Recap of the Sebastopol City Council meeting of March 18
Bureaucratic minutiae dominated this meeting, but there were a few interesting bits
The city council gallery was all but empty this week as the council took on the following topics: an amended electronics policy for council members who use their own computers for city business; a reconfiguration of the Climate Action Committee; agenda setting for the City Council’s Goals Setting Session on April 1st; and a request to use a portion of the city council budget for Mayor Zollman and Vice Mayor McLewis to attend the legislative committee meetings for the California League of Cities. The council also considered a proposal by Mayor Zollman for quarterly joint meetings between the city council and local school boards.
Here’s the recap:
Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer were present for the March 18 Sebastopol City Council meeting. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis was absent.
Public Comment
Craig Litwin spoke about the Equinox Garden Box project, a collaborative effort by Sebastopol Grange and Kiwanis to build garden boxes for those in need. This event will be held on April 13. (The Sebastopol Times will be doing a story on this project this week.) To volunteer or to receive a garden box, sign up here.
Kate Haug suggested, among other things, that every city council meeting begin with “an acknowledgment that the city is in a financial crisis.”
Thomas, a speaker new to the podium, was concerned that he had seen city workers spraying what he thought were pesticides. (Councilmember Maurer said she’d seen the same thing and also had been concerned, but when she inquired what they were spraying, it was a mix of vinegar and soap.)
Kyle Falbo was concerned that “weed abatement was getting promoted way earlier than it needs to be… in a way that is detrimental to our pollinator colonies.” He also recommended that people read the city department head reports, which you can find at the bottom of the list here.
In response to the concern about pollinators, Councilmember Maurer said there was something called No Mow May. “It’s basically self-explanatory,” she said. “Leave the weeds, and don’t mow in May.”
Consent Calendar
In addition to approving the minutes of previous meetings, the council approved the following on a 4 to 1 vote (the one was McLewis’s absence):
The Sebastopol Kiwanis Club’s 2025 Fireworks Show on July 3. Because of construction at the high school, the event will be held on the grounds of the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center and on Morris Street, which will be closed to traffic for the event.
General Plan Annual Progress Report for housing unit projects within the City of Sebastopol.
Amendments to City Council Protocols for the Role of Mayor and Vice Mayor. As directed by the City Council at its March 4 meeting, the following language will be removed: “It is the Mayor’s duty to serve as the City’s primary media spokesperson in coordination with City staff, and Appropriate City staff should always be alerted to media contact.”
The appointment of former Police Chief Ron Nelson as Interim Police Captain, at an amount not to exceed a monthly amount of $12,899.
The change of title from Public Works Superintendent to Public Works Director.
Public Hearing
Remember what I said about bureaucratic minutiae? Hold on to your hat. This public hearing involved an amendment to Section 13.08.110 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code, the Basis of Sewer Charges. The proposed ordinance would remove a portion of text from Section 13.08.110, then similar text would then be added to the City’s Policy #94, Utility Billing Collection Policy/Procedures.
Administrative Services Director Ana Kwong said this change was intended to ensure consistency with current utility billing collection procedures. She characterized it as “admin clean-up.”
Only one person, Kyle Falbo, spoke during this extremely brief public hearing. He had concerns about the effect this change would have on the transparency around sewer charges, but both Kwong and GHD engineering consultant Toni Bertolero, said that the sewage rates were set by the rate study and that there were plenty of opportunities for the public to address these issues. Kwong also invited anyone who was having problems with their water or sewer bills to call the Administrative Services department and “we will go through it detail by detail with the customer.”
The council voted 4 to 1 to accept this introduction of the first reading of the ordinance amending section 13.0810.
Regular Agenda
League of California Cities committees
This item, which the council approved 4 to 1, authorizes the use of City Council funds for Mayor Zollman and Vice Mayor McLewis to attend legislative committee meetings of the League of California Cities.
This is the first time that Sebastopol council members have served on Cal Cities' legislative committees.
Mayor Zollman is on the Community Services Policy Committee, which reviews issues related to childcare, parks and recreation, libraries, natural disaster preparation, cultural arts, and community and human services programs.
Vice Mayor McLewis is the chair of the Governance, Transparency, and Labor Relations Policy Committee, which reviews issues related to transparency, technology (open data), healthcare, elections, and political reform. Additionally, the committee oversees pensions and workers’ compensation reform, as well as other labor-related issues.
Zollman and McLewis were basically requesting to use a portion of the City Council budget to pay for travel and expenses involved in attending these legislative committee meetings and the California League of Cities conference. The estimated cost of each committee meeting trip (two days) was $650.00 x 2 = $1,300, plus the City Summit Meeting (three days): $1,250.
Assistant city manager Mary Gourley confirmed that there was already money budgeted for such events.
Although the council voted 4 to 1 to approve this expenditure, both Councilmembers Hinton and Maurer questioned the fairness of who gets to attend these meetings. “In the future, I’m going to be asking for a step back so that other council members can participate,” Hinton said. “I just want to be really upfront about that…it’s about fairness across the board.”
City Council Electronics Protocol
Last year, city staff tried and failed to get the city council members to give up their personal laptops and use city-provided laptops for city business. This protocol was created in response to that refusal. Assistant City Manager Mary Gourley explained, “We revised the protocols for a bring-your-own-device policy with some security measures and with training in there as well.” More details on those protocols are here.
Climate Action Committee reconfiguration and meeting frequency
The council voted 4 to 1 to approve the reconfiguration of the Climate Action Committee (CAC), reducing the number of committee members to seven and confirming that the committee could have an allotment of 10 hours of staff time per month, much of which would inevitably be spent on overseeing CAC meetings.
There was a long discussion about whether these meetings should be monthly or bi-monthly, what roles on the committee should be filled by what sort of person, and how those 10 hours a month of staff time might be spent.
Community Development Director Emi Theriault revealed she’d spent about 17 hours of staff time on the CAC over the last two months—some of that preparing the staff report for this meeting and some dealing with public comments. Councilmember Phill Carter suggested that answering questions from the public about the Climate Action Committee should not count against the committees’ 10 hours per month of staff time, which everyone agreed with.
After extended discussions, the council approved the reconfiguration of the Climate Action Committee’s composition:
The number of members on the CAC would be reduced to seven.
Members will include one city council member and six other members with experience in the following areas: Zero Waste, Youth Representative, Climate Change/Business Owner, Local Climate Action Group, Environmental Justice and Equity, Rights of Nature/Energy types, and Transportation.
The council also directed staff to set up interviews for open positions on the committee at the next available council meeting.
City Council Goal Setting Agenda
The long-awaited City Council Goal Setting Workshop is set for April 1, from 1 pm to 5 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol. This meeting will be open to the public.
Steve Mermell, the workshop’s facilitator, had developed a workshop agenda for the council to review. It turned out that this agenda was not to the council’s liking because it spent the first two-to-three hours of the five-hour meeting “setting the stage” for goal-setting, while the actual time allowed for goal-setting itself was limited to a 45-minute window.
After an extended critique of this approach, the council tossed it back to the consultant, who explained and defended his approach
“The nitty gritty is the goal setting,” Mermell said. “And I want to clarify: goal setting, strategies, priorities—that’s what we’re going to talk about. A goal is a big thing: financial stability, infrastructure, public safety—those are goals…once you determine what your goals are, you need to identify what are the strategies that further those goals…and then the council needs to prioritize which strategies you want to pursue over whatever term you decide…I assure you that you will come out of the workshop with a set of goals and a set of strategies and the priority amongst the strategies—because that’s why you’re doing this.”
“I would ask you not to spend the time red-lining a draft agenda for a workshop that’s yet to occur,” Mermell continued, somewhat testily. “I would ask you that you trust your professional staff and trust your professional consultant—who has 34 years of local government experience and has done a number of these for multiple cities up and down the state—to trust the process and engage in the workshop.”
They were not convinced. Hinton jumped right in: “Not to take anything away from you as our consultant or micromanage the project, but this is our agenda item. We’re giving feedback. We’d like to see some things retooled, and we are the ones that are doing the goal setting.”
The council then went line by line through the agenda and whittled things down so that the preliminaries (“setting the stage”) would take up no more than one hour.
In addition, the council requested that the consultant share with them the lists of goals and priorities that each council member had come up with during Mermell’s interviews with individual council members. They also requested that much of the material that was originally scheduled for the beginning of the workshop—a discussion of what makes for effective governance, the city’s recent accomplishments and current challenges—be given to them in writing as a part of their packets to help them prepare for the meeting. They asked that these packets also include a copy of goals from the 2019 Goal Setting and the September 2024 interim goals, as well as a list of common goals for other cities.
Mary Gourley fashioned this into a lengthy and detailed motion, and the council voted 4 to 1 to approve it.
Joint meetings with school districts
The council also considered a proposal by Mayor Zollman for quarterly joint meetings between the city council and local school boards.
Councilmember Carter suggested a once-a-year meeting.
Councilmember Hinton pushed back: “They have their own elected boards, and we’re elected to do city business, so I'm not going to be supporting this tonight,” Hinton said.
Councilmember Maurer, noting limited staff time and cuts to city committees, said she felt the council had a pretty full plate as it was. She suggested bringing it back at the goal-setting session so it could be seen “in the context of everything else we have to do…I also don’t want to add more responsibility in terms of what I’m already doing for the city in terms of my role as a council member. I would not want to add another meeting to that role.”
Maurer suggested that perhaps one council member could act as a liaison to the schools, but Councilmember Hinton suggested that even that was too much.
“I just don’t think it’s in our jurisdiction,” Hinton said, though she said she’d be willing to hear it as a part of their goal-setting session. “And then we’re just going to have to make decisions about where our priorities lie as a full five-member council.”
City Manager Don Schwarz said he and his staff are already in contact with the schools around various issues. “We're not foreign countries. We're in the same town and we do talk to each other on particular issues when there's the opportunity to do so.”
Based on the reaction of the council, Mayor Zollman withdrew the proposal and said he would bring it up again during goal setting.
Agenda Requests
Councilmember Maurer took advantage of the new section of the agenda, just added at the last meeting, to make a request to the Agenda Review Committee.
“So what I’d like to have agendized is the merger of the Design Review Board and the Planning Commission as an informational-only opportunity to get information, to have discussion and inquiry, to understand it without the pressure of having a vote. So I’m asking for that to be just informational-only, and it would come back at a later date for a vote.”
Hinton seconded this.
Now, according to the new rule, this item will be placed on the agenda for the next council meeting or as soon as possible.
You can watch a video of the March 18 Sebastopol City Council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is April 1, 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol.