It could be said that we will best remember the year of 2018 as “the year after.” After all, this was the year that followed the historic wildfires of 2017 in Sonoma County. And this was the first full year of legal cannabis in California, following the Jan. 1 implementation of the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA). This was also the year that followed the undeniable realization here that we are facing a monumental affordable housing shortage. What happens next in 2019 is likely to follow the same course of news, events and public discussions, also mostly about wildfire rebuilding efforts, evolving cannabis laws and our housing and affordable household income struggles.
The past year of 2018 was not without its own highlights or landmarks. The winegrape vintage of 2018 may prove to be one of the brightest and most lucrative harvests ever. The post-drought crop was very heavy, and the growing season was long and almost perfectly paced. This is good news for all of us where growing grapes is the biggest segment of our regional economy and supports more than 20,000 direct jobs, plus thousands more in hospitality and support industries.
In 2018, we held elections across the county, cities and local school and fire boards. New leadership emerged in a few places, and we bid adieu to a few retiring leaders at the end of their rewarding pubic servant careers. Our local elections were without the strife and bitterness we witnessed elsewhere across the country during the pivotal 2018 mid-term voting. As far as we know, there was no Russian collusion in any of our local elections.
The wildfires of 2018 spared Sonoma County this time. But the fires that destroyed Butte County’s town of Paradise and the upper mountain lands of southern Mendocino County rekindled many local fears, reminding all of us that we now live in a “new abnormal.” Going forward in California, every year will be a “wildfire year.”
Besides learning to live with a permanent threat of wildfires, we must also learn to live with new housing patterns and dozens or hundreds of new residential developments. We have learned that Sonoma County’s housing shortage is at least 20,000 unbuilt homes. With likely new restrictions on not building more houses in wildfire zones, this means small cities like Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Sebastopol and Windsor must accommodate both in-fill and outward fringe development.
If our new and old elected officials do things right, we should expect many evenings of housing debates, planning hearings and, hopefully, approved projects.
After only 12 months of having the AUMA cannabis laws on the books, almost no one can predict how and where the local zoning, cultivation, retail and regulatory laws will end up. Sonoma County’s cannabis landscape is a mess right now. No one is happy except possibly the invading large cannabis corporations, which are threatening to displace what was once the promise of cottage and family-owned cannabis growers and operations.
We will soon be told by visiting economists at the annual State of the Economy address that we should expect our local economy to begin to slow down. The long run of improving housing values, low unemployment and economic growth after the 2008 Great Recession will finally begin to end in 2019. At least that’s what we predict the predictors will tell us.
The coming year of 2019 can still bring better times for almost all of us. We will have another great grape harvest, weather permitting. We can provide lots of jobs and economic expansion if we get serious about building houses. And, grumble or don’t, but our regional tourism economy will remain very strong, catering to visitors from all over, including China and other places with money to export.
Let’s work together for the best outcomes. Be fire-ready, safe, resilient and willing to support some changes to our landscapes in places.
