A controversial anti-hate resolution, Measure N money in peril, and more
Recap of March 7 City Council Meeting
All council members were present at the March 7 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Neysa Hinton, Vice Mayor Diana Rich, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, Councilmember Jill McLewis, and Councilmember Stephen Zollman.
Note of Conflict of Interest: In addition to being the co-publisher of the Sebastopol Times, the author of this piece is also a part-time contractor for the city of Sebastopol. The news reported in this article, and any opinions reflected therein, are not dictated by or reflective of the opinions of the city council or staff of the city of Sebastopol.
The March 7 meeting began on a cheerful note with a Years of Service award to Sebastopol Police Officer Jacques Levesque, who has been with the department for 15 years. And then came the proclamations, with their piles of whereases, proclaiming March as Red Cross Month and Women’s History Month and the week of March 19-25 as National Surveyors Week.
CONSENT CALENDAR
In addition to approving the minutes of past meetings, the council also unanimously approved the hiring of a consulting engineer to do the Engineer’s Report for the city’s Lighting Special Assessment District for 2023-2024.
REGULAR AGENDA
Palm Avenue Improvements Project shelved
Anyone who regularly drives South Main Street is probably familiar with that little snick of Palm Drive that sits between South Main and Petaluma Avenue and which is used by thousands of cars a day to make what is essentially a U-turn— a left onto Palm and then an immediate left onto Petaluma Avenue—in order to head back toward downtown.
The problem with this maneuver is that while you’re looking to the right for a chance to merge into fast, oncoming traffic, it’s easy to forget that there’s a crosswalk to your left—which creates a danger for pedestrians.
In 2022, the city council, on the advice of the city’s Traffic Ad Hoc Committee, approved the Palm Avenue Improvement Project, which envisioned blocking off that small stretch of Palm Drive and turning it into a short one-way street (effectively ending its use as a turn lane), resurfacing it and adding a sidewalk. After researching this project, the Traffic Ad Hoc Committee decided it was more expensive than first thought and not as high of a priority (or as much of a danger) as some other streets, such as the dangerous second crosswalk at 116 and Burnett, near Funk & Flash.
Despite pleas from neighbors, the majority of the council agreed with the committee’s assessment and voted 4 to 1 (Jill McLewis dissenting) to put the Palm Drive improvements back on Sebastopol’s regular list of streets slated for repairs and paving.
Council opposes the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability initiative
The Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act recently qualified as a state-level initiative for the 2024 California ballot. This ballot measure calls for stricter rules for raising taxes, fees, and assessments (requiring voter approval with a 67% super-majority). It would also invalidate any existing state or local measure without a sunset clause, including Sebastopol’s recently passed Measure N, which removed the sunset clause from the city’s Utility User Tax (UUT).
“Measure N provides the city with approximately $700,000 every year—so the results of that would be devastating,” City Manager and City Attorney Larry McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said the city had three options:
Do nothing and hope that the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability ballot initiative doesn't pass.
Put Sebastopol’s Utility User Tax with a sunset clause back on the ballot in 2024. McLaughlin said this would only cost $15,000 because it would be riding on the coattails of an existing election.
Wait to see if the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability initiative passed. If it did, the city could then put a Utility User Tax with a sunset clause back on the ballot in 2025, which McLaughlin said would cost $30,000 to $50,000.
“So staff's recommendation at this point is to consider going back to the voters with a new ballot measure in conjunction with a 2024 municipal election to re-enact our UUT with a new sunset clause,” he said.
McLaughlin said this worrisome information about Measure N was purely informational at this point. He just wanted to give the council and the public a heads up.
With this information in their back pocket, the council voted unanimously for a resolution opposing the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability ballot initiative.
Council approves budget amendment to pay for new fire engine
The council quickly approved a budget amendment to increase the Equipment, Vehicle and Infrastructure Reserve Fund by roughly $30,000 to pay for the increase in the price of a new, already contracted fire engine, which was originally budgeted at $389,242.
The fire engine’s manufacturer informed the city in February that due to supply chain issues and the increasing cost of materials, the fire engine would cost more than the contracted amount. Not wanting to scuttle the deal, the city council unanimously approved a budget amendment to cover the cost increase of $30,075.
City agrees to record and post Budget Committee meetings
Councilmember Sandra Maurer brought forth a proposal to have the city videotape and post meetings of the city’s Budget Committee. It turned out that the Budget Committee was the only standing committee that wasn’t recorded and broadcast. The council quickly bowed to this common-sense proposal and approved it unanimously. The first recorded budget committee meeting can be found here.
What could be controversial about an anti-hate resolution?
Councilmember Jill McLewis introduced an anti-hate resolution, inspired by the anti-police vandalism of the Bank of America in February. The graffiti on the bank referenced the police shooting of an environmental activist in Georgia in response to the shooting of a sheriff’s deputy.
The language of the resolution was ordinary enough, but the supporting report relied heavily on a description of the incident in Georgia.
The four other council people were clearly uncomfortable with this.
“I don’t believe this was a hate tagging,” Councilmember Maurer said, “I believe this was a call for justice…I would support an anti-hate resolution, but I can’t have it connected to what’s happening in Atlanta, Georgia.”
“I am completely against any sort of hate crime, no matter who the targeted entity is,” Vice Mayor Diana Rich said, but she said she was alarmed that the vast majority of the images in the agenda item referred to the Georgia incident.
“I am completely against hate speech and graffiti and tagging, but having been on city council for a while, and watching how councils can slightly misstep and end up in the newspaper tomorrow, I would not want anyone to think that this council is not in support of free speech or the activists, who are obviously all over the news,” Mayor Hinton said. “I feel this could easily be reworded and brought back and expanded so it wouldn’t be tied to one incident, which, right now, it feels at first glance like it is.”
McLewis responded, “The whole purpose of this was just to say that this type of graffiti on these buildings is just not appropriate,” she argued. “To put on there ‘All cops are bastards’ and that type of thing – it's not something that I think that we as a city should be okay with. And I think that to take it that far to say that now we're supporting ‘Cop City,’ I think that's a far stretch.”
“Democracy only works if policies and laws include everyone,” McLewis continued. “That's what distinguishes us as a democratic society. And I think that just because they [the graffiti writers] were doing it for a certain reason doesn't necessarily make it okay.”
McLewis was urged by both Mayor Hinton and Vice Mayor Diana Rich to rework and resubmit the proposal, but it wasn’t clear whether she would do so.
Takeaways from the staff report from the City Manager
As of last week, the city has now recovered all but $20,000 of the $1.2 million that it lost to a cybercrime in April 2021.
Sebastopol’s housing element was certified by the state of California, making Sebastopol the first city in Sonoma County to have its housing element certified in this cycle.
You can watch the entire March 7 City Council meeting here. The next city council meeting will be on March 21 at 6 pm.