The CommonBond Foundation is working to unify Sonoma’s diverse communities.
Maybe it’s the language difference or a “haves and have-not” mentality, but many North Bay communities have a cultural divide between their Latino and Anglo residents. In a perfect world, we’d all get along and respect each other. For now, all we can do is shake our heads and say, “tsk, tsk.”
Don’t tell that to Bill Hammett.
Hammett is president of Hammett & Edison, an engineering firm based in Sonoma providing services to the broadcast industry. He has lived in Sonoma for 12 years. He’s also founder and president of the CommonBond Foundation, a public interest, nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering (as it states on its website) “cross-cultural appreciation and mutual respect among neighboring cultures in Sonoma Valley.”
“When we moved here, our kids weren’t yet in school, so I started volunteering at the local schools—reading and tutoring just to get a feel for the curriculum and what they would be going into,” says Hammett, who has three sons, ages 11, 15 and 17. “I spent some time at the high school and really noticed the self-segregation of the Spanish and Anglo kids, which I didn’t really like. My wife was involved in the Mother’s Club in Burlingame, where we moved from, and got involved in the Mother’s Club up here. She found there wasn’t a lot of mixing with the Latino mothers. There was a neighboring rich culture here that wasn’t being accessed, and there was no sharing going on. There were few common activities for Spanish and English speakers to interact. Each group held different events at different times.”
Talk the talk
“I decided to try to help bridge the gap between the neighboring Hispanic and Anglo cultures here in the Sonoma Valley,” he says. “My wife and I thought using music and sports might be a way to find common ground for the youth living in this valley.”
In 1995, Hammett applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a license to construct and operate a local public FM radio station. He had no experience running a radio station but was familiar enough with the allocation rules that he could find an available frequency. But government wheels turn slowly. So instead of sitting around waiting for his broadcast idea to work its way through the bureaucracy, Hammett thought of an additional way for the CommonBond Foundation to bridge the gap between the cultures. The CommonBond Foundation started a Spanish summer camp in 1998. The day camp, for English-speaking students from kindergarten through sixth grade, provides a total Spanish-language immersion experience. In addition to language skills, the program also includes culture, food and performing arts. Enrollment that first year was 18 elementary students, and it’s grown every year since. But that wasn’t enough for Hammett.
“In addition to running Spanish camp, in 2000, CommonBond started English camp, a companion piece,” says Hammett. “This is for Latino kids who haven’t had much English. A decade ago, when the kids were at home, they’d turn on the television and see programs in English [which helped them learn the language]. Now, there are so many Spanish language stations that a lot of kids in the schools haven’t been exposed to much English. In English camp, we focus on incoming kindergarteners and first graders. Like Spanish camp, it’s full-immersion.”
In 2006, 84 children were enrolled in English camp and 62 in Spanish camp. CommonBond also offers after-school classes and language classes for adults: “Adults Exploring Español” and “Adultos Explorando English.”
Media outreach
The public radio station, KSVY 91.3 Sonoma, got off the ground in 2004. The station has more than 60 volunteer hosts discussing all aspects of Sonoma Valley life, including high school baseball and basketball games and current events and popular and local music. Programming is in both Spanish and English.
In 2004, Hammett started two weekly newspapers The Sun in English and El Sol in Spanish. Circulation is an impressive 14,800 for The Sun and 7,500 for El Sol. Three House MultiMedia Inc., which also manages the radio station, runs the newspapers for CommonBond. (Three House also publishes FineLife and FineHome, which are distributed to 30,700 homes through the Sonoma Valley Sun and the Marin Independent Journal.)
In 2005, the Sonoma city council designated CommonBond as the operator of the city’s government access cable channel, SVTV Channel 28. As such, the station is required to run the city council meetings gavel to gavel. The meetings are conducted in English, but CommonBond is hoping to have a Spanish speaker host who will explain the meetings in Spanish (though the idea has not yet been approved by the city). The viewership could cover virtually the entire Sonoma Valley and reach as many as 40,000 people.
“CommonBond is involved in bringing TV online,” says Hammett. “That’s going great. We’ve taken possession of the scheduling software that will control the look of the screen and schedule the programs to run; we’re working to raise enough money to get to the next level of broadcasting government meetings. We’ll air city council sessions, hospital board meetings, school board meetings and government planning meetings. We want to make government more accessible to the valley.”
The Sonoma Community Swim Center
CommonBond has a bilingual public radio station, a community-focused public television station, newspapers in two languages, Spanish and English language camps and a variety of other language activities. For most people, these accomplishments would be enough, but Hammett soon saw another need.
In 2005, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District decided to close the swimming pool located on the Sonoma High School campus, because the aging facility had become an insurance liability.
“It had been the de facto community pool. The Boys and Girls Club would run programs there,” says Hammett. “When the school district closed down the pool, it was a shame because suddenly the school didn’t have a pool for its physical education classes, the local swim team was going to Napa for practices and meets and nobody seemed to be doing anything about it.
“CommonBond Foundation proposed the capital costs for construction and operation of a new community pool on the Sonoma High School campus (between the high school tennis courts and the soccer field behind Adele Harrison Middle School) be shared by the school district, Sonoma’s Community Development Agency and from community donations. Everybody said, ‘Yeah, good idea,’ but it took somebody to run with it. It’s not enough just to have the idea. I tend to dive in and work hard to try and make things happen.”
To break even financially, the pool would be open to the community and shared with the high school. CommonBond researched other community pools and found the pool could be self-sufficient if it provided features such as competition areas for lap swimming, water polo, aqua aerobics and diving. The proposal also includes a 50-meter pool, a family-friendly “splash” pool with a water slide, locker rooms and a snack bar. Construction costs are estimated at $5 to $6 million, and the plan calls for the swim center to be energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive, due to its proximity to the Nathanson Creek Preserve.
School officials reacted positively to the swim center proposal.
“The pool was removed before I arrived, because the insurance company deemed it wasn’t viable in its existing condition and determined it couldn’t be repaired,” says Barbara Young, superintendent of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District (SVUSD), which has approximately 4,500 students in kindergarten through 12th grade and an adult school. “As a school district, there isn’t any way we have the funding available to manage the replacement on our own. Working with an organization like CommonBond and developing a partnership with the city makes it possible for the pool facility to be available to the community as well as competitive teams, the high school and other events,” says Young.
The SVUSD Board of Trustees has agreed to commit $1.5 million and the use of district land. CommonBond is asking the city council for $2 million toward the project, and it’s privately fundraising the rest as a demonstration of community interest. The Sonoma city council hadn’t voted on the proposal at press time, but councilman Ken Brown told the Sonoma Valley Sun in April 2006 that, if all of the council’s questions were fully addressed, “I’m very supportive of moving forward.”
“We’re anxious to see how the project progresses,” says Barbara Young. “I think it makes sense. If there’s a way for public and private sectors to come together, it means we’re able to achieve an outcome that we couldn’t on our own. If this works for a joint agency, it can set a model for future projects.”
Creative finance partnerships
Why is it important for the school district, the city and private donors to work together?
“It’s a necessity in this era,” says Hammett. “The era of tax-and-build is over. There’s been a group here in town working for eight to 10 years trying to get a recreation district going with a tax to fund it. They’re getting no place. A couple of years ago, the schools tried to add $1 million a year with an $85 annual parcel tax. That failed, too. The taxpayers simply aren’t going to support building big features.
“I spent four years on the school board here and have visited a lot of schools around California and observed how they were built. What often happens is [the school district] forms a partnership with a developer who’s building homes. In the Central Valley, they’re adding schools like crazy as the population grows. The developer will build a school and then deed it to the school district. It’s another kind of a partnership.”
Waking up Slow-noma
Stephanie Dunn, a Sonoma native and president of Three House MultiMedia Inc., sees room for recreational improvements in her hometown. “Growing up in Sonoma, it was always called ‘Slow-noma,’” she recalls. “There’s not a lot here—especially for kids.”
She’s right. Sonoma has no local recreation agency; the bowling alley and slot car track have closed in the last 15 years, and the golf course was privatized. Compare that to Morgan Hill in the South Bay, which, though demographically comparable to Sonoma, is brimming with things to do. According to CommonBond, Morgan Hill has an indoor recreation center, a new sports complex, a 16,000-square-foot skate and BMX park, two 18-hole public golf courses and four lakes for fishing and boating. Local residents heavily utilize their aquatics center, which is similar in size and scale to the proposed Sonoma Swim Center.
“I know the pool will be an important venue for mothers with young children,” says Dunn, who herself has three children. “They’re going to put in volleyball courts and make it an all-around recreational area. It will be a place to entertain children and encourage families from throughout the community to interact.”
Dunn has nothing but praise for Hammett’s work. The two got to know each other two years ago when Dunn was involved in public relations work in the valley. It was in this capacity (as a publicist) that Dunn was first hired by Three House MultiMedia in February 2004; by November 2005, she was company president.
“Bill started the Foundation eight years ago so he could start the radio station. Then he had this idea in 2004 to start newspapers,” she says. “He had the idea all along to have news and information in both languages and was about to start with the English language newspaper, but Bill Hammett is just amazing. He’s one of those visionary people with the ability to move forward and get things done.”
Jump right in
Hammett says the community pool project fits well with CommonBond’s mission to bridge cultures.
“In English camp, we take the kids to the ocean,” says Hammett. “A lot of the kids haven’t been to the ocean before and don’t know how to swim. It would be good for the Spanish community to have access to and feel comfortable using a swim facility. There’s no resistance, it’s a good idea, it’s got a perfect location. It’s right on Broadway, a major thoroughfare, on the bus line that runs the valley, there’s a traffic light signal, there’s a new parking lot. Everybody’s excited about it.”
For further information visit www.commonbond.us and www.ksvy.org.
