Petaluma, a town in Northern California, has gone on record opposed to H.R. 597, which would put 124 acres near the town into trust for the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians, who own a casino in San Pablo, near San Francisco.
The bill has passed the House and is now being considered by the Senate.
The city council objects that the bill could “paint a bull’s eye” on the town and attract unwanted development. They also fear a casino going there, although the tribe says it has no interest in that. It wants to build a winery and tribal housing, it says. The bill would forbid the tribe from building a casino for 20 years.
The town council fears that if the land is put into trust the tribe will ignore local land use regulations, which normally do not apply to tribal lands. It sent a letter to California’s two U.S. Senators, Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, saying the bill would create precedent endangering rural areas.
The council wrote, “Petaluma views the Lytton proposal and H.R. 597 as a pernicious test case that could serve as a model for frustrated landowners and anti-zoning developers to partner with a tribe and blow up carefully designed regulations limiting sprawl development on lands adjoining cities throughout the region.”
Councilman Mike Healy told the Petaluma Argus-Courier: “That kind of paints a target on us. It looks like a blue print for blowing up urban growth boundaries.”
The tribe’s supporters say the bill has been active for three years and say it’s late in the game to be objecting to it.
In a September letter to the senators, the council called the Lytton bill “another unsavory step in the reservation –shopping saga in the North Bay.”
