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Your Five Minute News Flash
Greenbelt Alliance * Volume 3, Issue 11:
November/December 2004
Photo of the Month
 In
this edition
Feature: Bay Area Election Successes!
Feature: New Report on Sonoma
County's Future!
Open House: December 8, 2004
Green Manhattan: Full Text Available
To Our Volunteers and Supporters: Thank
You!
Upcoming Outings & Events
Bay Area
Election Successes!
Six out of the eight measures that Greenbelt Alliance took a position
on went our way! This means victory at the polls for good transportation
and land protection. Click here for
more information on the results.
Our biggest victory was defeating Solano County's Measure M, the transportation
sales tax. We were dramatically outspent by the opposition, but we succeeded
in making it clear that this measure would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Measure M focused on highway expansion without adequate protections for
natural areas and working farms, and without sufficient transit funding.
This shortsighted strategy would have meant more sprawl development, resulting
in more traffic. It would have put Solano County residents right back
in gridlock after having spent $1.4 billion of their taxes.
One measure we didn't win was San Francisco's Measure A. This housing
bond would have provided significant funding for much-needed affordable
housing in the city. We will continue to work on this issue, especially
through a collaborative regional inclusionary housing campaign to ensure
that new developments include affordable homes.
New Report
on Sonoma County's Future!
Greenbelt Alliance has just released a new report, Toward
a Bright Future: Updating Sonoma County's General Plan, addressing
threats to Sonoma County's quality of life. Currently, the County is updating
its General Plan, which lays out where growth will and won't go over the
next 15 years.
The General Plan has done a good job so far at keeping growth within
cities and protecting Sonoma County's farmlands and forests. But Sonoma
County is anticipated to grow by 130,000 people in the next 20 years.
That's like adding a whole new city the size of Santa Rosa. We need to
strengthen the General Plan so that new growth doesn't translate into
paving over vineyards, redwoods, and rolling hills.
Toward a Bright Future offers practical recommendations for how
to accommodate growth and keep Sonoma County a great place to live. The
report addresses the following critical issues:
1) Protecting Open Space and Wildlife Habitat
2) Protecting Farmlands and Keeping Local Agriculture Viable
3) Managing Water and Wastewater
4) Providing Affordable Housing
5) Providing Transportation That Works
Now we're working to make sure the Planning Commission and the Board
of Supervisors incorporate the report's recommendations in their update
of the Plan. To get involved in the campaign, contact Kelly Brown, Sonoma-Marin
Field Representative, at kbrown@greenbelt.org
or 707-575-3661.
To download a copy of the report, click
here.
Open House:
December 8, 2004
Join Greenbelt Alliance for an open house at our San Francisco office!
Meet staff and fellow volunteers and members, and chat with people who
share your concern for the Bay Area's cities and greenbelt.
Wednesday, December 8th, 2004
4:30-6:30 pm
631 Howard St., Ste. 510, at New Montgomery
(BART station: Montgomery)
Please RSVP by Friday, December 3rd: contact info@greenbelt.org
or 415-543-6771
Green
Manhattan: Full Text Available
David Owen has kindly granted us permission to share his article (70 KB
pdf, 10 seconds via 56.6 kbps), "Green
Manhattan,"on how cities are good for the environment. An excerpt
is below; to read the whole article, click
here.
Green Manhattan
Copyright 2004 by David Owen, first published in The New Yorker, October
18, 2004, reprinted by permission.
My wife and I got married right out of college, in 1978. We were young
and naïve and unashamedly idealistic, and we decided to make our
first home in a utopian environmentalist community in New York State.
For seven years, we lived, quite contentedly, in circumstances that
would strike most Americans as austere in the extreme: our living space
measured just seven hundred square feet, and we didn't have a dishwasher,
a garbage disposal, a lawn, or a car. We did our grocery shopping on
foot, and when we needed to travel longer distances we used public transportation.
Because space at home was scarce, we seldom acquired new possessions
of significant size. Our electric bills worked out to about a dollar
a day.
The utopian community was Manhattan. (Our apartment was on Sixty-ninth
Street, between Second and Third.) Most Americans, including most New
Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland
of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams, but in comparison
with the rest of America it's a model of environmental responsibility.
To our
volunteers and supporters: Thank you!
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we'd like to give our appreciation to all
of Greenbelt Alliance's volunteers, interns, members, partners, and other
supporters. You make our work possible, and that makes the Bay Area a
better place to live. Thank you.
Upcoming
Outings & Events
December 4: Bald Mountain Loop
December 5: San Bruno Mountain
December 12: Best of Berkeley
Become
a Member or Renew Your Membership
Support our work to protect the Bay Area's open space and make our cities
better places to live. Click
here to join or renew, or click
here to join our Greenbelt Guardian monthly donor club. Questions?
Contact Melissa Wright at 415-543-6771 or mwright@greenbelt.org.
There will be no December Newswire. Happy Holidays!
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