Rohnert Park California: City Council Approves Wal-Mart Supercenter
AUGUST 2010
On May 10, 2009, Sprawl-Busters reported that a newspaper poll in Rohnert Park, California indicated that the public is losing enthusiasm for big box stores. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that its readers were "generally opposed to many of the pending big-box plans in Sonoma County, including a proposed Lowe's in Santa Rosa and a Wal-Mart expansion in Rohnert Park. (MORE)  

Walmart OK Sets Up Grocery Battle Lines
JULY 2010
Council Overturns Planning Commission Decision to Deny 35,000 sq. ft. Expansion Into Super Center. Onlookers peer into council chambers through locked doors at Thursday night's special meeting of the Rohnert Park City Council. The council met to decide the fate of Walmart's expansion into a super center, drawing hundreds of people to the meeting, most of whom spoke to the council on the issue. (MORE)  

Go Local vs. Wal-Mart and Super-sized Chains
JULY 2010
On July 29 the Rohnert Park City Council will decide if it will approve a proposal by Wal-Mart to expand its Rohnert park store by more than 40,000 square feet, becoming a super center selling both groceries and retail. Rohnert Park's Planning Commission voted to turn down Wal-Mart's proposal in April, but the company appealed the decision to the city counsel (MORE)  

Opposition to Wal-Mart Supercenters Building Across the Bay Area
JULY 2010
The San Francisco Bay Area has become the epicenter for contentious battles in California to halt proposed Wal-Mart supercenters that sell both general merchandise and groceries. Both the City of Antioch in Contra Costa County and the City of Rohnert Park in Sonoma County will consider supercenter proposals this week. The outcome could derail Wal-Mart's strategy to build at least one supercenter in each county of the state.
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Wal-Mart Takes Another Run at Rohnert Park Expansion
MAY 2010
Wal-Mart, the giant retailer whose bid to supersize its Rohnert Park store by adding a grocery section was rejected by the city's Planning Commission, has appealed that decision to the City Council. The appeal states that the project is "fully consistent with the General Plan" and argues that the commission was wrong to turn down the project. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Angela Stoner, who represented the Arkansas-based company at the commission's decisive April hearing, did not respond Wednesday to calls seeking comment.
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Walmart Expansion EIR Rejected by Rohnert Park Planning Commission, 4-0
APRIL 2010
Expansion plans for Rohnert Park's Wal-Mart were denied at Thursday night's Planning Commission meeting. By a 4-0 vote, Rohnert Park's Planning Commission turned thumbs down on an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) from Walmart to add another 35,256 sq. ft. to their existing store so they could sell grocery items and produce. City Council chambers in City Hall were filled to capacity before the meeting started at 7pm Thursday April 22. A TV screen high up on the wall in the lobby displayed the action and folding chairs crammed in the lobby filled that space. It was SRO everywhere. Several police officers barred admission to the council chambers unless attendees already had a seat guarded by their seatmate.
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Down the Wal-Mart Low Road: What Are the Costs of a Supercenter?
SEPTEMBER 2009
Wal-Mart recently announced plans to convert its existing discount store in Rohnert Park to Sonoma County's first 'supercenter.' Many cash-strapped cities are tempted to hastily approve retail projects that can generate- substantial sales tax revenue given the current economic downturn. However, we should pause to consider, not only the benefits, but also the costs of the proposed supercenter for Rohnert Park and Cotati. In late March the Rohnert Park City Council will consider Wal-Mart's application to expand the existing Wal-Mart discount store in that city to a supercenter. A supercenter is a 200,000 square foot store that sells both general merchandise and groceries. Since 1988, Wal-Mart has opened 2300 supercenters nationwide. Wal-Mart announced in 2002 that it would build more than forty of these megastores in California. By 2008 thirty-one were built, with organized grassroots opposition and environmental lawsuits blocking the others.
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Target and Low-Wage Jobs: What Are the Costs?
DECEMBER 2009
On January 4th the Petaluma City Council will consider the proposal by Regency Centers for a shopping center on East Washington Street near the fairgrounds. A 140,000 square-foot Target store is the anchor tenant for the project that will include other major retailers and possibly a Friedman's Home Improvement store.

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Young Workers Need the Employee Free Choice Act
JULY 2009
Once again, a generation gap is evident in American politics and culture. Young voters supported President Obama by a huge 2-1 margin over Sen. John McCain in the national elections last fall. A recent Pew Research Center poll reveals that differences between the young and old about social issues and values is greater than at anytime since the turbulent Vietnam and civil rights era of the 1960s.
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Protecting Workers' Rights Is Critical To California's Economic Recovery
MARCH 2009
We are now in the deepest and most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The unemployment rate in California surged to 10.5 percent in March, which was the highest jobless rate in twenty-five years. Of those employed, one in three families in California are 'working poor' and do not earn sufficient wages and income to meet their basic needs.

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Marin Supervisors OK Caregiver Pay Plan
NOVEMBER 2008
Measures creating one pay tier for 1,200 in home support care givers and lifting salaries slightly to $11.55 an hour - while allowing "adjustment" of living wage policies and eliminating a cost-of-living boost next year - were tentatively endorsed at the Civic Center.

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WHY UNIONS MATTER MORE THAN EVER BEFORE
OCTOBER 2008
This Labor Day, Americans realize that their economic well-being and their prospects for upward mobility are at risk. (MORE)  

Petaluma joins 'living wage' cities
NOVEMBER 2006
The Petaluma City Council approved a living wage ordinance that would require employers to pay $11.70 an hour with benefits or $13.20 an hour without. This ordinance would apply to city employees and companies that do business
with the city.
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Workers Can Act Locally to Raise Wages
SEPT 2006
We should commend Governor Schwarzenegger for supporting an increase of the state minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.00 an hour by 2008. Wealth and income inequalities have reached levels not experienced in California since the 1930s. Raising the minimum wage can ease problems such inequities create...
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Petaluma Third Local City to Adopt 'Living Wage' Law
NOVEMEBER 2006
Petaluma's City Council on Monday voted unanimously to adopt a "living wage" law, joining two other Sonoma County cities that have passed similar ordinances in the past three years.
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Living Wage Laws Are Good Public Policy
OCTOBER 2006
City residents have likely seen the green lawn signs around town that say, "We Support A Living Wage for Petaluma." The city council is expected to approve a Living Wage Ordinance at the October 16th council meeting. What is a living wage and why do we need it? (MORE)  

Petaluma to consider 'living wage' ordinance
JULY 2006
Petaluma will consider adopting a "living wage" law this fall, giving added momentum to a campaign to win adoption in the rest of Sonoma County, advocates said.
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MAKING ENDS MEET
JULY 2006
Activists want 'living wage' for city workers City Hall asked to bump minimum pay to $11.70 an hour; proposal could apply to nonprofit groups

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Workforce Housing Fee Revisited
FEBRUARY 2006
Three years ago, in my capacity as the temporary chair of a Sonoma County Mayor and Councilman's working group formed to draft legislation, I wrote an opinion piece for this newspaper urging each Sonoma County city and the county itself, to adopt an in-lieu fee schedule associated with Commercial Development Workforce Housing. (MORE)  

Low-Cost Housing Fees Approved: Supervisors OK plan Targeting New Home Construction In Unincorporated Parts of County
APRIL 27, 2005
Builders constructing new homes and businesses in rural Sonoma County must include low-cost housing or pay fees to build it elsewhere under a sweeping plan approved Tuesday by county supervisors. (MORE)  

Fair Play: Sonoma May Become The Next City To Pass a Living Wage Ordinance
JULY 7-12, 2004
Sonoma is poised to become the next city in the United States to pass a living wage ordinance when the city council next meets on Wednesday, July 7. Three out of the five councilmembers--the majority required for passage--said during a heated debate at the recent June 2 Sonoma City Council meeting that they intend to support the measure. (MORE)  

Living Wage Coalition Deserves Credit for Victory of Awareness
JUNE 15, 2004
Whether or not one considers the Sonoma City Council's July 7 decision to enact a Living Wage ordinance a good idea or not, recognition is due for the diligence put forth by the inexhaustible members of the Living Wage Coalition. (MORE)  

Living Wage Set to Receive Council Approval
JUNE 10, 2004
After much lively debate, the controversial Living Wage Ordinance is set to receive City Council approval. Councilmen revealed their cards at the June 2 council meeting, with three of the five members saying they were in favor of the ordinance.
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Sebastopol Passes Living Wage Ordinance
DECEMBER 19, 2003
The City of Sebastopol became the 113th city, the first in Sonoma County to adopt the Living Wage Ordinance. The Ordinance requires a $13.20 hourly wage without medical benefits and $11.70 with medical benefits to all city employees. The ordinance also includes non-profit and for-profit city contractors, leasers of city property, recipients of city loans and city sub-contractors, all with specified requirements. (MORE)

LIVING WAGE COALITION IN THE NATIONAL NEWS

ARCING TOWARD JUSTICE: The Evolution of the Living Wage Movement
JANURARY 2006
The living wage movement turns 11 years old this year. It is a movement that has grown and changed dramatically throughout the last decade. And it has expanded beyond that one titular strategy into many strategies-including city and state minimum wage initiatives, "accountable development" campaigns that attach economic justice standards to public developments and now strategies to challenge Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and largest private employer in the United States. This report will take a look at that history, at past and current battles, and try to explain what has worked, what has not and why. (MORE)

Against the Grain is now available as a podcast!
SEPT 2006
KPFA Audio Archives
"Working for a Living" with Marty Bennett, Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County, and Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts hosted by C.S. Soong and produced by Sasha Lilley.
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Forget Washington, all GOOD Politics is Local: States, Cities go for Living Wage, Clean Elections, and Medical Pot
FEBRUARY 2006
What an embarrassment our national government is. Mired in the sickening muck of corrupt corporate money and right-wing ideology, our so-called leaders continue to divert our public treasury and our nation's unlimited potential for good into war, into the pockets of the superrich, into the self-serving whims of greedheaded corporate executives, into a rising police state, into the careless desecration of nature into waste.
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What Is a Living Wage?
JANUARY 15, 2006
For a few weeks in the summer of 1995, Jen Kern spent her days at a table in the Library of Congress in Washington, poring over the fine print of state constitutions from around the country. This was, at the time, a somewhat-eccentric strategy to fight poverty in America. (MORE)

Minimum Security
JULY 12, 2004
Over the past ten years, a host of scrappy grassroots campaigns across the country have successfully pushed through living-wage ordinances in 112 cities and counties. The individual wins are significant, but they add up to a big-picture victory, too--the expression 'living wage' has seeped into the national discourse, along with the notion that working families shouldn't have to rely on public assistance or private charity to make it from month to month. (MORE)

Money for Nothing
AUG 14, 2003
It was the dream of economic development that inspired officials in Caledonia, Minnesota, to give a Dairy Queen franchise a $275,000 tax subsidy in 1996. One problem: The largesse created exactly one job, at $4.50 an hour. (MORE)

Living Wage Comes of Age
JULY 23, 2001
When the nation's first living-wage ordinance passed in Baltimore in 1994--a modest measure that improved the earnings of just 1,500 workers--few could have predicted that a powerful national movement would emerge in its wake. In the ensuing seven years, more than sixty municipalities, pushed by coalitions of local activists, have passed living-wage laws, and some seventy-two campaigns are rolling forward around the country, from New York City to the right-to-work South, not to mention at Harvard University, where students concluded a high-profile living-wage sit-in in May. (MORE)

Living-Wage Movement Takes Root Across Nation
JULY 24, 2002
Life used to be very hard for Marlene Mendoza. The single mother worked as a waitress at Los Angeles International Airport. At $5.50 an hour, she says she had no choice but to put in 80 hours a week.
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