! PROTECT SONOMA COUNTY - REGULATE RATNA LING! !

OPEN LETTER:!

Ratna Ling Retreat Center on Seaview Ridge now has an Industrialscale printing plant, a publishing house, large warehouse, and an internet bookstore with shipping and handling facilities. This is a rural part of Sonoma County and such industrial uses do not conform to Ratna Lings Use Permit UPE 04-0032, its zoning (RRD240), or to Sonoma Countys General Plan. Sonoma County has failed to regulate the industrial activity of Ratna Ling Retreat Center. Sonoma County has failed to inspect code violations led against Ratna Ling by a concerned citizens group, Coastal Hills Rural Preservation. !

In 2004 the Tibetan Nyngma Meditation Center (TNMC) purchased a remodeled small (113 acre) guest ranch known as Timber Hill. TNMC is a $60 million conglomerate of 12 organizations including Dharma Publishing. TNMC also owns Odiyan Retreat Center which is the large Tibetan temple complex a few miles Industrial Land Use in Rural Sonoma County north of RL.!

Let me offer a few inammatory, but true, remarks to get your attention.!

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Odiyan is a unique model. The Rinpoche, spiritual leader, Tarthang Tulku makes it clear: Odiyan is NOT a traditional monastery dedicated to contemplation and prayer but a place of rigorous, demanding physical work. And he is not kidding.! Workers who labor 6 days per week and up to 12 hours per day are called retreatants. They need not be Buddhists, but they must

volunteer. Work is called skillful means and is considered a religious practice rather than work. Workers receive room and board and a stipend of $5 per day. Workers are not paid wages, accrue no Social Security, have no traditional benets, and after years of work have no savings and nowhere else to go. !

The work force at Odiyan is said to be around 40. If Odiyan paid workers $10 per hour, that would represent $1.4 million per year in unpaid wages. Wal-Mart should take note. Many workers leave after a few months and some workers choose to stay, but all the workers are exploited.!

Construction at Odiyan has continued non-stop for more than 30 years. Odiyan is a shimmering Shangri-La with copper and gold domed roofsa city on the hill. But it is not a city because there are no citizens. At Odiyan there is a Rinpoche, a billionaire benefactor, and a staff of workers. The Rinpoche lives in seclusion on a private estate with a staff that is instructed to divert their eyes in his presence.!

Odiyan is someones Winchester Mystery House, a billionaires folly with temples and stupas and gardens and two private residences and a heliport. Odiyan is an extreme gated community protected by 8-foot prison like fencing topped with razor wire and backed up by eight strands of electrical wire and security cameras. This is a STRANGE PLACE and someone needs to point out that the emperor has no clothes.!

Ratna Ling is called an Annex to Odiyan and it is organized around the same practice of rigorous, demanding physical work and $5 a day stipends. Today Ratna Ling is a 60,000sf industrial printing facility with a resident workforce and a daily contract workforce supplied by Odiyan. Ratna Ling is a company town.!

Odiyan: Private Property: Caution, Electric Fence.

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Thus end my inammatory remarks. I make note of this because what follows seems inammatory as well.!

TNMC rst proposed an Annex to Odiyan and to purchase the remodeled Timber Hill property if they could convert the existing 13,000 lodge to a religious printing facility and use the guest cottages as housing for workers. PRMD, Permits and Resource Management Department, correctly rejected this proposal, because converting a lodge to and industrial use requires industrial zoning. TNMC purchased the property anyway and repackaged their proposal as Ratna Ling Retreat Center. By simply changing their language to retreat center that included an ancillary printing facility PRMD was willing to approve a use permit!

Six-press Industrial Printing Facility at Ratna Ling Retreat

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Even though PRMD denied converting a 13,000sf lodge to a printing facility they were willing to approve the construction of a new 18,750sf ancillary printing facility. PRMD asserted: This use is

consistent with the intent and purpose of the RRD zoning district because it is similar to a non-commercial club or lodge.!

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NONCOMMERCIAL CLUB OR LODGE? Look at the pictures. THIS IS A FACTORY! This is not a Grange Hall activity. The Ladies Auxiliary does not work 6 days per week This is a factory! This is not a club or lodge. making tens of thousands of quilts for newborn babies. Ratna Ling is nothing like a club or lodge. Ratna Ling is a FACTORY. !

PRMD made a mistake. PRMD gave RL a windfall, sweetheart, good- old-boy 2004 use permit. Had RL conformed to this use permit there would be no recourse but to allow this use to continue. But RL never intended to conform to the conditions of the 2004 use permit. RL believes they are exceptional and are doing exceptional work, and this sense of exceptionalism allowed them to proceed with their own agenda. !

No one imagined that these Buddhists would be so zealous as to ignore use permits, lie about their intentions, and move their entire publishing empire to Ratna Ling without an industrial use permit. Since 2004 RL has methodically proceeded with their original plan to convert Timber Hill Ranch to their own company town.!

In 2004 all of Dharma Publishing was located in Berkeley as it had been for over 30 years. The RL ancillary press facility was a satellite of DP. PRMDs 2004 staff reports reads, To approve this

use permit a nding must be made indicating that the printing facility is an ancillary use to the retreat center. By

2007 all of Dharma Publishing was moved from Berkeley to Ratna Ling and the satellite-printing facility had now become the mother ship and hub of Dharma Publishing. All DP printing now occurs at RL. According to its own website: Dharma Publishing is the largest Tibetan Buddhist press in the world. At this scale the press facility is clearly no longer ancillary to the retreat center and it is an industrial land use. The retreat centers main purpose is to house Dharma Press, Dharma Publishing, Dharma Bookstore, and Dharma Enterprise workers.!

But this is just the beginning. Because of the move from Berkeley, DP quickly ran out of room at RL. In 2008, RL proposed a General Plan Amendment (GPA) to build"an 8,000 s.f. exhibition hall and"90,000 s.f. of underground warehouses which they euphemistically called Sacred Treasuries."This plan would have required moving 250,000 cubic yards of soil. (25,000 dump-truck loads) "At an estimated $300 per square foot this would have been a $29 million addition to the so-called " "ancillary" printing facility. If you look at the copper and gold temples at Odiyan it is clear that TNMC has the means and intention to build such a complex.!

Local community members organized to stop this outrageous expansion. Coastal Hills Rural Preservation, (CHRP) was formed and 175 residents petitioned the County to deny this expansion. Because of public pressure and the outrageous and untenable proposal, RL withdrew its General Plan Amendment, but not its pernicious desire to expand. ! # Before the 2008 GPA was withdrawn, RL requested, and PRMD granted permits for 39,000 s.f. of temporary storage tents that they called One Million Cubic Feet of Accessory Structures. (Tents are in Foreground at left.) accessory

structures. These tents, the size of a Wal-Mart store, contain one million cubic feet of space. Nevertheless PRMD permits them as accessory structures. Accessory structures are most often gazebos, decks and carports and require no public hearings to permit. How convenient, these huge warehouses required no public hearings or environmental review. Fortunately the temporary permit had a clearly dened 2-year time limit. Even though the permit expired 2 years ago the tents are still in use.!

Instead of enforcing the 2004 use permit PRMD allowed RL to le for a new use permit PLP08-0021 that will legalize past violations and make the temporary warehouses permanent. This use permit will allow RL to triple the permitted size of the printing facility from 18,000 s.f. to 60,000 s.f., and, it will triple the allowable number of factory workers from 27 to over 93, It will almost double the resident population from 67 to 123. One hundred and twenty three residents is the equivalent to 30 families on a small 120-acre RRD240 parcel.!

We can identify no other RRD parcel in Sonoma County with this intensity of use, not to mention a 60,000 s.f. factory. thrown in. The new permit also allows for previously unpermitted industrial warehousing, unpermitted commercial printing, unpermitted commercial manufacturing, and an unpermitted internet sales and distribution center.!

Ratna Ling: Excessive Land Use in a Resource and Rural Development Zone.

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In April of 2012 PMRD recommended and the Board of Zoning Adjustment approved a new use permit PLP08-0021. CHRP immediately appealed this decision to the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. It has been almost two years since we led our appeal, and now April 8, 2014 is our third hearing date.!

On February 28, 2014 PRMD presented a new Supplemental Mitigated Negative Declaration. Even though 39,000 s.f. of accessory warehouse tents have expired not to be renewed permits, PRMD has not enforced their removal. Instead PRMD is recommending making the warehouses permanent. Their logic: No

physical expansion of the existing accessory, not for prot Tibetan Buddhist printing facility is proposed. !

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WHAT? Because the tents are there then they can stay? Dont forget this argument if you get red-tagged for an unpermitted granny unit. Yes, your honor, I do have an illegal building but it is not a physical expansion from yesterday. Unbelievable!! Now is the time to regulate Ratna Ling, not reward them. RL received an unprecedented use permit in 2004 based on the ridiculous comparison to being like a non commercial lodge or club. PRMDs refusal to regulate a non-prot religious group and persistence in allowing industrial land use in RRD Zoning can be remedied. RLs own egregious behavior has put their use permit in jeopardy. In such cases the Board of Supervisors has the right and the obligation to enforce or rescind existing use permits. !

We must demand that the Board of Supervisors protect the environment, enforce the General Plan and Regulate Ratna Ling. !

! Bruce Johnson - 31400 Seaview Road - Cazadero, CA 95421 - 707 847 3323! !