We wish to share the news that our Executive Director, Daisy Pistey-Lyhne, has completed her tenure at SCCA. We have been grateful for her return to Sonoma County to take the helm of the organization at a moment of transition, and we are grateful for the work accomplished under her leadership in the past year, including:

• Bringing back our door-to-door canvass, and bolstering the success of the Measure M “Parks for All” campaign
• Reaching 55,000 households with SCCA’s candidate endorsements, achieving a 75% success rate overall for our endorsed candidates
• Helping to elect environmental candidates despite the influence of big money
• Moving forward our Toxic Free Future campaign to ban synthetic pesticides in public spaces
• Bringing forth a local neighborhood’s need for a safe train crossing, gaining the attention of SMART officials and the City of Santa Rosa
• Successfully pressuring Rohnert Park to place the renewal of its Urban Growth Boundary on the March 2020 ballot

Daisy came into her advocacy as a protégé of SCCA’s founder Bill Kortum, and continued Bill’s commitment to the “never give up, never back down” philosophy of SCCA, along with his passion for community organizing. As SCCA moves forward and charts a course toward the future, we appreciate Daisy’s dedication to the continuing success of the organization and our involvement with the broader community.

In Daisy’s absence, we will be keeping our campaigns moving forward through the work of our Board and community members, and looking forward to the coming election season in 2020. We will release an announcement in the months ahead about the process to fill this open role.

We are committed to supporting SCCA through this transition as we prepare for our annual Grassroots Gala on July 13th. We look forward to seeing Daisy’s success with her next endeavors, and are grateful for the continued support of our community in helping to ensure that SCCA remains our County’s watchdog and environmental steward as our community faces the growing pressures of development, social and environmental injustice, and climate change.

We look forward to seeing many of you on July 13th as we celebrate our 28 years of success in the face of challenges, and as we discuss our theme: “Environmentalism in the Age of Trump,” with Congressman Jared Huffman as our keynote speaker, and a special video message from Bill McKibben. More information on tickets and sponsorships are available at: www.conservationaction.org/Gala2019

Sincerely,

The Board of Directors
Sonoma County Conservation Action

We accomplished an incredible amount of work this year, thanks to the support and involvement of our members across the county. Following on months of hard labor protecting waterways after last year’s Firestorm and helping to coordinate rapid response funding for fire-impacted neighbors, here are some of our major accomplishments over the last 6 months:

Measure M – Parks for All – Victory!

In the November election, Sonoma County voters overwhelmingly supported providing money for the maintenance, repair and opening of parks in our cities and the county. SCCA played a big role in making this happen – we knocked on 10,000 doors and spoke with voters at their homes about the benefits of this funding measure. 72.6% of voters countywide supported the measure, giving a strong mandate to our elected officials to continue support for parks. The success of the measure will translate into a projected $12 million+ annually in dedicated parks funding to county and city parks. These funds will be used to beautify and maintain our precious parklands and provide the funding to keep them pristine for future generations.

Election 2018

When our members vote, we win! In this November’s election, 75% of the candidates endorsed by SCCA were elected into local office. This was even higher than our historic average of 71% over the last 28 years. By getting environmental champions elected to office, we help to ensure that the environment has a seat at the table, and that the community is heard in local decision making. These candidates enter into office knowing that we will support them, AND that we will also hold them accountable to their promises to our community.
SCCA does not stop once the election is won. We will be here with you over the years to hold their proverbial feet to the fire, ensuring that our City Councils and Board of Supervisors continue to protect our natural resources and protect the needs of our community.

Toxic Free Future Campaign

We have succeeded in passing bans on glyphosate products (RoundUp, RangerPro, etc.) and other synthetic pesticides in several cities in the county so far, and we are are continuing forward to others to ensure that public spaces are safe for our children and residents to play, picnic, walk, and breathe. So far, Santa Rosa, Windsor and Sebastopol have adopted bans. Petaluma and Healdsburg are close to eliminated, with glyphosate in median strips currently. Next up, we will focus on Rohnert Park, Cotati, the County unincorporated areas, and neighborhoods in Cloverdale. As scientific concerns grow, the urgency of this campaign grows.

Smart Growth

Over the years, SCCA has worked to pass Urban Growth Boundaries around 9 out of 9 cities in the county. We will continue to protect these lines as they come up for re-election, and defend the lands outside the line from development. Meanwhile in the wake of the Firestorm, we are actively engaging with cities to ensure that the Rebuild process is resilient and the construction of new housing focuses this development in downtown areas near to transit. This will create vibrant urban cores in our cities, while reducing cars on the road and the Greenhouse Gases that fuel climate change.

Conservation Action celebrated a victory last week when the City of Santa Rosa banned the use of synthetic pesticides like RoundUP in City public spaces.  Volunteers for the Toxic Free Future campaign have been working with the City to adopt nontoxic landscape methods for several years.

The City’s decision came on the heels of an August 2018 San Francisco court verdict ordering Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp, to pay a school maintenance worker with terminal non-Hodgkins lymphoma $289.2 million for failure to warn consumers that exposure to RoundUp weedkiller can cause cancer.

Thank you to all of our volunteers and public officials who made this change possible. This work will better protect our children, pets, workers, and the environment from unnecessary toxic exposure.

Contact SCCA if you want to learn more about getting your favorite park or school to go toxic free!