"...supervisors...support...limits on wineries, events"--PD

[Shepherd]

Especially if you were at yesterday's Supervisors meeting on wineries and have a comment to make, please consider sending it to me, as well as making it at the following link to the PD article.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/5...upport?ref=TSM

Sonoma County supervisors signal support for limits on wineries, events
ANGELA HART, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | July 12, 2016

A majority of Sonoma County supervisors on Tuesday voiced support for new regulations on one of the largest sectors of the local economy — wine-related tourism — a move that signals the likelihood the wine industry will face greater county scrutiny and potential limits on new development and business activity.

The consensus came about during a first-of-its-kind four-hour study session on the growth of the county’s signature industry. Supervisors agreed the county needs to act, citing widespread concern among residents about the increase in wineries that double as event centers and commercial impacts on roads, resources and the character of rural areas.

“I grew up in Dry Creek Valley. I’ve been to weddings and parties at vineyards, but it’s a different day now,” said Supervisor James Gore, who represents the north county, including Dry Creek and Alexander valleys. “This is from a guy who people say is owned by the wine industry.”

Supervisors Susan Gorin, Efren Carrillo and David Rabbitt joined Gore in calling for crackdowns on wineries found to be holding unauthorized events, with Gore and Rabbitt calling for a so-called “three-strikes” rule for wineries that repeatedly break the rules.

All four said they also are concerned about the cumulative impacts of winery development, and an increase in events in recent years that has worsened traffic, drained water supplies and added noise in rural neighborhoods. Of the 447 wineries and tasting rooms outside city limits, 291 sites are allowed to host events.

The next move could include the drafting of new regulations that could limit such activities in the future, while balancing the needs of the wine industry. Planning commissioners and supervisors would need to sign off on any final rules.

“There is a balance that we need to strike, and we can’t do it without the industry’s participation and acknowledgment that the status quo isn’t perfect,” said Carrillo, who represents most of the Russian River Valley. “We also need to be mindful of the economic engine that agriculture provides here in the county.”
Supervisor Shirlee Zane was absent.

Wine-related tourism generates $1.25 billion in Sonoma County each year, with an additional $13.4 billion in economic impacts, according to the county.

Supervisors were scheduled Tuesday to direct county planning officials to draft a potential ordinance setting new rules on the industry for adoption at a later date.

But the board halted such action after dozens of public speakers weighed in on county proposals, including options to limit amplified music, restrict events at some wineries situated off narrow country roads and regulate the type of food served in tasting rooms.

Wine industry representatives are seeking fewer limits on events, while neighborhood groups said the county must limit both new wineries and cap the number of events allowed.

“We are very concerned about this case-by-case permitting that has led to a local concentration of wineries and tasting rooms in Sonoma Valley, on West Dry Creek Road and on Westside Road,” said Padi Selwyn, co-chairwoman of the group Preserve Rural Sonoma County. “Sonoma County has reached a tipping point.”

The board voiced support for potential limits on wineries, tasting rooms and events in areas with a high level of wine-related tourism. Those could be the same areas that Selwyn mentioned in her comments Tuesday. Supervisors are set to reconvene the study session within 60 days.

Gorin, who represents Sonoma Valley, was the most outspoken about the need for regulations. She said her office is often inundated with calls from concerned neighbors who live near wineries and tasting rooms.
“We have a lot of tasting rooms and we have a lot of events,” said Gorin, whose district also includes Bennett Valley east of Santa Rosa.

“We need to think about how much is too much.”

Wine industry representatives floated a proposal that would relax the county’s current definition of permitted events, allowing wineries to host activities that increase direct-to-consumer sales, such as dinners and release parties. Sonoma County Vintners, the winemakers’ trade group, also proposed creating an oversight and compliance officer to respond to community concerns and resolve disputes with neighbors.

Most of Sonoma County wineries are small, family-owned business that produce fewer than 50,000 cases. Vintners said events help them sell their wine, promote agriculture and sustain an industry that preserves farmland and open space.

“It seems like a lot of people have forgotten what agriculture truly is,” said Mike Martini, a partner and general manager of Taft Street Winery in the Russian River Valley. “Agriculture is, in fact, commercial. If we start tinkering with the permitting process, the people we’re driving out of the business are not the Jackson Family wineries, it’s the small family producers.”

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or [email protected]. On Twitter @ahartreports

[Shepherd]

Following are some comments by people who were at the July 12 Board of Supervisors meeting on wineries. If you have other comments to add, even if you were not there, about the meaning of that meeting, please add them to this discussion. I may send out another group of comments, as we seek to understand the significance of that meeting.
Shepherd

Thank you to everyone who sent emails, showed up, spoke before the board, and shared our plea for emails and attendance. It was very heartening to see so many of our supporters present in this overflow crowd! The wine industry was on their knees yesterday. Their presentations were so weak and Karissa left even before her name was called to speak. Wine folk behaved very differently than they did at the November 16 meeting where they were cocky, confident and arrogant!

There is still much work to do and we need to make sure to keep the pressure on as we can be assured wine interests will be working hard behind-the-scenes. Thanks again for all the time, effort, and energy. Together we are making great progress and together we will continue to work hard to preserve rural Sonoma County!
Padi Selwyn, Preserve Rural Sonoma County

It was wonderful to see and hear so many people who support rural preservation. Our statements were very strong and the supervisors heard us. I was really proud to be there.

And there is a lot of work to do. The last 10 minutes at the bitter end were revealing. Susan Gorin was the only one who seemed to want county wide regulations. The rest emphasized to Tennis, as they were trying to direct him, that they wanted flexibility on regs and wanted to look at events on a case by case basis. Gore lifted both arms up and said he didn't want to worry about every little event. Carrillo and Rabbitt were concerned about protecting the wine industry. So we will see what happens!! And send more emails concerning our positions and words of support to Susan.

Does anyone know Shirlee Zane's position?
Eszter Freeman

I heard it a little different in that Board wants Countywide rules. The "Specific Plan" thing came up as an alternative to solving existing problem in troubled areas. So, I suspect we'll see both 1) amendments to Ord and 2) additions to GP a la specific plan for Sonoma and W. Dry Creek in a year or so.
Ernie Carpenter

I feel that Susan Gorin was the star. I was impressed, but just briefly about some of James Gore remarks. They were anti-food and wine pairings unless local food was highlighted. He back pedaled alittle afterwards but felt the new thing in wineries should be multiple crops. CAFF was late and did not get a speaker card in, lost opportunity to speak more on that.

I understand that each area of concentration is different but using the same old case by case approval is only setting up more conflict and special interests. We made some progress but time will tell as we will not hear a thing until September due to the case load by PRMD whose staff was just reduced by 25%. This is crucial as the Supes asked for several studies including traffic and NO ONE SPOKE out about conducting these studies in peak traffic times. PRMD let Bella Winery redo their traffic plan in low traffic periods to get an event permit.

Also I was incredibly disturbed at the insistence that most of the wineries are small! PRMD and the wine folks really hammered on that! PRMD and the supervisors kept saying 92% could be in compliance for events. More back dating of permits like Ratna Ling? Char Vale remember had 3 wineries closest to them openly advertising non-permitted events. We need to get on the make up of the corporate people who own all these small wineries now. This is the new corporate thing to buy up small wineries with limited production so they can charge more. Less than 2 weeks ago one big group bought up 4 or 5 small wineries according to the PD. I am slammed for the rest of the day. Thanks for doing this!
Janus Matthes, Wine and Water Watch

Fred Allebach's comment on PD article
What we are seeing in the county is an internal wine industry war between estate-based, bonded wineries and urban/Plaza-based virtual wineries.

These virtual wineries and associated tasting rooms, bottling facilities and shipping facilities, in urban areas, are what is driving actual estate-based,
bonded wineries into a frenzy of event center panic, to not lose market share to the new central Plaza model.

Then we get mixed up in industry marketing obfuscation about who is a "family-owned winery", when most of them are actually big corporate. In the county
70% of production is from 12 wineries.

The reason the bonded wineries are pushing for so many more events, weddings, food pairings, concerts etc., is because the virtuals are stealing market share. The bonded wineries cry they can’t make a profit, but this is not because of excessive regulation by the government but because of good old-fashioned free market competition and an evolving economic playing field.

And then it comes on the backs of the urban and rural public to endure a bonanza of intensified competition between two conflicting models of making and
selling wine. The old model offers aristocratic countryside mystique; the new model offers a one-stop wine/ food pairing shop in cutesy pie boutique 
Plazas which the virtuals have taken completely over.

This internecine wine industry competition threatens to gobble up all county public space with wine, wine, wine and more wine. Maybe the job of government is to protect citizens from this marketing cancer, rather than it feed it more.

[Shepherd]

Following and attached is the California Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) letter to the Sups on winery events:




NORTH COAST CHAPTER
July 10, 2016

To: Sonoma County Board of Supervisors,
Comments regarding Winery Events

Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), North Coast Chapter strongly supports General Plan provisions and zoning regulations which protect the integrity of designated agricultural lands for production as well as practices which enhance the natural resources that allow agriculture to flourish. We are concerned that the rapid increase in the number of wineries and winery events in some areas has begun to change our agricultural sector into a hospitality industry, threatening the same agriculture that it intended to support. The cumulative impacts of so many wineries and event centers has resulted in the loss of prime farmland to visitor serving uses, the degradation of rural roads, severe traffic and safety problems, and loss of the rural character that has made our county so special and that the General Plan indicates must be preserved.

We appreciate that the County is now considering regulations to limit and monitor the number and extent of winery events.

The Staff Report outlines the economic benefits of the wine industry to the county, but as this industry has shifted to hospitality, the costs to the county have increased as well. A full cost/benefit study should be completed for each wine region to help determine the true economic impact of these rural visitor serving uses. Such a study should include analysis of road and traffic impacts, increased patrols for drunk drivers, greenhouse gas emissions, labor needs, (numbers of workers and commuting miles), and increased water use, while run off has increased and groundwater recharge has decreased.

The Staff Report also states the need by the wine industry to utilize more direct to consumer sales due to industry market changes. However, hosting events is not the only way for a winery to distinguish themselves and sell wine. Growers using organic and biodynamic practices and diversifying their farms with other crops and livestock have become very popular and have strong sales. The demand for local food far exceeds the supply, and with climate change disrupting global food production, our agricultural lands are critical for increasing food security. We need to have policies that encourage and support diverse local production. Diversity is a key component to economic and ecological stability.

As to the specific policy options now being addressed, we support the following:

Minimum site area
Minimum site area required for a tasting room 10 acres and support other options listed.

Setbacks
Setbacks should conform to General Plan standards and create new minimum setbacks to achieve the goals of noise standards. Noise “abating” features must be documented. Standards should be applied to ALL noise sources, (not just the event center itself), including parking areas and access roads.

Number of tasting rooms
Only one tasting room per site in agricultural zoned lands. Permitted only where processing takes place. Limit size of area. Support all options listed.

Access
Require access from a public road for events and minimum 18’ paved road width for access roads to sites with events or tasting rooms.

Visitor hours
Limit events to end by 9:00 pm with noise standards. Limit number of attendees and events per year, established on a size threshold and location basis.

Food service
Support all options listed.

Promotional activities
Support all options listed and in addition: Business trade activities should be counted as events if number attending exceeds 25. All “activities” should be included in analysis to determine impacts and address mitigations cumulatively.

Industry-wide events
Support all options plus limit to 2 consecutive days in all areas. Include in analysis other events in region that would increase impacts (i.e. bike rallies, car races, lavender festival, etc.)

Monitoring and enforcement
Support all options listed. Fees for permits must cover administration and monitoring of program and should include traffic/road impact fees.

Existing wineries
Set a time limit for applications for use permits and meaningful fines for any that to not meet that deadline. Consider cumulative impacts of existing and “historic” wineries and/or events as part of mitigation planning.
What’s missing
Although cumulative impacts and concentration are mentioned in the Staff Report, no policies are proposed to deal with this problem and create limits.

Additional impacts are not addressed such as increased greenhouse gas emissions from rural transportation and winery emissions, water use and groundwater recharge capacity and hospitality labor needs.

CAFF appreciates the opportunity to provide input on these issues that are so critical to the future of our county. Thank you for considering our views.

Sincerely yours, Wendy Krupnick, for CAFF North Coast Policy committee

[O.W.]

July 6, 2016

Dear Supervisor Gorin, Carillo, Gore, Zane and Rabbitt,

Wine & Water Watch (WWW) is a group of concerned citizens that focus on water and natural resources in the environment. We have 100 members that are committed to true sustainability of those resources. Our group has been calling for a full EIR county wide on cumulative impacts of winery expansion that has gone far beyond the General Plan predictions to be conducted before any long lasting decisions are made. Without that EIR any decision will be based on more assumptions that apparently were not even close to predicting the mess we have now.

WWW members request that you, as our Supervisors, act in the best interest of the whole community to uphold the protective policies in our current General Plan (GP) and stop the industrialization of our ag lands. Changing the definition of agriculture to an industrial commercialization model will be a disaster to our communities.

The issue facing Sonoma County is one of over-development of agricultural land. Even small parcels qualify to have wineries on them.With the proliferation of wineries come events: Private and industry-wide events during summer months and holidays and special events for wine club members.Traffic, parking, noise, and safety are all compromised with the commercialization of neighborhoods that are on rural roads and two-lane highways on/or near 20,000 to 500,000 case wineries that are becoming the norm. Ag land is being commercialized in this way and there is a rush to get permits so that later the parcel can be sold for millions.

Wineries always ask for more events when requesting a permit and then compromise so that they can advertise at least 18 events a year plus industry-wide events with only an estimate of attendees. Kenwood Winery is a good example of this.They plan to rev up their marketing plan to increase visitors from the current 20,000 to 35,000 with a final goal of 50,000 plus.The permitting process cannot rely on enforcement or policing of wineries after the fact.The Sonoma County General Plan has been superseded and the number of wineries predicted for 2020 has been exceeded by more than 80 per cent.It’s time for a moratorium on winery permits until the County completes an EIR regarding development of ag land and consults with traffic engineers and Cal Trans on current and predicted impacts to traffic and safety on our roads and highways.

Local groups have estimated that tasting rooms, parking lots and event venues on agriculture lands have paved over 8,000 acres in our county already. This is NOT preservation, this is industrialization and should be in commercial areas not in rural areas where roads are crumbling and infrastructure barely exists. Our police are overburdened with half of the calls now coming from tourists according to recent Press Democrat articles.

We no longer need to fund tourism for this county as it is already out of hand. The loss of local community support stores to tourism based boutiques and t-shirt shops do not help communities function nor make them livable. The tourism industry is traditionally LOW WAGES making residents look for 2 and 3 jobs to stay financially viable. The event centers are fragmenting neighborhoods by allowing vacation rentals in all zones. Homes become investments and not for living day to day. The more rural roads decay and traffic gets unbearable, residents are forced to drive on roads that should only have local traffic. Our children are being forced to move away due to high rents and lack of affordability as the billionaires move in for more profit making.

We feel the following should be enacted:

1. Last year the Press Democrat reported over 3,000 complaints against the industry. Fines for infractions should be greatly increased. Those fines could pay for more enforcement.
2. Move all events to areas that can handle the traffic safely as Europe does, move industrial ag operations (event centers, tasting rooms) to main thoroughfares off Highway 101.
3. Change the definition of agriculture back to what was the original intention and NOT direct marketing that is causing wineries to compete more and more with each other in a “promotional event war” which favors the big investors. This business model is costing wineries more in capitalization and encouraging even commercialization to compete which in turn pushes out local business.
4. Land uses conflicts can be addressed by not allowing anymore event centers and tasting rooms on our rural lands. Let’s not make our neighborhoods collateral damage.
5. Protect our local restaurants and stop issuing commercial kitchens in wineries.

​To implement fixes for the myriad of problems caused by binge tourism and commercialization of our rural ag lands, inventory all existing centers and impacts and do not allow events in congested areas.

The fiasco on Hwy 12 for the Lavender Festival should be a wakeup call that something needs to be done to curtail this out of control industrial model that has been taking over our neighborhoods and fracturing our communities.
Wine and Water Watch

[Shepherd]

I want to echo some of the things that O.W. says and add some other points. Wine & Water Watch, which is at www.winewaterwatch.org is a four-country network--Napa, Mendocino, and Lake, in addition to Sonoma. The importance of this has to do with the Napafication of Sonoma County. Some of the worst apples in the wine industry--like Paul Hobbs and Joe Wagner--came here from Napa, where the regulations on the wine industry are stronger and enforced better. We need to strengthen regulations and enforce them with fines. For example, in 2013 Joe Wagner's father settled with Napa County for $1 million. Hobbs was liable for fines in the millions, because citizens turned him in for violating the law. He settled for $100,000 with Sonoma County. That may sound like a lot of money, but to these vintners, it is merely the cost of doing business.

I agree with the 5 points that W.O.'s concludes this letter to the supervisors with.

...Wine & Water Watch (WWW) is a group of concerned citizens that focus on water and natural resources in the environment. ...

[beshiva]

and If you want a Board of Supervisors that supports the Wine Industry wholeheartedly, because that is the Altar they worship and drink from-- then you will probably keep the status quo and vote for Hopkins.
and Don't complain that you thought it would be different.