Recap of the Sept. 16 Sebastopol City Council Meeting
Micah's Hugs, an update of city goals and priorities, plus staff to review (and tighten) the city's formula-business ordinance
Compared to the gigantic agenda of the last meeting, there were relatively few items on this week’s city council agenda. The beginning of the meeting was dominated by two items: the choice of two new planning commissioners and public comments from the residents of Woodmark.
In addition, the council heard presentations from Micah’s Hugs and an update on the city’s progress toward the council’s goals and priorities. That left just a few regular calendar items to consider: some refinements to the Formula Business Ordinance, a proposal to switch the time for closed meetings from 5 pm to 6 pm, and a discussion of the job description for the recruitment of a new planning director. Here are the deets:
Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer were present in chambers for the Sept. 2 Sebastopol City Council meeting. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis attended via Zoom.
Planning Commission interviews
City boards and commissions often struggle to fill all their positions. Not so with the planning commission this time around when there were five candidates for two positions. The council ultimately chose Joan Harper, whose term ends December 2026, and Alex Kanzler, who’s term ends December 2027.
Proclamations
The council proclaimed Sept. 29 – Oct. 5 as “A Week Without Driving” in the city of Sebastopol and encouraged elected officials, community leaders, and residents to participate.
September 15-21 was proclaimed Pollution Prevention Week.
September 22-28 was proclaimed Russian River Creek Week.
September was proclaimed Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
On the consent calendar
The following items on the consent calendar were unanimously approved by the council:
Approval of engineering services by Wood Rodgers for the preparation of the Flood Resiliency Master Plan, not to exceed $152,130.
A modification of the contract with GHD for the Water System Master Plan Update. This modification is for providing missing details in the City’s existing water model, including infrastructure additions since 2005. Amount not to exceed $14,738.
The council received a report on the storm drain repairs at 222 Ragle Road completed in June.
Approval of sponsorship of membership fees for Sebastopol Chamber to join Main Street America. Annual Dues of $1,675 are being split between three entities: Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce; the Sebastopol Business Improvement District; and the City of Sebastopol.
The final consent item, a revised job description for the recruitment of a new Planning Director, was pulled by Neysa Hinton and added to the regular agenda.
Presentations
Micah’s Hugs
Micah’s Hugs is a nonprofit dedicated to preventing substance abuse and fentanyl poisoning through education, awareness, and stigma reduction. The founders of the organization, Micah and Michelle Sawyer, lost their son Micah to fentanyl poisoning six years ago. They started Micah’s Hugs in his honor.
After recounting their son’s tragic fall into addiction, Micah’s dad noted that their organization has distributed 28,000 doses of Naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, since the organization started. They have a new program, working with the Press Democrat, to use old newspaper vending machines to distribute Narcan. They are looking for businesses in Sebastopol that would like to host one of these boxes.
Micah was a graduate of Analy High School, and this year, Analy declared the month of October as Fentanyl Awareness Month and Oct. 16, which was Micah’s birthday, as Fentanyl Awareness Day. On Oct. 16, Micah’s Hugs will hold what they hope will be the largest Narcan distribution and training ever at Analy High School.
An update on council goals and priorities
Interim City Manager Mary Gourley gave a whirlwind update on the progress the city has been making on the list of goals and priorities the city council came up with at their meeting in April.
“The council adopted 49 goals with 59 action plans at their meeting in April,” Gourley said. “I will tell you of those, 49 goals and 59 action plans that of the action plans, two have been completely completed. One will be pending completion this weekend with the labyrinth. We have 44 that have been started and are currently in some stage of the process, whether we’re just started it, in the middle of it, or starting to finish it. There are 12 that have not yet been started but are anticipated to be started later into the year.”
Gourley then went item by item and gave a quick update on the status of each one. It was an impressive performance. The goals and priorities were organized in six overarching areas: community vitality, public safety, infrastructure, high performance organization, fiscal sustainability and economic development. You can see the full rundown in the staff report.
When she finished, Mayor Zollman said, “I just have to say I was blown away by all of the things that we’d ask you to do, everything that you completed, and you always do it with such style and grace. So thank you. And also thank you to everyone, all the other department heads—all amazing.”
Other council members echoed this praise as did several public commenters, one of whom said, “I’ve been coming to the city council meeting for years, and it is obvious to me that Mary is the foundation and the rock of getting things done in this city. So why not make her the city manager instead of the interim city manager? I’m just throwing it out there.”
Regular Agenda
Review of the Formula Business Ordinance
Despite a Press Democrat article suggesting that Sebastopol was about to reconsider its ban on chain stores in its downtown, this agenda item turned out to be a rather confusing nothing-burger. City Attorney Alex Mog was simply requesting permission from the city council to review and tighten up the formula-business ordinance. (See the full ordinance.)
“Over the last few months, reviewing the ordinance, we’ve found some things that maybe need some tweaking or updating,” he said. “So we’re asking direction from the council to move forward with reviewing that…As the staff report says, I want to be clear, this is not a comprehensive update to it or making a move to allow chain stores in downtown. I know there was a newspaper article with a bold headline, but as the staff report says, this is just about making limited and focused updates…Even these minor updates would go through the Planning Commission and then back to the City Council for review.”
“So the goal then is to strengthen the ordinance?” Councilmember Maurer asked.
Mog replied, “Correct.”
There was a second part of this item that was more problematic—or maybe just more mysterious.
In council discussion, Councilmember Hinton noted that the staff report for this item also referred to the creation of a “curated vision for downtown” that she didn’t feel was fully explained.
Councilmember Maurer concurred with this, saying, “This agenda item is pretty ambiguous and kind of vague, and I’m uncomfortable with that.”
Gourley agreed it was weirdly worded and said, “I believe that is what we’ve been talking with our planning director—and our planning consultant coming in—about how we do a vibrancy plan for the downtown in conjunction with the Sustainable Transportation Grant.”
Gourley asked if the council would like to see these items separated into two separate motions, but no one took her up on this.
Instead, this item got translated into a rather garbled motion that proposed “to direct the city attorney to review the formal business ordinance, and after it goes through the planning commission it will return to the city council, and then also directing staff to review the curated plan with the desired vision of the city’s downtown, with, for example, the vibrancy plan as part of the economic development, which was not clearly state in here.”
What?
Surprisingly, the council approved this item anyway, with Councilmember Carter, Vice Mayor McLewis and Mayor Zollman voting in favor, Council Member Maurer in opposition, and Councilmember Hinton abstaining, noting “I don’t have enough information about the second part of the motion.”
Changing the time for closed session hearings
This rather minor item took a long time to discuss, but ultimately the council agreed to change the time for closed session meetings to 5:30 pm, preferably on Mondays, depending on the availability of a quorum.
Community Development Director reverts to Planning Director
Under the previous city manager, the position of planning director was changed to community development director, which combined the roles of planning director and economic development. Emi Theriault, the person who was appointed to this role earlier this year, held the position for just six months before first going on an extended leave and then “separating” from the city. Now the city staff has decided to go back to the title of “planning director,” which comes in at about $27,000 cheaper than a community development director.
The council voted unanimously to re-establish the planning department, to approve the revised job description for planning director, and to authorize the city manager to do the recruitment for this position. As discussed at the previous council meeting, this recruitment is expected to take several months. Until then, the consultants from 4 Leaf will be running the city’s planning department.
Requests for future city council agenda items
Mayor Zollman had three requests to add to a future city council agenda:
“Based upon the abhorrent treatment of the residents at Woodmark, I am requesting to have agendized an item to have our city attorney explore ways that the city can assist.”
“I am adamantly opposed to the city having to lower the flag in honor of Charlie Kirk, but I understand that there were unintentional results from the language that we just passed in the flag policy. So I’m requesting for a future agenda item to modify that flag policy.”
He also asked for an agenda item directing the staff to look into how the city could help Micah’s Hugs place Narcan distribution boxes in front of interested businesses in Sebastopol.
You can watch the Sept. 16 council meeting here and find all the supporting documentation here. The next city council meeting is October 7 at 6 pm at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St. and on Zoom.