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Lisa Wittke Schaffner
By CLARK MASON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Lisa Wittke Schaffner, the chief executive officer for the business lobbying group Sonoma County Alliance, is stepping down to lead a private foundation.
Schaffner will become president of a foundation funded by vintner John Jordan on March 1, she confirmed Wednesday.
She managed the alliance for seven years and was given credit for helping to broaden its original developer-builder core membership.
“She made an effort to be much more ecumenical, to have it reach out to a much broader audience, and in my opinion not be as confrontational,” said Rohnert Park Mayor Jake Mackenzie. “She made an effort to try to bring people together.”
Membership in the Sonoma County Alliance more than doubled during Schaffner’s tenure, increasing from about 180 to 380 members. Labor unions, nonprofit groups and members of the restaurant and hospitality industry joined, along with agricultural representatives.
“She has helped the alliance grow to be, in my opinion, the leading voice of business in Sonoma County,” said Iver Skavdal, a civil engineer and the organization’s incoming president.
He said the alliance will conduct a “grassroots” effort to fill her position.
Economic development, job creation and protecting private property rights are at the top of the Alliance’s agenda, as well as promoting the SMART passenger train, Highway 101 improvements and county airport expansion.
But the Alliance also has signed on to the climate protection campaign.
Members meet once a month with featured speakers at the Santa Rosa Golf and Country Club.
Schaffner said the top priority is “whatever it takes to maintain a healthy business climate in Sonoma County.” She said that sometimes involves “talking to elected officials.”
The Alliance also has a political action committee that interviews and gives donations to candidates for county supervisor and city councils.
“Our PAC is more influential than it was,” she said. “Most candidates seek our endorsement now.”
Schaffner, 42, a former Healdsburg City Council member who served twice as mayor, knows how government works.
She was previously a county planning commissioner appointed by North County Supervisor Paul Kelley. When Mike McGuire was elected to Kelley’s old seat in 2010, he appointed Schaffner to a position on the Sonoma County Fair Board.
The Alliance has an annual budget of approximately $225,000, but no offices and no staff other than Schaffner, who answers to a 51-member board of directors and 20-member executive board.
Schaffner said she works out of her home and coffee houses. “I know every coffee house from here (Healdsburg) to the Sonoma border south.”
She said she has known Jordan for more than 20 years.
Jordan, 39, ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 1998 and has since turned his attention to running the winery his father, oil tycoon Tom Jordan, founded in 1972.
The new foundation probably will be called the Jordan Foundation and is still “a work in progress,” she said. It will likely focus on education and programs that “make sure kids not only graduate, but end up in some vocation,” she said.
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@ from the street-first-I don’t sit on the Alliance Executive Committee. Your second set of comments seem to reveal your true angst over SMART rather than the Alliance and their support of community and business. It must be easy to throw anonymous accusations around when you haven’t the courage to spell out your own economic plan for success much less use your real name. I do wonder what is “my kind of business growth”? I spent most of my career building treatment facilities that cleaned up the environment.
@ Captain Bly
It isn’t business growth that many are opposed to it, it is your type of business growth that is opposed.
Since you sit on the Executive Alliance Board you have a cat bird seat to what the Alliance is all about. The Alliance is lobbying for SMART which ready means redevelopment on a countywide scale.
Little boxes built next to each other. This is a future slum not a housing development.
If Sonoma County and the cities wanted to be truly business friendly and want development, they would eliminate or vastly reduce the rediculous regulations, taxes and bureaucratic trapping that drive business out or prevent business from coming into the county. The local governments in this county are definately anti-business and anti-business development.
The Alliance wants its hands in the public trough. Well, the taxpayers like the government are broke and tired of being taken advantaged of with public housing, boondoggle transportation schemes and government taxes and spending.
You Mr. Bly are not an unbiased commentator. It certainly is in your economic interest to see SMART and the redevelopment project succeed.
I guess we can count you as a no on the Repeal SMART petition.
@from the street-so what is your economic plan to fund government without a vibrant business environment? Without some growth in the number of businesses to tax, we are doomed to a cycle of higher taxation (fees, fines, whatever you want to call it) on the remaining employers coupled with less services for all of our citizens. The Alliance is not a group that existst to promote “growth”, but rather is a group that is clear in its determination to sustain and support businesses that employ people. How do you suggest we continue to have jobs without that kind of mandate? Lisa has done a terrific job leading the Alliance and in doing so, has given back to the community in many constructive ways. She will be missed.
This Alliance group is an interest group setup to promote growth in the North Bay. Growth used to be an obscenity in leftist Sonoma and Marin. To be pro-growth was in the same category as a fascist right wing nut. What happened?
The Alliance adopted the new religion, green ecology. Everything they promote is now green and golden such as SMART. This is how propaganda can turn ideas totally around.
Have the issues changed? No, this group promotes in-fill growth, golden bicycle trails, reducing streets to bike trails and convincing us that all of this will be paid for by the government where public money is nobody’s money, so spend, spend, spend.
Its been quite a coup. They and their allies in government have created a new language to convince the citizens that they know best and they will take care of you.
When you hear words like collaborative, celebrate, diverse group, empowerment, think big government doing things for you, thinking for you. Now many people are quite satisfied with this system, but many of us are not.
Many of us think government, especially here in California and especially in Sonoma County, is too big, spends too much and has developed a large interest group of government dependent citizens and public projects.
Checkout who the Alliance supports for local government elected officials. They all buy into this green, growth “new” economy which is nothing more than the old growth with a new name.
A 51-member board of directors. A 20-member executive board. An ecumenical group that includes labor and non-profits, all led by a former county planner.
Only in Northern California could you use the words in the above paragraph on the same page as the word business.