By Kerry Fugett, Executive Director
Stepping into Dennis Rosatti’s role as Executive Director can certainly be described as “big shoes to fill”. But I am ready for this challenge and am extremely honored and excited for the opportunity to take those shoes and stretch them out. To keep those shoes knocking on 50,000+ doors a year, educating and building our community to achieve a healthy quality of life and ecologically thriving environment in Sonoma County.
1
The environmental movement is shifting, as we stand on the shoulders of those before us, we must open our arms and acknowledge the impacts of social pressures affecting our environment. Longstanding, unsolved problems are festering: affordability of housing, stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, the impacts of climate change, and a generation who wants to call Sonoma County home but struggles to find a salaried job locally. This all affects our environment: carbon emissions from long commutes and increasing traffic, development pressures on open spaces, our local coastal access being used as a quick fix to state level funding problems. While there is no shortage of problems, there is equally no shortage of solutions. Our community is filled with brilliant minds, passionate groups of millennials thinking outside the box, and advocates for our environment. The crucial piece is that we build the right alliances and push to have our values and voices represented in local government.