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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

April 23, 2004

Bikers aim to protect open space

Greenbelt Alliance gathers valley bicyclists to promote low-impact living.

Advocating buses, senior paratransit, ferry service, commuter rail and land conservation, members of the Greenbelt Alliance stopped at Wooden Valley Winery in Suisun Valley and voiced their views while on a week-long Bay Area bike tour to celebrating Earth Day.

County officials will have their first meeting today to begin negotiating a spending plan on a one-half cent sales tax for local transportation projects. That tax, proposed for the November ballot, could raise up to

$1.4 billion during the next 30 years, according to the Greenbelt Alliance.

"Will they try to pave their way, increasing sprawl and swallowing up open space?" asked Brent Schoradt, Solano-Napa field representative for the alliance.

Solano County Supervisor Duane Kromm and his wife, Fairfield Councilwoman Marilyn Farley, also a Greenbelt Alliance board member, joined the bikers to add official support to the advocacy.

In calling for more transit, Farley lauded the urban growth boundaries that have been drawn around Fairfield and Benicia, an anti-sprawl philosophy that smart transportation planning also embraces, she said.

"When you were here last year this valley had no protection from urban sprawl," she said to applause.

The expenditure plan for the transportation tax likely will take many months to develop.

In 2002, a similar tax barely failed to get the two-thirds voter support required for a local increase to the sales tax. The Greenbelt Alliance took a neutral stance on that tax and did not actively support its passage.

"If there's enough transit, we can be on the ground and working for this tax," Schoradt said.

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