Editorial

A fascinating new rationale is going around to explain why wineries have to throw so many big parties. It has to do with a relatively new social force called “wine club pressure.”

All sorts of barnyard proverbs and euphemisms could be used to explain the current taxpayers’ dilemma. Not to beat a dead horse, but we’ve repeatedly warned about too many tax increases and bond measures on the next ballot. We don’t want to sound like Chicken Little and claim that the sky is falling, but decades of runaway pension costs are finally coming home to roost. Somebody left the barn door open and all that is left in our taxpayers’ barnyard is a pile of cow pies and horse biscuits.

Healdsburg’s GMO (Growth Management Ordinance) is a complicated citizen’s initiative that was passed in 2000. In essence it limits the number of homes that can be built in a given year to 30. Since then the population has increased by less than 500 people. It is very difficult to provide housing opportunities for working folks in our community as median home prices have risen dramatically, inventory shrinks and nearly one third of re-sales are for second homes. Two years ago a committee was formed to look at amending the GMO. A compromise was reached that would give us a few more units for a 15 year period and then revert back to the current GMO. It wasn’t perfect, actually far from it. The original author of the GMO measure attended and spoke at the meetings. However he would not support even the modest changes the committee proposed, but agreed to remain neutral. He insisted that the GMO wasn’t broken and didn’t need a fix.