Measure B Appears To Be Failing

Voters in Sonoma appear to have rejected a measure that would have limited existing and new hotels in the city to 25 rooms.

Measure B, the Hotel Limitation Measure, was losing by 92 votes late Tuesday night, according to semifinal official results from the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters Office.

According to those results, 1,761 voters supported the measure and 1,853 who voted "no." It is not yet known how many mail-in and provisional ballots remain to be counted.

The measure would have allowed hotels to have more than 25 rooms if the city's overall hotel occupancy rate exceeded 80 percent, or if having more rooms wouldn't take away from Sonoma's "historic small-town characteristics."

A group that supported the measure, the Preserving Sonoma Committee, has argued that hotels, like other development projects, should be subject to regulation under the planning process. "Unless commercial hotel development in Sonoma is controlled, we risk being over-built. Traffic, pedestrian safety and overcrowding are already problems; without development controls in place it will quickly get worse," the committee said on its website.

The Protect Sonoma - No on B Committee's argument was that the prohibition of more than 25 rooms would damage the city's reputation as a world-class tourist destination.

They say Measure B's ban was too extreme because an 80 percent occupancy rate is unattainable. "Sonoma does not have a hotel problem," a post on that group's website read. The measure's opponents argued that the city's future should be left in the hands of local residents, the Planning Commission, Design Review Commission and City Council.

Voter turnout for the special election was 56 percent.

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