Recap of the August 5 Sebastopol City Council Meeting

A Hotel Sebastopol update, info about homeless services, the creation of a water and sewer committee and more

At the August 5th city council meeting, the meeting began with a proclamation proclaiming August 26, 2025, as Women’s Equality Day in the City of Sebastopol. The council then heard the annual update about Hotel Sebastopol (spoiler alert: don’t hold your breath) and got a primer on the county’s Department of Health Services (which handles homelessness). The council also approved the creation of a Water/Sewer Fund Oversight Committee and awarded a $40,000 contract for homeless outreach to West County Community Services. The council turned down the Sebastopol Senior Center’s request for an up-to-$5,000 appraisal of their building, which is owned by the city.

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Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer were present for the August 5, 2025, Sebastopol City Council meeting. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis was absent.

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Consent Calendar

The consent calendar consists of items that are routine in nature or don’t require additional discussion, often because they’ve been discussed extensively at a previous council meeting.

In addition to approving the minutes of previous meetings, the council approved the following items:

• Approval of amendment to City Council Protocols

• Approved an amendment to Sebastopol Municipal Code to designate the Police Chief as the Director of Emergency Services.

• Approved an RFP for the recruitment for the City Manager position.

• Approved a point person for staff coordination with Sebastopol Neighborhood Communications Unit (SNCU) and MYN (Meet Your Neighborhood).

• Approved an amendment to the Administrative Technician job description to include “may be tasked supervisory lead” duties as needed.

• Adopted a resolution authorizing the City Engineer consultant to sign forms and documents pertaining to Caltrans and transportation grants. (This item was required because the newly hired city engineer just announced his retirement effective Aug. 10, 2025.)

• Approved the Annual Peace Wall honorees, including Bob Alpern, Gerry Condon, David Hartsough, Alice Waco.

Public comment for items not on the agenda

• Oliver Dick said he feared the city was in financial danger due to its partnership with St. Vincent de Paul in Gravenstein Commons, a new Project HomeKey permanent supportive housing site.

• Kate Haug argued that the city had been unfairly siphoning money from its enterprise funds. (See her argument here with supporting documents here, listed under Public Comment.)

• Katie Davis, the director of the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, invited everyone to the Senior Center Open House on Wednesday, Aug. 20. from 4 pm to 6 pm, at 167 N. High St., Sebastopol.

• In light of the recent lawsuit against three current and former Sebastopol Police officers and the City of Sebastopol, Kyle Falbo said he hoped the city’s insurance policies were up to date and urged the creation of a civilian oversight board for the Sebastopol Police.

• Myriah Volk, director of the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce, said that nominations were open for their annual Community Awards. Here’s the nomination form. The awards ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 1.

• Kathleen, a nurse who has volunteered with St. Vincent de Paul in Santa Rosa, noted that the Trump Administration has indicated that it might be scrapping the concept of “Housing First” and requiring people to be clean and sober before getting federal housing funds. She also offered to appear at a future council meeting with suggestions from current residents at St. Vincent de Paul’s HomeKey site in Santa Rosa about how to make Gravenstein Commons more successful.

Mayor Stephen Zollman mentioned that St. Vincent de Paul Sonoma County Director Jack Tibbetts will be appearing before the council on Sept. 2 to discuss Gravenstein Commons.

Informational Presentations

Hotel Sebastopol Update

Piazza Hospitality Vice President of Development Daniele Petrone said that while his company was still “very committed and excited” about the Hotel Sebastopol Project, they were “navigating unprecedented curveballs that we’ve been thrown over the past few years,” including COVID, high interest rates, the high cost of construction, and a difficult lending environment. Due to conflicting timelines and demands from the federal and state governments, they’ve had to abandon a federal loan package that they had hope would allow them to jumpstart construction of the project.

“Given all this, we have really started to sharpen our pencils and try and figure out a way to change the project, make it more buildable,” he said. This includes removing the basement level and one of the buildings along Petaluma Avenue that make up the hotel complex.

In the meantime, they are considering how to “activate the site” beyond the current art project that is there. Since development of the hotel might be several years out, Councilmember Carter suggested creating a public park on the site, which Petrone said he would be open to discussing. Zollman asked for more specific details about what is possible.

Petrone said that the Hotel Sebastopol project has been in the works for nine years, about as long as he’s been with the company. Piazza has spent $8 million dollars on the project already.

“We are very motivated to see this through because we’ve spent so much money to date,” he said. “We’ve spent so much time and effort to date.”

“We’re not a multinational hotel, right?” he continued. “We’re not the Hilton. And so for a project like this to fail—and that means either we don’t build it and we eat the $8 million that we’ve already spent on getting the entitlements and the land and all of the holding costs, or if we build it and it fails in business terms—our company’s a mom and pop local company and so we can’t absorb that. And so that’s why we’re being especially conservative and waiting to break ground.”

For the most part, public commenters made suggestions about what they’d like to see in this location in the meantime—more art, a park, an ice rink, a dog park (and no homeless people).

Frequent commenter Kyle Falbo thought it was scandalous that the developer had been able to lock in development fees from 10 years ago. “We’ve allowed a developer to dodge our increase in development fees by just letting the existing development agreement carry on and extend year after year with zero actual progress in the way of developing the property.” He felt this set an unfortunate precedent.

There was no vote on this item. The council merely accepted the update.

Department of Health Services Presentation

Nolan Sullivan, the new director of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services, gave a long presentation on his department and the state of homeless services in the county.

Sullivan started off by emphasizing the multi-jurisdictional nature of the problem: “Homelessness is not the city’s problem. Homelessness is not the county’s problem. Homelessness is also not the state government’s problem. It is not the federal government’s problem. It is all of our problems, and if we don’t work together, we’ll never solve this problem,” he said.

He noted that he had 30 staff members to serve a county homeless population of roughly 2,000. His staff is divided into three teams: the Heart Team (who reach out to find homeless people and try to get them into housing and programs); the Soul Team (which provides care and case management to specific clients at County-run sites) and the Funding Team, which helps the county patch together the funding from federal, state and local government sources, as well as philanthropic sources.

His presentation, which ran about an hour, is too complex to explain in a city council recap. We will dedicate a full article to this next week. If you can’t wait, you can see the staff report and Sullivan’s PowerPoint Presentation here or watch his presentation on video, starting at the 1:32:42 mark.

Regular Agenda Items

Council OKs the creation of a standing oversight committee for water and sewer funds

In introducing this item, Councilmember Carter said, “We need more transparency, and we need to get better budgetary control over our enterprise funds. I think it’s important that we add a little bit of citizen oversight to our process before we get into the budgeting process, which the enterprise funds are a part of.”

Acting city manager Mary Gourley added that the committee would meet one or two times a year. Carter suggested quarterly.

Gourley said the proposal was for a five-member committee with one city council member; one businessperson with a business in the city; at least two residents who are actively engaged in city government (i.e., attending council meetings or emailing the city); and one member with experience in accounting, auditing or another financial field. They would have a two-year term. As a standing committee, its meetings would be agendized, open to the public and governed by the Brown Act.

In public comment, Kate Haug opposed the idea of a standing committee of the council, arguing that “We need a completely separate district that has total control over revenue, expenses, employees, priorities, transparency and capital improvements. Council and city staff simply do not have the time nor the bandwidth to effectively manage the enterprise funds and the necessary capital improvements.”

Gregory Fearon, who is on the County’s Measure O Oversight Committee, said he supported the creation of a standing committee of the council. “I think it’s consistent with your perception that the community needs to have someone they can trust looking over the finances and projects.”

Kyle Falbo, echoing Haug’s previous arguments and his own, said “Go back and look at our budgets, and specifically look at the amount of allocation of our enterprise funds to various departments…you will find some very, very interesting accounting…that turned out to not be legit.”

Robert supported the proposed standing committee, saying, “This is probably as good a first step as anything.”

Mayor Zollman said the staff is preparing a report on the cost allocations that will be presented at the Midyear Review.

Councilmember Hinton asked what exactly this committee would do and the answer seemed to be that they would submit an annual report to the council.

Hinton also defended the city’s handling of its enterprise funds, “Tonight we’ve heard from the public things that I don’t necessarily agree with. I feel like we’ve done our due diligence, and we’ve also been advised—we hire consultants to give us the amounts that should be the correct allocations, and we have followed those. Now we’re going to revisit that at midyear. And so for me, this is a little premature to create another subcommittee, when, in our history, we have reduced our commissions because we have not been able to fill them.”

The council voted 3 to 1, Hinton dissenting, to approve the creation of an Enterprise Fund Oversight Committee.

Cultural District Designation Grant

The council voted to authorize the Interim City Manager to sign forms and documents required for submittal of a California Cultural District Grant Application to the California Arts Council.

According to the staff report, “The Cultural Districts program helps communities harness their unique cultural assets to stimulate local economies, attract tourism, preserve historic sites, and support vibrant, inclusive creative economies.”

The grant process was introduced by Luke Lindenbusch from Four Leaf Consulting, which is acting as the city planning department, while Emi Theriault, the city’s newly hired planning and development director, is on leave.

“The application for the grant opened up in May 2025 at which time the grant was brought forward to the Public Arts Committee for an initial meeting on June 10, and then returned to the Public Arts Committee for two additional sessions on July 8 and 22 to really go more in depth on the branding for the proposed cultural district and to define the district geography, which the Public Arts Committee narrowed down to a 3,000 square foot radius around the Sebastopol Town Square and then provides a cultural asset inventory of existing arts and cultural resources, speaking to both cultural heritage and cultural production within that radius.”

The grant is for $10,000 and requires a matching grant from the city in that same amount.

There was a discussion about what to call the new arts district. The Public Arts Committee had suggested something involving the word “Sebtown,” which most councilmembers (and public commenters) didn’t like. Councilmember Maurer suggested the “Sebastopol Cultural Arts District: A walkable, vibrant, arts, culture and food haven at the gateway to the Sonoma Coast,” and that won the day with a 4 to 1 approval vote—4 yeas and 1 absence.

Council awards $40,000 to West County Community Services for homeless outreach

Last month, because of county budget cuts, West County Community Services (WCCS) Director Christy Davila suggested giving this funding to the Sebastopol Police Department. At the August 5 meeting, Police Chief Sean McDonagh gave a pitch for this idea, but it fell on deaf ears, and the council awarded the money to WCCS for a half-time person, who (in 18 hours a week) will do homeless outreach in Sebastopol. This includes the following:

• Refer people without homes to Coordinated Entry as appropriate.

• Represent WCCS at relevant meetings.

• Develop relationships with clients and connect them to services.

• Stay current about the homeless service system in Sonoma County.

• Connect people without homes to housing options.

• Develop volunteer/civic engagement opportunities around homelessness.

• Support Safe Parking efforts.

In actuality, at 18 hours a week, the job of the Sebastopol Homeless Outreach worker will be primarily to keep the HMIS (Homeless Management Information System) system updated with information about Sebastopol’s homeless people, thereby keeping Sebastopol’s homeless on the list to receive housing should housing become available.

Trying to set expectations, Davila said, “I just want to be really clear, because even if we had 40 hours a week or 80 hours a week, outreach is not going to solve the homeless problem in the city. It’s a piece of the solution.”

The $40,000 contract is already accounted for in the current year’s budget so there is no fiscal impact of this decision.

Council turns down a $5,000 request from the Sebastopol Area Senior Center to appraise the building it rents from the city

The Sebastopol Area Senior Center is bursting at the seams, and Senior Center Director Katie Davis has come to the last few city council meetings, mostly during public comment, asking for help from the city to solve this problem. This time, they were on the agenda with a specific request for up-to-$5,000 to get an appraisal of the building they rent from the city, with the hope of leveraging that value to move to bigger digs.

“Last fiscal year, ending June 30, we logged 36,000 units of service,” Davis said. “We’ve grown by 12%. We’ve heard a lot of discussion tonight about some really, really serious topics, and another serious topic is the exploding senior population. If our town is not ready to handle the increased need for senior services, we’re going to be in a tough spot.”

Davis said that the center serves over 2,000 seniors each year—roughly 100 people per day come to the center for a meal, a class or a support group. In public comment, Senior Center Board Member Gary Bachelor said they are currently so crowded that they turn away 30 to 40 people per day.

Davis said that while they’re enthusiastic about the Sebastopol Commons community hub idea, she sees that as a long-term solution that’s 15 to 20 years in the future.

“We have a dedicated expansion committee and very eager donor base to support a potential capital campaign, and we’re actively working with the county and other nonprofit partners. What we don’t have is time to wait,” she said. “So I’m going to be a squeaky wheel in the fact that we really need to have some conversations, not about a 20-year project, but a project within the next two to five years.”

For Mayor Zollman, this statement was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

“I think I have an idea of where this 15- to 20-year, grandiose, 5,000 miles down the future came from, and I gotta say, it’s pretty disrespectful. I’m just gonna put that out there, just gonna nip that in the bud. This is not a grandiose thing. It is insulting for some of us who have spent not one but two years coming into three years to research, not just for the library, but for our whole Commons to benefit everyone in the city, including the nonprofits,” he said, mentioning other organizations around town that also needed more space.

“I feel for you, and I do value the services you provide,” he continued, “but I would like a little bit more cooperation and a little bit more understanding of how everyone is also experiencing pressures too as far as space. So I am definitely not supporting this, but I am willing to continue to work with everyone and the board. But again, have a more realistic and a little bit more respect for the time and effort, as far as what we have been trying to do for space for everyone.”

The Senior Center is a popular institution in town, and the reaction to this request was surprisingly negative both in public comment and on the council.

In public comment, Oliver Dick said, “We’ve got to find a solution to help the senior center leverage their bank account to expand in the city by putting a lot of pressure on the county to actually step up and put some funding in for this,” because many of the senior center’s clients come from out of town. Kate Haug echoed that sentiment, asking, “How many people who use the Senior Center are residents of Sebastopol?” She also noted, “When I rented apartments, I never thought I could sell the building that I rented in and then take the money.”

On the council, every member had their own reason for rejecting the senior center’s request: Maurer because it would push the budget into deficit and an appraisal is only good for a few months because of shifts in the real estate market; Hinton because she felt it was premature and that a couple of good realtors could provide a cheaper answer to the question of how much the building was worth. Carter said the city would be happy to work with the senior center to find a solution, but he didn’t support spending money on an appraisal. Like Zollman, he also felt the Sebastopol Commons wasn’t 20 years away.

In the end, the council not to vote on this request and merely let it die.

You can watch a video of the Aug. 5 Sebastopol City Council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is Sept. 2, 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol, and on Zoom. (The August 19 meeting has been cancelled as part of the council’s summer break.)

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