The Great Hotel Debate

Overview
Sonoma is a small town in a rural agricultural setting that has managed to retain its country-living atmosphere by curtailing development growth and urban sprawl. There are those who would see Sonoma expand its commercial growth, especially in tourist dollars, and become more of an urban or city-like community; more Santa Rosa and Napa-like. And there are those who don’t want to see the essential small-town qualities that drew many of us here in the first place, eroded by unlimited commercial growth.

This is not a new or unique clashing of perspectives, but at the moment, and as has happened before, we are in the thick of it. The heart of the matter is … just as it was necessary at one time to limit, to regulate if you will, housing development, it’s now necessary to put some restrictions on commercial development. Right now the focus is on the size and number of larger hotels, and it’s a rather narrow focus at that. It should go without saying that this planning perspective is neither anti-business, or anti commercial growth. Such claims are boilerplate and just plain silly. It is however, a perspective that says we can strike a balance between commerce on the one hand and quality of life necessities on the other. This doesn’t seem a hard concept to grasp, but every time some limitation to commercial expansion comes up, the usual players – the Chamber of Commerce, City Managers, the wine industry, some realtors, and the Index-Tribune – fall into hair-on-fire hysteria forecasting the end of our financial viability and life as we know it. Settle down, people, as Jon Stewart says, let’s take a breath and have a look at things.

Just for a moment
Return with me now to the days of yesteryear (anybody remember the Lone Ranger? I’m talking radio here) when a stranger from Texas rode into town, flashed a silver bullet or two, its reflection glinting in the eyes of the previously mentioned cast of characters, and dire predictions of economic doom were wailed if the Texan’s development plans weren’t swiftly adopted and embraced. “OMG!” some townsfolk insisted. “We’re all going to perish in poverty!” if we don’t sell our hillside backdrop to Mr. Texas so he can put a luxury hotel/resort on the people’s property. But there lay the rub; it was the people’s property, and the people held an election and took a vote on the Texan’s promises of eternal economic security, and you know what? The people weren’t buying. And the Texan wasn’t buying us, and you know what else? Our economic financial viability and present state of health is just fine. Even through a brutal recession we are chugging right along. So friends, next time you hear the standard proclamations of economic Armageddon, made always by the same doomsday crew, take heed of the promises of gifts because there’s always hidden costs and a higher price than you imagined.

Local coverage or move over Fox News
Which brings me to the Index-Tribune. Only such a segue could be conjured up in the blogoshpere. The Index-Tribune has given at minimum four lengthy Op Eds to those who want no restrictions on the size and number of hotels in Sonoma. Included in this is the City Manager who’s had two of these columns arguing the case for unbridled large hotel growth. She purports not to be an advocate of this position, only stating the facts of the matter, but like so many city managers before her, she paints a scenario of economic/financial collapse, loss of city services and all the usual threats if we don’t satisfy the always-increasing demand for tourist dollars. Tourism is our life-blood says this fine civil servant.

But we’ve been this route before and it doesn’t hold true. Besides, such transfusions of life-blood come at a hefty price. To wit: the TID tax. And, yes, to those who take exception to the word “tax.” A tax is exactly what it is. The TID (Tourist Improvement District) was an added 2% tax to the existing (hotel, motel, etc.) TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax), and earmarked for the express purpose of bolstering their occupancy rates through promotion and advertising. The City Council could have added a 2% increase to the TOT, put that money into the General Fund and use accordingly, but in their wisdom decided not to. So a TID was created (poof!), and the hotel folks get to control and use that money, around $450,000 in 2012. In other words the City of Sonoma subsidizes these particular businesses – no others get such a deal – to keep them afloat. So answer this for me: Why would we want now, or until there is higher hotel occupancy, more larger hotels – meaning more vacant rooms – which will also create a demand for more City subsidy? What financial/economic sense, pray tell, does that make?

I can’t see one argument for more and more large hotels (more than 25 rooms) at this time that makes a lick of sense. Only developers and those who feed off them stand to gain from it. Ultimately the people will give their town away for a handful of empty promises. I say, stuff that silver bullet; it’s nickel-plated anyway.

Wrap that up for take-out
Well, this seems like a good place to wrap up this installment of the hotel saga. There’s really quite a bit of ground to cover on this issue as it seems to touch on a good deal more than a couple of commercial growth regulations, some of those being local politics, land use issues, the balance between commercial tourism needs and preserving small-town character, all the key players involved and their underlying motivations, and more. I’ll say this in closing: Anyone who thinks it’s an easy matter working to get an initiative on a ballot has never been engaged in the process. Aside from the considerable expense of having a legal document drawn up, which is what an initiative is, there’s a hell of a lot of time, energy and civic action sweat that goes into it. Grass-roots organizing, and that’s exactly and accurately what Preserving Sonoma is, no matter the cause is no easy thing to pull off. There are countless hours of work required to get the job done, and many people needed to share the weight. And no one gets paid! And going out into the public, into the community of different perspectives and opinions opens one up to lots of slings and arrows along with the praise and support. It ain’t easy, but democracy isn’t either, and ultimately that is what Preserving Sonoma wants: a vote of the people. Let Sonomans decide what kind of a place they want to live in.