Sonoma Plays the San Jose Card

There are three things that Californians hold most dear above all else in life: their undying devotion to their individual automobiles, their more recent, but just as devoted, relationship with their iPhones and their fervent belief that representative democracy means that every election cycle we must wade our way through dozens and dozens of state and local ballot initiatives or propositions.

As a registered voter in California in the twenty-first century, you are mailed so many pamphlets and voting guides for each election that engaging in what was once the simple civil act of voting now resembles cramming for the S.A.T.

The statewide initiative process in California is outlined and protected in the state constitution.  The initiative process itself in California was a reaction to the corruption and power wielded by the railroads in the state at the beginning of the last century.

Proposition 13, which capped property taxes and was passed in 1978, was the most important and far-reaching ballot initiative during my lifetime, and its success set off a wave of city, county and state ballot initiatives that seem to grow exponentially in number and complexity each election.  If an elected official wants to commit political suicide in California, all one has to do is muse about the mere thought of revising Prop. 13.

I haven't run across many people in the Bay Area who, like myself, have lived in Sonoma County during the past twenty years and notice more than a passing resemblance to rural, agricultural San Jose in the 1970's.  I didn't know anyone else in Sonoma County who had once lived in San Jose and I've yet to encounter anyone in San Jose who has even visited Sonoma County.  They're two places only a hundred miles apart, but they might as well exist in different countries.

A verdant valley with dozens of farms, wineries and open stretches of untouched landscape accompanied by a dry, Mediterranean climate and surrounded by beautiful mountains, San Jose was at a crossroads in the 1970's and chose high tech jobs, unplanned suburban sprawl and growth over preservation of any kind.  It is now, without question, the Los Angeles of the Bay Area.

An affluent city of nearly a million people that sprawls unchecked across the entire floor of the Santa Clara Valley, there isn't a notable cultural attraction - a fine museum, gallery, world-class symphony, ballet or theatre company or a notable restaurant within the city limits.  The majority of the voters in San Jose have never considered any of that important. 

The new billion dollar terminal at San Jose Airport.

The expensive rinky-dink airport, which must be one of the major civic job generators in the county because the thing has been under construction the entire two years I've lived here, only has two international flights - both to Mexico - and two daily flight to the East Coast - one to Boston and one to New York.  San Jose thinks small on a big city scale.

Since we returned to San Jose two years ago, I can't recall a conversation with someone here that even remotely touched on food, a restaurant, a play, a museum or a book.  If it doesn't have a .com at the end, it might as well not exist.  In Sonoma County, it was damn near impossible to walk out to the mail box and not have someone mention their latest meal out or what gourmet goodies were fresh that week at the market.

Sonoma County was far more rural and agricultural than San Jose in the 1970's, and it also had a more extensive wine and tourist industry, and soon would have a far greater appreciation for good, fresh food and fine dining.  But unlike San Jose, Sonoma has also always had an arty, funky and politically active side.   There's a reason Tom Waits lives in Sonoma County, not San Jose.

A flyer announcing another protest.

Let me give a simple example.  Large protests in the small Sonoma County town of Occidental each summer, calling attention to and protesting the presence of the world's power brokers at the Bohemian Grove, are as much an annual rite of Summer as swimming in the Russian River.

You move the Bohemian Grove down to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains near San Jose, and nobody cares and nobody has ever heard of it.  I'm sure any longtime residents of San Jose reading this are thinking to themselves, "Bohemian Grove?  What in the hell is Bohemian Grove?"

As the inevitable growth of the Bay Area moved north towards Sonoma in the 1970's and 1980's, residents looked to what was happening on the other side of the Bay in San Jose and nearly unanimously agreed they didn't want Sonoma County to become THAT.

A greenbelt movement was born to buy farms and lease them back to farmers, use zoning regulations to try and keep the agricultural areas green and restrict building and growth to the cities.  If you drive north on Highway 101 from San Francisco through Marin and Sonoma Counties, you will notice that there are miles and miles of open space between towns and cities.  The North Bay - despite seeing huge growth in population in the past twenty years - has still retained its unique agricultural and rural feel while moving into the twenty-first century.

The only greenbelt in San Jose would be Interstate 280, which connects the bedroom communities of San Jose with the high paying dot-com and high tech jobs in nearby Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

Sebastopol, California - a Nuclear Free Zone.

Throughout much of the 1990's and up to today, many of the more prominent local countywide ballot initiatives  in Sonoma County dealt with growth and how it should be handled.  Should the freeway be widened from four lanes to six?  No, maybe and eventually yes.  Should Sonoma County have a commuter railroad?  No, maybe, Yes.  Should there be some limits on building on hillsides that surrounded the valley?  Yes.  Should a housing development be permitted in a large, open space that had been the site of a devastating brush fire twenty years earlier?  Yes, it was.  Should a shopping mall be permitted atop a rebuilt hill that suffered a massive mudslide twenty years earlier?  Yes, it could and the hill's still moving.  Should you be able to enter Sebastopol - the scenic and charming town that anchors the West County of Sonoma - with a nuclear warhead?  Build your own reactor?  Sorry, you can't do that.  The voters have spoken.

As growth continued and ballot initiatives were used more and more in Sonoma County to curb and contain growth, one tactic became the final card played in every election that featured a growth or anti-growth proposition: if we do or don't pass this proposition, we will head down the road to becoming San Jose.  Not San Francisco, not Los Angeles, Stockton or Oakland.  San Jose.  The worst possible outcome for most residents of Sonoma County is that one day it will resemble San Jose.  That was the Ace in the Hole.  It was the winning hand every time.  No card-carrying Sonoman wanted Sonoma County to bear any resemblance to Santa Clara County, and especially not San Jose.  Forty years ago they were similar; today they are nothing alike.

I take the right and responsibility to vote seriously, and usually make it a point to study the issues and vote wisely in each election, but the growing ballot initiative industry in California is making that difficult.  There are elections now when the propositions are so convoluted, or the arguments are so convincing from both sides, that as a voter you just are not sure whom to trust.

The vast majority of state government spending in California has been set by voter mandates from piecemeal ballot initiatives, leaving the governor or legislature little room to make discretionary budget decisions.  So much is approved one proposition at a time that the voters approve money for schools and hospitals in one election, jails and highways in the next election and then parks and police and fire protection in the next election.  They are all important and worthy budget expenditures, but they shouldn't be decided one issue at a time from year to year.  They need to be decided as a whole on an annual basis.  That's why we elect a governor and a legislature.

I would love to stay and tell you more about the initiative and proposition process here in California, but the next election is less than a month away and those ballot pamphlets and voting guides are stacking up on the kitchen table.  I gotta' get to work.