Friday, June 01, 2018

No, or Yes, on Measure C?

It's June already and on June 5th Napa County voters will be asked whether or not to approve Measure C.  The entire Napa Valley is in a tizzy over Measure C, so today I sat and read the 'Full Text of Measure C' (Ordinance No. 2018-01) in Vinomaker's copy of the Napa County Voter Information Guide to try and make some sense of the arguments for and against this contentious measure.
Oh my goodness, I could not make head nor tail of it.  Measure C's intent is to amend "the Napa County General Plan and Zoning Ordinance to establish 'water quality buffer zones' on parcels greater than one acre within the Agricultural Watershed zoning district and would limit tree removal, including both oak and non-oak species, within those zones."  Whaa?  I'm not quite sure what that even means.  There is way too much legal jargon, in the reading of this measure, to have it be understood by normal people.
One of the criticisms of the 'No on C' folks by the 'Yes on C' folks is that the No-folks have more money and so have the wherewithal to mail many more glossy pamphlets to the voting public.  A small, unscientific survey, by me, over a two week period did indeed uphold that grievance; 6 brochures for the No-folks and 2 for the Yes-folks.  (Just this morning, Vinomaker told me he had received even more and had promptly put them straight into the bin.)  Well, Yes-peeps, we don't live in Communist Russia (even Russians don't anymore because Communism doesn't work, well, except for the elite).  It's a fact of life that some people/groups just have more money than others.  Get over it!
If I could vote, and I can't, I would be a NO on Measure C.  The initiative, although well intentioned, is written very badly and is extremely vague.  Can we say, costly lawsuits?  Yes, we can.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

VG: Welcome to the land of manipulated feelings, and that relates to just about everything, because the more chaos introduced into law and culture the more control the social technocrats have to micromanage 'our' lives.
Commonsense seems to have fled with gobbledygook legalese, from package labeling to downloading a computer game; societies are now constipated traps for political sharks. JMO

Vinogirl said...

NHW: "Constipated traps for political sharks." I like that.

As of this morning, Measrure C's fate is still hanging in the balance; it was a 50/50 outcome, the postal ballots are likely to decide it.