Last thoughts on Measures U and W, Graton's election, canvassing in Nevada and a reflection that no matter what happens nationally we can be grateful to wake up here
Wow. The Sebastopol Times should be embarrassed by their attempt to out a private citizen and silence information. I am shocked at the ethics violations in this article. I guess it is now up to readers to decide if they trust these folks. Pretty disgusting in this election period that is marked by a criminal trying to gain the presidency. I guess these folks are in line with tRump on thinking it is okay to throw rules out the window in favor of political gain.
The Sebastopol Times certainly doesn't point fingers - "they" crush opposition with public humiliation. I had hoped having local news would contribute to more government accountability. Now we see it as a political communication tool for the "powers" that run the city. This should have been a letter to the editor from Sarah Gurney and Diana Rich. I guess in effect that is what it is.
I am sorry you see it that way. You should have seen the emails I got from the powers that be this week after we included Michael Carnacchi's F-U Measure U sign in an article. And now we're getting it from the other side...which to me means we're hitting the sweet spot. I am curious why none of you wrote a letter to the editor when invited. I suppose one advantage of not doing so is that you can later accuse us of bias for not including anything from what I have begun to think of as "the regime in exile."
By the way disagreeing with someone - and naming them - is not humiliating them. Why don't any of you guys use your real names? It would honestly lend more credibility to your arguments.
Now that the Sebastopol Times has tipped their hand as totally biased, more information is necessary. Once again, the information on the hotel is completely incomplete.
The Sebastopol Inn TOT numbers were taken from fire and flood years so they are artificially low. The County paid over 40% of appraised value for the hotel. Other people tried to buy it but the County outbid them, paying much more than the hotel was worth. It was part of a package deal with the Hotel Azure in Santa Rosa.
Importantly, article leaves out the fact that sales tax and tourist traffic also contributed to the local economy. If a hotel has 20 occupied rooms per day and each room spends $40 per day in the local economy, that is $800 per day or $292,000 pumped into the local economy. That helps Sebastopol businesses survive and creates revenue. It creates visitors on the streets. People to buy coffee and eat breakfast, window shop. In addition, permanent supportive housing is a needs intensive community, which require additional services such as calls to the police. Read this article on the SVP Commons. Occupants openly use fentanyl . Residents complain of drug dealers. Does having permanent supportive housing in your downtown area support local business or make it harder for them?
If the hotel would have continued as a hotel, it would have continued generating revenue. There is a possibility that rooms would have been upgraded to a higher price point to generate more TOT,.
If you watched the presentation by the financial consultant, the first thing he said was that Sebastopol needs a hotel. Once again, only people with financial incompetence would say that removing a hotel would have limited fiscal impact. Cities compete for hotels because they are huge economic engines, especially. in a tourist economy with little other revenue generating industry.
Any reasonable Council that wanted to protect their City budget, especially when Sebastopol's budget is so small, would have said, "No" to the conversion as it presented too big of a financial risk, which has played out.
For the ST to say it is all ok because TOT revenues are back to 2015 levels is misleading. Recall high school math and the power of compounding. Inflation of 2-5% over 9 years has increased TOT tax even with no downtown hotel. That doesn't make it ok to lose the hotel. Those lost revenues and the impact on local businesses and restaurants went right to the bottom line and the deficit.
In the past, the city had the same council members for many years. During much of that time there was very little oversight or opposition from either the press or citizens. During that time many issues were manifesting themselves and being neglected. In the past four years public comments have identified important issues and forced the city to act on some of them.
• Past councils for years allowed as much as $700,000 each year to be shifted from water rate payers to fund general expenditures. The result was not enough money to maintain our water infrastructure, which is now considered badly in need of funding to improve it. Diverting this money from its intended purpose is actually against California State Law. Public pressure forced the city to do the first study in 20 years to address the problem.
• Past councils failed to act on the growing deficits in Water and Sewer. Although the growing deficit was called out in public comments it was not addressed until the city had to loan $1MM from the general fund to the Water enterprise. That got attention. Public comments have been calling for proper oversight of our critical water and sewer operation by the City Council. We are not there yet.
• The city paid for a study that shows the streets are in poor condition. No surprise, the public who have to drive and ride bikes on these streets identifies this as a priority. Even after spending money on the study, past councils did not consider street repairs a priority even when they had budget surpluses.
• The issue with the Sebastopol Inn having declining revenue and value was in large part due to the issues with crime and vagrancy in the Gravenstein Station driving away tourists. This problem spilled over from Park Village which we now know was the first permanent supportive housing project paid for by the city of Sebastopol. Purchase of Park Village by the city was presented to the citizens and the bank who loaned the money as an initiative to convert the Village into a park. Even today there are no reports to the city council about the Park Village project. The cost to the city is not fully presented in the budget.
• Past councils approved multi-year double digit increases in salaries and benefits without any plan to increase revenues to pay the bills.
• Past council chronically underfunded the fire and police services. Our fire service now has to be outsourced. Our police force has been underfunded to the point Sebastopol has the highest violent crime rate in the County. The rise in violent crime over the last four years had to be uncovered and presented by public comment. If the city council doesn't know there is a problem, they can't set priorities to fix it. The current initiative to shift police funding to mental health services might not have gotten traction if the city council had known about the increase in violent crime.
• Public comments have called attention to the fact that there are now more homeless people per capita in Sebastopol than any other city in Sonoma County. 50% of police time is dealing with the homeless. Violent crime is increasing. Without public comment and perhaps the news media shining a light on the problem no real effort will be made to solve it.
• Much of the Public comment on homelessness has been critical of local efforts to help the homeless. Horizon Shine was our primary effort, and it seems to have helped a handful of the 25-35 people who may have received services. It appears none of the drug addicted or mentally ill got services. We now know from the PD and the Grand Jury that there may not have been any county services operating at the time.
• Housing was a primary goal of the Horizon Shine project. Only one or two have reportedly qualified for more permanent housing. We have learned that it is difficult to meet the requirements for housing subsidies and if you qualify you live on the streets for two more years hoping for an opening. Lack of housing is an issue and the Sebastopol Inn sits empty for the past year.
We need citizens to pay attention. We need an independent press to hold government accountable. We need elected officials who listen. Sebastopol has lots of smart people who need to be encouraged to contribute insights and ideas.
I appreciate this comment. There are a couple of errors. The council gets a report on Park Village at least annually -- I know, I have to sit through them. I doubt the violent crime figure. But what I appreciate here is the lack of vitriol and name-calling which discourages many smart people from running for council.
People don't run for Council because it only pays $300 per month and it's a full time job. It's not feasible for most working people with families can't afford to participate in Council. Once again you are missing the relevant information. Police records all show an increase in crime where there are homeless encampments such as when Morris Street was an RV encampment enabled by Glass, Gurney and Rich, currently 116 and when Sebastopol Inn was occupied. Once again, actual data is helpful if you want to "report" on local issues.
Is the report to council only? The last Level of Service report on the website is from 2022 and is a draft report. I looked in 2022 draft and 2021 and no mention of Park Village. If you search you can find expenses for park village. PW budgeted 7,800 for repairs. There is a loan payment of around $70,000. We pay WCCS to manage it for $78,000. There appears to be no revenue coming to the city from rents or grants. It looks like we pay $78,000 to West County Community Services and they collect the rents and any grant money they can raise?
You doubt the data? Data is data. It tells a story. If you take action to address problems, you can measure the effectiveness of your efforts with data. Did you look at the data?
Look at the public comment on violent crime. Go to the FBI database and do your own research. It is very user friendly. While it is true we have a small population and a small number of crimes the rate tells you the number of crimes per person compared to other cities with different populations. This doesn't include the number of crimes per square mile which I am sure is equally high or higher than other cities in the county. A citizen in Sebastopol has 2.7x the chance of experiencing violent crime than Sonoma or Windsor, 1.8x compared to Cotati.
The defense was multiple charges for one "event". I'm sure other cities do the same thing. Another defense seemed to be "bad" people come through town on the two major arteries. Many of us use those arteries putting us in close proximity to the people apparently committing violent crimes.
I hoped that they might be concerned about the high proportion of violent crimes that involve youth aged 0-19. No discussion about what is going on with youth but to be fair my guess is the Sergeant didn't see the comment before being asked to defend himself and the department.
It would have been more functional if instead of putting that Sergeant on the hot seat, the mayor had asked the city manager to prepare a report explaining the problems, what is being done and what help the police need from the council to reduce crime rate in Sebastopol to the lowest in the County. Seems like a reasonable goal, its measurable and actionable.
Until the “powers that be” look at the city in a realistic way instead of their idealized view of Sebastopol, it is going to be very difficult to change for the better.
Sorry, that's what I meant by "I doubt it"--that I had never seen that statistic. I'm eager to investigate this. It would make a great story if true. I guess it just seemed unlikely to me. Like have you been to the sketchier parts of Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park? Or Windsor for that matter. I guess I share that idealized view of Sebastopol. When people tell me how dangerous Sebastopol is, I have to say that's not my experience and I'm here all hours of the day and night. But I'm eager to look at that FBI site.
Hmm . Here’s what I’ve learned. The only reports - other than brief mentions verbally during the annual level of service report—are the weekly (?) reports from the homeless outreach coordinator, who I think has “clients” there. Not sure if these are public-though I was sent the most recent one. They’re very brief, about a half page.
Alas, my notes are chaotic. I wish it were not so. It would make my life easier. I'd thought the Park Village Report was a part of the Annual Level of Service Report--I know it's always mentioned verbally in the context of that--but the report is basically just about RHNA numbers at this point. Still digging...
If Substack defaults to pseudonyms then that is your problem. If indeed NYT is Kate Haug then you must know that Kate is one of the few people who provide her full name on written public comments to city council and does not ask for it to be redacted as most do. Your own October 5 post identified that she wrote the opposition argument to Measure U. She was not hiding from anything. As you know how to contact her, why didn't you ask her about the hotel and TOT? If you allow people to use pseudonyms, then you need to respect the anonymity intrinsic to the practice. I suppose you could identify the anonymous commenters that support your views. If you can't figure out how to work with Substack or post a disclaimer, maybe you shouldn't allow for comments at all.
Are you kidding me!!?? You give people the chance to comment using pseudonyms and then you, possibly, out them in the first paragraph of an article that is beyond biased? Are you going to out me next and everyone else on this blog? You are breaking the trust of our community. Do you know the term ethics? Obviously not. The Society of Professional Journalists gives a definition of their Code of Ethics: Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. AN ETHICAL JOURNALIST ACTS WITH INTEGRITY. Let me define integrity for you also:
the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Does someone tell you what to write? Does Sarah Gurney hold the pen? Just when I thought this "paper" was becoming a little more fair to everyone living in Sebastopol, you pull this doozie. I for one have lost all faith in this blog - readers, are you going to trust this person to keep your pseudonym a pseudonym? Gotta go - looking for an attorney for NYT...
Hi Mary - I'm sorry you feel this way. We don't have a choice about letting people use pseudonyms--that's just the Substack default. If we had our druthers, people would have to use their real names. Perhaps you think hiding behind a psuedonym while attacking other people's competence, character, morals and performance is the height of ethical behavior. We disagree.
Don't you think competence, character, morals and performance are all critical aspects of assessment when it comes to people running a City or government? It's clear that nepotism are the playbook in Sebastopol, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that you and Craig Litwin both received funding from the City of Sebastopol for "vitality" work. You know who doesn't want their competence, character, morals and performance criticized? Trump! So I guess we know who you voting for!
Is it though? How different are you actions from doxers that threaten to expose people's identities to silence them? Either you and Dale are using personal information from your subscriber base or you're just slandering people. Either way, it is totally unethical. Subscribers - beware - your personal information might be at stake. If Laura and Dale decide to, can they just publish your personal information? Can they attribute comments to you without any verification? Without a doubt, it displays a very shaky moral compass and zero journalist integrity.
It has been a lot of years since my civics class, but I thought that public opposition and a free press were critical elements of a functioning democracy.
No, I do not think that hiding behind a pseudonym while attacking other people's competence, character, morals and performance is the height of ethical behavior. I do think that in a democracy people should be able to say the truth about what transpired by public elected persons and bring to light truths others may not be aware of.
NYT does herself a disservice by not answering the central allegation that there is a loss of $400,000 per year to the City from the conversion of the Sebastopol Inn to housing. I have heard someone say these same exact things at Council meetings and wondered where this comes from. I hope I understand this person’s posts below in which she seems to add the Sebastopol Inn’s TOT tax loss of $100,000 per year (at best) to the $300,000 in estimated expenditures of those visitors. I am not saying that this is not an economic loss to Sebastopol’s GDP, but visitor expenditures are not City revenue that can be utilized to offset the budget deficit as this person has intimated at many Council meetings. The statement that $1.6M over four years would offset the City budget deficit is false and I thank the Sebastopol Times for helping me understand why with clearly stated facts and figures.
Visitor expenditures are in fact the major source of city revenues in the form of TOT tax and sales taxes. Property tax is significant as well but only grows about 2% per year. To keep up with rising salaries the city needs to realize 5-6% increase in total revenues and the only revenue sources that grow are TOT and sales tax which grow in proportion to how many visitors spend money in Sebastopol.
The issue is whether or not Dale and Laura have the legal right to either "guess" someone's identity or use personal information from their subscription to attribute them to comments without verifying them. This is a huge ethical violation. Do you think Dale and Laura should either be able to "out" people using their data from their subscription base or "guess" about who they attribute quotes to? Doxing is a practice that is used by groups who want to silence criticism. This is what they have attempted to do.
Re "Measure U and a Tale of the TOT" , thank you, thank you, Dale, for setting the record straight. "NYT" sure had me buffaloed; "she" sounded very knowledgeable. Perfect pairing for "buffaloing": misstate the facts and use authoritative language.
Walter, don't feel bad. The Sebastopol Times has had a lot of people buffaloed - I was until I started paying attention to the city council meetings. If you want the real information go back and watch old meetings, go back and read the PD during all of this time. Go back and look at what they did to our firefighters! Smart people listen to smart people. Sometimes someone who sounds very knowledgeable IS very knowledgeable.
I don't feel bad and I wasn't buffaloed by the Sebastopol Times; it was NYT who had me buffaloed. I just appreciate it when the record is set straight. I have found Sebastopol times to be a straight-forward source of news that I wouldn't know otherwise. ¶ What is you straight-forward message in "If you want the real information go back and watch old meetings, go back and read the PD during all of this time. Go back and look at what they did to our firefighters! Smart people listen to smart people"?
I understand... My message is that most people know nothing about what is going on in our city and if you just read the ST you are not getting all the information. If you think the record was set straight then you don't know the real information. If you go back and watch the city council meetings you will see what really happened. We are fortunate to have new council members like Councilmembers McLewis, Zoleman, and Maurer. And hopefully Kee and Phill will win the election and then we can enter a new era of transparency, curiosity, and fiscal responsibility.
Walter, they still have the facts wrong. The Sebastopol Inn TOT numbers were taken from fire and flood years so they are artificially low. The County paid over 40% of appraised value for the hotel. Other people tried to buy it but the County outbid it. Importantly, article leaves out the fact that sales tax and tourist traffic also contributed to the local economy. If a hotel has 20 occupied rooms per day and each room spends $40 per day in the local economy, that is $800 per day or $292,000 pumped into the local economy. That helps Sebastopol businesses survive and creates revenue. In addition, permanent supportive housing is a needs intensive community, which require additional services. Read this article on the SVP Commons. Occupants openly use fentanyl . Residents complain of drug dealers.
If the hotel would have continued as a hotel, it would have continued generating revenue. There is a possibility that rooms would have been upgraded to a higher price point to generate more TOT,. If you watched the presentation by the consultant, the first thing he said was that Sebastopol needs a hotel.
1) To me, "they still have the facts wrong" is not supported by what you then state. 2) I don't understand the relevance of your PD citation to Sebastopol. 3) I am not concerned about being "outed" as I do not, at least knowingly, misstate in my comments.
If you don't understand how closing a hotel in a tourist area reduces revenue, then I can't help you because that is basic economics. Perhaps review the presentation that was presented to the Council regarding revenue generation. The relevance of the PD article is that the people moving into both of Sebastopol's Homekey Projects, one of which is located in the middle of downtown, are occupied by people who are drug addicts and have severe mental illness and are not required to seek treatment. They are active drug users of dangerous drugs like fentanyl. This means that Sebastopol will see an increase of drugs flowing into our community, which creates a burden on our City services. Currently, over 50% of our police calls have to do with homeless people.
Perhaps you'd like to read this analysis of.crime in Sebastopol?
With respect to your 1 and 2, you would understand all of this by watching past council meetings and read the PD articles on Sebastopol. If you are truly concerned about Sebastopol, go back and watch the council meetings - it's illuminating.
Wow. The Sebastopol Times should be embarrassed by their attempt to out a private citizen and silence information. I am shocked at the ethics violations in this article. I guess it is now up to readers to decide if they trust these folks. Pretty disgusting in this election period that is marked by a criminal trying to gain the presidency. I guess these folks are in line with tRump on thinking it is okay to throw rules out the window in favor of political gain.
The Sebastopol Times certainly doesn't point fingers - "they" crush opposition with public humiliation. I had hoped having local news would contribute to more government accountability. Now we see it as a political communication tool for the "powers" that run the city. This should have been a letter to the editor from Sarah Gurney and Diana Rich. I guess in effect that is what it is.
I am sorry you see it that way. You should have seen the emails I got from the powers that be this week after we included Michael Carnacchi's F-U Measure U sign in an article. And now we're getting it from the other side...which to me means we're hitting the sweet spot. I am curious why none of you wrote a letter to the editor when invited. I suppose one advantage of not doing so is that you can later accuse us of bias for not including anything from what I have begun to think of as "the regime in exile."
By the way disagreeing with someone - and naming them - is not humiliating them. Why don't any of you guys use your real names? It would honestly lend more credibility to your arguments.
Concluding the article by calling someone contemptibly lacking in courage; cowardly (Craven) isn't exactly a friendly hug!
You're talking about credibility. Now, that's a laugh!
No one invited me to do a letter to the editor. Didn't even know you had such a thing.
It was in Sunday Roundup in October. Probably should have repeated it.
Now that the Sebastopol Times has tipped their hand as totally biased, more information is necessary. Once again, the information on the hotel is completely incomplete.
The Sebastopol Inn TOT numbers were taken from fire and flood years so they are artificially low. The County paid over 40% of appraised value for the hotel. Other people tried to buy it but the County outbid them, paying much more than the hotel was worth. It was part of a package deal with the Hotel Azure in Santa Rosa.
Importantly, article leaves out the fact that sales tax and tourist traffic also contributed to the local economy. If a hotel has 20 occupied rooms per day and each room spends $40 per day in the local economy, that is $800 per day or $292,000 pumped into the local economy. That helps Sebastopol businesses survive and creates revenue. It creates visitors on the streets. People to buy coffee and eat breakfast, window shop. In addition, permanent supportive housing is a needs intensive community, which require additional services such as calls to the police. Read this article on the SVP Commons. Occupants openly use fentanyl . Residents complain of drug dealers. Does having permanent supportive housing in your downtown area support local business or make it harder for them?
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/st-vincent-de-paul-sonoma-county-homeless-housing
If the hotel would have continued as a hotel, it would have continued generating revenue. There is a possibility that rooms would have been upgraded to a higher price point to generate more TOT,.
If you watched the presentation by the financial consultant, the first thing he said was that Sebastopol needs a hotel. Once again, only people with financial incompetence would say that removing a hotel would have limited fiscal impact. Cities compete for hotels because they are huge economic engines, especially. in a tourist economy with little other revenue generating industry.
Any reasonable Council that wanted to protect their City budget, especially when Sebastopol's budget is so small, would have said, "No" to the conversion as it presented too big of a financial risk, which has played out.
For the ST to say it is all ok because TOT revenues are back to 2015 levels is misleading. Recall high school math and the power of compounding. Inflation of 2-5% over 9 years has increased TOT tax even with no downtown hotel. That doesn't make it ok to lose the hotel. Those lost revenues and the impact on local businesses and restaurants went right to the bottom line and the deficit.
In the past, the city had the same council members for many years. During much of that time there was very little oversight or opposition from either the press or citizens. During that time many issues were manifesting themselves and being neglected. In the past four years public comments have identified important issues and forced the city to act on some of them.
• Past councils for years allowed as much as $700,000 each year to be shifted from water rate payers to fund general expenditures. The result was not enough money to maintain our water infrastructure, which is now considered badly in need of funding to improve it. Diverting this money from its intended purpose is actually against California State Law. Public pressure forced the city to do the first study in 20 years to address the problem.
• Past councils failed to act on the growing deficits in Water and Sewer. Although the growing deficit was called out in public comments it was not addressed until the city had to loan $1MM from the general fund to the Water enterprise. That got attention. Public comments have been calling for proper oversight of our critical water and sewer operation by the City Council. We are not there yet.
• The city paid for a study that shows the streets are in poor condition. No surprise, the public who have to drive and ride bikes on these streets identifies this as a priority. Even after spending money on the study, past councils did not consider street repairs a priority even when they had budget surpluses.
• The issue with the Sebastopol Inn having declining revenue and value was in large part due to the issues with crime and vagrancy in the Gravenstein Station driving away tourists. This problem spilled over from Park Village which we now know was the first permanent supportive housing project paid for by the city of Sebastopol. Purchase of Park Village by the city was presented to the citizens and the bank who loaned the money as an initiative to convert the Village into a park. Even today there are no reports to the city council about the Park Village project. The cost to the city is not fully presented in the budget.
• Past councils approved multi-year double digit increases in salaries and benefits without any plan to increase revenues to pay the bills.
• Past council chronically underfunded the fire and police services. Our fire service now has to be outsourced. Our police force has been underfunded to the point Sebastopol has the highest violent crime rate in the County. The rise in violent crime over the last four years had to be uncovered and presented by public comment. If the city council doesn't know there is a problem, they can't set priorities to fix it. The current initiative to shift police funding to mental health services might not have gotten traction if the city council had known about the increase in violent crime.
• Public comments have called attention to the fact that there are now more homeless people per capita in Sebastopol than any other city in Sonoma County. 50% of police time is dealing with the homeless. Violent crime is increasing. Without public comment and perhaps the news media shining a light on the problem no real effort will be made to solve it.
• Much of the Public comment on homelessness has been critical of local efforts to help the homeless. Horizon Shine was our primary effort, and it seems to have helped a handful of the 25-35 people who may have received services. It appears none of the drug addicted or mentally ill got services. We now know from the PD and the Grand Jury that there may not have been any county services operating at the time.
• Housing was a primary goal of the Horizon Shine project. Only one or two have reportedly qualified for more permanent housing. We have learned that it is difficult to meet the requirements for housing subsidies and if you qualify you live on the streets for two more years hoping for an opening. Lack of housing is an issue and the Sebastopol Inn sits empty for the past year.
We need citizens to pay attention. We need an independent press to hold government accountable. We need elected officials who listen. Sebastopol has lots of smart people who need to be encouraged to contribute insights and ideas.
I appreciate this comment. There are a couple of errors. The council gets a report on Park Village at least annually -- I know, I have to sit through them. I doubt the violent crime figure. But what I appreciate here is the lack of vitriol and name-calling which discourages many smart people from running for council.
People don't run for Council because it only pays $300 per month and it's a full time job. It's not feasible for most working people with families can't afford to participate in Council. Once again you are missing the relevant information. Police records all show an increase in crime where there are homeless encampments such as when Morris Street was an RV encampment enabled by Glass, Gurney and Rich, currently 116 and when Sebastopol Inn was occupied. Once again, actual data is helpful if you want to "report" on local issues.
Is the report to council only? The last Level of Service report on the website is from 2022 and is a draft report. I looked in 2022 draft and 2021 and no mention of Park Village. If you search you can find expenses for park village. PW budgeted 7,800 for repairs. There is a loan payment of around $70,000. We pay WCCS to manage it for $78,000. There appears to be no revenue coming to the city from rents or grants. It looks like we pay $78,000 to West County Community Services and they collect the rents and any grant money they can raise?
You doubt the data? Data is data. It tells a story. If you take action to address problems, you can measure the effectiveness of your efforts with data. Did you look at the data?
Look at the public comment on violent crime. Go to the FBI database and do your own research. It is very user friendly. While it is true we have a small population and a small number of crimes the rate tells you the number of crimes per person compared to other cities with different populations. This doesn't include the number of crimes per square mile which I am sure is equally high or higher than other cities in the county. A citizen in Sebastopol has 2.7x the chance of experiencing violent crime than Sonoma or Windsor, 1.8x compared to Cotati.
The defense was multiple charges for one "event". I'm sure other cities do the same thing. Another defense seemed to be "bad" people come through town on the two major arteries. Many of us use those arteries putting us in close proximity to the people apparently committing violent crimes.
I hoped that they might be concerned about the high proportion of violent crimes that involve youth aged 0-19. No discussion about what is going on with youth but to be fair my guess is the Sergeant didn't see the comment before being asked to defend himself and the department.
It would have been more functional if instead of putting that Sergeant on the hot seat, the mayor had asked the city manager to prepare a report explaining the problems, what is being done and what help the police need from the council to reduce crime rate in Sebastopol to the lowest in the County. Seems like a reasonable goal, its measurable and actionable.
Until the “powers that be” look at the city in a realistic way instead of their idealized view of Sebastopol, it is going to be very difficult to change for the better.
Sorry, that's what I meant by "I doubt it"--that I had never seen that statistic. I'm eager to investigate this. It would make a great story if true. I guess it just seemed unlikely to me. Like have you been to the sketchier parts of Santa Rosa or Rohnert Park? Or Windsor for that matter. I guess I share that idealized view of Sebastopol. When people tell me how dangerous Sebastopol is, I have to say that's not my experience and I'm here all hours of the day and night. But I'm eager to look at that FBI site.
Do you have the date of the last report in your notes?
Here's a link to the last Level of Service report: https://www.cityofsebastopol.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Agenda-Item-Number-9-Level-of-Service-Report.pdf
Oddly, it's url says 2022, but the report is from Dec. 2023.
Hmm . Here’s what I’ve learned. The only reports - other than brief mentions verbally during the annual level of service report—are the weekly (?) reports from the homeless outreach coordinator, who I think has “clients” there. Not sure if these are public-though I was sent the most recent one. They’re very brief, about a half page.
Alas, my notes are chaotic. I wish it were not so. It would make my life easier. I'd thought the Park Village Report was a part of the Annual Level of Service Report--I know it's always mentioned verbally in the context of that--but the report is basically just about RHNA numbers at this point. Still digging...
If Substack defaults to pseudonyms then that is your problem. If indeed NYT is Kate Haug then you must know that Kate is one of the few people who provide her full name on written public comments to city council and does not ask for it to be redacted as most do. Your own October 5 post identified that she wrote the opposition argument to Measure U. She was not hiding from anything. As you know how to contact her, why didn't you ask her about the hotel and TOT? If you allow people to use pseudonyms, then you need to respect the anonymity intrinsic to the practice. I suppose you could identify the anonymous commenters that support your views. If you can't figure out how to work with Substack or post a disclaimer, maybe you shouldn't allow for comments at all.
Are you kidding me!!?? You give people the chance to comment using pseudonyms and then you, possibly, out them in the first paragraph of an article that is beyond biased? Are you going to out me next and everyone else on this blog? You are breaking the trust of our community. Do you know the term ethics? Obviously not. The Society of Professional Journalists gives a definition of their Code of Ethics: Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. AN ETHICAL JOURNALIST ACTS WITH INTEGRITY. Let me define integrity for you also:
the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. Does someone tell you what to write? Does Sarah Gurney hold the pen? Just when I thought this "paper" was becoming a little more fair to everyone living in Sebastopol, you pull this doozie. I for one have lost all faith in this blog - readers, are you going to trust this person to keep your pseudonym a pseudonym? Gotta go - looking for an attorney for NYT...
Hi Mary - I'm sorry you feel this way. We don't have a choice about letting people use pseudonyms--that's just the Substack default. If we had our druthers, people would have to use their real names. Perhaps you think hiding behind a psuedonym while attacking other people's competence, character, morals and performance is the height of ethical behavior. We disagree.
Don't you think competence, character, morals and performance are all critical aspects of assessment when it comes to people running a City or government? It's clear that nepotism are the playbook in Sebastopol, as clearly demonstrated by the fact that you and Craig Litwin both received funding from the City of Sebastopol for "vitality" work. You know who doesn't want their competence, character, morals and performance criticized? Trump! So I guess we know who you voting for!
OK, now that last assumption about my voting choice is actually funny.
Is it though? How different are you actions from doxers that threaten to expose people's identities to silence them? Either you and Dale are using personal information from your subscriber base or you're just slandering people. Either way, it is totally unethical. Subscribers - beware - your personal information might be at stake. If Laura and Dale decide to, can they just publish your personal information? Can they attribute comments to you without any verification? Without a doubt, it displays a very shaky moral compass and zero journalist integrity.
It has been a lot of years since my civics class, but I thought that public opposition and a free press were critical elements of a functioning democracy.
No, I do not think that hiding behind a pseudonym while attacking other people's competence, character, morals and performance is the height of ethical behavior. I do think that in a democracy people should be able to say the truth about what transpired by public elected persons and bring to light truths others may not be aware of.
NYT does herself a disservice by not answering the central allegation that there is a loss of $400,000 per year to the City from the conversion of the Sebastopol Inn to housing. I have heard someone say these same exact things at Council meetings and wondered where this comes from. I hope I understand this person’s posts below in which she seems to add the Sebastopol Inn’s TOT tax loss of $100,000 per year (at best) to the $300,000 in estimated expenditures of those visitors. I am not saying that this is not an economic loss to Sebastopol’s GDP, but visitor expenditures are not City revenue that can be utilized to offset the budget deficit as this person has intimated at many Council meetings. The statement that $1.6M over four years would offset the City budget deficit is false and I thank the Sebastopol Times for helping me understand why with clearly stated facts and figures.
Visitor expenditures are in fact the major source of city revenues in the form of TOT tax and sales taxes. Property tax is significant as well but only grows about 2% per year. To keep up with rising salaries the city needs to realize 5-6% increase in total revenues and the only revenue sources that grow are TOT and sales tax which grow in proportion to how many visitors spend money in Sebastopol.
The issue is whether or not Dale and Laura have the legal right to either "guess" someone's identity or use personal information from their subscription to attribute them to comments without verifying them. This is a huge ethical violation. Do you think Dale and Laura should either be able to "out" people using their data from their subscription base or "guess" about who they attribute quotes to? Doxing is a practice that is used by groups who want to silence criticism. This is what they have attempted to do.
Re "Measure U and a Tale of the TOT" , thank you, thank you, Dale, for setting the record straight. "NYT" sure had me buffaloed; "she" sounded very knowledgeable. Perfect pairing for "buffaloing": misstate the facts and use authoritative language.
Walter, don't feel bad. The Sebastopol Times has had a lot of people buffaloed - I was until I started paying attention to the city council meetings. If you want the real information go back and watch old meetings, go back and read the PD during all of this time. Go back and look at what they did to our firefighters! Smart people listen to smart people. Sometimes someone who sounds very knowledgeable IS very knowledgeable.
I don't feel bad and I wasn't buffaloed by the Sebastopol Times; it was NYT who had me buffaloed. I just appreciate it when the record is set straight. I have found Sebastopol times to be a straight-forward source of news that I wouldn't know otherwise. ¶ What is you straight-forward message in "If you want the real information go back and watch old meetings, go back and read the PD during all of this time. Go back and look at what they did to our firefighters! Smart people listen to smart people"?
I understand... My message is that most people know nothing about what is going on in our city and if you just read the ST you are not getting all the information. If you think the record was set straight then you don't know the real information. If you go back and watch the city council meetings you will see what really happened. We are fortunate to have new council members like Councilmembers McLewis, Zoleman, and Maurer. And hopefully Kee and Phill will win the election and then we can enter a new era of transparency, curiosity, and fiscal responsibility.
Walter, they still have the facts wrong. The Sebastopol Inn TOT numbers were taken from fire and flood years so they are artificially low. The County paid over 40% of appraised value for the hotel. Other people tried to buy it but the County outbid it. Importantly, article leaves out the fact that sales tax and tourist traffic also contributed to the local economy. If a hotel has 20 occupied rooms per day and each room spends $40 per day in the local economy, that is $800 per day or $292,000 pumped into the local economy. That helps Sebastopol businesses survive and creates revenue. In addition, permanent supportive housing is a needs intensive community, which require additional services. Read this article on the SVP Commons. Occupants openly use fentanyl . Residents complain of drug dealers.
If the hotel would have continued as a hotel, it would have continued generating revenue. There is a possibility that rooms would have been upgraded to a higher price point to generate more TOT,. If you watched the presentation by the consultant, the first thing he said was that Sebastopol needs a hotel.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/st-vincent-de-paul-sonoma-county-homeless-housing
You might also want to watch out making comments on this blog or they might try to out you like they did me.
1) To me, "they still have the facts wrong" is not supported by what you then state. 2) I don't understand the relevance of your PD citation to Sebastopol. 3) I am not concerned about being "outed" as I do not, at least knowingly, misstate in my comments.
If you don't understand how closing a hotel in a tourist area reduces revenue, then I can't help you because that is basic economics. Perhaps review the presentation that was presented to the Council regarding revenue generation. The relevance of the PD article is that the people moving into both of Sebastopol's Homekey Projects, one of which is located in the middle of downtown, are occupied by people who are drug addicts and have severe mental illness and are not required to seek treatment. They are active drug users of dangerous drugs like fentanyl. This means that Sebastopol will see an increase of drugs flowing into our community, which creates a burden on our City services. Currently, over 50% of our police calls have to do with homeless people.
Perhaps you'd like to read this analysis of.crime in Sebastopol?
https://www.cityofsebastopol.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/How-safe-it-Sebastopol.pdf
With respect to your 1 and 2, you would understand all of this by watching past council meetings and read the PD articles on Sebastopol. If you are truly concerned about Sebastopol, go back and watch the council meetings - it's illuminating.
Excellent essays and selected letters. I’m proud of your local journalism!
You really this this is journalism? I think local propaganda is more like it.