One form of economic stimulus that should not be controversial is for our county to change the winery definition ordinance to allow for more types of marketing events at wineries. Napa County can certainly use the business, and it is rather mystifying that we are not already doing this anyway.

It could be done without expanding the number of allowed events on each wineries permit, the suggestion being to simply allow different kinds of events. For example, if a meal could be served a winery could host a corporate dinner, showcasing their wines and not only making money off the event itself, but also introducing new potential customers to their wines for future business. It would also provide business for caterers, hotels, florists and possibly others, as those brought into the valley would probably go out to other businesses while here.

More controversial would be weddings, due to the fact that they can get large and loud. The fact is that many non-winery venues in Napa County are doing weddings successfully, like Meadowood and the Culinary Institute. Imagine a wedding taking place virtually across the street from the CIA at the Krug Winery, where most of us have been to an event, with a large number of attendees I might add, at one time or another.

Would a wedding at Krug have any different impact on the community than the weddings that are now taking place at the CIA? Or any of the other events being done at Krug that have hundreds of attendees? Yet at Krug it is now illegal to have a wedding simply because it is a winery.

Weddings won’t go away because they are a huge money maker and every other wine country around is doing them and making oodles of bucks and landing oodles of jobs for their businesses. It would be easy to write common sense rules to prevent weddings from getting out of hand and disrupting neighbors lives. It makes no sense for Napa to ban them from wineries.

The opposition to changing the winery definition ordinance seems to come down to trying to keep the ag preserve in some kind of purified state, nothing done here but growing grapes and making wine. Any other commercialization would be seen to diminish the value of wine making here.

There is some merit to that position, but it can reach an extreme point where it becomes more of a religious devotion to an ideal that does not exist than anything that is actually saving the ag preserve or making Napa more attractive to visitors.

Let’s face it, doing weddings would make Napa more attractive to visitors, especially the many who want to get married here at a winery. Weddings are an elegant event that don’t compare to selling t-shirts at wineries that say "I got drunk on $100 wine in Napa!" We would not lose the ambiance that makes Napa so special.

The other point is that it seems like right now more than ever people are afraid of change, we see it with the tea bag protests, and here in Napa we see it with strong opposition to doing just about anything new that comes up. People are afraid of change because change always necessarily involves heading into the unknown, and there are always unknown and unintended consequences to anything new. Easier to just hang on to what you know.

The problem with that is that change is happening whether you like it or not, and change is happening in Napa because the economy is getting hammered. And the truth is that carefully considered change like this usually turns out well.

Napa is going to have to change along with everyone else, and we may never have the level of sales of high end wines that we once had. That is a reality that we now have to deal with and may have to deal with for a long time. What it means is the nearly 9 percent unemployment that we now see here, and the huge drop-off in business.

We need to take steps now to address that, including changing the WDO to allow for more business, and we also need to put more money into marketing the Napa Valley through the Destination Council which is the marketing arm of local industry.

Our elected leaders throughout the county should reinvest a much greater percentage of the TOT tax into marketing Napa Valley through the Napa Valley Destination Council, our countywide tourism management organization.

We must have some flexibility and fluidity to respond to changing times, and we can do that without endangering what we have that is so important to all of us.