City Council meeting recap for Nov. 19

The council hears updates on the budget, as well as reports on new building fees, Sebastopol's Active Transportation Plan and EIFDs. It also transferred two city programs to Gravenstein Health Action

The beginning of the Nov. 19 Sebastopol City Council meeting was marred by interruptions from Neo-Nazi Zoom bombers and a naked man wanking off on screen. Welcome to the internet. Otherwise, the meeting went on as usual and lasted late into the evening.

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All council members were present for the Nov. 5 council meeting, including Mayor Diana Rich, Vice Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Jill McLewis. Councilmember Sandra Maurer was attending via Zoom.

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Consent Calendar

The consent calendar consists of items that are routine in nature or don’t require additional discussion, often because they’ve been discussed extensively at a previous council meeting.

In addition to approving the minutes of previous council meetings, the city council approved a review of the city’s Conflict of Interest Code; several City Council Protocols and Procedures; a resolution revising the City’s Publicly Available Pay Schedule; and a funding agreement for use of 2022-2023 Community Development Block Grant funds for the Burbank Farm Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Project.

Councilmember Maurer removed Item 6—the Electronics Device Policy—for discussion later in the evening, but the meeting ran so late that a discussion of this item was moved to the Dec. 3 council meeting agenda.

Presentations

Because of the city’s financial problems, city staff has committed to giving the city council quarterly reports on the status of the city’s General Fund and Enterprise Funds (water and sewer).

The report on the city’s water and sewer funds was given by Ana Kwong, the city’s Administrative Services director, who said both funds were on track in the last quarter. The water fund had raised a little more revenue than expected, but City Manager Don Schwartz said that was because water use is higher in summer.

Given that water rates were slightly above expectation, Mayor Diana Rich asked “At what point does the city look at the possibility of lowering rates?”

“One quarter’s data is not enough,” Schwartz said. “One year’s data would be more worthy of that. But one quarter is way too early. My suggestion is to get a year’s worth of data and see where we are on both the revenue and the expense side.”

When Councilmember McLewis asked how many complaints the city had received about the new rates, city staff couldn’t give a definitive number.

Mayor Rich asked if it was less than 10% — i.e., less than 300 complaints out of 3,000 water and sewer accounts—and Kwong answered in the affirmative.

She also noted that there were 304 delinquent accounts, up from 302 in the previous quarter.

Schwartz gave the first quarterly report on the General Fund. “It's hard to draw many conclusions this early in the fiscal year,” he said. “Our budgeted deficit is about $700,000. And frankly, I think it’s too soon to tell where we’ll end up.”

One significant thing—he said the city was budgeting that the Measure U sales tax would be based on a quarter-cent sales tax increase instead of the full half-cent, based on the state sales tax cap. This means the city is projecting it will bring in only $750,000, instead of the hoped-for $1.5 million.

“A quarter cent increase means significant reductions in services or we put less into infrastructure or we do some combination of the two,” he said.

Taking a quick look back at last year, Schwartz said that last year's budget deficit came in around $287,000, which is $855,000 less than projected. He said city belt-tightening had something to do with that.

“Regardless of doing better than last year, the fundamental need for more revenue, the need for Measure U, remains the same. The foundational story has not changed, unfortunately,” Schwartz said.

He said one of the ways the city was holding down costs was by keeping some positions vacant, including at Maintenance Worker 1 position, which he said would normally be budgeted at about $130,000. Maintenance Worker 2 positions come in closer to $150,000 annually.

In terms of Measure H money from the fire tax measure passed this spring, Schwartz said the city is projecting that they’ll get around $750,000, all of which will have to be spent on fire-related expenses. “So we’ll be spending more on that,” he said.

Regular Agenda

Building Department fees

The fee structure for Building department activities hasn’t been updated since 2016. Here are the new proposed fees:

“The typical house permit under these new fees would be, as shown, about $14,000, which is the building permit fee themselves and the general fund portion. $33,000 in impact fees—that’s sewer connections, water connections, park fees, a small fire fee. That’s a total of around $47,000,” explained Steve Brown, head of the city’s Building Department.

Brown noted that only three new houses had been built in Sebastopol in the last six years. He said fees in Sebastopol were higher than in high-construction cities like Santa Rosa and Petaluma, but lower than in comparable cities.

“The comparisons between other cities: Cotati is around $60,000, city of Sonoma is at $57,000, I believe, these days, for that size house. And so we are near the bottom, with the exception of the county,” he said.

After a brief discussion, the council approved the new fee structure and “designated authority to the building official to set rates for construction types not listed. The resolution provides authority for annual cost of living increases on July 1st of each year, based on the consumer cost index for the previous year.”

Sebastopol Active Transportation Plan

Transportation consultant Eleanor Leshner introduced the Draft Sebastopol Active Transportation Plan for consideration by the council. See the full staff report and PowerPoint here. The Sebastopol Times has covered this plan extensively in an article on Oct. 15, and therefore this discussion will focus on the council discussion about the plan.

From the beginning, council members seemed skeptical of the plan. Vice Mayor Zollman kicked this off by saying a constituent had mentioned that bike plans have come and gone in Sebastopol and people get all excited, but that nothing ever gets built. Councilmember McLewis asked how easy it was to get the grants mentioned in the plan’s implementation section. Associate Planner John Jay said that, as a town, Sebastopol is somewhat handicapped in the grant game because of its equity score—which is to say, it’s a mostly white and wealthy community.

Councilmember Maurer and Mayor Rich asked why the Gravenstein and Apple Blossom trails were listed as “aspirational,” rather than included on the list of prioritized projects. Leshner said it was because those trails involved private properties, while all the prioritized projects were on public right-of-ways. During public comment, many commenters argued for adding these two trails to the list of prioritized projects.

During council comment, Councilmembers Maurer, Zollman, and McLewis expressed a preference for putting the Gravenstein and Apple Blossom trails on the prioritized list. Mayor Rich and Councilmember Hinton said they didn’t have enough information about the trails to recommend that. Noting they had a three-member majority, Councilmember Maurer tried to get a vote on this, but nothing came of that.

In the end, the council punted to staff with a bunch of questions regarding how various trails get prioritized and who makes the final call about what gets in the draft. City Manager Don Schwartz promised to get information to answer those questions by the time the Sebastopol Active Transportation Plan returns for final approval at the end of February.

Mayor Rich noted that Sebastopol residents still have until Nov. 30 to make comments on the draft plan. You can do so by going to the SCTA ATP webpage, and scrolling down till you see the Draft Plan Feedback Form. You can also send comments on this plan to Sebastopol’s Associate Planner John Jay at jjay@cityofsebastopol.gov.

Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (EIFD) Feasibility Analysis

The city began considering developing an EIFD a year ago, in November 2023. Supervisor Lynda Hopkins procured funding for an EIFD feasibility study, and the city hired a consulting company, Kosmont, to carry out that study. At the Nov. 19 meeting, consultant Joe Dieguez of Kosmont delivered the results of that study. Kosmont explored different EIFD boundaries and revenue scenarios, as well as which sorts of projects would be eligible for funding. This topic is too long and complicated to explain in a city council recap. We will devote an entire article to this presentation later this week. For now, we will simply note that the council unanimously approved the continued exploration of the EIFD concept and Kosmont’s EIFD proposals.

Meet Your Neighbor and Sebastopol Neighborhood Communication Unit programs to be transferred to Gravenstein Health Action

Sebastopol Fire Chief Dave Bray came prepared to give a presentation on Meet Your Neighbor (Formerly Map Your Neighborhood) and Sebastopol Neighborhood Communication Unit (SNCU) programs, but the lateness of the hour—it was 10:45 pm—led the council to suggest he give the presentation at a future council meeting. They chose instead to focus on the request to transfer two city programs, Meet Your Neighbor program and Sebastopol Neighborhood Communications program, to the Gravenstein Health Action Coalition (GHAC). This involved transferring those programs’ remaining funds—$7,700 to GHAC. The council approved this plan.

Other item: The council also unanimously agreed to hire Marcia Raines, a retired city manager, to do 10 hours of executive coaching work for the city, capping the cost at $1,500.

Watch the full video of the Nov. 19 Sebastopol City Council meeting here. You can find all the staff reports, supporting documents, and comment letters for that meeting here. The next city council meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 6 pm at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol.