Meet the winners of Sebastopol's city council election
Longtime council member Neysa Hinton wins her third term, and climate activist Phill Carter enters the fray
There have been more exciting elections in Sebastopol’s history. This one wasn’t much of a nail-biter. All three candidates diligently trooped to candidate forums and submitted to interviews with the local press. There were signs in yards—mostly for Hinton and Carter, though the third candidate Key Nethery had a few handmade signs around town.
Perhaps, given the drama on the national front, we should simply be grateful for the sedate and civil campaign that unfolded here this election season. Now that that season is finally over, we can all settle down to figuring out how to solve the town’s budget crisis and keep this tiny ship of state afloat.
The two winners don’t have much daylight between them politically, but their styles couldn’t be more different. Hinton is a practical, down-to-earth politician, a bit world-weary but well-practiced in the art of local Democratic politics. An entrepreneur and environmentalist, Carter is a big ideas guy, a member of Sebastopol’s Climate Action Committee and an avid cyclist. His challenge will be tethering those ideas to practical solutions in the real world. On the other hand, he’s run a tourism bus company and several other businesses, including a biodiesel enterprise, and you have to get your hands dirty (literally) to do either of those.
Neysa Hinton redux
Hinton won this campaign the way she’s won campaigns in the past: with shoe leather.
“I probably knocked on 1,000 doors,” she said. “That’s how many door hangers I had. I also was endorsed by the Democratic Party, so they had a door hanger for the Democratic slate that included my name. I think there were 500 of those out.”
What did she learn going door to door this time around?
“A lot of people, when they learned that I was already on the council, had a lot of questions,” Hinton said. “The number one issue was the budget—why did we have such a horrible budget situation happening? What were we doing to fix it? You know, had we really been, I guess, irresponsible? And then the second thing was the parking ordinance and the homelessness issues with RVs around town. So those were the two hottest things.”
Not surprisingly, the homelessness issue was the most pressing issue for people on the north end of town.
“The people that asked the questions about the RVs and homelessness were generally on the side of town where the RVs are, like the neighborhoods behind Pacific Market. That’s a big concern for them because obviously they’re seeing that, and that’s in their neighborhood.”
“Usually when I would spend time with people—if they gave me the opportunity to respond—I was able to explain things that they didn’t necessarily know, like about the ACLU lawsuit,” she said, referring to the lawsuit against Sebastopol over its overnight parking ordinance, which would have essentially banned homeless RV camping within city limits. Enforcement of the ordinance has been suspended since the lawsuit began.
“I think it’s generally really hard for people—if you’re not doing it like we are all the time or really working to keep up with the issues, because everybody has a life and so I think that explaining in a one-to-one communication that there's more to the story than a sound bite.”
Hinton said her two biggest priorities—aside from solving the budget crisis, which is first in everyone’s mind—were fire consolidation and solving the parking ordinance/homelessness issue embodied by the ever-growing line of RVs on Hwy. 116.
“Finding a long-term solution for fire services definitely motivated me to run for a third term, because I want to wrap that up,” she said. “I’ve worked on that for seven years out of my eight years so far, and I want to make sure we have a sustainable fire department and emergency response moving forward. That’s been a long process, and we’re not over the finish line, but we’re continuing to work on it and make sure that we're making the right decisions for the city and for the fire services moving forward.”
She said council priorities have a way of changing, depending on what happens in the real world. “I’ve never been a one-issue candidate, and I don’t really have an ax to grind on any specific issue. As a council member, you’re just helping do the business of the city. So we don’t know what’s going to be thrown at us…I mean, in my first four years, did I know there was going to be a flood and a city-wide evacuation? In my second four years, did I know that COVID was going to continue? And now, although I know what’s on the docket probably for the next year, I have no idea what Sebastopol will be met with next.”
Phill Carter is eager for this new challenge
Like Hinton, Carter knocked on a lot of doors.
“The most enjoyable part of campaigning was walking around, knocking on doors and listening to people, because I’m not from here, and I’ve met an amazing amount of people that have been here for generations, and I respect everything that they have to say. I’m just a sponge, soaking it all up,” he said. “Walking around and meeting people—making a real connection with people—I think helped my election and will help me be better on the council.”
What did Carter learn in his perambulations?
“As I was talking to people, quite a few people were concerned about the direction of the town,” he said. “I wanted to allay some fears—that things were being put in motion already for a better Sebastopol. I definitely think that the budget was one of the major issues. We all knew that.”
He knows he has a big learning curve ahead of him—as there is for all new council members.
“I’m going to develop my own personal mentor committee that helps me with this process, which includes former council members and leaders and people who understand the town so that I’m not learning in a vacuum,” he said. “And I will lean of course on Mary Gourley for understanding how to interact in council. But through the campaigning process, I’ve done a lot of learning about how council procedure works, and having experience on the Climate Action Committee has certainly helped me understand and has given me a head start on the learning curve.”
“I don’t feel like it’s terribly different than any other organization where you have to work together as a team to get things done,” he said.
Carter said his top priorities—in addition to the budget—will be dealing with the high cost of utility bills (both for the citizens of Sebastopol and the city itself) and working to solve Sebastopol’s traffic and transportation woes, including creating better bike trails around town.
“I want to look really hard at what we’re doing with our water utilities and make sure that our downtown businesses are not forced out because of power bills and water bills,” he said. “And in that way, I want to work with—and I wanted to do this as a part of the Climate Action Committee long before I got on the council—I want to work with Sonoma Clean Power to figure out how we can do better—how we can both clean up our energy, but also work with PG&E to control power bills for the city’s own expenses and for downtown businesses and for everybody else.”
In regard to solving Sebastopol’s traffic and transportation problems, Carter called the issue “massively complicated because of our situation with the two highways.” He said that much of Sebastopol’s traffic issues have to do with population growth elsewhere in west county.
“Sebastopol is really between a rock and a hard place. What’s growing is the people’s need to get through Sebastopol to somewhere else, and is that on Sebastopol to absorb?” he asked.
He said he had some ideas but wanted to save them for a more in-depth discussion.
One thing he’s willing to go on the record about is his enthusiastic support of bike trails that are fully separated from traffic, such as the proposed Apple Blossom Trail and the Gravenstein Trail, a proposed bike and pedestrian trail through the Laguna Uplands. Both are listed as merely “aspirational” in the newest Sebastopol Active Transportation Plan.
“I am interested in building some more off-road trails and having a complete bike system,” he said, noting that in Boulder, Colorado, where he used to live, the city built “bike highways, where people were completely off the road and able to get other places.”
As a final priority, he said he wanted to work to establish a closer relationship with the county. “I think we need to work with the county better, he said.
Carter also wanted to say something to his fellow Sebastopudlians who are mourning the results of the presidential election.
“As I picked up my signs around town, a lot of people that supported me supported Vice President Harris and are sad,” he said. “So I spent a little bit of my time just reminding that local action is a good way to counter anxiety. And then the state has an amazing amount of power to shield itself from a lot of things that the President may do. So local activity is great, and I'm going to be somebody that definitely encourages the local citizens who have amazing talents to get involved to get us to a better place.”