City Council recap of the Nov. 5 council meeting
Council approves development on Healdsburg Avenue, increases Mary Gourley's salary
All council members were present for the Nov. 5 council meeting, including Mayor Diana Rich, Vice Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, Councilmember Sandra Maurer and Councilmember Jill McLewis.
Consent Calendar
In addition to approving the minutes of a previous city council meeting, the city council unanimously approved amendments to personnel rules, removing the position of Police Chief from the classified service and making it “at will.”
Presentations
Police Sergeant Cameron Fenske was given a 10-year award of service from the City. It was accepted by acting Police Chief James Hickey.
Public Hearing: Approval of a development at Healdsburg and Murphy
The council unanimously granted a conditional use permit to the development at 7621 Healdsburg Avenue to build a 100% residential project in a commercial zone. Set on 1.44 acres, the development, owned by Pacific Knolls LLC and designed by architect Kathy Austin, includes 12 one-bedroom apartments facing Healdsburg Avenue and 12 townhomes built behind them.
The apartments, designed for one or two people, are very small. Six of the apartments are 760 square feet and six are 590 square feet. The two-bedroom townhouses behind them are also quite cozy: seven are 1,120 square feet and five are 1,148 square feet.
The townhomes have a one-car garage and a driveway for an additional car. The apartments have 18 parking spaces in the rear of the building, along with an ADA-accessible elevator.
All of the units (apartments and townhomes) will be rentals, though it’s possible that the townhomes might be sold separately in the future.
The council seemed excited about this project. Several members noted the need for smaller, more affordable one-bedroom units given Sebastopol’s aging population.
This will be market-rate housing, however, with only one to three units officially designated as “affordable.”
Sadly, Austin couldn’t say when the development might be built. She said it was possible that the owner might sell the development as a package once it was approved and that high interest rates and difficulty in getting bank financing might delay construction into the future.
“It is so volatile with the cost of everything right now,” Austin said. “I wish I could say it was going to happen tomorrow. I would love to see that. But the reality is there’s not a lot of new construction going on. Things you see under construction now were approved years ago. It’s just really hard right now.”
The Return of Police Chief Ron Nelson
The council made a finding of “critical need”—a bureaucratic necessity required by the Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS)—so they could temporarily re-hire Ron Nelson as police chief while ongoing efforts to find a new police chief continue.
A raise for City Clerk/Assistant City Manager Mary Gourley
Everyone agrees that City Clerk/Assistant City Manager Mary Gourley is a treasure. This week the city council extended her contract to 2027 and gave her a $46,700 increase in salary and benefits, for a total base salary of $212,592.
Gourley took a 10% voluntary pay cut when the city ran into financial trouble—the only city employee to do so—and has forgone raises in the past. It was pointed out that Gourley, who won California City Clerk of the Year in 2019, was making less than some of her male subordinates.
The paeans came flowing in for Gourley, who has been an employee of the city for 30 years and who Councilmember Hinton called “the ultimate professional.”
City manager Don Schwartz said “Nobody in my career works like Mary Gourley does, and you'll never know about it, but things like, how do public comments get posted almost instantly when they arrive on weekends. It’s not a magic machine. It’s Mary Gourley. That’s just one really modest example. If we want to build a strong organization, having the best talent is the most important thing we can do, and we have an extraordinary talent here. I’m really honored to be your city manager, but it’s the honor of my career to be working with Mary Gourley.”
Noting that the council had received a large number of letters opposing the raise because of the city’s financial straits, Councilmember McLewis said, “We do need to figure this financial situation out, but we can’t do it on the back of one employee, an employee who is working 70 to 80 hours a week.”
The council voted unanimously to approve the raise.
Off-schedule bonuses and more days off for some city employees
The council voted unanimously to give three employees (a police captain and two fire engineers) an additional $1,000 each and gave another group of employees two additional days off at Christmas (the 23rd and the 26th). This was a compromise to give those employees some of the same perks given to the city’s SEIU union employees. The total cost was $5,000.
More discussion of City Council Protocols and Procedures
The council is engaged in a months-long review of city council policies, with the goal of creating a city council handbook by June 2025.
At their Oct. 1 meeting, the council agreed on a new protocol for choosing the mayor and vice mayor: the vice mayor would automatically become mayor the next year, and the vice mayor would be chosen based on who had won the highest number of votes during the election. This would mean that next year’s mayor would be Stephen Zollman, with Jill McLewis as vice mayor. McLewis would be mayor the year after that. Councilmember Maurer, who came in third in the race, wouldn’t have a chance to be mayor in this term. At the Oct. 15 meeting, Maurer and Mayor Rich suggested an alternative method of choosing the vice mayor, based on random number generation.
On Tuesday night, there was supposed to be some discussion of this idea. Instead, Councilmember McLewis made a motion to accept the staff wording for the original plan hammered out on Oct. 1. The motion passed 4-1 (Maurer opposing).
Next came an excruciatingly long discussion of the Agenda Review process. Sandra Maurer captured it this way in her city council recap email:
“The council is mostly maintaining the same process with slight variations, such as if the Agenda Review committee hasn’t addressed an item in 90 days, or can’t decide on an item, it will come to the full council for a decision [in the next 30 days]. We agreed on the Conduct of City Council Meeting policy, including giving discretion to the Mayor in terms of how they read the titles of the consent calendar items.”
This sort of thing took nearly two hours. Happily, the council didn’t revisit the discussion about where council members should sit at the dais.
Congrats all around
At the end of the meeting, council members eagerly checked their phones to review the election results. Councilmember Neysa Hinton got congratulations for securing her third term on the council, and Mayor Diana Rich was elated by the massive support that Measure U, the half-cent sales tax increase, was getting from Sebastopol’s voters.
“I am absolutely pleased that the public is supporting this really important sales tax measure for the city of Sebastopol,” Rich said. “I’m hoping that we’re going to have a really large turnout. We want to hear from everyone.”
Watch the full Nov. 5 city council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is on Nov. 19 at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol.
I, along with others, consistently commend the Assistant City Manager, and I maintain that view. However, I appreciate you highlighting the City Manager's remarks, as it raises a valid concern for me: it’s unclear whether the city is effectively prioritizing its workload when an official of the Assistant City Manager's caliber is being celebrated for tasks like ensuring that public comments are posted almost instantly, even on weekends.