“If you’re a regular person,” she says, “you don’t stand a chance.”
You Would Think
Here’s what we think. If you value clean water, clean air, and good quality of life, then you should vote for Measure C. If you like being lied to, enjoy sitting in traffic on Highway 29, and don’t mind seeing this valley run for the express benefit of political and economic elite, then by all means vote against it.
The 411 on 795 for Measure C
Letter to the Editor, May 16, 2018
Thanks, Measure C opponents, for your latest contribution to disingenuous mendacity. In your latest mailer, I see you have fixated on the 795-acre figure.
Maybe you forgot Measure C was written in cooperation with the Napa Valley Vintners. And you pretend not to know that oak woodland is now being cleared for vineyards at a rate that, by 2030 will add up to ... 795 acres.
So that number is basically yours, included to ensure the Vintners’ support. Which they then withdrew. The Measure C effort made this concession up front, and was repaid with an opposition campaign of obfuscation and deception.
Turning the 795-acre figure on its head and acting like Measure C favors oak woodland cutting is the latest of these. And without Measure C, what’s the number of cleared acres allowed?
Unlimited.
Shame on the No on Measure C campaign. Vote 'yes' on Measure C.
Jeremy Wilder Fitch
Napa
Is Napa growing too much wine? Residents seek to preserve treasured land
The rise of Napa began with an upset. Warren Winiarski would know – his wine, a cabernet sauvignon, was a firm underdog at a legendary 1976 blind tasting in Paris, which pitted the best of France against the little-known California region.
His winery, Stag’s Leap, shocked the wine world by taking top honors. “It broke the glass ceiling that France had imposed on everyone,” he recalls. “People’s aspirations were liberated.”
Today Winiarski, 89, is speaking not of liberation, but of limits. A growing coalition of industry veterans and longtime residents fear that Napa has become a victim of its own success, pointing to the ecological transformation of the valley floor from dense oak woodland to a sea of vine-wrapped trellises. And they are posing a thorny question: has a unique agricultural region reached a tipping point at which agriculture itself becomes the threat?
Sierra Club is for Measure C
A Letter to the Editor - St. Helena Star by Diane Shepp - Sierra Club Representative
Two opponents of Measure C have signed election documents representing themselves as “Sierra Club Member” and “Former Sierra Club Board Member” to which we take strong exception as attempts to mislead voters in the face of approval by the Sierra Club at all levels to endorse Measure C.
"Sierra Club has confidence in Napa County voters and calls upon our membership to join and vote YES on Measure C."
Vintners and Growers support YES on Measure C
Should significant money from vineyard and winery organizations, or the voice of citizens, win this battle for our watershed?
Complaint Filed with State Elections Watchdog over Official Legal Analysis of Napa County’s Measure C
Napa County – The attorney for the Yes on C campaign filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) late on Monday, May 7th, charging that the Napa County Board of Supervisors, as well as Supervisors Ramos and Pedroza, are “actively engaged in an unregistered and unreported campaign against the Napa County Watershed and Oak Woodland Protection Initiative of 2018, which has been placed on the June 5, 2018, ballot as Napa County Measure C.” Read the entire complaint filed here:
The complaint asks the FPPC to take enforcement action against the county for unlawfully using public funds to prepare a “9111 Report” that advocates against Measure C. The county’s report was prepared by the law firm the county previously retained to keep a very similar ballot measure off the ballot in 2016. Under the California Constitution, public officials are prohibited from using taxpayer dollars to advocate for or against a ballot measure. Instead, the California Supreme Court has directed that any materials prepared at public expense must be limited to “fair presentation” of “all relevant facts” and cannot be used “to promote a partisan position in an election campaign.”
“The county’s 9111 report on Measure C is so outside the norms of what these analyses typically include that it’s a stretch to call it a ‘9111 report’ at all,” said Robert “Perl” Perlmutter of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, LLP, the law firm that drafted the language of Measure C as well as previously adopted citizens’ initiatives in Napa County, Measures J and P. “The report is campaign advocacy paid for with taxpayer dollars, plain and simple. We feel confident that the FPPC will agree with our position.”
Under state elections law, public agencies like boards of supervisors and city councils have the authority to prepare reports informing voters about the potential impacts of citizens initiatives that affect their local jurisdictions. These analyses, known as 9111 reports (in reference to a section in the California Elections Code), are authorized to examine seven specified effects of county initiatives as well as any other matters the board requests. The county’s report was drafted in a biased manner that did not consider any of Measure C’s benefits and failed to analyze any of the seven effects identified in the Elections Code.
The report contains no discussion of how and to what degree Measure C will further its stated goals of ensuring long-term protections for Napa County’s oak woodlands, streams, and wetlands. The approach taken in the Measure C report stands in stark contrast to the approach taken in past 9111 reports for other Napa County ballot measures.
According to the FPPC complaint, “the 69-page report . . . reads as if it were a legal hit piece prepared for an opponent of Measure C, with the sole purpose of cataloguing every conceivable ground—no matter how flimsy—for potentially challenging Measure C in court.” The complaint points out that the executive summary in the report highlights the allegedly “significant” likelihood that Measure C’s opponents will file litigation against Measure C on numerous grounds. But the report then buries the fact that such potential lawsuits against the measure would most likely fail in court.
The report repeatedly asserts that key terms in the initiative might be attacked as unconstitutionally vague, without mentioning that those same terms are repeatedly used in the county’s existing laws, the county has never had a problem interpreting them, and they have never been legally challenged.
The complaint also names Supervisors Ramos and Pedroza, who signed the ballot arguments against Measure C that relied on the taxpayer-funded report to promote their political position on this matter.
The complaint alleges that the board and these individual supervisors violated state law by unlawfully using public funds for campaign purposes. It also argues that “they have violated numerous provisions of the Political Reform Act by: (1) failing to file the required independent expenditure verification; (2) failing to include any legally required disclaimers on certain campaign materials; and (3) failing to acknowledge their ongoing campaign finance reporting obligations.”
“The bottom line is that the county’s report about Measure C is replete with fundamentally misleading, biased, and inflammatory statements. It’s a campaign document, and must be treated accordingly,” concluded Perlmutter.
Letter sent to Fair Political Practices Commission names the Board of Supervisors and
Supervisors Ramos and Pedroza for using taxpayer funds to support campaign activity.
Rights require responsibility – Yes on C.
Letter to the Editor - Napa Valley Register by Andy Beckstoffer
The anti-conservation forces are declaring that the Measure C protection of watersheds is an assault to their property rights. It is not; it is a normal and expected outcome of increasing density of development.
In the early days of populating an area, the impact of one person is typically negligible, and so there are few formal restrictions. As an area becomes more populated, two things happen.
First, there are irresponsible people who do things on their land that have negative impacts on neighbors and downstream. Whether carving up a mountain such that it washes into the river, polluting, or creating problems with neighbors, rules are created to make it clear that irresponsible behavior is not allowed.
Of greater significance is the aggregate impact of development when an area attracts many landowners to deforest, build facilities, and scrape the land of natural vegetation. The aggregate and cumulative impact of development has harmful effects for neighbors and downstream communities, even if each individual adheres to a "best practice" approach.
That was resoundingly demonstrated in the Dunne report of 2001. As density increases, the cumulative impact becomes significant, and each landowner has to adhere to increasingly stringent rules to prevent permanent harm to the environment and its citizens. Even the first guy, who operated under no rules and was responsible, has to adhere to the rules that protect everybody. The same rules for everybody.
Is this stealing property rights? No. Nobody has unlimited sovereign rights. In general, you can do with your property as you please, unless it negatively impacts others. You can’t build a rock concert venue down a two-lane road deep in a canyon and you can’t operate a mercury mine (any more).
You can’t light a bonfire in windy dry weather. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, dry trash was burned in incinerators in back yards. The cumulative impact was horrid smog, so it was made illegal to possess an incinerator.
Was this an infringement on property rights? Not at all. It was acknowledgment that with increasing population density, this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
The flip side of the “rights” argument is “responsibility.” Acknowledge that Napa today is not the Napa of 1970. The volume and density of development – agriculture and "hospitality" - is having cumulative impact on the county, and we will have to create rules that protect the environment and communities from the cumulative impact of individually responsible operations.
Property rights are not absolute or infinite. What you can do with your property has always been with consideration to the impact on others. You are part of a community.
Which brings us back to Measure C. It is up to the citizens of our community to pass the initiative that will assure a healthy environment for all of Napa County’s current and future generations. Please join me in voting 'yes' on Measure C.
Andy Beckstoffer
St. Helena
It's only natural: the push to give rivers, mountains and forests legal rights
As reported in The Guardian
"What kind of culture develops the systems we have now that created such devastation?"
Action now on water
Letter to the Editor - Napa Valley Register by Charlie Toldeo
"Napa County cannot wait another week or years to start being proactive. What we are in the midst of is a major statewide water crisis. If the general public knew how critical the local water situation is, they would be very angry that the legislators have failed the public at such critical junctures."