The recent filing of required FPPC Campaign Committee reports confirms that Protect Sonoma is officially a "sponsored" committee, and that the sponsor is Chateau Sonoma Hotel Group, LLC. (aka Kenwood Investments). All of Protect Sonoma's roughly $25,000 in contributions are reported as "non-monetary", meaning all expenses were routed through the sponsor and donated to Protect Sonoma for "services in kind." It also means it is impossible to know the names of the actual suppliers or if contributors gave money to the sponsor, which makes knowing their identities impossible as well.
Months ago when "Protect Sonoma" was announced, we at Preserving Sonoma said it had all the earmarks of an "Astroturf" organization (as opposed to "Grassroots"); a name easily confused with our own and a manager who admiited her salary was paid by Kenwood Investments who have proposed a 59-room hotel in the southwest corner of the Plaza. Any pretense of being more than a captive organization has now been officially eradicated; Protect Sonoma is simply a publicity effort by the hotel developer, and nothing more. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...well, you know how that ends!
