In July, rent for the about 100-vendor weekly market in the parking lot of the Sonoma County-owned Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building will increase from $23,875 per year to $57,660, an amount officials say would be the going rate. (That’s a $338 per year increase per vendor or about $6.50 a week.) Since 2002, county officials say they have waived more than $156,000 in rent, according to news reports.

Occupier:  Well, isn’t this the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent. It’s déjà vu all over again. The small farmers get the shaft with a 140 percent rent increase, and the county walks off with the money. It isn’t fair.

Fellow Sonoma County native: I agree, it is not fair — but not for the reason you cite. It’s not fair because it’s not right that Sonoma County taxpayers are subsidizing what should be left to free enterprise. 

Occupier: What? Are you kidding me? These small farmers don’t have the resources to pay a 140 percent increase because the Wall Street bankers have walked off with all the money and left the rest of us holding the bag.

Fellow Sonoma County native: Well, perhaps the market can set up a micro-loan program for the new, small growers who need help to get started. I’d support that. And I think the county keeping the rent low in the early years was probably warranted to help the market get on its feet. But I have to ask you: Do you realize taxpayers are subsidizing a market patronized largely by customers who are fully financially capable of paying the real market price of a rutabaga, not some county-subsidized price? Talk about the rich getting richer off the taxpayer.

Occupier: Yeah, but the system is so weighted toward the rich that one little subsidy for the small farmers seems OK. They need their little piece. If they don’t get help, they might not make it and we’ll all be back to buying all our produce from the supermarket. I love the market: All the people moving about. The music. The aromas of fresh food and lattes.

Fellow Sonoma County native: Yes. I love it too. But should county taxpayers be, in effect, subsidizing the farmer from, say, the Central Valley, or the Jacquard tablecloth stand or someone buying a pound of radicchio for the poolside dinner party for 10?

Occupier: OK. They are part of the 1 percent. They should pay full freight. In fact, they should pay for the startups.

Fellow Sonoma County native: Correct. In fact in real life, the 1 percent does pay for the startups. That’s called investing or venture capital. It could work at the market, too. The problem is, all of these kinds of programs such as the market that are funded by government for one reason or another are well-intended. But the county is nearly broke. It can barely keep the lights on and support public safety, which is actually where taxpayer dollars should be going.

Occupier: Like the money that should be going to the truly vulnerable, not the boomer picking up sushi-grade scallops at the veterans hall parking lot, right?

Fellow Sonoma County native: Right. Let’s keep talking.

•••

Brad Bollinger is the Business Journal editor and associate publisher. He can be reached at 707-521-5241 or bbollinger@busjrnl.com.

First, just the idea of protesting anything about Exchange Bank stretches the imagination. In a county with the highest rate of community volunteerism in the state of California, Exchange Bank is a standout, supporting a wide range of non-profit organizations. It is a stellar corporate citizen. Very few businesses of any kind or size do more for people in need.

Mr. Schrader, who openly describes himself as a child of the 1960s and the protests of that era, is deeply devoted to his community. He has led forums aimed at keeping kids out of gangs and has mentored scores of young people on leadership, to name just two of many, many examples of commitment to community. He is a trusted adviser to small, family owned businesses across Sonoma County.

The protesters’ grievance with Exchange Bank was that it has suspended funding of the Doyle scholarships to Santa Rosa Junior College students, grants that are funded through the bank’s stock dividend. The bank stopped paying a dividend as it suffered losses in the financial crisis, much of it related to real estate lending. On that score, Exchange Bank has lots of expert company in the banking world, none of whom predicted the epic nature of the property collapse.

The bank’s position is that it fully intends to restore the Doyle funding as soon as it is financially prudent, which hopefully will be soon.

But the protesters want it restarted right away, although the irony of their argument is that restoring the Doyle too soon runs the risk of putting the entire scholarship program at risk for the long term.

Mr. Schrader has been open about the financial challenges that remain. With the economy still very uncertain, preserving capital is necessary to tide any organization through potential future bumps in the road. But no one is more committed to restoring the Doyle as soon as possible than Mr. Schrader and other leadership at Exchange Bank.

As for the protesters, many in the business community are open to having a discussion with the Occupy leaders or anyone else about creating more economic opportunity for everyone. That could be a healthy process.

When it comes to restoring the Doyle, though, Exchange Bank needs — and deserves — the time to do it in a way that the scholarship will be around another 100 years.

…

Brad Bollinger is the editor and associate publisher of the Business Journal. He can be reached at 707-521-4251, bbollinger@busjrnl.com.

Now the organizers of the largest Schools Plus’ fundraiser need help. Please see the message below from Schools Plus’ Ted Grafe. It’s a call to action to support our kids.

“Schools Plus’ biggest fundraiser of the year is only 10 days away – Saturday, September 24^th.   We have 80 tickets left – all must be sold, if we plan to meet our fundraising goal for Santa Rosa City Schools in 2011.     Every red cent of our fundraising efforts will go straight back to the High Schools (Montgomery, SR, Maria Carrillo, Piner, Elsie Allen, Ridgeway, and Middle Schools…all of them) – supporting the sports, art and music programs.    Do you have kids or grandkids coming up in Santa Rosa City Schools?   Are your kids interested in sports, art and music?   We must pull together to ensure these programs to stay in place.

 If you haven’t already bought a ticket(s) – now is the time.   Please pass this e-mail message on to your networks – sports team parents, colleagues, friends, family, etc.

 To purchase – CLICK HERE:  http://schoolsplus.org/night-under-the-lights-registration

 Top 10 Reasons to Attend – “Night Under The Lights Gala” – September 24^th at the Friedman Center

10.) Getting together with 350 Sonoma County friends, community and business leaders – stepping up!

9.) Gourmet meal prepared by the Maria Carrillo High School Culinary Students (amazing rising food stars).

8.) The Pat Jordan Band, Fondettes and High School Music Performances – high energy music and dancing!!

7.) Full Bar (no really, we got it all), Lagunitas, Blue Moon, Macro Beer, Cosmo Bar and world class Sonoma County Wines.

6.) Silent Auction – Spa Treatments, Trophy Wines, Restaurants, Local Excursions, Sports Camps, Art Work, the list goes on…(85 items).

5.) Live Auction – Destination trips to Tahoe, Hawaii, Scottsdale, Bodega Bay, Gourmet Chef Dinners, Abalone Feeds, the list goes on…(12 live auction lots).

4.) Being part of an amazing “grass roots” community effort to help all our kids – no one is paid in the Schools Plus organization – 100% volunteers!

3.) Keeping the North Bay League (NBL) in tacked – State budget cuts may result in Spring sports going away (baseball, track & field, swimming, etc.).

2.) Shared belief that co-curricular activities (sports, art and music programs, etc.) are not expendable luxuries in the education of our kids.

1.) Night out without your kids – BUT, 100-percent benefiting your kids (no guilt!).   Best party of the year!!

Call, e-mail me or go directly to the Schools Plus site to purchase tickets.   Take five minutes today and git-er-done!

Thank you, thank you, thank you….see you there!

 Best regards,

 Ted

Ted Grafe

Burr Pilger Mayer (BPM)

110 Stony Point Road, Suite 210

Santa Rosa, CA 95401

(707) 524-6523 – Direct

(415) 350-6323 – Cell

www.bpmcpa.com

Their charge is to develop a response to forecasts of a climate-change induced 55-inch rise in sea levels. The result is that these large regional organizations could have enormous impact on limiting land use across hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Bay Area land.

Business is just now waking up to the potential impacts. For instance, consider one of the most extreme ideas floated: Abandon Highway 37 to the bay. No kidding.

That possibility is raised in a report entitled “Climate Change Hits Home” by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, or SPUR.

In the report’s section on transportation, SPUR recommends public agencies “make decisions about what transportation infrastructure to protect, move, retrofit or abandon.”

SPUR suggests Highway 37 traffic in Sonoma County could be “shifted to Highway 121.” This is part of what SPUR calls “managed retreat.”

Such a “retreat” would, of course, be potentially devastating to landowners, wineries and other businesses dependent on Highway 37 as the primary way customers get to them.

But that is just the beginning. The Bay development commission’s proposed Bay Plan amendment would exert added control over 213,000 acres of the inner ring of the Bay Area, and much of it planned for development.  The area includes San Francisco International Airport and large swaths of land in Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties.

Business groups including the Building Industry Association, the Bay Area Council and the Bay Planning Coalition have strongly objected to the BCDC’s Bay Plan amendment on several grounds.

“The proposed regulations are of concern because they are being used by a segment of the Bay Area environmental community to advance an anti-development agenda of adaptive retreat from low-lying areas near the bay shoreline,” said Chuck Finnie, a spokesman for the Building Industry Association in San Francisco.

The plan, said Mr. Finnie, is a threat to local control over key land-use decisions such as where to build “infill residential development at a sufficient scale to meet the region’s current and future housing needs.”

The BIA is leading an effort to organize a coalition called Protect our Bayside Communities to address concerns about the Bay Plan amendment.

Mr. Finnie said the objectives of the group will be to assess the real threat posed by sea-level rise; encourage commitment to protecting existing and future development, and promoting private investment and public-private partnerships to raise the billions of dollars it will cost to respond to a change in sea level.

It is a big task. But so is the threat.

                      •••

Brad Bollinger is Business Journal editor in chief and associate publisher. He can be reached at 707-521-4251 or bbollinger@busjrnl.com.

The news appeared locally … and in New York on Bloomberg and in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Sonoma County residents with friends or family back East were soon getting congratulatory emails.

That’s sums up the almost incalculable impact of the record SSU gift from Joan and Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup.

Everyone associated with the center here knew it was world class. And many prominent artists knew as well. But not enough. Now, because of whom this gift came from, the Green Music Center and its spectacular concert hall went from world class to world known, too. Just like that, the Green Music Center is now more broadly known as the Tanglewood of the Wine Country, an equal on the West Coast to the famed Seiji Ozawa Hall in Massachusetts.

As one of its most ardent supporters said last week, the Weills and the Green center, named for telecom pioneer Don Green and his wife, Maureen, couldn’t have been a more perfect match.

Mrs. Weill is the founder of one of the nation’s most prominent dance schools. Mr. Weill has been on the board of Carnegie Hall for two decades. He is so well-connected in the music world that he could ask acclaimed Chinese pianist Lang Lang to come to the Green Music Center hall to test it out.

Mr. Lang arrived at midnight in January. Imagine the scene: a great pianist playing a Steinway as the window coverings were moved up and down so he could hear the change, just one part of how the hall will be tuned for performances. He called the hall extraordinary and told Mr. Weill he would want to visit it on future world tours.

Carnegie Hall Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson also came to visit. He, too, gave it his resounding approval.

Again, the hall went from world class to world known.

Like much of the music world, the Weills, who purchased a home in Sonoma County in October, were unaware of the $120 million center until they were told about it at a social gathering. They visited the center and learned about its architecture and acoustical design. They loved it.

But they went a major step father, vastly increasing the number of people that could use the center. They could give $4 million and finish the hall. But they gave $12 million so that outdoor seating for 3,000 could be completed as well as a 10,000-person capacity outdoor commons and stage.

In a matter of weeks over December and January the gift was finalized.

“And the rest is history,” said Patricia McNeill, vice president of university development at SSU. Ms. McNeill will be directing a continuing $4 million one-for-one fundraising campaign that was part of the Weills’ gift.

At a reception in their honor last week, Mrs. Weill praised the level of involvement in the project by the community. It’s very rare, she said, for a potential donor to come across a project so close to fruition.

Mr. Weill said what struck him when he first saw the hall was that the university “never took any shortcuts.” He is convinced that if the vision for the hall is executed, it will have broad benefits for students and the broad community.

For SSU President Ruben Armiñana, the gift is the culmination of a sometimes challenging journey that spans more than a decade. It was the vision of him and his wife, Marne, that “at a public university you could blend together music, performance and education,” he said.

In an interview last week, Mr. Weill noted that creating the perfect conditions for a musical performance by a talented artist requires both science — the finest acoustical design and instrument making — and a bit of prayer.

When they come together, it is magical. And for those who have been devoted to the Green Music Center effort for these many years, this is magical.

                                                                      •••

Brad Bollinger is Business Journal editor in chief and associate publisher. He can be reached at 707-521-4251 or bbollinger@busjrnl.com.

That’s because his idea to end redevelopment funding for cities and counties – part of his plan to close a more than $26 billion California budget deficit – came in for a shellacking.

Newly elected Santa Rosa City Councilman Jake Ours called Mr. Brown’s redevelopment proposal a “shell game” to move money from cities and counties into courts and state medical programs.

“It’s a straight steal,” Mr. Ours told the regular meeting of the Sonoma County Alliance. He said important city projects will not get done without redevelopment funds playing a role. “The Hearn Avenue overpass, gone,” he said. Projects from downtown to Coddingtown are in jeopardy, he said.

The future of redevelopment for the entire North Bay is “bleak,” he said.

Redevelopment projects are funded by local property taxes that would otherwise go to the state, Mr. Ours and others noted.

In Healdsburg, hotel developer Martin Sher described how the Hotel Healdsburg was made possible in part by redevelopment agency involvement.

Mr. Sher said he had a vision for a getaway experience for Bay Area residents who have had a decades-long relationship with Sonoma County.

Few would argue Hotel Healdsburg has not had a transformational impact on that city in particular and Sonoma County in general. Two-thirds of Hotel Healdsburg customers come from within a two-hour drive of Sonoma County, Mr. Sher said. Those visitors in turn patronize businesses throughout the county.

A Healdsburg official noted that the city uses redevelopment funds for a variety of big and smaller projects such as building downtown façade improvements.

     There was no mistaking the anger many local officials harbor over the governor’s proposal. One former city council member said it was simple politics. The governor was targeting city and county funds because it was a lot easier than taking money from schools or bloated public agencies.

If the governor’s proposal is approved, it likely will face a court challenge, one city official said. And even if local governments ultimately win, years could pass without any redevelopment projects being started.

As for recent efforts to push through redevelopment plans now to secure the funding before a ban, Mr. Ours said it has been rumored that the state may try to re-capture funding for projects going back three years.

The problem is, of course, if not $1.7 billion in redevelopment funds getting the axe, what does get cut to close the massive deficit? How, Gov. Brown might argue, can the state direct funds to assist a local project by a large national shopping center developer when parks and schools need dollars?

Local officials will argue that getting the shopping center project moving with redevelopment funds helps the entire city and its residents, not just the developer. And many think Gov. Brown should start by cutting the state bureaucracy before hobbling innovative local projects.

 But with the governor unable to risk igniting organized opposition to a planned June ballot measure extending tax increases – the second critical leg of his deficit proposal – serious cuts to state government seem unlikely immediately.

Clearly, Mr. Brown doesn’t appear anxious to spark a Wisconsin-style confrontation. So, for the moment, the howls of city and county officials may represent California’s albeit smaller and different version of the Wisconsin statehouse protesters.

But if the ballot measure fails in June, all bets are off.

                                                             •••

Brad Bollinger is Business Journal editor in chief and associate publisher. He can be reached at 707-521-4251 or bbollinger@busjrnl.com.

 Solano County, which for years has been considered something of a rest stop between Sacramento and San Francisco, is no more.

“Solano is the emerging growth center at the heart of the Northern California Mega Region,” writes Solano Economic Development Corporation President Mike Ammann.

In fact, Solano County has many of the amenities and economic drivers most regions aspire to including the rest of the North Bay.

It has a fast-growing life sciences cluster. It is home to Fortune 500 companies, a major Air Force base as well as having a thriving micro enterprise sector. UC, Davis, which is fast rising in the ranks of great research universities, sits on Solano’s edge.

“Our collective entrepreneurial spirit should be able to capitalize on an adult workforce that continues to become more educated, a growing micro-enterprise employment sector, and a business churn with more businesses growing in Solano County than leaving,” said Solano County Board of Supervisors Chairman Michael J. Reagan in the introduction to the Solano EDC’s 2010 Index of Economic and Community Progress released Jan. 27.

But as the report’s author, Doug Henton of Collaborative Economics, points out, there is one statistic that threatens to overshadow all others: Education levels among Solano’s youth.

Even as educational levels of adults rose, from 2007-’08 to 2008-’09 Solano’s high school dropout rate climbed a troubling 6 percent to 28 percent. The statewide dropout rate is 22 percent, nearly 30 percent lower.

Meanwhile, the number of students taking UC-CSU required coursework in high school trails the statewide rate 28 percent to 35 percent. Solano’s pre-school enrollment also trails the statewide average.

As Mr. Henton told the attendees at the EDC’s annual meeting Jan. 27, a failure to reverse these worrisome educational trends could have disastrous impacts on Solano County’s economy and its communities in the years and decades ahead.

The good news is that Solano is continuing to develop the tools, assets and desire to meet the challenge.

The City of Santa Rosa last week became the latest public entity to declare a hole in its pension liabilities: $100 million.

But what’s $100 million when the federal government is on track to have a 2011 budget deficit of $1.5 trillion, up dramatically from in just a matter of months.

A trillion here, a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

So far at least, the unfunded public pension liabilities that are straining budgets across the North Bay and nation – an estimated $200 billion for California – have not raised the kind of public outrage one might expect.

True, it’s an abstract concept. And perhaps many people figure their own retirement is unfunded, so what’s new? And Social Security is going broke, too, right?

But the public pension crisis must be addressed. And the longer the issue is not dealt with, the deeper the hole will become. State and local officials must come to terms with the fact that the current system is unsustainable and begin to make hard choices. Otherwise, every public pension – most of them entirely legitimate – is under threat.

This newspaper has been writing about the looming pension shortfall and the sometimes questionable levels of retirement benefits of public employees since 2005.

Public agencies have been able to cover up the shortfalls for years by cutting services as the pension commitments take up a larger and larger percentage of their budgets.

But the tipping point is near, if it hasn’t already arrived. The day is quickly approaching – if it is not here right now – that a city does not have the money to pay a police officer to patrol the neighborhood where his retired colleague lives.

The changes that must be made have been routine in the private sector for a decade or longer. Defined pension plans like those common in government are becoming rarer by the day. Self-directed plans such as 401(k)s are taking their place.

Government must move in this direction, if not for current employees, then certainly for new ones. Some public agencies have already done so.

And public agencies also must end early retirement benefits that are just too generous to sustain, sometimes reaching into the millions of dollars over the course of a retiree’s lifetime.

The issue clearly is not going away and delaying action will only increase the pain.

One could have heard a pin drop as Marin County native Harry Thomas spoke passionately about the area he grew up in and where he spent a successful career in finance.

Today, he said, the very foundation that makes Marin a great place to live – the schools, fire, police and other public services – are threatened by an eroding business and tax base needed to pay for them.

And another pillar of a strong community – the ability of multiple generations to live and work in the same city or town – has been seriously weakened.

“My daughter makes $80,000 a year,” Mr. Thomas told attendees at last month’s San Rafael Chamber of Commerce Forecasting the Future conference. “She lives in Sacramento. We’d love to have her live here.”

But, of course, $80,000 a year is an exemplary salary by almost any standard, but not enough for Marin’s very high cost of living. And then there’s the issue of whether there would be a job for her anyway.

Speaking broadly, those are the fundamental issues being taken up by the young Marin Economic Forum of which Mr. Thomas is the current president.

Started with initial funding from the county of Marin, the forum is now backed by leading Marin businesses and last week received a $75,000 grant from the Marin Community Foundation. The forum is in the process of selecting a CEO.

Marin has never had its own economic development organization. It hasn’t needed to. And many people are skeptical this latest effort can succeed.

But just as many people have now come to the conclusion that something must be done because they believe Marin’s economy is drifting in the wrong direction and its “very lifestyle we enjoy will devolve,” in the words of Mr. Thomas.

The forum is clear on one point: whatever efforts it undertakes will balance “civic, environmental and social goals.”

The forum’s initial economic study showed Marin has opportunities before it today. The author of the first Marin Economic Bulletin, Dr. Robert Eyler, chairman of the economics department at Sonoma State University, said many successful entrepreneurs live in Marin County and are looking for business and other opportunities. But unless Marin creates the environment for these enterprises to succeed locally, it risks losing them to San Francisco or Silicon Valley.

Marin also has opportunities for added tourism and work-at-home employment, according to the forum. Marin also needs a more effective transit system.

On those topics and others, the forum, to its credit, has started the conversation.