E veryone wants to make prudent financial decisions, both individually and on a community-wide level. But what’s the best way to go about it? How much do officials need to know to make a decision?

Nowadays developers expect to do an environmental impact report (EIR) for any large-scale construction project. But are physical results like noise or traffic and the ecological balance the only things decision-makers should evaluate to determine if a proposal will help or harm the local community? In Petaluma, activists are proposing requiring a community impact report (CIR) to assess the true fiscal costs and benefits of potential projects.

Environmental impact reports have entered the standard public lexicon. Are CIRs the next step? “Twenty-five or 30 years ago, the environmental impact report was also a new tool, and now it’s standard,” asserts Marty Bennett, a Santa Rosa Junior College instructor and co-chairman of the Sonoma County Living Wage Coalition, part of the group that’s urging Petaluma to adopt the CIR requirement. “From my point of view, 25 years down the road, we will say that a CIR has become standard in the approval process for new developments. That will be a huge step forward.”

But Petaluma resident and Sonoma County Planning Commission member Don Bennett (no relation) thinks that’s a bad idea. Community impact reports, he says, would be used as “a tool to keep things from happening within the community.” He argues that the proposal is anti&–chain stores and anti-big-box retailers.

“It comes down to a philosophical thing, whether you think the role of government is to control business and management, and who you’re managing it for,” he says. “Who’s going to decide who you want in? That’s the problem. Whose will do you impose?”

Cities such as Los Angeles and San Jose already require CIRs as part of the approval process for major projects. Usually less than 50 pages, a CIR looks at five main impacts: fiscal, employment, affordable housing, neighborhood needs and smart growth. Unlike an EIR, a CIR isn’t binding and doesn’t require mitigation of any impacts.

“For me, [a CIR] is a win-win for both sides,” says Melissa Abercrombie of the Petaluma Neighborhood Association. “You look at the information, you weigh it and you figure out what works.”

There’s an urban-growth boundary to protect Petaluma against sprawl, Abercrombie points out. “Any project that’s built within that should be the best, because it’s a limited amount of space.”

Petaluma is already looking at plans for new Target and Lowe’s stores within city limits. Among other items, a CIR would evaluate the number and types of jobs, including salary levels, that they would bring to the area. It would look at whether they would bring new sales tax revenues to city coffers or just cannibalize the sales taxes already being collected by other, usually smaller stores.

For Abercrombie, a CIR is just a way of looking at the big picture before making a decision. It’s similar to what developers do before deciding to build a project, she argues, and isn’t at all anti-development. “I would welcome a development that I thought would benefit our community, and I don’t think analyzing that makes it not happen.”

But Don Bennett sees a CIR requirement as a “fact-finding thing to determine what you don’t want in your community.” The CIR proposal, he asserts, is being supported by those who don’t want more chain stores in Petaluma. But if a lot of folks didn’t like big-box retailers, he says, they wouldn’t exist.

“If the majority of people didn’t want to shop in those places, they couldn’t keep their doors open.”

In his view, it’s more important for people to be able to shop, work and live in Petaluma. A CIR, he argues, is an attempt to have the government decide what can be built on private property based on the social aspects of the project.

But Abercrombie sees things differently.

“A CIR is just a tool so we can have a clear picture for our decision making.”

The coalition presented its CIR proposal to the Petaluma City Council in late January. Coalition members are now working with city staff to answer a number of questions raised by the council members, including how much CIRs cost and how they’ve been implemented in other communities.

A fter years of refusing to spend money on things like children’s healthcare, George W. Bush is generously giving all of us in the under-$75,000 tax bracket a $600 rebate. In the Feb. 25 issue of The New Yorker , James Surowiecki analyzes this move, noting that, while it may be akin to economist Russell Roberts’ quote about “taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow,” it could also be a welcome boost to our languishing economy. Surowiecki’s article (“The Stimulus Strategy”) is eloquent and thoughtful, but it also points out a disturbing trend: the notion that as Americans we can spend our way to prosperity.

These days, $600 doesn’t buy much. Used wisely, it’s perhaps two months of health-insurance premuims (assuming you have any), 12 tanks of gas, a small deposit in the IRA account that most people don’t have or a pittance toward the enormous credit card debt that most people do. Those who go with Uncle Sam’s plan and spend it not so wisely will end up owning a bunch of video games but will be further perpetuating the sort of financial conundrum that results in documentaries like 2006’s Maxed Out and our eventual takeover by the Chinese when the national debt comes due. Whatever we do, we’re bound to discover that spending doesn’t equal salvation.

I should know. When I worked at Macy’s, I developed a shopping addiction. I was fresh out of college and in love with a married man who didn’t love me, and I felt as powerless as any one in that set of circumstances ever could. Taking full advantage of Macy’s “generous employee discount,” I thought if I could just buy that skirt or that pair of shoes, I would feel complete. I’d look polished. I’d be in control. The man I loved would weep that he’d had the audacity to marry before he discovered me. And so I spent. I went into debt. And the next week, there would always be some other item I just had to have to fill in my inner deficit.

Whatever the reasons, I think all big spenders are trying to console themselves. In the 1999 film Fight Club , Edward Norton’s character is desolate when he loses his collection of Ikea furniture in his bombed apartment. But it’s only when he stops buying things and moves into Brad Pitt’s rotting Victorian that he actually feels alive. Severed from the myth that possessions equal satisfaction, Norton’s downtrodden corporate drone finally gets his “smirking revenge.”

Since Fight Club first piqued my interest in denying the Man his funds, I’ve been hearing about various movements of people who have jettisoned frivolous spending from their lives. In San Francisco, the ever-increasing ranks of the Compact make a yearly pledge not to buy anything new. The Rev. Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping protest Starbucks, and he has penned a book based on his sermons called What Would Jesus Buy? ; the accompanying documentary made ripples in theaters last year. And then there’s Spend Nothing Day, where people from England to Taiwan take a “holiday from consumerism.”

Yes, Mr. President, the anti-consumer movement is steadily gaining steam. One of my favorite examples is the brilliant Into the Wild , Sean Penn’s screen adaptation of the John Krakauer book. We’ve all heard the story of how a young man named Christopher McCandless abandoned modern society and eventually died in the Alaskan wilderness. In the movie, Chris, portrayed by Emile Hirsch, sneers when his parents offer to buy him a new car, declaring: “I don’t need stuff .” It’s a scene that speaks to the heart of anyone who has ever wondered just how, exactly, a BMW is supposed to bring you enlightenment.

To me, Into the Wild is almost a superhero movie, except, rather than slinging spider webs or snogging Kirsten Dunst, McCandless’ superpower is his refusal to conform to the dictates of capitalist society. Sure, Spidey is cute, but he’s also the ultimate corporate drone: working insane hours, he fights to protect the norm, valiantly battling anarchists and rescuing babies. But he’s always got to promote himself (via Peter Parker’s rigged cameras) and, at the end of the day, he’s too tired to notice that Mary Jane is growing distant. Holy American dream, Batman! Spiderman may be validated as a hero and slapped on a bunch of lunch boxes, but I’d rather die in an abandoned bus, poisoned by wild potatoes but happy that I’d actually managed to live in the first place.

With these happy sentiments in mind, I decided that in 2008 I would start my own personal rebellion against the urge to splurge. Similar to the Compact, I decided not to buy anything that wasn’t absolutely essential to my existence. No new clothes, no CDs, no DVDs, no gadgets and no pricey lattes. While I remain a great fan of movies, books and clothes, I don’t actually feel the need to buy them unless I venture too near a store.

It’s been a good start. But if you really want to see how deep you’re in, try putting a complete moratorium on spending. A few days after liberating myself from my credit card, my boss mentioned that he wanted to “up the game” to impress our clients. He spoke fondly of some past associate who always dressed to the nines, an intimidating concept for a girl who was wondering just how long she could get away without a haircut before it threatened her job. It also provided me with my first lesson: the world doesn’t get off the wagon just because you do.

This whole venture has proven to me that consumerist philosophy, despite all its charm, makes everybody miserable. Forget how much money trying to stay hip is draining from your bank account; you could spend it all, look exactly like Tyra Banks, celebrate every Hallmark holiday and afford every car that rolls off the block, and you still wouldn’t be happier. If you’re one of the poor souls in credit-card debt, as I was, you’ll be twice as miserable trying to live outside your means. Depending on what study you read, the average American is $35,000 in debt with precious little to show for it.

Fortunately, more Americans seem to be realizing this. Suzanne Barlyn, a writer for TheStreet.com, has noted that a good third of the people surveyed by the tax-information provider CCH about the so-called economic incentive package that the IRS will be mailing to us in May are planning to actually save their rebate money. In answer to the question “So, is it time to go shopping now?” Barlyn quips, “Congress may think so. But I don’t.”

The desire to actually save money may be the most heartening economic trend America has ever seen, but don’t expect it to catch on just yet. We still live in a society where money and materialism are marketed as the path to fulfillment. And we still live in an era where, in the wake of the 9-11 recession, the leader of the free world actually got on television to promote Disneyland.

E very few years during the past decade, the cultural trumpet has sounded to herald the “reemergence” of the vinyl LP. Combined with the glaring oversight of the fact that vinyl, even in the CD-crazed years of the late ’80s and ’90s, never really went away, such repeated declarations have always been weak with the dominance of digital media.

But this time, the vinyl resurgence is very real—with a little help from its digital friend, the mp3. In fact, nearly every prominent independent record label in the country—Merge, Sub Pop, Epitaph, Matador, Saddle Creek and many more—are now applying what’s becoming a familiar sticker on LP versions of their releases: “Includes coupon for free mp3 download of entire album.”

And it’s helping vinyl sell like crazy.

Stores, bands and record labels all praise the combined accessibility of LPs with enclosed mp3 download cards, but no one has responded more favorably than the customers themselves. After all, it’s a sleek and hip way of cutting out what’s becoming an increasingly maligned middleman for music consumers: the CD. It’s not infeasible that record stores, as the “real” format of vinyl becomes suavely marketable to a digital generation, could very well start becoming record stores again—mp3 download included.

Brian Davis, a buyer at San Francisco’s Amoeba Music, has seen the phenomenon’s impact firsthand. “Vinyl sales have noticeably increased in the last six to nine months,” he says, noting that the enclosed mp3 download card is so widespread for vinyl releases that it’s rarely even mentioned as a selling point anymore. “It seems to be the standard,” he says. “We just assume it now.”

Not only has Davis noticed regular customers switching from CDs to LPs lately, but he’s seen completely new customers buying LPs for the convenience of the enclosed download card. “It just makes it easier,” Davis speculates, or—hinting at the beleaguered conscience of the illegal downloader—”maybe they feel better about themselves.” And in some cases, as with Beach House’s recent Devotion album, he explains, the LP/mp3 version of a band’s album has nearly outsold the CD format at Amoeba.

The pioneer of this marketing practice is indie heavyweight Merge Records, home of acclaimed acts like the Arcade Fire, Spoon and M. Ward. Merge’s founders Mac McCaughan and Laura Balance approached their digital assets manager Wilson Fuller with the LP/mp3 idea in 2005, and shortly thereafter, the label released the Clientele’s Strange Geometry with an enclosed download card. The public response was immediate: hell yes!

“People love it!” Fuller enthuses, adding that vinyl sales have quadrupled since 2004. “It’s boosted vinyl sales, and its versatility makes labels more likely to put out vinyl. You can tell by just looking at the amount of vinyl we’re putting out now versus the last few years.”

Chad Pry, a website programmer who developed the PHP/MySQL web application for Merge, Polyvinyl, Matador, Touch & Go, Epitaph and many other labels, goes even further in his praise of the idea. “I do feel that vinyl will surely outlast CDs,” he says. “The compact disc is a total drag and will hopefully be out of our lives before too long.

“For some reason, vinyl demands my respect,” the digital-savvy Pry adds. “Maybe it’s the large album cover and format size or the great feeling of finding a cool old LP at a second hand store for a buck, or just that magical transducer, the needle in the groove.”

The download cards themselves reinforce the superiority of vinyl: “Like you, we love vinyl,” states a card inside Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga LP; “Your good taste has been rewarded,” says Okkervil River’s The Stage Names LP; “Thank you for purchasing vinyl,” declares Headlights’ Some Racing, Some Stopping LP.

On the card is printed a website and a randomly generated password to enter online to download the entire album, and sometimes bonus tracks, in mp3 format. Most download cards are good for one digital download, after which they expire, and the tracks are fully importable into any iPod or portable music player. Fuller says there’ve been few, if any, technical problems.

“We have had times where the pressing plant has forgotten to put the download cards into the actual records during the pressing process,” he laughs, but that’s all. Since the passwords are one-use-only, there’s no concern about piracy.

As the head of publicity over at Polyvinyl Records, Seth Hubbard is a “big believer” in the LP/mp3 format. “It’s boosted our vinyl sales significantly,” he says, “and it’s the way a lot of people buy records nowadays—it eliminates the need for the CD.” Their first LP release to include an mp3 card was Of Montreal’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? and customer response, he says, was and continues to be “overwhelmingly positive.”

Hubbard also points out that the downloadable mp3s are available at a near-CD-quality standard of 320kps, and that any potential losses accrued by the LP/mp3 from digital or CD sales are negligible. “The younger kids who are very tech-savvy don’t really need to buy CDs,” Hubbard says. “We’re just lucky that they’ll pay to download instead of steal it somewhere.”

All of which points to the demise of the disc. “If CD sales continue to decrease, I don’t think we’ll keep putting them out if it doesn’t make sense to keep putting them out,” Hubbard predicts, pointing out the label’s obvious allegiance to continuing to make vinyl. “We’re not stuck on the CD. I mean, we’re called Polyvinyl.”

With such great success, the LP/mp3 combo provides a rare beacon of hope for a faltering music industry. But as usual, major labels from the Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG and Universal Music Group are late to the party. Although a hugely increased number of new major-label releases from the past five years have been pressed on vinyl—Amy Winehouse, Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys and the Foo Fighters, to name only the most high-profile examples—there’s been no evidence of the majors embracing the LP/mp3 offer. (One exception: MGMT, a psychedelic scenester band from Brooklyn signed to Columbia Records, who no doubt goaded a reluctant Sony into offering the mp3 download for their LP, Oracular Spectacular .)

“To get a major label to change how they do business, they’ve got this giant, massive entity to try and fix to adapt to this rapidly changing market,” Hubbard says. “Since Polyvinyl’s so small, we can adapt quickly. I feel like we’ll be able to stay on the cutting edge of trends.”

For their part, major labels have been faltering with sometimes altogether goofy ideas. “Ringles,” which attempted to combine a CD single with downloadable ring tones and wallpaper for cell phones, died a quick death due to compatibility issues. Similarly, albums packaged on USB drives, released for bands like the White Stripes, Matchbox 20, the Mars Volta and Ringo Starr, have experienced slow to nonexistent sales. Sometimes costing three times as much as a CD and often containing few bonuses, the USB drive serves to draw attention to an artist but generally fails to sell well, especially in the case of Ringo Starr.

“Everything always starts with the underground in the independent music scene,” says Jon Collins at Dropcards, a company that offers credit-card-style download cards for labels and bands. “Once the major labels catch on that Sub Pop has been doing it, Touch & Go has been doing it, Def Jux has been doing it, it’s only a matter of time before they start doing it as well.”

For as little as 20 cents per card, Dropcards hosts mp3 files and prints high-quality, glossy cards to include in vinyl pressings, instead of the more common photocopied coupon. A benefit is that many bands order overruns of the cards to sell at their merchandise table on tour, Collins says.

Dropcards does big business, and has printed literally millions of consumer-brand media cards for Red Bull, Disney, Vitamin Water and iTunes, designed to be given away for free. Independent labels, too, order promotional cards (“This month we’re getting slammed with South by Southwest,” Collins says), but 20 percent of the company’s business is in cards designed for inclusion in LPs, including albums by Aesop Rock and the Polyphonic Spree. As that number keeps growing significantly, Collins says, LPs with mp3 cards aren’t necessarily taking over so much as they’re starting to fill what could one day be a void of physical media.

“CDs,” he dryly observes, “seem to be making themselves pretty obsolete on their own.”

A long Fountaingrove Parkway lies the elaborately stone-covered entrance to Varenna, Santa Rosa’s newest soon-to-be completed retirement community. On the approach, a family of deer romp quietly through the grass, but once inside the job site, clang and clamor from hundreds of workmen fills the air. Our car is immediately accosted by a guy dressed in grubbies who, having evidently just lost some of his men, leans in the window. “Hey, can you guys paint?”

Nearby, a taco truck does brisk midmorning business next to two dozen new refrigerators waiting to be installed. Up the tractor-cluttered driveway, some carpet guys are overheard discussing who may or may not be drunk on the job today. And then the grand welcome: the two-tiered fountain, the porte-cochère, the arched entrance and the absolutely gargantuan main lobby. Welcome to this totally insane thing on the hill.

As the baby-boomer generation grows older, assisted-living retirement communities with onsite healthcare have become a secure, bankable industry. Just ask Aegis Senior Living, formerly known as Gallaher Construction, one of the area’s major retirement developers. Gallaher once developed single-family subdivisions in the North Bay, but has for the past 10 years built assisted-living centers almost exclusively. Fountaingrove’s lavish Varenna is in a 29-acre stratosphere of its own.

There’s a cocktail lounge, indoor and outdoor pools, a hobby shop, spa, bocce court, library and barber shop. Regular housekeeping, meals, activities, transportation, valet service and fitness training are included. And for retirement in full regal splendor, chauffeured town-car transportation, delivered meals and personal dry cleaning are an option.

So how much does this all cost? Entrance fees for Varenna’s 250 resort-style units start at $345,000 and go up to $1.3 million; additionally, residents pay a required monthly fee of $2,700&–$5,400. Varenna’s units are not owned by residents, so these fees are essentially for the luxury of renting. And yet, even though Varenna isn’t completed, 85 percent of the units have already been taken.

“There’s been a pent-up need for something of this quality,” says Varenna project manager Bill Mabry via phone. Although the cost is high, Mabry says, there’s nothing like Varenna anywhere in the Bay Area, and “there’re a lot of people who were waiting for something like this.”

Upon move-out or death, the former resident or the estate of the deceased receives 90 percent of the original entrance fee, minus any monies owed, in case “we go into their unit and somebody had a giant beer party in there, and they threw all the chandeliers off the deck,” Mabry jokes.

While touring a model unit at Varenna, a stereo plays Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand, softly. Hat boxes dot the walk-in closets, and bookshelves are lined with works by Mailer, Grisham and Robert Benchley. A martini shaker and a chess table sit among faux African sculptures and large prints, some of steam ships, some of flowers—victory and serenity.

Extravagance lies around every corner as one stumbles upon the wine cellar, with walls and ceiling sculpted to resemble a rock cave. Up the hill, neighborhood-style units called Casitas feature a two-car garage—with a separate, smaller garage door for a golf cart. The trip from the main patio down to the lake is made easy by a planned sky tram.

For wealthy retirees still on the fence, Varenna has a slam-dunk selling point, and it’s undeniably breathtaking: the 150-degree view looking out over the lake to the coastal mountains. Rolling by on the job site covered in sawdust, even Bob Pospisil, Varenna’s construction manager, echoes the sentiment. “It’s just kick-butt beautiful,” he agrees.

Not all is serene on the hill, however. Though Varenna was welcomed by the Fountaingrove Master Homeowners Association (FMHA), a smaller assisted-care project down the hill, also proposed by Aegis, has been ensnared in public objections from the FMHA and stalled in an environmental impact report for over a year. It’s called the Lodge at Fountaingrove, and it’s oriented specifically toward gays and lesbians.

After two and a half years, Aegis has not yet broken ground on the Lodge and Mabry says that though the costs of the opposition now are reaching over half a million dollars—an amount that would normally kill a project—Aegis remains financially and morally dedicated to the many gay and lesbian seniors waiting to move in. Asked if Aegis plans to stick with it, Mabry’s answer is swift and resolute: “Absolutely.”