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So democracy doesn’t count, even when voters approve it?

So there are no holding costs for large tracts of land?

So republican economic policies aren’t responsible for any of the evil visited upon many?

Maybe if you pay zero taxes and expect someone else to pay for your public services, you might be pleased.

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Shennanigans outside the traditional governmental model of responsibility. As to make it difficult to decern who and what’s really goin’ on.

That’s the idea. See ultimately, the goal, the Plan, the Agenda is to not allow humans access to open space. Not to live near, walk on, travel through, nothing. Off limits.

The people will be asking how it all went wrong.

By passing the ball to our water rights and our land rights (we do pay for it),
they subvert the responsibility.

Many of us will blame who sold us out, who was in office, who was complicit.

Who went along with allowing these unelected UN sponsored agencies and NGOs to dictate land use/community/life changing decisions for the citizens.

Finger pointing won’t be enough.

This has been the Plan all along.

Treason.

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i.e. “….management costs, which range from $25 to $400 per acre.”

WHAT “management costs” ???? lol.

Raw land does not require “management” costs… that is just your usual government lie to pretend that they are somehow “busy” in their jobs.

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The Marin County Open Space District buys land primarily for public access parks, PERIOD. In a few cases, they have purchased environmentally sensitive land and preserved it without access. They buy the land and remain in control of it. Then Marin has MALT, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, a completely separate entity whose sole purpose is to preserve land for agricultural use.

The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has been a monstrous waste of taxpayer money. Primarily it has been a slush fund for large landowners located in the fringes of the county who are trying to run their farms the same way that they did 40 years ago and need the money because their business methods do not work. If you don’t believe me, just look at the SCAOSD maps. The second use of SCAPOSD money has been to pay outrageous sums for worthless land in theory to turn into parklands. Specific examples of this are a played out rock quarry along the Russian River and two properties so worthless (Roche and Cardoza/Tolay Creek) in the Lakeville area that you can’t even graze livestock on them. And don’t get me started on the completely bogus assessments that they have done on properties over the past 22 years that double, triple and even quadruple their value from what is real because they have inadequate drinking water supplies.

And now they say that they need to hand over this protected property to other agencies to run them. Are you kidding me??? NO NO NO. SCAPOSD, your job is to buy these parks and work WITH county parks to run them. YOU are the ones with a steady stream on money coming in from 1/4% on our sales tax. YOU have the money to run these parks. The county parks department doesn’t.

Of the nine Bay Area counties, Marin County has the highest amount per person of publicly accessible parklands. San Francisco, for obvious reasons is last. Sonoma County is second to last. At least 1/3 of Sonoma County residents are closer to unregulated Marin County Open Space parks of over 50 acres in size than to Sonoma County parks the same size. If that isn’t pathetic, you’re not paying attention.

Press Democrat – If you really want to do the public some good, how about an investigative report on exactly what the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has done with OUR money over the past 22 years and how very few people have actually benefited from it.

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I voted to acquire the land mainly to keep it out of the hands of developers. The fact that much of it is not open for public use doesn’t bother me at all, because there are so many other places in Sonoma County that you can already visit. I say let the creatures that Nature’s God put there, live in peace there.

To help offset costs, I do like the idea of renting some of the fertile valley areas for small local sustainable food and livestock production, as long as no one plants more wine grapes and the livestock is treated respectfully.

Only one quarter of a cent of every dollar spent in Sonoma County funds the acquisitions, which amounts to only about $3 dollars a month per person on average but accumulates to about $15 to $18 million dollars a year. The District often attracts additional funding partners and is financially accountable to the public through an annual audit and oversight by the Open Space Authority. http://www.sonomaopenspace.org/Content/10002/faq.html

Good use of tax dollars = thumbs-up
Waste of tax dollars = thumbs-down

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