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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres, is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, how you doing everybody? Welcome to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location at the beautiful jockey club located on the eastern end of the Sonoma County fairgrounds. This new facility is really quite a place, it's about

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six or seven months old, It has a beautiful spot to come in and watch and wager on the horse races if you choose. It has a lovely snack bar in the Derby room which is one side of the facility and a dining room and the turf

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club which is on the other side and the jockey club, catering service, food service is really putting out good meals, so if you're looking for a delightful afternoon or an evening, be sure to come out to the jockey club and enjoy yourself. This is a special

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program for about 10 years. I've tried to get two supervisors to come and visit on the same program and they finally weakened and did it. And so for today I guess kim smith on the left ear screen? The supervisor for the third district now in his

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second term. Ernie Carpenter, supervisor for the fifth district. I once said 4th 5th district. That right? Yeah. Ernie is serving his fourth term. He is midway through that fourth term. Your uh about 1996. Right. And I won't I won't make any predictions for any comments. But

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If you're thinking of running in 96, you better think very seriously. Which way do you mean? That was not the present that was present company excepted. I'll get I'll get called on that one. Um Actually, it was nice to have you both here. I said earlier

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and I'll say it again publicly. In my opinion, the two of you have done a damn good job of being supervisor tim You're in your second term early, you're in your fourth term. I judge that by not knowing you as acquaintances, but by the fact that

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I hear that in your district and I do turn around the district and the third district things to think that you're satisfying the job shooting the purpose. And the fifth district seems to be very pleased with the record. You put up up there. Thank you and

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we don't always get along, you know, supervisor smith and I but we've managed to work through everything so far. Damon. All right. Uh Some of these questions I'll ask either of you. Well, I hope you'll both give an answer to him and a couple of half

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dozen or for you individually, but for Ernie and tim, how has the Sonoma County board changed or let's put it this way? How has the county changed since the two of you been on the board? I'll let the senior go first here. Sounds good. Well, the

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greatest change of course has been the population growth. And when I first moved here in 1969, I never thought that we would have the restaurants and the people and just the activity that you now have in our major cities at night time with that of course

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go some bad things like the traffic and increase in the size of the jail and needing to spend more and more money to keep up with the services personally. And I have to think this of course. I think the county has done a real good job

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with planning to accommodate that growth and the open space district will certainly help us over the next few years. City centered growth without losing the ambience and what I think most people really like about Sonoma County. So the population and right now the traffic I would

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say are the two major things that we have to work with. I think certainly everything that he's had to say rings very true. And In addition to that, the growth that has come to Sonoma County in the last 10 years. Perhaps we've also seen the demographics

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of that growth change. We've got a burgeoning Hispanic population changing needs. In fact, we're finding it more and more difficult to maintain, particularly the area around health and human service, very challenging to try to keep up the service levels. And as everyone knows, we've been in

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a recession for a number of years now and certainly government isn't exempt from that kind of pressure. So it's been a challenge all the way around to try to keep up with the land use decisions. And certainly the burgeoning jail population is only mentioned and I

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think the health and human service side is a huge challenge and still is okay point number two. And you you you touched on this and and it certainly is important, there are many traffic problems in Sonoma County. We know that what is the county and and

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let's say the transportation, the transportation authority, I should say doing to correct this and it is getting to be a headache. You know, I'll jump in here only because he had the other one. Maybe it's a poor choice of questions to answer. Thanks a lot. But

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it's it's in the old days when we had the partnership between the federal and the state and local governments, we were able to actually construct roadways and make improvements and do something for transit and you know, get federal funding for our busses and so forth and

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so on. And certainly to try to obtain federal and state revenues to purchase the N. W. P. Right away. And I think what's happening now is the dollars at the federal level certainly aren't available like they were in the past were in a $4 trillion deficit

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at the federal level. There's a huge deficit already on the books for fiscal 94 95 in the state and the local coffers can't keep up with the demand for those kinds of improvements. And if you look at one interchange along highway 101 to fix it, it's

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a $25 million project. And so when we have four or $5 million annually set aside to take care of 1500 miles of unincorporated road, you begin to get the drift of the problem. So 1574 miles. So it's a it's a huge problem. And so we find

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ourselves doing more in the way of studies and paper shuffling than an actual construction. And it's frustrating to everybody forgive that remark. But it reminds me of a quick, he said 1500 I said 15 74. I was drilled in my head a few years ago. But

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recently we had jim moore on the program. Free fair program. And I, one of the questions I said by the way, jim, how many buildings do you have on the fair crowds? He looked at me and he said many buildings, he thought of thinking of all

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of the stables and I said, well, no, no. What I mean is the ones you used, what you call it, the interim events and things like that. But it was kind of a chuckle at that time. Should I add a little bit too that bio please

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just to say it's a little different for me because I represent a more rural area. So I'm always in competition with the other board members to make sure that those roads out there in the West County get fixed. But I think we all admit that the

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101 corridors, our greatest problem with respect to moving traffic. And I think what we're trying to do and there is a transportation authority that has a member from each city, all all nine and three supervisors for a total of 12 people and we've allocated most of

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the $262 million that come into this area over the next 20 years into the 101 corridor. Unfortunately, the freeway exchanges are not addressed and then there's the issue of rail, which seems to be a competing interest. I think our job is not to make it a

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competing interest and tim smith says there's just not enough money. So how do you balance trying to develop a rail, change people's habits to the automobile, make the freeway structure in the county roads work at the same time, all with a diminished dollar and it's a

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challenge. So basically what you do is you try and develop a consensus and piecemeal it together and I think that's the best you're gonna get right now until the economy changes or something changes on state or federal level. You just have to establish strict priorities too,

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don't you? I mean, I know that's different in your different minds, but, but whatever is really the vitally necessary thing first, and I know that's what you're trying very hard to do. And I think that basically there is universal agreement to that. I think Ernie's interest

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in my interests are really facilitating transportation movement within the county. And I think for too long we've zeroed in on how to facilitate more commute traffic, which is not in anybody's interest. We've heard a lot about acquiring the northwest pacific right away and the problems between

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marin and Sonoma County with respect to the ownership of the thing. Now, maybe you could bring us up to date. How is this going on right now? Uh, painstakingly slow. Um, I think, I think, I think on the, to preface this, I think between marin and

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Sonoma County, oddly enough, there's more agreement than disagreement on most issues. I mean, the one that sticks out in the one that the press has been paying close attention to has been the dispute over the ultimate ownership of the right away. Our county, along with humboldt,

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Mendocino counties are members of the North Coast Rail Authority and feel that that's an important place for Sonoma County to be because we have interest in the continuing freight service as well as ultimately making passenger service available on the right away. Marin County, at least one

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member of their board feels very strongly that they want to have some hands on control through a joint powers agreement as the ultimate owning authority and I've got my concerns about that. I think supervisor Carpenter can certainly speak to it, but 50 vote on our board

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is pretty emphatic and so we hope that the issue will get resolved and that we can actually get the funds necessary to go ahead and acquire it. Actually, our board agrees more often than not, I can't add much to that except to say that Sonoma County

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is obviously positioned so they're interested both to the north and to the south and the north is more rural, it's freight to the south. And when you talk about marin and Golden Gate, it's more of a commute freeway kind of thing. So we're trying to work

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that out and really since the money is there and the North Coast Rail Authority, which we have joined is created, it's only a matter of time until we break this one loggerhead of which is between marin and Sonoma over the ownership and some liability issues around

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that. So we will eventually bring about public ownership of that rail right of way. But then the real problem starts, what do you do with it? And again, we cannot at this point finance any infrastructure for Bart like system, a light rail system or some other

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alternative. But that, that would be the next step. Okay, jump to another subject. There's been a lot of activity recently about the Russian river, gravity mining access issues, the coastal, coastal conservative, conservative, conservative conservative. Okay, that's the coastal Conservancy program. How about an overview of the

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different activities that are taking place in that subject? Well, first, I think it's, it's positive that there is so much energy focused on the Russian River, which is a real artery to this county that leads from Mendocino to the sea. And the Conservancy funded a study

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to look at public access, restoration of fisheries and some other issues having to do with habitat restoration, and recreational youth. And they've looked at the length of the river and come up with some pretty good plans. Meanwhile, gravel, mining, timbering, agriculture, the health of the tributaries

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themselves. And and how do we go about trying to get back to a place where the fisheries were the way they used to be gaining public access and acquisition along the river without annoying the farm community and keeping respect for private property. And I find it

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to be exciting that we have all this energy focused on the Russian river. And in fact as far as tourism goes, it's, it's probably, but it's certainly in the top three, the coast wineries and the Russian River. So we're trying to be the longest time has

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been the Russian River. I mean it's been the favorite of vacationers for it may still be the way that Snowmen County is best known. At least. It probably is, it is in the bay area that's for sure. So I just think that all of this energy

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and the county's putting some resource into that will lead to bringing back, if not minimally, at least preserving the Russian River as we know it. I know tim and the board is supported that and it's really not in their district simply because everyone has an affinity

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for rivers. One other thing I'm going to jump from one another real quickly. I hope our audience is paying close attention because these things are really going to be affecting you and me in the years ahead. Believe me. And another thing I will say is these

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people, I know these people for a long time. I have known them, uh, there are firebrands at times, but they really believe in what they're doing and they believe in preserving Sonoma County is the open space district working and if it is, what are we doing

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so far, I think it's working great. The public much to their credit night is I think it's a, it's a real strong testimony to the fabric of people, the type of people that we have living in this county that voted to tax themselves in order to

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ensure that we had something set aside for future generations to enjoy and community separators and the protection of agricultural land, which I think most people realize how, what an integral part of the county's future ag land is productive ag land and set up a district and

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to raise money to be able to secure easements to protect those properties. And I think there's been some bumps in the road as far as how, how the, the district has managed to play out its operations. But I think it's doing a heck of a fine

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job and securing needed community separators, greenbelts, providing agricultural people, the people that are in the business, some financing so they can continue agricultural operations when they're committed to doing that. And I think it's going to go down in history is probably one of the most important

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steps that we have taken collectively as a community. I'm real proud of the district and how it's working. I always have to throw in a little tiny before going through a little tiny tidbit when my father and mother moved me to Central County in 1935 and

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santa rosa at that time was 8600 people. I think the county was about 60 something 1000. This is when you should have been here, you could have saved all these things for conservation. You would have been really way of course you would have been a little

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older now. Well, there's, there's good and bad about growth obviously and we're going to have it and we probably won't see those days. I'm really sorry I missed them. We have to, we have to, to a degree. You agree, you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. I

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agree wholeheartedly with tim smith. I think I think that the open space district is working fine and we did have some growing pains there in the beginning and you call them bumps in the road. And part of it was I think the press needed to scrutinize

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closely the workings and who's to say, but maybe over time it'll even be more helpful to us right now. Our problem is people want too much money for the land we're trying to acquire in the community separators, but we've got a long list of them backed

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up and I think you'll see some very significant acquisitions coming down in community separators and and again, supporting agriculture is an agriculture, cultural preservation, open space district. It's going to turn out to be, I I agree one of the best things that's happened to this county.

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Well, I did have the pleasure of having David Hansen, your appointed executive director and Marie soprano the planner there with me a couple three months ago and I was really quite impressed with what they had said about not only the ones that have kind of quietly

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acquired, but the ones that are in a band that will be tremendous assets as has set aside recreational or just plain aesthetically beautiful areas in the county and good Lord, if we don't do that, we're gonna, we are gonna look like santa's, I graduated college down

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there, it was starting to get that way, then now understand it's paved over altogether. Maybe not. I ship them ahead. All right. Uh, here I want to conflict with you a little bit, but I want to probably get you, people are interested in trails. So I

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want to know what's happening in Sonoma County along those lines and what's the status of the santa rosa Creek trail. 1st, 1st, 1st, the, the trails council and there's a strong bay area, effort to establish a trail all the way around san Francisco bay, san Pablo

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Bay and I think this county has actually been out quite well in front of this issue, understanding that how valuable trails and pedestrian pathways are. Two people in fact underneath district, you have the widow to trail that links up Sebastopol and santa rosa, which certainly every

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time I go by there, there's always people on that pathway that enjoy it and the santa rosa Creek, which we've been following very closely. Now we have an adopted master plan and it's completely passive, there's no imminent domain. It's an effort to try to bring the

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community together around how to enhance some areas that have been rip rapped and concrete ID and and how to establish the pedestrian pathways so people can enjoy it. So I think there's a lot of positive movement going on on that front. I think everyone loves trails

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except when it gets to their neighborhood, sometimes the opinion changes and and the only way to really make this work, which our board has been supportive of and the city council is to put it on the table and let everyone discuss it and get to the

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point of compromise. And I think that's been adequately done with with this trail when you move out west of Fulton Road, there's still some people concerned that we might move the levees and so on out there and I see that being a long time coming, but,

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but but if you mentioned the redundant trail, ultimately this santa rosa Creek trail and that's not too far away. We'll go all the way to forrest ville. We are in the process now of putting that ricotta trail through Sebastian pool as the West County Trail and

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it will go on out. We're right before acquiring the rest of that railroad right away in the forest ville, so it'll take a few years to develop, but it's imminent that they will be hooked up and you can bicycle walk perhaps even take your horse if

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we get to that point now, maybe we're going to start a trend horse riders into santa rosa for shopping and back, I don't know, but the trail itself is real exciting. You go there you go get your cart. But it's to me it's very exciting to

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be able to, to see this go from a paper stage to rio exactly 11 conflict. Part of the whole thing was I know I live out in the east end and I agreed with the people out there, santa rosa creek from Los Alamos road down to

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I think about mission boulevard was really inadequate for a trail. Apparently, what do you call it? Hydra, the largest water agency. They all indicated publicly that it really would not be a applicable idea. There would better to come up with mission boulevard maybe go across into

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the three parks you got howard, you got spring lake and you got to the other and so which is to your credit. And I'll tell you one thing, the city seemed to be adamantly for the whole 13 miles supervisor kale and the rest of you hassle

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this about and what they wound up doing was eliminating that top two miles where the creek would simply not bear a path. This smacks of statesmanship compromise if you will. In other words, the area was not right. So you're rerouting a little bit, but the project

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remains and in fairness to the city and certainly the countless hours that the creek committee has put into this, it was always understood that even though it was an idea in on paper that it would always be passive and no one was ever trying to shove

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anything down anybody's throat, which I think was important because only talks about it is painful to go through the consensus building process. But in the end you generally are better for it when you come up with a more solid product. And the and the decision was

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made, that was purely logical. It made a lot of sense and has allowed us to prioritize in other areas. So going to one final little remark on that going out there, a lot of people said this is the nimby problem, not in my backyard and to

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agree, I'm sure people were thinking along that, but see in those days they built right up to the creek before there was any such restrictions against it and to try to put it in the creek out there and 22 ft wide from bank to bank, it

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would have been walking through the creek. So, but the main point is they looked at that, they listened, they took it out of there. Now, the rest of the project looks like it's going to be beautiful. In fact, we've had to spend quite a bit of

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money re plumbing a lot of that area in santa rosa where they did build right up to the creeks over near Montgomery village and threw in there. So I think we might have eliminated the flooding in there. But hopefully we won't have another 100 year storm.

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No, I hope not either. We gotta pause right here for a for the station to bring the audience in the public service announcement after which Sonoma County in the nineties on location at the beautiful jockey club with guests Ernie Carpenter supervisor for the fifth district and

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tim smith supervisor for the third district will rejoin me and we got some more questions, we hope we'll put them on the hot spots some more. That's Fact on this map. Each dot stands for a million people in 1492. World population was only one half billion.

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Today it's 5.5 billion and in about 30 years it made double to 11 billion fact over population and over consumption produce environmental devastation. So let's act now please call Population Communications International 1 800 fact act for free information on behalf of our Children's future. Welcome back

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to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties were on location at the jockey club on the eastern side of the Sonoma County fairgrounds, a lovely facility. Come here, simulcast, wagering, watching lovely lunches and both the snack bar and the dining room, lovely place to visit.

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I hope you'll come out and see it. We're talking to two gentlemen who kind of approve this whole thing at some time. Money came from the state by the way. I thought you'd like to know that um kim smith and left your screen supervisor for the

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third district Ernie Carpenter, fifth district supervisor. And let's get right into this, we've only got three or four minutes. You gentlemen recently allocated 2,500,000 for something called community partnerships. Now, the newspaper called it a crime prevention act. What is the Youth partnership act? Well, primarily rich.

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Through the efforts of our county auditor Rod Dole, he was able to effectuate a change in the way property taxes are distributed and not boring with all the details. These are not new taxes, but there's simply monies that we've gotten back from the state on a

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one time basis. That means that we cannot count on those dollars any subsequent years. So it was a $12 million benefit in total to Sonoma County and the board decided rather than do the typical, let's fix this pothole or take care of this immediate problem to

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set aside some dollars for kids that will last hopefully for all time. And so what we're trying to do is to work with cities, school districts, nonprofit organizations, athletic leagues and anybody else that wants to be a part of this effort to actually do some bricks

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and mortar type work to provide some facilities for kids throughout the county personally, I'm just ecstatic about the board adopting this, I think it's gonna be a very exciting opportunity to do something that is futuristic that will last well long beyond our years on the board

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and hopefully indirectly will do something to improve the situation with crime as well because I think we all know that if you can keep kids active and keep them motivated and provide them opportunities that your chances of doing some good solid preventive work are a lot

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better. So we're thrilled with the whole concept. It's almost, it is a one time opportunity, but it's almost an opportunity that I didn't see coming. But there are so many needs out there for young people, whether it be the soccer field, the ball field or a

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community center in certain neighborhoods. And uh, this money will allow us to match other money to get schools involved, uh, with uh, year round. I don't know how you characterize it, but keeping their fields and their, their gyms open longer than they do now. Year round

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activities, maintenance and operation, let them take that if we can put some money up in seed money to help build and I think we've done a great thing and supervisor smith mentioned it earlier in terms of changes in the county, There are areas of the county

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now that have largely hispanic populations and I hope to get that community as well involved and particularly the southwest looking at some of those needs and maybe we can fund some of the programs that they need out there from the standpoint of soccer fields and community

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centers that are, are ethnic population is becoming more diverse all the time and many of the ethnic groups are growing. You feel like people put on the spot, what's new, who spends his whole political life, you've been on the board 14 years, This is your 14th

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year, you're going to run again in 95. Are you going to run in 95? Well, you know, I have to make that decision and there's two things that go into that and one is your own personal satisfaction that you have the energy, you're meeting your family

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commitments. My Children, last one's graduated from high school, uh, energy level, but probably more importantly, is do the people want me to return as a supervisor? And that's a question that needs to be answered. So probably in the next three or four months, I'm gonna be

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out there talking to a lot of people trying to understand on my own whether the two come together and if the answer is yes, I'm going to give it a strong consideration and you're in the middle of your second, I don't think you're gonna, you know,

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I'm I plan to pursue it again. And I think Ernie touched on the real high points and that is how a public life integrates with your personal life and I've got a wife and three terrific kids that obviously come first and so this, this job, a

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public job does have a great impact on them, but I think everybody's pretty acclimated, my interest is sure up and there's no shortage of problems to try to solve and I'm enjoying it. So I plan to About 45 seconds. I had two things I want to

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ask about the budget and reorganization, but this gives me a good excuse to have you come back. Well sure you can spend 30 minutes on those two questions. I can't believe it anyway. And we haven't really disagreed. If we had to disagree on something, I do

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want to spend some of that $12 million dollars on potholes. We'll see what happens. You need something. I think every district has a lot of road projects coming out to question. Ladies and gentlemen, it's, can I say at the end this nice little discussion because not

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only do I like these two gentlemen, I enjoy talking to them about what they do. My name is Rich McGlinchey. The program is Sonoma County Nineties on location. At the beautiful jockey club, guests have been tim smith carpenter. I'll be back with you next week and

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the other member of the county government family. Till then tonight. Good luck, good health. Each and every one of you