Revised  6/01/02
 

• In 1928, the Department of Interior established a number of ‘Rancherias’ in California to provide home sites for homeless Indians. One of these was in Alexander Valley and called the Lytton Rancheria. In 1938, the first Indian family moved onto the Rancheria, joined shortly thereafter by a second family. In 1950, these two families demanded that the government give them the property in fee title. The government did so. The families sold the property for about $40,000 and left the former Rancheria.

• Another group of Pomo Indians, some of them descendants of the original families, tried in 1990 to claim rights to land in Alexander Valley in order to build a casino. As part of a Settlement Agreement, in 1991 the group gained recognition by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) as a “band” called the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians entitled to have a reservation, if they could find one. They have been looking ever since. The Band is composed of about 100 families, 90 of which are considered low-income.

• At this time neither the San Pablo nor the Windsor site are tribal lands to the best of our knowledge.   The San Pablo site is being sued and the BIA has withheld tribal status until lawsuits are settled.  A Philadelphia promoter named Katz made a deal with the Lytton Band to buy a card room in San Pablo; the Lyttons are to make it a ‘reservation’ and apply for gambling permits. In return Katz entered into a lease-option purchase agreement to buy 50 acres of native oak forest west of Windsor. If the casino deal goes through, he will buy the land and the Lyttons claim they will build a tract of fifty to ninety-seven $500,000 houses, a community building and administrative offices as well as a community water well and sewage plant.

• As Tribal Land, none of this will be subject to the rules and regulations of the County of Sonoma or State of California. The property and all surrounding land are currently zoned for agricultural uses with a minimum lot size of five acres. The proposed development is 5 to 10 times that allowed by County zoning regulation. Although the Pomo claim they won’t, it is still possible that they could build a casino on this site, especially if something were to happen to the San Pablo casino site.

• Since the Band members are all low-income, the Band intends to finance all this with profits from the gambling casino in the City of San Pablo. The casino project needs Governor Gray Davis’ approval of 3rd level gambling (electronic slots) to be a full-fledged casino. Governor Davis has been refusing to approve casinos in urban areas such as San Pablo.

• The local area BIA has delayed approval of the casino in San Pablo to tribal land until the lawsuits against the casino are settled.
• The BIA will not accept any environmental and engineering support documents for the Windsor site that are more than a year old. The Lyttons’ original application is now several years old, so it will be required to re-submit. The Indians will not say when they will re-submit. When they do, our local governments will have only 30 days to object to the application.

 
• The option for buying the 50 acres in Windsor expired on April 15, 2002, and buyers claim they will purchase the WindsorWest land and provide money by June 15, 2002, as per the contract agreement between buyer and seller.

• We found about all this possible Lytton Pomo Reservation on 50 acres in Windsor originally May, 2001, and purely by accident, from an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. At first all the local government agencies denied any knowledge of this impending misuse of Windsor property. Under pressure, they finally ‘discovered’ the original application. We established an organization called Windsor West Residents and set up a web site for the purpose of gathering information as quickly as we could. The web site: http://www.sonic.net/windsorwest/home.htm collects all the information and posts it to all interested citizens.

• We have met with the Windsor Town Council and Paul Kelley, our Supervisor, Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. They need us to demand that they take action.

 
• The residents of WindsorWest are pressuring the Board of Supervisors to join the Town of Windsor and take a stand against this proposed misuse of the forest.