Fortunately, we live in a democratic society, where referendum petitions are every citizen's right, and duty, whenever some issue deserves closer scrutiny by the voters. A referendum repeals nothing and commits no one to anything. It merely asks the Board of Supervisors to refer the question directly to the voters. A person signing our referendum petition is not even passing judgment on the Stream Setback Ordinance. He is merely indicating his desire to let the voters decide, which is particularly appropriate for such a controversial and divisive issue as the Stream Setback Ordinance.
NVLSA members believe the Stream Setback Ordinance deserves closer scrutiny by the voters because it was not arrived at through careful analysis of the legitimate needs of the watershed and of the people who live there. It is not scientifically justified, and it will generate no demonstrable environmental gain. Instead, it was derived through a process of "political horse trading" and positional bargaining, beginning five years ago when one County Supervisor commandeered a citizens' watershed coalition to serve his own political goals and reconvened it as the Watershed Task Force (WTF).
From the very first days of the WTF everyone involved knew they were responding not to environmental needs, but rather to political pressure. The same was true of the subsequently convened WTF Oversight Committee. And the process continued in that vain right through the public hearing stage and into the final days of negotiating reduced setbacks and exemptions immediately before passing the ordinance. To bring their positions into alignment, the various parties promoting the ordinance apparently engaged in a form of haggling that had very little to do with what made sense for the watershed and very much to do with what concessions each party thought it could live with. We don't think this is a good way to make policy, especially when that policy achieves no measurable gain and adversely impacts thousands of people who were not even invited to the bargaining table.
The Supervisors voting for this ordinance seemed shockingly insensitive to the hundreds of citizens who took time from their livelihoods and families to earnestly communicate their concerns. At the early public hearings hundreds of these people described their overwhelming opposition to this ordinance. But having said what they needed to say, and assuming they had been heard, some of them did not feel they could take still more time off work to simply repeat themselves at a subsequent hearing, so they went on about their business.
Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance stayed the course and continued to advocate for these people. But certain Supervisors seemed to interpret this natural attrition as declining resistance to the ordinance, and one of them actually told NVLSA president George Bachich in early March that he believed NVLSA no longer had significant support. We believe this was a grave miscalculation, and that thousands of Napa County citizens are still opposed to this ordinance. We want them to have a chance to vote on it at the next election.
We feel very strongly that the SSO is an unjustified, arbitrary, senseless regulation that needlessly deprives thousands of property owners of legitimate use and enjoyment of their property. But the ordinance passed, and the only way we could possibly reverse that was to refer it to the voters and let them decide. That is why we circulated our referendum petition.