Yesterday, Deaf Dog coffee gave it up. Thank you for good years sign. Victim of poor economy? Competition? Whatever the reasons for the Death of the Dog, its presence will be sorely missed by many. One of a kind.

Made me notice the character and look of downtown is slowly, inescapably changing, and not all for the good. We remain a colorful, peaceful place where thousands of people find time to stroll, get lost in village mode, relax into being human. Not a cookie cutter corporate center; a real live downtown peopled by real live merchants, their regulars and out of towners.

I still love living downtown in the warehouse under the faded Green Village awning in what use to be the original Jungle Vibes. Romantic, definitely. The only place in town where you can ride your bicycle into the living room. Before I lived here, I remember saying to Wayne "I don't see how you can live by the River and not go down to it every day."
Hawks and Great Blue Herons, Mallards and Barn Swallows came every day. Now you rarely see them.

And I hear Alano Club building has been sold to Basin Street, the whole operation moving to someplace on Petaluma Blvd South. Our recovering neighbors were always friendly and will also be missed. Their goes the neighborhood?

Used to be a business down the way under the weeping willows called Into the Woods, a guy who spent his life finding beautiful pieces of wood, untouched or from old buildings - and he'd leave huge old chunks of whorled branches on the ground by the River and by his Into the Woods sign. We used to go down there and sit on those and then find a board you could use as a teeter totter, whiling time away like little kids on our own, private/public playground. I hear the guy (don't recall his name) died and the wood disappeared.

Now we'll have a landscaped road leading to apartments and condos and Lakeville. I'm sure with Sandy Reed designing it it'll be lovely - but no longer wild. That's what I'll miss from Deaf Dog. The wild kids discovering themselves. A place to quietly sip coffee - lots of those - but Deaf Dog had its own way of life. The only place you could imaging having a
Stephan Day when we all went in wearing black as did our native Theatre Vampier producer, Stephan Buchanan.

Deaf Dog was way different from any chain however nicely painted. Kids could hang out and hundreds did every day. Now they're looking for a place to sit down together and sometimes seen just standing around.

I'm regional. I feel the whole downtown is my home, San Francisco is my home, Berkeley is my home, parts of Chicago and maybe even NYC and Omaha and I'd like to add China, France, New Zealand. But Petaluma has a kind of peace to it I find rare - and worth working hard to keep. The River is central; the Central Specific Plan protects the character of downtown.

We need to protect the goals and possiblities offered by the SMART Petaluma Central Specific Plan - to build out using genuinely green practices wherever possible; to preserve the character of our peaceful River city Where Wine Country Begins.

Our downtown is a major part of our cultural identity that needs the augmentation on its way with the work of the Petaluma Arts Council and others. To date, we're a charming little River city skirted by AG land, the bread basket of Sonoma County. And yes, we are Where Wine Country Begins! (I'll sell you that slogan for way less than the $38,000 Santa Rosa is paying someone to write one!) Economic prospects are good. We're due a large share of tourism dollars coming to Sonoma - and Wine Country passed Disneyland this year as a tourist destination. Maybe you knew? But we've got to protect what we have here.

I've thought a lot about responsible leadership, especially responsible growth, the core mission of Petaluma Tomorrow, and I'm the secretary. The phrase responsible leadership appears on local campaign fliers, certainly an important element in this election since the next council ratifies our next 20-year General Plan. I grew up thinking about city planning. My Dad was an architect in Chicago and thought architecture had a lofty goal to be inspirational as well as practical, buildings that could weather storms yet remain as beautiful human habitats.

Responsible growth for Petaluma will have dramatically different meanings as we face impacts of climate change, how our water allotment measures up to projected needs and the economic impacts of growth. The Times They Are A Changin (Bob Dylan, remember?) Global warming may bring a huge amount of water - our lovely Downtown may get flooded - yet some candidates have voted for more building in the floodplain. Not what I'd call responsible. The moratorium given us by Mike Healy, who now wants to be our Mayor, called for still more building in our floodplain, an AOK for all approved developments in the pipeline - even though our little River city just incurred $51 million in damages from flooding!

To be responsible, growth takes a great deal of care. For instance, we don't have enough water to complete all the growth included in the GP, nor does it make sense to me to BUY water instead of staying within our SUSTAINABLE water allotment, our own natural resources. And what about the still-touted Rainier underpass, at an estimated cost of $55 million, money that no one came up with, this road leads us right onto floodplain land presumably to be developed for yet more retailers! We haven't even got our Kenilworth site built and rented or even completed building and renting to new retailers in the Theater District and yet we're being told we need yet more retail across from Petaluma Valley Hospital including chain stores that will likely cause some local downtown shops to close; the ugly downtown blight our award-winning Petaluma Central Specific Plan was created to overcome! Responsible growth includes looking at impacts for whatever we build.

Of course we're going to build out to our Urban Growth Boundary. This brings us tax dollars and new housing, but giving developers whatever they say they want isn't the point; responsible development is about the needs of our growing population. It's about protecting the health of people and the community. Our local, existing businesses and services should take precedence over new chain stores. Besides the fact we may actually LIKE our local merchants and service providers, money moves through chain stores into our community one time only, then going to their headquarters usually out of state. When locally-owned businesses earn our money, it circulates through our local economy as many as seven times.

Being responsible about growth as we approach build out of our City to its Urban Growth Boundary and projected population of around 72,000 people is a huge task and one that takes doing one's homework. Building according to our water allotment rather than what we can buy (sustainable growth); supplying affordable housing to residents; making sure the infrastructure serves our needs and is kept in good repair is tough work and takes really smart people to get it right. I trust Pam Torliatt, Teresa Barrett and Spence Burton to understand these challenges and make responsible decisions. Check out candidate websites and deciide who you agree with. League of Women Voters/AAUW forum is at City Hall Tonight, Oct. 4th, 7pm, and the Chamber of Commerce forum is tomorrow, Thurs. 6:30pm at the Sheraton. History is made by those who show up. Having been responsible, you'll go away feeling great!