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Community Corner

Clock Begins Ticking on Preserving Sonoma Ballot Initiative

With today's expected agreement on the title and summary wording of the petition, former mayor Larry Barnett anticipates steady progress toward his goal of passage.

The intiative Preserving Sonoma should move one more step closer to the ballot today, if as expected it’s signed off by the City Attorney as a legal petition.

The petition, or more specifically a notice of intent to circulate it, was submitted to the City Attorney on March 25, the first step in the lengthy legal process that should lead to a special election, sometime this fall.

While the City Attorney has already provided a Title and Summary for the ballot measure, the initiative's driving force, three-term City Counciklman Larry Barnett, says, “our attorney has a question on some wording which I hope will be resolved tomorrow [Tuesday]. The next step is publication in the newspaper of legal record next Tuesday the 16th, and then we can begin collecting petition signatures.”

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The initiative will require a special election, which by law must happen 110 days following the certification of signatures on the petition.  The petition has 180 days to accumulate enough signatures – about 1,100 valid signatures – to qualify, but Barnett said it should take only 30 to 60 days to reach that number.

A special election, then, could come as soon as five months from mid-April, possibly in September, more likely in October or November.

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The measure, known formally as the Large Hotel Growth Management Initiative, seeks to limit the size of hotels the City can approved based on several measures.

Its text reads in part, “the Initiative requires that no new large hotels over 25 rooms may be permitted by the City’s Planning Commission unless Sonoma’s occupancy rate for hotels and other overnight lodging accommodations exceeds 80 percent and the proposal would not adversely affect the City’s historic small-town character.”

The complete 10-page Petition document is attached to this article as a PDF, or available on the Preserving Sonoma website here.

The petition, according to Barnett, does two things. “Number one, we’re adding new language that pertains to defining and regulating large hotels.  That definition, for the purposes of this petition, is anything over 25 rooms.”

The petition ties the ability of the City to approve these large hotels to the occupancy rate in Sonoma, setting that measure at 80 percent.

There are presently four hotels in town that are over 25 rooms, said Barnett. “They will not be affected by this initiative insofar as their current operation. They would not be able to add rooms going forward, until we meet that 80 percent occupancy.”

In  2012, according to Barnett, the occupancy rate was 64.8%, “and it has generally bounced around in the 60s over the years.”

"But since 2000, the number of hotel rooms has essentially doubled, now numbering over 500 compared to 2000, when we had 270-something.” The occupancy rate is in part a function of the total room inventory available, so as the number of rooms has increased, the occupancy rate, while variable, has not come close to that 80 percent threshold.

“Some people have said it’s too difficult to achieve,” said Barnett. “But of course the point of setting it at 80 percent was to set the occupancy at a high enough number that it actually has the effect of slowing things down.

“The point of this effort, after all, is to moderate and slow the rate of expansion and growth of hotels in Sonoma.”

The proposal doesn’t restrict hotels under 25 rooms, but allows their development – pending Planning Department approval.

“This isn’t in the least anti-business,” said Barnett. “To me the heart of it is taking the step of encouraging the type of business we want.”

The Lodge at Sonoma, a Renaissance hotel, has 175 rooms on nine acres. The next largest, according to Barnett, is the Best Western Sonoma Valley Inn, approximately 77 rooms. McArthur Place with 66 rooms on seven acres; and the El Pueblo with 63 rooms complete the list of the four largest hotels.

“That actually comprises about 350 or so of the 500 hotel rooms in Sonoma,” Barnett observed.

Another hotel, The Inn at Sonoma, on Broadway, is currently 18 rooms but has already received city approval to 26 rooms. They will not be subject to the terms of the initiative, Barnett said.

Although the Darius Anderson hotel project known formerly as Chateau Sonoma is one of the reasons Barnett launched the petition drive, he pointed out that another large hotel project is also in the development stage, at "what is affectionately referred to as the Sonoma Truck and Auto lot," at MacArhur and Broadway. The city planner, according to Barnett, has already had discussions with a hotel developer called the Kessler Group.

Barnett, Mayor of Sonoma in 2000 and 2005, left the City Council in 2006 after three terms. “It was a fabulous experience, one of the most rewarding of my adult life,” said Barnett.

Earlier, in 1999, Barnett was involved in a petition to establish the city’s 20-year Urban Growth Boundary, that prohibits annexation beyond the UGB. The UBG will expire in 2020, and either needs to be renewed or will become obsolete – another factor spurring his petition and ballot initiative.

“The impetus for doing this is not just to control the pace of growth of large hotels in Sonoma and to control the size,” said Barnett. “It’s also to give some breathing space to the community and to help the existing lodging operators that we’ve already got to establish a higher occupancy rate, to promote stability, and not have to feel so much pressure in promoting their properties.”

Barnett anticipates opposition from the Chamber of Commerce, and probably from the Sonoma Index-Tribune as well. "They certainly can run any number of advertisements in their own newspaper - and I expect that to happen."

The Index-Tribune is owned by Sonoma Media Partners, a partnership that includes Bill and Jim Lynch, IT editor-publisher David Bolling, Darius and Sarah Anderson, and Bill Hooper, currently president of Sonoma-based Kenwood Investments.

“If I was completely out of synch with what the people of Sonoma want, then the two previous initiatives I felt strongly about would have failed. The fact of the matter is, they won.”

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