SodaCanyonRoad | NVR Eds: the time has come - just not now

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NVR Eds: the time has come - just not now
Bill Hocker | May 4, 2018 on: Campaign 2018

Update 5/4/18
The Yes-on-C campaign has labeled the Editorial Board's "the-time-has-come-just-not-now" approach as absurd, which it is. It is the same approach Sup. Ramos, one of the opponents of Measure C, used on the Raymond decision concerning use permit violations. It is obvious that the time will never come for reform in Napa county if left up to the establishment.

4/30/18
NVR Editorial Board 4/28/18: Our view: The measures on the June Ballot

The Register's Editorial Board opinion on Measures C, D and 3 is a bit disappointing. It seemed that in all three cases they voted, reluctantly, against the ideas that they lavished their praise on. What kind of decision making is that.

On Measure C
"We agree with almost all of what the backers of Measure C say....Where we do disagree with the backers of Measure C is in the notion that we have exhausted all possible avenues to protect the watersheds before reaching for the dangerously blunt and inflexible weapon of a ballot measure."

Actually the Walt Ranch hearings and appeals and court case over a four-year period were a thoroughly exhaustive attempt to protect the watersheds through normal political avenues. Yet it was not enough to save them from substantial deforestation for the development of 35 new vineyard estate sites.

As Nancy Tamarisk of the Sierra Club has recently written: "Initiatives are filed as a last resort when people have lost faith that their government bodies represent them, often when people believe that officials are captive to special interests."

As Tony McClimans has written in a recent editorial about previous efforts to pass more comprehensive watershed protections: "Confronted by staunch industry opposition, decades of board majorities declined to take action."

And Katy Felch writes: "Our local government