! ! ! ! ! Dear Editor:! ! ! ! !

A BOS hearing to be held Tuesday addresses a Sonoma coast citizens appeal of illegal industrial expansion by Ratna Ling, a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Center which is turning into an industrial book factory.! I was raised down the road from what was then Timberhill Ranch. When Ratna Ling (a religious nonprot with assets of $60million) bought the property in the early 2000s, it promised positive rural tourism and was nobly preserving Tibetan texts for refugee communities abroad.! But instead of a retreat center with ancillary printing and storage facilities, Dharma Publishing now occupies over 60,000 sf of the property (more than thrice the space allowed in the original 2004 Use Permit), and exceeds its allowed book production by more than 400%. Only the cloistered Rinpoche knows why the entire printing operation was moved, from an industrial zone by the Port of Oakland, to our rural forestlands.!

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This tax-exempt development undermines our General Plan: It has brought tremendous truck trafc to local roads, along with re hazards and unknown water impacts, while promising no long-term jobs for locals.! The citizens group Coastal Hills Rural Preservation has meticulously documented Ratna Lings repeated violations and agrant zoning-creep. Time for Supervision, dear Board.! Kendra Johnson Katz! Guerneville, CA