Recap of the Dec. 19 Sebastopol City Council Meeting, Part 2

The council received the Planning Commission Work Plan and annual Level of Service Report and heard comments on whether to return to in-person-only city council meetings

All councilmembers were present for the Dec. 19 council meeting, including Mayor Diana Rich, Vice Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, and Councilmember Jill McLewis.

This is Part 2 of the Dec. 19 city council recap. See Part 1 here.

Regular Agenda (continued from Part 1)

Review of the Planning Commission Work Plan

Several state-grant funded programs top the list of the Planning Commission’s work plan. These include the continuation of the development of objective design standards for SB9 (single family housing), vehicle miles travelled thresholds, the bicycle and pedestrian master plan, Sustainable Transportation Grant (for revisioning downtown), Workforce Housing/Flex Zoning Modifications, and Housing Element Implementation.

These items had top priority on the list because, according to Planning Director Kari Svanstrom, “We’re trying to take advantage of outside funding for these items.”

Other items on the work plan include an update of the Vacation Rental Ordinance, revising local ordinances to comply with state legislation, the Ives Park Master Plan, and the Creek Ordinance update.

The council unanimously approved the work plan, requesting that both the housing element implementation items and the vacation rental ordinance be returned to the council for further discussion.

See the proposed work plan here.

Level of Service Report

As spelled out in the staff report, “The City’s Growth Management Ordinance requires the provision of an Annual Level of Service Report to the City Council.” This report is also used to satisfy The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research’s requirement that jurisdictions submit a General Plan progress report to them annually.

The Level of Service Report includes information on the status of the General Plan, as well as level of service standards for city services. It provides an annual update on city parks, planning, as well as fire and police department information. It also includes status reports on public works, engineering, housing, traffic, environmental issues and more.

In other words, if you want to read one document that gives you an update on the nuts and bolts of city services in town (with recommendations), this is the report for you.

You can learn, for example, how many miles of gravity sewers (29.6) or lower laterals (10.5 miles) the city has, or how many manholes (749). On the other hand, this is an extremely drama-free report. One wouldn’t know from this summary, for example, that the city’s water and wastewater enterprise funds are seriously underfunded and will require significant funding infusions in the near future (either from rate payers or some other as-yet-unidentified source).

Here are of some of the highlights, verbatim, from the staff report:

Public Works:

• Water and sewer are within available capacities with current and proposed projects.

Engineering:

• A new AmeriCorps Trail will be constructed in the Laguna Wetlands Preserve where final contracts were approved in 2021 and Engineering has secured a contractor with construction proposed in spring of 2024.

• In 2022 the City initiated updates to its Pavement Management Program/Budget Operations Report using a grant from Pavement Technical Assistance Program for the 2023 Cycle. The update was certified in 2023 and serves as a guide for implementing pavement improvements to the street network pavement condition index.

Fire:

• The fire department responded to 1,325 calls for service in 2022, 1,269 calls for service in 2021, 1,164 calls for service in 2020 and 1,306 in 2019…Over 60% of the calls continue to be medical related.

• Fire department saw an increase of 56 calls from last year’s report. The Fire department has a fire protection rating from the Insurance Services Office of Class 3. Only 5% of fire departments in the nation have a Class 3 rating or higher.

• Fire department’s average response time for the last four years is 6:06 minutes for 80% of calls, and 7:30 minutes for 100% of calls.

Police:

• Sebastopol Police Department (SPD) handled 12,384 incidents in 2022 where 632 of those were categorized as Priority 1 (emergencies), where the average response time was 3:33 minutes from dispatch to arrival of officers.

• SPD document 885 cases that required either a crime report, arrest report, or informational report. In addition to those reports officers issued 216 traffic citations, 139 criminal citations, and 822 parking citations.

• SPD made 54 felony arrests, 218 misdemeanor arrests, and 25 arrests for people driving under the influence of drugs/alcohol.

Planning:

• The planning department led the effort on the City’s General Plan Housing Element for the sixth cycle where it was adopted on January 3, 2023, and certified by the State prior to its January 31, 2023 deadline.

• The City met its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) with the production of 131 units, where 120 were required. With that, the City will not be subject to an SB35 applications for the first half of the 6th Cycle.

• The planning department issued 98 permits over the year of 2022, 17 of those permits were acted upon by the Design Review Board, 17 of those permits were acted upon by the Planning Commission, and 5 were acted upon by City Council.

Read the full report here.

Consideration of return to in-person meetings only

The hottest topic of the evening was the idea of returning to in-person council meetings. The alternative is livestreaming the meeting so that people can watch but not comment. The council is considering this change due to a recent spate of racist and antisemitic zoom bombing during public comment.

The vast majority of the public commenters on this topic begged the council not to do this, noting that two-way Zoom access allowed seniors, the handicapped, and people with young children (as well as everyone else) to more fully engage with the city council.

The council didn’t have an opportunity to discuss this topic because they had reached their 10:30 cut-off time. This topic will be added to the agenda of the next council meeting on January 2.

Watch the full Dec. 19 meeting here. The next regular city council will be on Tuesday, Jan. 2, at 6 pm at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol. (UPDATE: The Regular City Council Meeting of January 2, 2024, has been cancelled. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be held Tuesday, January 16, 2024 at 6:00 pm.)