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Friends
of Lafferty Park letter to the Petaluma City Council on
October 22, 2001, following the Council's certification
of the Lafferty Park Environmental Impact Report (EIR)
 laffertypark@mail.com
www.laffertypark.org
707-793-2244
October 22, 2001
Petaluma City Council
11 English Street
Petaluma, CA 94952
Dear Mayor Thompson and Councilmembers:
On behalf of Friends of Lafferty Park, allow me to
thank and congratulate you all for Tuesday's unanimous
vote to certify the Lafferty Park EIR as complete and
accurate. We are thrilled to have a definitive end
to that long and costly process which park opponents
forced upon our city.
We now look forward to working closely with you in
moving ahead without delay to remove the remaining
obstacles to opening the park.
Chief among those obstacles is the need for funds to
implement the park and, if need be, to defend the project
in court. We pledge to redouble our efforts to help
you secure significant funding for the project by
strongly supporting your application to the Sonoma County
Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, by
helping research and write other grant proposals, and
through direct fundraising.
We ask the Council to begin allowing public visits to
Lafferty consistent with historical use (e.g school class
field trips, a weekend or two of general public tours,
and small groups of individuals led by City employees,
and by elected and appointed City officials.) Public
visits will be critical to the fundraising effort. FLP
stands ready to help the City organize and conduct such
visits.
On Tuesday, several councilmembers mentioned their
desire to hold talks between City and County
representatives, and possibly including park opponents
such as the Sonoma Mountain Conservancy (SMC), to try to
resolve the outstanding issues holding up park
implementation.
Friends of Lafferty Park's view of this suggestion is
as follows:
- FLP is, of course, in favor of any equitable
solution that gets the park open without further
unnecessary delays and expenditures, provided the
solution is fair to park users, landowners (that
is, the people of Petaluma), and the park's
natural environment.
- Any discussions should be held in full view of
the public and press, so far as is possible.
Engaging the services of a professional mediator
should be given careful consideration, and
participants should be actual stakeholders, not
their representatives. If representatives must be
involved, the names of those being represented
should be divulged.
- FLP should be given at least as much standing in
any discussions as SMC. SMC is a special-interest
citizens group opposed to the park. As
their counterpart in favor of the park, FLP
deserves, to say the least, an equal voice.
(Some have suggested SMC needs more standing
because they are threatening to sue Petaluma.
But we all heard SMC attorney Les Perry say, in
response to a question, that SMC has never even
discussed the possibility of suing the City! We'll
let that pass without comment.)
- In Tuesday's meeting, Councilmember Moynihan
suggested he would like to be part of a council
subcommittee involved in such discussions.
We feel Councilmember Moynihan has disqualified
himself for such a role by publicly promoting a
so-called "compromise" plan in the
local newspaper which coincides precisely with
the SMC's non-negotiable demands since 1993, and
which the people of Petaluma have repeatedly and
resoundingly rejected. For this reason, FLP
will not find acceptable any subcommittee makeup
which includes Councilmember Moynihan.
- We must reiterate that the current Lafferty Park
management plan is itself a significant
compromise, reflecting major concessions to the
concerns of park neighbors not typical of
comparable parks in the region (no night use,
long fire season closure, huge water tank for
fire fighting, extensive mowing, exclusion of
horses, bikes, and dogs to protect the wildlife
and creek, etc.) This compromise management
plan was arrived at with the active participation
of park neighbors John Saemann and Pat Cheda, and
with extensive input from SMC lawyers and
consultants.
- Finally, while we are open to discussion about
any concerns brought about by park implementation,
one issue we will not compromise on is the
central fact that Lafferty will, in fact, become
a park. A park at Lafferty has been the
City's goal since 1962, and the County's goal
since 1964. FLP's resolve for that outcome,
and that of the people of Petaluma, we believe,
is stronger than ever. Any notion that
discussions with park opponents might lead to a
result where Lafferty becomes something other
than a park should be utterly dispelled.
Thank you for your consideration of these views.
We look forward to continuing together on this
challenging, but ultimately very rewarding, climb to our
mountaintop.
Sincerely,
Larry Modell
Larry Modell
for Friends of Lafferty Park
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