Pity the visionary who arrives in Petaluma who hopes to create some new resource that would benefit our quaint, retro-centric town. For no matter whether it’s rescuing an historic fire trap from the wrecking ball, building an asphalt plant with aims to help pave the pot hole capital of the north bay, turning an empty field into a shopping center that would offer staple items to a community the great majority of whose retailers sell antiques, ephemera and tchotchkes, or a local, family-owned hardware store that proposes to invest in our city, these developers (a four-letter word in the minds of those who build nothing on their own) will be attacked by the apparatchiks, useful idiots and raving BANANAs who dread any sort of proposed change which they have not personally anointed. The chosen weapons of the proponents of stasis are EIR’s, endless litigation and the spreading of half-truths. Welcome to Petaluma.