Wednesday, December 12, 2007

RRROC Election Results

Thanks to Kristin Thurman-Fein & the West Sonoma County Talk (WSCTalk) newsgroup on Yahoo, I have the RRROC election results below. All of the incumbents were re-elected. Apparently, only 1,061 people voted in this election. This surprises me given the high level of controversy & Mr. Guccione's ceaseless campaigning in the Safeway parking lot.

PROPERTY OWNERS
Dan Fein - 554 (ELECTED)
Lloyd Guccione - 408
Adrian Hardesty - 99

BUSINESS OWNERS
Lynn Crescione - 624 (ELECTED)
Gary Getchell - 610 (ELECTED)
George Zastrow - 499
Bellamy - 184

RENTERS
Sheila Peterson - 693 (ELECTED,UNOPPOSED)
Catherine Young - 749 (ELECTED,UNOPPOSED)

Also, I was mistaken in my previous post: If you & your partner/spouse live here & own your home, both of you CAN vote. One of you can vote as a homeowner & one can vote as a resident.

While Mr. Fein received a clear majority of the votes, enough votes were given to Mr. Guccione, Mr. Hardesty (who publicly withdrew during last month's Candidate Forum & asked his supporters to vote for Mr. Fein), Mr. Zastrow & Mr. Bellamy to indicate that a sizable number of people do want to see some changes with RRROC. Then again, a huge majority of people didn't even bother to vote, which could either signify a general satisfaction with RRROC's activities, or (more likely), a general lack of caring one way or the other.

I believe that RRROC needs to continue its work towards getting more people involved in the process. There seems to be a perception that RRROC is totally powerless & has no influence whatsoever on redevelopment projects planned by the County. This IS somewhat true, because RRROC has no budget or actual authority to initiate projects. However, it does play a valuable role towards ensuring that redevelopment funds are only allocated to projects which are supported by the community, & towards ensuring that our community has a voice in how projects will proceed. Organizations & individuals propose projects for funding & RRROC votes on whether or not to recommend funding for these projects. The County can say "No" to a recommended project (as they did with funding for Sweetwater's upgrades), but they cannot fund any projects which are not recommended by RRROC (which contributed to the demise of the poorly-devised plans for the Monte Rio Sewer system).

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