Letter from BIA spurs Windsor reservation opponents, town council into action

With the Obama administration in its last weeks, a recent letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs requesting comment on a proposed reservation on Windsor’s southwestern boundary has prompted speculation that the agency may be moving to approve it before the president leaves office.

Windsor officials received the letter the day before Thanksgiving from the agency asking for some routine information on the parcels the Lytton Rancheria Band of Pomo is proposing to take into federal trust to establish their “homeland” for a tribal housing project.

On Wednesday, the Town Council decided to ask the BIA for more time to respond to the letter, but decided it will include a summary of many of the objections residents have voiced about traffic and environmental issues.

The council is asking the BIA for an extension to Jan. 20 to reply to the letter, the last day President Barack Obama will be in office, although the town attorney said they may not grant that much time.

“I always expected the land would be taken into trust prior to Obama leaving his administration,” Windsor Mayor Debora Fudge said Wednesday. “I wasn’t surprised the BIA letter arrived a couple weeks after the election.”

Given the uncertainty over President-elect Donald Trump’s position on creating more Indian lands as well as who will head up the Bureau of Indian Affairs in his administration, some observers say it is possible Obama’s BIA could approve the long-stalled Lytton application before Jan. 20.

Lytton tribal attorney Larry Stidham suggested the possibility Wednesday.

“It’s cleaner to get things done now, since we’re already working with the Obama administration on the application, “ he said in an interview.

The BIA’s letter asked for potential impacts to local government in creating the reservation related to property taxes, special assessments, government services and zoning. But after hearing from more than a dozen staunch opponents of the project, the Town Council agreed to include many of their concerns as well as a reminder that the council went on record in 2009 opposing the tribe’s development on the town periphery. Those concerns include the erosion of the urban boundary and the loss of 1,500 trees and animal habitat.

With proceeds from its highly profitable San Pablo Casino, the Lytton tribe more than a dozen years ago began buying up land on the west side of Windsor to build a housing project for its approximately 280 adult members.

The tribe is planning to build 95 single-family homes, 24 townhouses and 28 high-density units along with a 19,000-square-foot community center, smaller roundhouse and retreat facility on 124 acres it owns south of Windsor River Road.

The tribe has had an application pending for more than seven years with the slow-moving Bureau of Indian Affairs to create a reservation, which would no longer make the land subject to county zoning and restrictive rural density guidelines.

Under the tribe’s proposed project, municipal water and wastewater connections would be used, something that requires approval of Windsor voters since the land is outside urban boundaries.

But the tribe has also said it will drill its own wells and build a small sewer plant if it can’t obtain Windsor utilities.

The tribe and Windsor officials had for a number of years discussed the possibility of asking Windsor voters to approve a ballot measure that would extend town utilities to their project in exchange for the Lyttons building a long-sought municipal aquatic complex at Keiser Park.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 707-521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com