Updates from Friends of Public Banking Santa Rosa

[Shelly]

Dear Friends of Public Banking,

My heart goes out to you all at this time of great disaster within our beloved community. I pray that you are all safe and well and if you were directly impacted by the fire that your recovery will be rapid as we collectively work together to heal. I have attached a Word doc that I sent out to friends with some tips on ways to keep ourselves healthy in this smokey air and I hope you all may find some benefits here too.

As always my focus remains on building a public bank, as I know of no better way to generate the funds that will be needed to rebuild this community than to establish a public Bank of Santa Rosa. As an example of this, the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota experienced a devastating flood and fire in 1997, burning down the center of their town and flooding most residences. The Bank of North Dakota was able to immediately provide relief to the municipality and to businesses in the form of low interest loans. Homeowners and students were also granted six month moratoriums on loan repayments.

Showing us what is possible in establishing public banks are our sister city's Oakland and Los Angeles. LA council president Herb Wesson wrote the attached Motion to establish a Bank of Los Angeles and  9 of the 14 council members have now signed on to the Motion. [read more]

Last month the city of Oakland approved conducting a feasibility for a public Bank of Oakland. The city of Berkeley contributed 25k and Richmond put in 5kto support the funding of the study. Also last month in Oakland, Councilmembers Kalb and Kaplan collaborated with Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland to host an event with Wolfram Morales, chief economist at the East-German Savings Bank Association of Germany. The title of his presentation was "Public Banks Power Local Renewables: How Germany Built Local Renewable Resources" Germany has 400 municipal banks known as Sparkassen. Currently 41% of the energy produced and consumed in Germany is renewable up 6% from the year 2000. The Sparkassen banks have financed 72.5% of that in the form of low interest rate loans, as low as 1.1%. [watch video and read more]

We were scheduled to have our monthly Public Bank Santa Rosa work group meeting tomorrow, but given that the firestorm was so recent, we will plan to meet again instead on Saturday November 11th. That same day, the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center will have an exhibit on Decolonizing California History. Several folks from our group want to attend that event, so we will meet afterwards at the Peace and Justice Center.

12:30-2:30 Decolonizing California History

California Indian Museum and Cultural Center

5250 Aero Drive Santa Rosa, CA

https://cimcc.org/decolonizing-california-history/

3:00 - 4:30pm Public Bank Santa Rosa Work Group/Sonoma Solidarity with Standing Rock - Divestment Meeting

4:30 - 6:00pm Sonoma Solidarity with Standing Rock- Admin Meeting

Attached are the minutes from our last meeting on 9/23/17

For now, you can help us by signing the following petition asking city officials to fund a feasibility study to determine the economic benefits of establishing a Bank of Santa Rosa.

https://www.change.org/p/shelly-browning-establish-a-public-bank-of-santa-rosa

You may also follow us on our Public Bank Santa Rosa Facebook page for updates on the public banking movement both in Santa Rosa, across the state and around the nation.

Wishing you all well as we collectively work together to heal our community.

In solidarity,

Shelly Browning

"The tallest oak in the forest was once just a little nut that held its ground." ~ Unknown