Editorial

The No on R signs with their ominous “Protect Healdsburg” byline remind me of the dad we met at the farmers’ market whose icebreaker question was “What do you do for work that you can live here?”— as though we belong to a special club and not a town. Or the guy in Parkland Farms who told me he wasn’t concerned about the Saggio Hills development because, “That’s all going to be high end stuff … What I’m worried about are the apartments they want to build downtown— it’ll look like Rohnert Park.”

I promised myself that I would give the whole gun control issue a bit of a break. I find it depressing in the extreme and it only exacerbates my feeling of helplessness. I broke that promise to myself because a) no matter how I tried my thoughts still carom back to the subject, b) I had my fingers crossed when I made the promise and c) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get the words ‘exacerbate’ and ‘carom’ in one paragraph.

—Rollie Atkinson

The physical landscape and human culture of Sonoma County is a multi-layered tapestry of many ethnic paths, heritages and contributions. But if we were to only celebrate one perhaps it should be Latinos and Hispanics, as we now seek to do with National Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.

Fasten your seatbelts. This week marks the official start of Election Year 2016, culminating next Nov. 8 with the election of a new U.S. President and Congress. Dozens of local elections also will be decided, along with the usual flash mob of statewide propositions.

During the next year or so, the City of Healdsburg will make important decisions about our future as a community. We see this period as an exciting opportunity, as well as a challenge to get those decisions “right.” And we must start by asking the right questions.