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APAC #8 statement
APAC #8 statement
| Jul 28, 2015 on: APAC
Good morning chair and committee members of TPAC. I'm Mike Hackett from Angwin.
I've been to all the TPAC meetings except for last week and that's not my impression of what's going on at all, honestly [promoting wine sales proposed by the previous speaker]. Just to take a step back it seems like we're all here really, not to beat around the bush, but to just take the distant view that we do have an imbalance here, and the problem is that tourism is taking the balance away from the residents who live there. That's why we're here. That's why everybody's here complaining, because the large corporations and winery owners and the tourism industry is dominating the philosophy and the politics in this county. There's no doubt about it. I was really enthused about this group, and I am a little disappointed at this point because now I realize the even before it was set up, it was set up to fail.
I actually had a supervisor, who will remain nameless, say to me "you didn't really expect that group to accomplish anything did you?" That's a supervisor and that's a direct quote. That's no anecdotal, that's from him to me to you. And it appears that that's what's going on. The tourism block has voted against any kind of restriction. raising the parcel size-no; small winery use permit-no; minimum amount of estate grapes-no; no net loss to vineyards-no; changing food service to accessory use-no; there's been nothing but no votes out of the industry. That's the facts, again non anecdotal. That's the facts.
Last week I was unable to attend so yesterday I spent two and half house [listening to] the audio which is OK, I'm glad you're getting the video this time. It was going pretty good until Mr. McCrae, speaking on behalf of the vintners said that the vintners are interested in the compliance issues and having some auditing and some self enforcing, and that's OK with production numbers, but if you start talking about events, they don't want anything to do with it, no copying [?] of events. Well that's the problem here. As it came out last week we have 23,000 events each year. It doesn't sound like much unless you bring it down to 64 in Napa County every day. 64 every day. Seems like a lot to me. Doesn't sound like the wine industry is just part of the problem, [but maybe] the whole problem.
Thank you Mr. Dunbar for bringing up a motion that was shot down immediately, and it was shot down because some people needed to talk to their constituents I was sickened by that. If you can't represent your constituents here you shouldn't be on the committee. You have to back to hem? it's ridiculous. How much more do we need? No more events. We've got 5.6 million dollars spent for tourism. I think you get the jist of what I'm saying. Thank you very much.
Good morning chair and committee members of TPAC. I'm Mike Hackett from Angwin.
I've been to all the TPAC meetings except for last week and that's not my impression of what's going on at all, honestly [promoting wine sales proposed by the previous speaker]. Just to take a step back it seems like we're all here really, not to beat around the bush, but to just take the distant view that we do have an imbalance here, and the problem is that tourism is taking the balance away from the residents who live there. That's why we're here. That's why everybody's here complaining, because the large corporations and winery owners and the tourism industry is dominating the philosophy and the politics in this county. There's no doubt about it. I was really enthused about this group, and I am a little disappointed at this point because now I realize the even before it was set up, it was set up to fail.
I actually had a supervisor, who will remain nameless, say to me "you didn't really expect that group to accomplish anything did you?" That's a supervisor and that's a direct quote. That's no anecdotal, that's from him to me to you. And it appears that that's what's going on. The tourism block has voted against any kind of restriction. raising the parcel size-no; small winery use permit-no; minimum amount of estate grapes-no; no net loss to vineyards-no; changing food service to accessory use-no; there's been nothing but no votes out of the industry. That's the facts, again non anecdotal. That's the facts.
Last week I was unable to attend so yesterday I spent two and half house [listening to] the audio which is OK, I'm glad you're getting the video this time. It was going pretty good until Mr. McCrae, speaking on behalf of the vintners said that the vintners are interested in the compliance issues and having some auditing and some self enforcing, and that's OK with production numbers, but if you start talking about events, they don't want anything to do with it, no copying [?] of events. Well that's the problem here. As it came out last week we have 23,000 events each year. It doesn't sound like much unless you bring it down to 64 in Napa County every day. 64 every day. Seems like a lot to me. Doesn't sound like the wine industry is just part of the problem, [but maybe] the whole problem.
Thank you Mr. Dunbar for bringing up a motion that was shot down immediately, and it was shot down because some people needed to talk to their constituents I was sickened by that. If you can't represent your constituents here you shouldn't be on the committee. You have to back to hem? it's ridiculous. How much more do we need? No more events. We've got 5.6 million dollars spent for tourism. I think you get the jist of what I'm saying. Thank you very much.