Best Family Investors LLC Winery:New Public Hearing

[Thomas Morabito]

In their infinite wisdom our Board of Supervisors has decided to finalize the vote on a number of controversial General Plan amendments on election day. Apparently they feel that having people take an afternoon off from work to participate in the process is not inconvenient enough for the residents of Sonoma County. If you can manage to clear the many hurdles the county has erected to discourage public participation in the process we would love to see you at the Public Hearing which will decide if a 33,000 sq. ft. factory will be the new welcome sign to people entering Sebastopol from the north end of town. It appears to me that The County would like to see the neighbors, the public, the EPA, and all other opposition go away so The Best Family Investors Winery LLC can begin to maximize their profits on a piece of land unsuited and too small to accommodate this monstrosity.
Please come to the Hearing:
June 8, 2010 2:10 p.m.
Sonoma County Board of Supervisors
575 Administration Ave
Santa Rosa California

Come and Be Heard! Don't let our elected representatives sell Sonoma County to the highest bidder.

[paradise]

What a sad day it was.....Tuesday, June 9th ! The Board of Supervisors chose to vote in favor of special interest and developers and ignore the pleas of the residents who demand an EIR (environmental impact report) on the project for the Best Family Investors LLC .

People came to the hearing prepared to inform the Board of Supervisors that changes to the Mitigated Negative Declaration require the project be moved to a date when the public has been notified of the hearing with sufficient notice to speak to the new changes. Each member of the public wishing to address this project was allowed ONE MINUTE to speak to the issues in the Draft Resolution only, a documents delivered to the public via counsel at 4:20pm on Friday afternoon !

The Board of Supervisors ignored ,on Staff's recommendation, the expert opinion of Dr. Robert Curry, a well respected professional and a registered Hydrologist and Geologist. His supplemental report reads as follows:
"The footprints of the delineated wetland and its required setbacks as well as that for the water supply well, together with the proposed 38,000 square feet of winery buildings and 42 parking spaces on this small parcel do not allow for future redesign of an inadequate septic system. The design must be proven effective in advance of your approval of rezoning."
The Planning Commission at the initial hearing on October 2009, by their own admission, stated that the system the applicant was planning had a high failure rate.....But, one said, "I'm sure it will be allright".

The Best Family Investors LLC presented this project as an example of water conservation. They proposed the use of the infamous 3oz toilets which Mr. Tom Lynch, 5th District Planning Commissioner, boasted about in a newspaper article. These toilets, it appear, are not permissible in Sonoma County. In addition, the investors presented a water capturing system of cisterns and stated they would use the captured water to clean the wine barrels, wash the interior of the crush facility, etc. Well, it appears they never had a system in place to make this water potable. It also appears such a system is not permissible in Sonoma County ! The Applicant's representation of water use was misleading. So, all the water savings down the drain, no pun intended, and the Board of Supervisors doesn't think it's necessary to require a new Water Balance Report to calculate the new well water use of this project and the impact it will have on the area? That's right !

The public submitted expert opinion suggested "drawdown from the private parcel well and the winery well could be expected to coincide and temporarily reduce the water tables at the pumps on both wells. .....This would reduce somewhat the water available to each well and may draw leachfield effluents into the local groundwater" !!!!!! That's potential contamination of local groundwater.
Expert opinion was overriden by County Planner with her own mitigation. Last time the public checked, County Planner was not a registered hydrologist or geologist, qualified to contest the opinion of an expert.
Well....that doesn't appear to matter. The Board of Supervisors let it go.

So many things wrong with this project. So, why is the Board of Supervisors voting for it? It appears this Board is in favor of special interests and not the environment. The cummulative effect of this, along with all the other winery projects in line for approval, could be our own GULF DISASTER in the making ! The Board is selling us down the river in favor of fattening the county coffers and special interest.

Wake up residents of West Sonoma County. Who speaks for us if we don't speak up for ourselves?
Please support Concerned Citizens for Responsible Land Use. With your support we can continue to speak up against this injustice. For more information and to pledge your support write [email protected].

Let's keep West Sonoma County beautiful, clean and healthy for ourselves, our children and our children's children.

[paradise]

There are so many things wrong with this project, but PRMD Staff has also made numerous errors in the Mitigated Negative Declaration and Revised Mitigated Negative Declaration.

Can you believe in the Revised MND the wrong deed and parcel description of the project was cited?

Can you believe that the applicant's architectural renderings show landscape plantings on property not owned by them?
Additionally, applicant states they will keep the grove of eucaliptus trees in place. Well, this grove of eucaliptus trees is on someone else's property. Let's hope they leave it alone.

There are 2 schools within 1/4 mile from this project which have not been addressed.

When the straw vote was taken on March 2nd, applicant's representative stated they had a zero emissions (Green House Gas) plan which was submitted. Where is this plan? The public has not seen it.

A very important fact is that all reports on this project estimate a total number of 150 attendees for 5 industry wide events. The traffic, water, noise, etc all have been calculated on this maximum number. The Board of Supervisors has approved this project leaving this critical number out.
If more than 150 people attend a particular event, the applicant's reports no longer make sense.


Another point I find so interesting is that in the architectural design a huge roll up door has been placed on the side of the building facing Atkinson Road. The applicant's representative state this door is for "esthetics" only. When this roll up door is opened, ALL the noise reports might as well be thrown out the window. The noise levels will exceed their own reports. AND WHO PUTS IN A ROLL UP DOOR FOR LOOKS? Give me a break !

The public has been mislead by PRMD Staff's Courtesy Notice which invited the public to attend the hearing on June 9th. But, in essence, said they could not address the issues because the hearing had been closed on March 2nd.
So why then, should the public receive a Courtesy Notice encouraging it to attend and not allowed to speak?
The public was permitted ONE MINUTE per individual to speak ONLY to the Draft Resolution.

One of the residents at the June 9th hearing,took the podium and in one minute cited inumerable errors and the corresponding pages in the Revised MND.

Please support Concerned Citizens for Responsible Land Use. We need your help and support. E-mail [email protected].

Thank you.

[2Bwacco]

The noise from the facility will most likely be intolerable to all living in the small neighborhood of Atkinson Road and nearby Occidental Road.

So, as you move away, the "Best" folks will probably snatch up the parcels one by one, and probably eliminate the housing, so as to expand their whiney facility.

I witnessed the "hearing" on Tuesday, June 8, 2010.

As the events unfolded, basically no hearing took place.

The extremely limited discourse allowed by the Board of Supervisors constituted public comment nullification!