Fiscal sustainability, the end of HorizonShine, and a report on policing the mentally ill
Sebastopol City Council Recap
All councilmembers were present for the May 16 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Neysa Hinton, Vice Mayor Diana Rich, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, Councilmember Jill McLewis and Councilmember Stephen Zollman.
Note of Conflict of Interest: In addition to being the co-publisher of the Sebastopol Times, the author of this piece is also a part-time contractor for the city of Sebastopol. The news reported in this article, and any opinions reflected therein, are not dictated by or reflective of the opinions of the city council or staff of the city of Sebastopol.
PROCLAMATIONS:
A proclamation was read in memory of community volunteer extraordinaire Ellen Stillman.
PUBLIC COMMENT
The most startling public comment came from Ka’Lani Roposa, who worked at SAVs HorizonShine briefly in 2022, and who launched a broad attack against the management of HorizonShine, attacking the character of its new director and saying the site had become a mecca for drug use and stolen goods. He even insinuated that three recent deaths in Sebastopol had something to do with their association with HorizonShine. Police Chief Ron Nelson disputed the latter claim. (See his letter on these deaths here.) Roposa requested that the city council launch an investigation into the management of the site. (Editors note: These claims are unsubstantiated but HorizonShine has been controversial enough that we felt readers had a right to know about Roposa’s accusations. We will be looking into these claims in future articles.)
CONSENT CALENDAR
In addition to the approval of meeting minutes, the council unanimously approved the following:
· Approved the engineer’s report and intention to levy and collect assessments for the annual streetlighting assessment for 2023-24;
· Approved a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant for the renovation of Burbank Experimental Farm’s restrooms;
· Approved a bid award to Argonaut Constructors, Inc. for Bodega Avenue Bike Lanes and Rehabilitation Project, Phase 1;
· Approved an amendment to city personnel rules and regulations;
· Approval for the Sebastopol Regional Library to turn the fountain in front of City Hall/Library into a planter with a Gravenstein Apple tree planted in it;
· Approved a resolution declaring weeds a public nuisance and setting date/time for public hearing.
PRESENTATIONS: Fiscal Sustainability Report
NHA Advisors gave a report on the Fiscal Sustainability Study they did for the city. NHA representatives gave a draft presentation of this report to the budget committee earlier in the year and were chastised by the committee for putting too good a face on things. Well, they fixed that. Here’s a summary of their presentation:
Although the city has maintained a reserve of 15-20% over the last five years, it has done so with the aid of one-time revenue. In fact there's been a structural deficit growing over the last several years which is projected to widen to $2.6 million in 2023-24 and to $3 million by 2028-29. The city’s reserves, which have dropped by 39% over the last three years, will be depleted by 2024-25.
NHA advised that the city should consider revenue enhancement and cost management strategies, including pension cost management, revenue enhancements such as increasing the sales tax, transient occupancy tax (TOT), utility users tax, cannabis tax, parcel tax (a suggested $295 per parcel tax), or voter approved bonds.
To get on top of things, the city must raise $3.1 million over the next few years to maintain a 15% reserve balance.
To reach this goal, the city faces three main challenges: rising pension costs, rising staff costs, the high cost of capital improvements projects (roads, buildings, and other infrastructure). It may face an additional hurdle if an initiative on the November ballot, which limits local government’s ability to raise funds via taxes and fees, passes.
The NHA had four recommendations: economic development, revenue enhancement, pension strategy, and cost containment.
For the last several months, the budget committee of the city council has been doubling down on cost containment. At the end of the NHA presentation, Councilmember Stephen Zollman requested that staff prepare a report on a pension strategy recommended by NHA.
See the full fiscal sustainability report here.
REGULAR CALENDAR AGENDA
City agrees to be a co-applicant on grant to replace HorizonShine with permanent housing
The first item on the regular agenda was a resolution for the city to become a co-applicant with St. Vincent de Paul on a grant application for Project Homekey, a state program to create housing for the homeless. The grant will fund the construction of a 22-unit very-low-income apartment complex on the site in north Sebastopol currently occupied by HorizonShine, the homeless RV Village. Apartments will be limited to those making less than $12,000 a year.
Director of Planning Kari Svanstrom, who introduced the resolution, emphasized that there would be no financial cost to the city for construction or operation of the complex, and that any costs incurred by the city in terms of staff time would be reimbursed by St. Vincent de Paul.
Jack Tibbetts, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Sonoma County, confirmed this. He also said that the apartment complex would have both a resident manager and a fulltime supportive services worker on staff. (He said this is actually required for very-low-income developments.)
Much of the discussion centered around two issues: what will happen to those currently at HorizonShine and does Sebastopol really need more very low-income housing.
Tibbetts said they hope to break ground on the project in March 2024 and that in the meantime St. Vincent de Paul would work to find placements for the current residents of HorizonShine. He suggested that in the meantime HorizonShine not add anymore residents and that it let its numbers drop through attrition as residents are placed in housing elsewhere.
Councilmember Jill McLewis led the charge against the resolution, arguing that Sebastopol already had more than its fair share of very-low-income housing. She questioned Saint Vincent de Paul’s management record, based on an expose in the Press Democrat of one of their other properties, the Gold Coin Motel.
Tibbetts’ defense of St. Vincent de Paul’s record seemed to ameliorate this latter concern, but McLewis was adamant in her opposition.
The other councilmembers—Rich, Zollman and Maurer—spoke to the need for low-low income housing in Sebastopol. Maurer mentioned Burbank Heights and Orchards, which is inundated every time they open for applications.
In the end, it was a 4 to 1 vote in favor of the resolution, with McLewis voting no.
“I think that we need to be providing mixed housing,” she said, explaining her dissent. “I mean, what's considered low-income housing is about $66,550, according to Sonoma County's website. Those are our teachers. Those are people who are working in the community very hard and are just getting by … I could support this if it was more mixed housing and supporting working people who are contributing to the community, but bringing people in from outside the community who are going to require numerous services and also be more of a burden on our fire and safety? I just can't support this kind of housing.”
Discussion/Update of Mental Health Response Program
The previous council requested that the city’s police chief look into Cahoots-style model for dealing with the mentally ill. Under this model, clinicians rather than (or in addition to) police answer calls involving mental illness.
Police Chief Ron Nelson gave a report on how the department currently deals with people with mental illness and looked at the options for a Cahoots-style model in Sebastopol.
He said that all but two of his officers have attended a week-long crisis intervention training, and he thinks the remaining two will do that program by the end of the year. He lauded the work of the city’s Homeless Outreach officer, noting that she and the police department have a close working relationship. He also said that his department has access to the county’s mental health team, called Mobile Support Team (MST), which provides mental health workers to requesting law enforcement officers responding to a behavioral health crisis. (Unfortunately, the MST has limited hours.)
Nelson said that between January 1, 2020 and March 20, 2023, there were just under 27,000 total calls for service to the police department. He said about 10.1% of those were either related to homeless issues or mental health-related issues.
“What percentage of those would be reduced by having this team [i.e. a mental health support team]? It’s hard to say. That said, it’s a great model. It’s wonderful. Trust us, we would rather have people with more expertise than us respond to these situations…but it comes at a very high cost. It is not cheap because you have to have trained clinicians.”
He estimated the cost of a stripped-down program at $225,000 a year, and said he was currently looking into grants to underwrite such a program.
Read the full report here.
City Manager/City Attorney discussion
(Mayor Neysa Hinton recused herself from this discussion because she has a personal interest in the outcome of this employment decision.)
Longtime city manager and city attorney Larry McLaughlin announced earlier this year that he’d like to retire, and his current contract ends in June. The city is currently looking for a new city manager and city attorney to replace him, but in the meantime, he has agreed to stay on until that person is found. He’s agreed to stay on as city manager until Dec. 31, 2023, or until a replacement as found, and he’s agreed to stay on as city attorney (without a cutoff date) until a replacement is found.
The contract for this combined role is $187,042.
According to Deborah Muchmore, the human resources advisor for the city, who is facilitating the search for a new city manager and city attorney, this represents a significant savings for the town.
“I can certify that this salary agreement is half to a quarter of what we would have to pay for a city attorney,” she said. “So it is a value to the city to have this agreement in place, and I appreciate the work that the city and Mr. McLaughlin did in creating it.”
The council voted three to one in favor of this contract, with Mayor Hinton absent and Councilmember Zollman opposed, because he doesn’t think the two jobs should be combined.
Of proclamations and ending times
At the end of the meeting, the council discussed two proposals, one from Jill McLewis to cut down on the time spent on proclamations and one from Mary Gourley to set a hard end time for council meetings at 11:30 pm.
Gourley’s proposal passed unanimously. McLewis’s suggestion met with more controversy.
At the last council meeting, the reading of proclamations at the beginning of the meeting took almost an hour. McLewis suggested that from now out the council read only the title of the proclamation and not the myriad supporting whereases. Mayor Hinton said that reading the entire proclamation was more traditional, while Zollman said the reading of entire proclamations was an important expression of the values of the community. When it was noted that the beneficiaries of proclamations often didn’t show up to receive them, Councilmember Maurer suggested giving people a choice: If they wanted the entire proclamation read, then they had to agree to be there to receive it. In the end Assistant City Manager/City Clerk Mary Gourley picked up on Mayor Hinton’s suggestion of shortening the proclamations. She said if that didn’t solve the problem, McLewis’s proposal could be brought back to a future council meeting for more discussion.
You can watch the full May 16 council meeting here.
The next Sebastopol City Council Meeting is on June 6, at 6 pm. You can find information on the upcoming meeting, including the agenda and Zoom link, here.