In Part 2 of our Sebastopol City Council recap, the council also tackles a ban on lying on the sidewalk, looks for legal solutions to racism behind Safeway, and funds the EIFD
Chipping away!!! Now let's get the other 5M back and into the well infrastructure. One small step towards the larger restitution. This is great to see. Onward towards an incrementally improved, more ethically accountable future Sebastopol? Common Sense Party?
Agreed! 5M siphoned of our utilities money siphoned off by the City of Sebastopol! Liars figure and figures lies. So the $350,354 is a pittance compared to the 5M. I see it as a slap to the face when the City Council expects us to accept any explanation for the theft.
Regarding the EIFD. As a taxpayer IN the City of Sebastopol and someone who has watched almost every council meeting for the last 4 years, I am not happy that this was voted on with the council members apparently not completely understanding this complex issue.
There is no accurate number as to what the cost will be for city staff time, yet Phill, Steven and Neysa agreed to another 10-15 hours a week for city staff to work on this.
They also voted to spend $125,000 of our taxpayer money, (adding to the deficit), to work on something no one really understands.
There is no concrete - in writing - contract with the county to match funds.
Thank you to Sandra and Jill for voting no - which was the appropriate vote to make if one was voting to protect the taxpayers and the budget.
I wouldn't say the costs are not well understood. Very difficult to explain in a small session. Neysa Steven and I have had the uneven fortune of studying them for the past months to a year. Costs are controllable and part of that control has yet to be determined ( the map and yes the county match) - but there is a strong reason to set the baseline as soon as possible. I will say council meetings are a difficult place to explain something as complicated and nuanced as this. If the County declines, the district does not form and we do not spend the money to form. There really is no version where we proceed city-only and absorb all of the costs.
This is the clearest illustration, hypothetical-ish, I can give you. Take the 2-way street conversion at say $5 million, borrowed over 30 years at 4 %. The numbers below are my calculations off Kosmont's published assumptions, not published numbers, and I'll have to ask Kosmont to check them.
Without the EIFD district- the city would need regular debt or city bond ( an addition to property taxes) which has an annual debt service of about $289,150, carried entirely by the General Fund for 30 years. Present value cost, ~ $5,667,000.
With the EIFD district- we have the same $289,150 payment, but the district revenue covers a growing share of it. If the loan starts in 2030, The General Fund pays about $126,000 in the first year, $74,000 in the second, then $47,000, then $19,000. By roughly the 8th year of the district the increment covers the full payment, and the General Fund contributes nothing further. Cumulative General Fund cash exposure across those 4 bridge years is about $266,000. Present value cost, roughly $1,836,000. SO we get a $5 million street project for about ~$266,000. There are formation fees of about $100,000 that would be absorbed into this project and others for the next 45 years.
So we have added about $4 million of present value for 1 project. Could we borrow other ways more cleanly? Sure, but the city pays out of pocket. What the district changes is who pays it back and and from what available financial bucket.
The County share is why this works. It is a precondition to accepting the EIFD formation.
The City's own contribution is General Fund money ... The only genuinely additional money here is the County's. It is also important about when the money is accessed - because it is sort of like taking from future savings account.
Approximately 22 cents of every property tax dollar collected in Sebastopol goes to the County. Under a match, a portion of the county's growth in the tax revenue of tthe EIFD area ( a conservative 25%), is directed to projects here instead. For many years the ask of council was to see if the county could contribute more to help our infrastructure that also serves great West County. This is the mechanism. The growth the projects spur in the area should increase our property tax rate faster than the [3.5%] rate projected. Kosmont models it at $10,702,005 in present value. It recovers nothing already collected and does not reduce the County's baseline. It does not raise taxes and if done well - so there is some risk, if done well it improves the city's general fund balance.
On the streets project ( hypothetical above) the County match alone covers the entire annual payment by roughly Year 19, and from that point the City's own increment is free again.
"For many years the ask of council was to see if the county could contribute more to help our infrastructure that also serves great West County. This is the mechanism." - PC
No free lunch. It's frustrating that those making that ask for all kinds of projects aren't focused on how to make this solution work. Nobody, no agency, hands out money without an upfront process. Yes, it's more complex than an ordinary bank loan, but the benefits to the City are magnitudes better. That's why it costs something up front and costs less later. We make that choice all the time...pay more now for things that work better and last longer.
This is a California state program and we are not the first area to use it. It does require 30,000 foot level thinking because it will help so many projects over a long time. Getting a plane off the ground is the most fuel intensive part of the flight. And that seems to be the rub. Detractors seem to characterize definable short term risks as certainties and definable long term benefits as impossibilities.
We are in danger of saving pennies and losing dollars.
Thank you for the excellent reporting. I'm just adding a little information about Restorative Justice programs.
Restorative jutice programs incorporate the ideas put forth in Hward Zehr's The Little Book of Restorative Justice, and have been developed successfully in some Bay Area jurisdictions to address small, low level criminal activity, like grafitti and vandalismo, etc., especially amongst youth. Goals include stopping the troublesome activity, making reparations for any property damage, and providing ofenderse with a process separate from the juveniles justice system.
We do not have any similar restorative justice programs in Sonoma County. There is a strong bias against restorative justice programs in some parts of the county because some continuation high schools have purchased a proprietary product called Restorative Practices that provides the schools with a program that many parents and community members have not been pleased with.
Restorative Practices is not the same as Restorative Justice. They are two different things.
Restorative justice is a philosophical and legal approach to developing a local justice system that meets the needs of víctims, offenders and community members.
"Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligaciones, in order to heal and put things as right as possible."
The substantial number of comments from Sonoma County people that I've read about Restorative Justice (almost all highly critical comments) Do not address restorstive justice at all. Instead, people are referring to the proprietary package program that Ridgeway (and perhaps other cintinuation schools like Laguna?) purchased.
From what I've read, Restorative Practices is not a particulary helpful program. The only reason I mention it is that almost all the comments from Sonoma County people about restorative justice actually refer to the proprietary Restorative Practices package.
I would advise folks who are potentially interested in establishing a restorative justice program in Sebastopol to read the restorative justice litersture and consult with the Bay Area communities and police departments that have experience with restorative justice programs focused on low level crime by local youth in their neighborhoods or school neighborhoods. These programs have often been very successful.
Mostly, I just wanted to say that:
(1) Yes, restorative justice programs offer communities a good pathway for dealing with youth crime like vandalismm, shoplifting, and grafitti, in my experience and inderstanding; and
(2) Please keep in mind that most of the information and comments about Restorative justice here in Sonoma County do not refer to Restorstive justice itself, but are about a proprietary program named Restorative Practices.
Sorry to go on so long, but not everything in life is short and simple.
In closing, I support Restorative justice, but do not recommend the Restorative Practices product that people often refer to as "Restorative Justice."
By the way, City of Sebastopol returning the $$$ to the water and sewer funds is an excellent example of Restorative justice.
Thank you, Mayor McLewis. We appreciate your clarity with the Board. Wish looking for practical solutions to real problems would not result in such absurdities as saying one is trying to punish poor people. No. It is not ok to hand over our streets and sidewalks to people with no shelter. Let's figure out practical solutions that do not result in more and more city services (and tax payer dollars) going to this small group of people who's numbers have already expanded past our ability to help.
Really digging into this, I went back and watched the meeting. Specifically, whether the council voted to move forward with this with or without the county match. The council was clear in November of 2024 that the city should accept the consultant's recommendation that the EIFD did not make financial sense without the county matching the city dollar for dollar. It is peculiar that this requirement was not included in the motion on Tuesday night. The motion was to approve the Kosmont agreement plus the proposed add-on costs described in the staff report. The Kosmont agreement incudes as task 1 to seek the county match but that agreement does not state a requirement that task 1 be completed before tasks 2 and 3 are begun. Tasks 2 and 3 are essentially preparing all the documents and public meetings necessary to finalize the formation of the Public Financing Agency. The recommendations in the staff report to approve the Kosmont agreement and authorize the City Manager to spend further dollars to expand the potential size of the EIFD boundary also do not mention that none of these expenditures should be initiated until the city has a signed agreement from the county to match. Why? Is this going to just keep rolling with council promising not to move forward without a county match while they hope no one in the public or maybe on the council will actually read the agreements they are voting to approve?
I’m calling BS on Councilmember Hinton’s explanation that they were keeping the EIFD on hold because they were busy with the Measure U Sales Tax Measure. All issues with that measure were resolved in July 2025 when the legislature approved the full ½ cent. This City Council last moved on this issue in December of 2025, well after the tax measure was resolved approving and Resolution of Intent to establish the Sebastopol EIFD.
Council Member Hinton argued in her motion in December 2025 that council approval of the Resolution was necessary to show the supervisors the city was serious. She predicted no further action for six months while they got an agreement from the County to match funds. It seems the measure was on hold pending the county matching agreement. This seems a very reasonable explanation except where the signed agreement is. When is it expected. What issues have to be overcome to get support from a majority of the Supervisors?
Regarding the EIFD - The financials make very little sense. If you look at the staff report and go way to toward the end (page 40 of 56) there is a chart showing the General Fund Impact of the EIFD over 10 years. The tax revenues raised is projected at $1,515,504. The expenses the city will incur to administer the program over 10 years are projected to be $954,100. Presumably these are administrative costs like staff time, consultants, fees, accounting audits, reports to the state, etc).
Think of this like a savings account. Would you contribute $1.5MM to a bank that in effect charged you fees of $954,000 leaving you only $561,000 after 10 years of hard work? That is the financials of the EIFD. Three members of the council (Voted Yes) apparently manage their finances that way, unless of course they spend our money differently.
Unfortunately, this information while attached to a 56-page document did not get presented or discussed. This is consistent with commenter criticism following part 1 of this article describing the city council's current practices: "Council and staff rarely say anything introductory about an issue. Comments and discussions often begin with "weedy technical issues".
The result of the city's new process is a chain of poor decisions. The city passed a budget with a $900,000 deficit. They adopted a budget with a 5-year forecast of $1MM deficits for the next two years. Yet the city council voted to raise their salaries by 300%. At this meeting they voted to increase the budget for EIFD consulting from $75,000 to $125,000. Cost estimates keep going up making the 10-year cost of $954,100 look pretty conservative.
I stand corrected, the 10-year administrative cost of this initiative is probably closer to $500,000 not $954,000. Still seems like a lot of money to administer a program where the city diverts a portion of its property tax to a separate fund. The city has dozens of different funds that cost nothing to administer.
The $954K figure is for costs to the area from growth of the years for services like police and other services over a decade -although growth from a Hotel and 60 more homes cause that level of service increase it is far from given. The $125K fees - which could possibly be lower as this is a holder - can be absorbed by the district and therefore shared by the county and amortized into the EIFD life of 45 years not 10, which I feel is misrepresents the cost for capital. -> We are effectively getting the ability to borrow for large projects now when that would have been cost prohibitive. Saving would take 18 years for the same capital.
Thankfully the county is talking with us to help contribute - which matches our contributions and therefore is additive with interest.
The opposite of this statement states the EIFD better - "Think of this like a savings account. Would you contribute $1.5MM to a bank that in effect charged you fees of $954,000 leaving you only $561,000 after 10 years of hard work? "
We could borrow $5M and pay back $2.5 M , including admin costs, after 10 years. That's a pretty good deal.
Let's start with how our city attorney and a city council member with obvious interest in restorative justice are unaware of the city's own operating guidelines as it relates to Restorative Justice.
Item 50.3 of the adopted recommendations describes the city's own Procedural Justice Program and policy implemented in conjunction with County Probation and Procedural Justice in May of 2023. Chief of police at the time, Ron Nelson stated: "All officers are trained and we are referring youths to the program for low level offenses, particularly first-time offenders."
It is concerning because this information was included in the staff report at the last council meeting discussing the update on police reform. If council members or our city attorney prepared for that meeting one might presume they read the full staff report.
Why then did an extended debate take place between the council and the city attorney about whether such a program could be implemented. Why did our City Attorney not know that the county has a program that is coordinated with the cities and the various police forces apparently including Sebastopol? Why did no one on the council know about the city's own practices given the level of priority that has been placed on the Jerry Thweet reforms.
Could a more productive discussion have taken place? More effective questions might have been: How was our internal policy applied to the Safeway situation. Would these youths be qualified under our policy? Did the "racist/hate" nature of the crimes result in the youths being cited? Another excellent question might have been what our experience has been working with Sonoma County on this issue. Are they open to receiving referrals from the city? Do we have any data on whether the referrals result in changes of behavior?
Reading Madeline Solomon's comments here, one might expect the answers to those questions might have been: No, the County does not have an effective program. There is no data available on the effectiveness.
Oh dear - I did not do well explaining the eifd in the meeting...honestly I think council meetings aren't a great venue to discuss and work through big decisions transparently. Something with quite a bit of nuance, technical understanding, and months of work deserves more than a 10 minute presentation and limited discussion -> I think this is how we get meaningless and manipulated soundbites. Regardless... to redeem myself I updated my website which covers my perspective and should explain the EIFD in regards to Sebastopol more clearly... The short statement is: this a great mechanism for Sonoma County to help build infrastructure in Sebastopol because that infrastructure will create additional property tax growth - AND this does not affect anyones taxes nor burden the General Funds of either the county or city with debt. https://phillcarter.com/eifd
What wasn't spelled out in the meeting is Sebastopol's underlying position on rules and policies.
Do we believe in the spirit or the letter of the law? The spirit of the Sit/Lie ordinance is making sure we have a way to keep sidewalks open and businesses prospering. The letter of the ordinance is that casual non-walking use of public access ways is punishable by fines and jail time.
Are we focused on the aspirational purpose or the possible misuse? "Head in the sand" is a glib way of saying one person can't see/understand the position of the other. Tuesday's meeting and heated exchange stemmed exactly from unspoken different belief systems around how rules should be written.
How much is too little and how much is too much reliance on "selective enforcement"?
The discussion wasn't helped any by both the city attorney's and police chief's inability to clearly articulate the rules already in place for addressing a person blocking access to a business. This is textbook stuff. They should have been describing the next step about how existing options are useful or problematic. Only with that information could a Sit/Lie ordinance be precisely sculpted to solve our particular enforcement problems.
Attorney Mog did say something very important. Between Oliver Dick's and Kyle Falbo's comments is a truth otherwise glossed over. While the Oregon case cleared a path for these kinds of ordinances, Mog said there are "similar" efforts in our surrounding jurisdictions, but they aren't identical. While Sebastopol may become "the weakest link" without a Sit/Lie policy, it also becomes an instant lawsuit target if our ordinance isn't highly tailored to the specific activities it is trying to address. In our case, reliance on "selective enforcement" is a sure way to get the city into trouble.
As for people on the sidewalks. I have never been barred from going somewhere except when they had all those RVs parked on Morris. People would leave their stuff on the side walk.
Early one morning I was returning books to the library, to find a young man sleeping on the pavement in front of the book drop. I simply, quietly leaned over and put my books in the drop. If you can get around the person, just go around them.
Chipping away!!! Now let's get the other 5M back and into the well infrastructure. One small step towards the larger restitution. This is great to see. Onward towards an incrementally improved, more ethically accountable future Sebastopol? Common Sense Party?
Agreed! 5M siphoned of our utilities money siphoned off by the City of Sebastopol! Liars figure and figures lies. So the $350,354 is a pittance compared to the 5M. I see it as a slap to the face when the City Council expects us to accept any explanation for the theft.
Regarding the EIFD. As a taxpayer IN the City of Sebastopol and someone who has watched almost every council meeting for the last 4 years, I am not happy that this was voted on with the council members apparently not completely understanding this complex issue.
There is no accurate number as to what the cost will be for city staff time, yet Phill, Steven and Neysa agreed to another 10-15 hours a week for city staff to work on this.
They also voted to spend $125,000 of our taxpayer money, (adding to the deficit), to work on something no one really understands.
There is no concrete - in writing - contract with the county to match funds.
Thank you to Sandra and Jill for voting no - which was the appropriate vote to make if one was voting to protect the taxpayers and the budget.
I wouldn't say the costs are not well understood. Very difficult to explain in a small session. Neysa Steven and I have had the uneven fortune of studying them for the past months to a year. Costs are controllable and part of that control has yet to be determined ( the map and yes the county match) - but there is a strong reason to set the baseline as soon as possible. I will say council meetings are a difficult place to explain something as complicated and nuanced as this. If the County declines, the district does not form and we do not spend the money to form. There really is no version where we proceed city-only and absorb all of the costs.
This is the clearest illustration, hypothetical-ish, I can give you. Take the 2-way street conversion at say $5 million, borrowed over 30 years at 4 %. The numbers below are my calculations off Kosmont's published assumptions, not published numbers, and I'll have to ask Kosmont to check them.
Without the EIFD district- the city would need regular debt or city bond ( an addition to property taxes) which has an annual debt service of about $289,150, carried entirely by the General Fund for 30 years. Present value cost, ~ $5,667,000.
With the EIFD district- we have the same $289,150 payment, but the district revenue covers a growing share of it. If the loan starts in 2030, The General Fund pays about $126,000 in the first year, $74,000 in the second, then $47,000, then $19,000. By roughly the 8th year of the district the increment covers the full payment, and the General Fund contributes nothing further. Cumulative General Fund cash exposure across those 4 bridge years is about $266,000. Present value cost, roughly $1,836,000. SO we get a $5 million street project for about ~$266,000. There are formation fees of about $100,000 that would be absorbed into this project and others for the next 45 years.
So we have added about $4 million of present value for 1 project. Could we borrow other ways more cleanly? Sure, but the city pays out of pocket. What the district changes is who pays it back and and from what available financial bucket.
The County share is why this works. It is a precondition to accepting the EIFD formation.
The City's own contribution is General Fund money ... The only genuinely additional money here is the County's. It is also important about when the money is accessed - because it is sort of like taking from future savings account.
Approximately 22 cents of every property tax dollar collected in Sebastopol goes to the County. Under a match, a portion of the county's growth in the tax revenue of tthe EIFD area ( a conservative 25%), is directed to projects here instead. For many years the ask of council was to see if the county could contribute more to help our infrastructure that also serves great West County. This is the mechanism. The growth the projects spur in the area should increase our property tax rate faster than the [3.5%] rate projected. Kosmont models it at $10,702,005 in present value. It recovers nothing already collected and does not reduce the County's baseline. It does not raise taxes and if done well - so there is some risk, if done well it improves the city's general fund balance.
On the streets project ( hypothetical above) the County match alone covers the entire annual payment by roughly Year 19, and from that point the City's own increment is free again.
"For many years the ask of council was to see if the county could contribute more to help our infrastructure that also serves great West County. This is the mechanism." - PC
No free lunch. It's frustrating that those making that ask for all kinds of projects aren't focused on how to make this solution work. Nobody, no agency, hands out money without an upfront process. Yes, it's more complex than an ordinary bank loan, but the benefits to the City are magnitudes better. That's why it costs something up front and costs less later. We make that choice all the time...pay more now for things that work better and last longer.
This is a California state program and we are not the first area to use it. It does require 30,000 foot level thinking because it will help so many projects over a long time. Getting a plane off the ground is the most fuel intensive part of the flight. And that seems to be the rub. Detractors seem to characterize definable short term risks as certainties and definable long term benefits as impossibilities.
We are in danger of saving pennies and losing dollars.
sounds about right.
Thank you for the excellent reporting. I'm just adding a little information about Restorative Justice programs.
Restorative jutice programs incorporate the ideas put forth in Hward Zehr's The Little Book of Restorative Justice, and have been developed successfully in some Bay Area jurisdictions to address small, low level criminal activity, like grafitti and vandalismo, etc., especially amongst youth. Goals include stopping the troublesome activity, making reparations for any property damage, and providing ofenderse with a process separate from the juveniles justice system.
We do not have any similar restorative justice programs in Sonoma County. There is a strong bias against restorative justice programs in some parts of the county because some continuation high schools have purchased a proprietary product called Restorative Practices that provides the schools with a program that many parents and community members have not been pleased with.
Restorative Practices is not the same as Restorative Justice. They are two different things.
Restorative justice is a philosophical and legal approach to developing a local justice system that meets the needs of víctims, offenders and community members.
"Restorative justice is a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligaciones, in order to heal and put things as right as possible."
The substantial number of comments from Sonoma County people that I've read about Restorative Justice (almost all highly critical comments) Do not address restorstive justice at all. Instead, people are referring to the proprietary package program that Ridgeway (and perhaps other cintinuation schools like Laguna?) purchased.
From what I've read, Restorative Practices is not a particulary helpful program. The only reason I mention it is that almost all the comments from Sonoma County people about restorative justice actually refer to the proprietary Restorative Practices package.
I would advise folks who are potentially interested in establishing a restorative justice program in Sebastopol to read the restorative justice litersture and consult with the Bay Area communities and police departments that have experience with restorative justice programs focused on low level crime by local youth in their neighborhoods or school neighborhoods. These programs have often been very successful.
Mostly, I just wanted to say that:
(1) Yes, restorative justice programs offer communities a good pathway for dealing with youth crime like vandalismm, shoplifting, and grafitti, in my experience and inderstanding; and
(2) Please keep in mind that most of the information and comments about Restorative justice here in Sonoma County do not refer to Restorstive justice itself, but are about a proprietary program named Restorative Practices.
Sorry to go on so long, but not everything in life is short and simple.
In closing, I support Restorative justice, but do not recommend the Restorative Practices product that people often refer to as "Restorative Justice."
By the way, City of Sebastopol returning the $$$ to the water and sewer funds is an excellent example of Restorative justice.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mayor McLewis. We appreciate your clarity with the Board. Wish looking for practical solutions to real problems would not result in such absurdities as saying one is trying to punish poor people. No. It is not ok to hand over our streets and sidewalks to people with no shelter. Let's figure out practical solutions that do not result in more and more city services (and tax payer dollars) going to this small group of people who's numbers have already expanded past our ability to help.
Really digging into this, I went back and watched the meeting. Specifically, whether the council voted to move forward with this with or without the county match. The council was clear in November of 2024 that the city should accept the consultant's recommendation that the EIFD did not make financial sense without the county matching the city dollar for dollar. It is peculiar that this requirement was not included in the motion on Tuesday night. The motion was to approve the Kosmont agreement plus the proposed add-on costs described in the staff report. The Kosmont agreement incudes as task 1 to seek the county match but that agreement does not state a requirement that task 1 be completed before tasks 2 and 3 are begun. Tasks 2 and 3 are essentially preparing all the documents and public meetings necessary to finalize the formation of the Public Financing Agency. The recommendations in the staff report to approve the Kosmont agreement and authorize the City Manager to spend further dollars to expand the potential size of the EIFD boundary also do not mention that none of these expenditures should be initiated until the city has a signed agreement from the county to match. Why? Is this going to just keep rolling with council promising not to move forward without a county match while they hope no one in the public or maybe on the council will actually read the agreements they are voting to approve?
I’m calling BS on Councilmember Hinton’s explanation that they were keeping the EIFD on hold because they were busy with the Measure U Sales Tax Measure. All issues with that measure were resolved in July 2025 when the legislature approved the full ½ cent. This City Council last moved on this issue in December of 2025, well after the tax measure was resolved approving and Resolution of Intent to establish the Sebastopol EIFD.
Council Member Hinton argued in her motion in December 2025 that council approval of the Resolution was necessary to show the supervisors the city was serious. She predicted no further action for six months while they got an agreement from the County to match funds. It seems the measure was on hold pending the county matching agreement. This seems a very reasonable explanation except where the signed agreement is. When is it expected. What issues have to be overcome to get support from a majority of the Supervisors?
Regarding the EIFD - The financials make very little sense. If you look at the staff report and go way to toward the end (page 40 of 56) there is a chart showing the General Fund Impact of the EIFD over 10 years. The tax revenues raised is projected at $1,515,504. The expenses the city will incur to administer the program over 10 years are projected to be $954,100. Presumably these are administrative costs like staff time, consultants, fees, accounting audits, reports to the state, etc).
Think of this like a savings account. Would you contribute $1.5MM to a bank that in effect charged you fees of $954,000 leaving you only $561,000 after 10 years of hard work? That is the financials of the EIFD. Three members of the council (Voted Yes) apparently manage their finances that way, unless of course they spend our money differently.
Unfortunately, this information while attached to a 56-page document did not get presented or discussed. This is consistent with commenter criticism following part 1 of this article describing the city council's current practices: "Council and staff rarely say anything introductory about an issue. Comments and discussions often begin with "weedy technical issues".
The result of the city's new process is a chain of poor decisions. The city passed a budget with a $900,000 deficit. They adopted a budget with a 5-year forecast of $1MM deficits for the next two years. Yet the city council voted to raise their salaries by 300%. At this meeting they voted to increase the budget for EIFD consulting from $75,000 to $125,000. Cost estimates keep going up making the 10-year cost of $954,100 look pretty conservative.
I stand corrected, the 10-year administrative cost of this initiative is probably closer to $500,000 not $954,000. Still seems like a lot of money to administer a program where the city diverts a portion of its property tax to a separate fund. The city has dozens of different funds that cost nothing to administer.
The $954K figure is for costs to the area from growth of the years for services like police and other services over a decade -although growth from a Hotel and 60 more homes cause that level of service increase it is far from given. The $125K fees - which could possibly be lower as this is a holder - can be absorbed by the district and therefore shared by the county and amortized into the EIFD life of 45 years not 10, which I feel is misrepresents the cost for capital. -> We are effectively getting the ability to borrow for large projects now when that would have been cost prohibitive. Saving would take 18 years for the same capital.
Thankfully the county is talking with us to help contribute - which matches our contributions and therefore is additive with interest.
The opposite of this statement states the EIFD better - "Think of this like a savings account. Would you contribute $1.5MM to a bank that in effect charged you fees of $954,000 leaving you only $561,000 after 10 years of hard work? "
We could borrow $5M and pay back $2.5 M , including admin costs, after 10 years. That's a pretty good deal.
Let's start with how our city attorney and a city council member with obvious interest in restorative justice are unaware of the city's own operating guidelines as it relates to Restorative Justice.
Item 50.3 of the adopted recommendations describes the city's own Procedural Justice Program and policy implemented in conjunction with County Probation and Procedural Justice in May of 2023. Chief of police at the time, Ron Nelson stated: "All officers are trained and we are referring youths to the program for low level offenses, particularly first-time offenders."
It is concerning because this information was included in the staff report at the last council meeting discussing the update on police reform. If council members or our city attorney prepared for that meeting one might presume they read the full staff report.
Why then did an extended debate take place between the council and the city attorney about whether such a program could be implemented. Why did our City Attorney not know that the county has a program that is coordinated with the cities and the various police forces apparently including Sebastopol? Why did no one on the council know about the city's own practices given the level of priority that has been placed on the Jerry Thweet reforms.
Could a more productive discussion have taken place? More effective questions might have been: How was our internal policy applied to the Safeway situation. Would these youths be qualified under our policy? Did the "racist/hate" nature of the crimes result in the youths being cited? Another excellent question might have been what our experience has been working with Sonoma County on this issue. Are they open to receiving referrals from the city? Do we have any data on whether the referrals result in changes of behavior?
Reading Madeline Solomon's comments here, one might expect the answers to those questions might have been: No, the County does not have an effective program. There is no data available on the effectiveness.
Oh dear - I did not do well explaining the eifd in the meeting...honestly I think council meetings aren't a great venue to discuss and work through big decisions transparently. Something with quite a bit of nuance, technical understanding, and months of work deserves more than a 10 minute presentation and limited discussion -> I think this is how we get meaningless and manipulated soundbites. Regardless... to redeem myself I updated my website which covers my perspective and should explain the EIFD in regards to Sebastopol more clearly... The short statement is: this a great mechanism for Sonoma County to help build infrastructure in Sebastopol because that infrastructure will create additional property tax growth - AND this does not affect anyones taxes nor burden the General Funds of either the county or city with debt. https://phillcarter.com/eifd
What wasn't spelled out in the meeting is Sebastopol's underlying position on rules and policies.
Do we believe in the spirit or the letter of the law? The spirit of the Sit/Lie ordinance is making sure we have a way to keep sidewalks open and businesses prospering. The letter of the ordinance is that casual non-walking use of public access ways is punishable by fines and jail time.
Are we focused on the aspirational purpose or the possible misuse? "Head in the sand" is a glib way of saying one person can't see/understand the position of the other. Tuesday's meeting and heated exchange stemmed exactly from unspoken different belief systems around how rules should be written.
How much is too little and how much is too much reliance on "selective enforcement"?
The discussion wasn't helped any by both the city attorney's and police chief's inability to clearly articulate the rules already in place for addressing a person blocking access to a business. This is textbook stuff. They should have been describing the next step about how existing options are useful or problematic. Only with that information could a Sit/Lie ordinance be precisely sculpted to solve our particular enforcement problems.
Attorney Mog did say something very important. Between Oliver Dick's and Kyle Falbo's comments is a truth otherwise glossed over. While the Oregon case cleared a path for these kinds of ordinances, Mog said there are "similar" efforts in our surrounding jurisdictions, but they aren't identical. While Sebastopol may become "the weakest link" without a Sit/Lie policy, it also becomes an instant lawsuit target if our ordinance isn't highly tailored to the specific activities it is trying to address. In our case, reliance on "selective enforcement" is a sure way to get the city into trouble.
As for people on the sidewalks. I have never been barred from going somewhere except when they had all those RVs parked on Morris. People would leave their stuff on the side walk.
Early one morning I was returning books to the library, to find a young man sleeping on the pavement in front of the book drop. I simply, quietly leaned over and put my books in the drop. If you can get around the person, just go around them.