SodaCanyonRoad | The Notification Issue

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The Notification Issue
Gary Margadant | Feb 16, 2015 on: The WDO

NVR 2/12/15: Napa County explores requiring signs for proposed projects

To put a little wind in the sails of a few Supervisors and make note of a small slice of public opinion, the attached doc has the comments to a recent article, "Napa County explores requiring signs for proposed projects".

Here are two, the first being mine. I plan to put them into an email to the Supes about Project Sign and Neighborhood Notification. Overall, I would say the response was favorable and engaging.

MtVeederView - February 13, 2015 10:57 am
Rural residents want to know what is going on in their neighborhood, just like our neighbors in the city limits. But we are spread out and notification currently is limited to 1000ft (recently changed from 300ft) from the project property line. That is less than one quarter of a mile, and on a road like Mt Veeder, Dry Creek, Atlas Peak, Soda Canyon, all longer than 12 miles with no cross streets, 90% of the neighborhoods are out of the loop. We want signs, 4ft x 4ft, max size or like the ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) required signs (used by neighbors to sell wine from their grapes). The signs are not clutter in rural areas, they are essential neighbor information, so don't think of them in the context of city blocks and housing tracts, it is not the same. Sadly, some of our supervisors are using city language to decide a rural issue, one that can only assist those who would prefer not to see rural participation in land use matters before Napa County. Gary Margadant

Davebob
I enthusiastically support adopting a sign notification such as is currently employed by Sonoma County for the following reasons----
1) Legal notifications in the local paper are in fact not read by the majority of the readers, and the subscription base is not a majority of county residents.
2) Letters of notification have had problems reaching the complete list of property owners within the 300 foot project boundary.
3) The notification letters have been written in “legalese” ----a real word translation is missing.
4) Using technology for notification could/would be blocked by spam filters. (There are still people in rural Napa that only have dial-up or no internet).
5) A sign would be temporary---only for the term of the project.
6) Completed projects typically have permanent signs, and they are allowed. So will there actually be more signs in the long run?

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