One-wayers and two-wayers battled it out in public comment, but the council relied on the expertise of the consultant and the planning commission. Plus, a Q&A with Geoff Rubendall
While I don't know whether two-way or one-way is ultimately a better, safer traffic configuration, I do have to ask WHY we have to reinvent the wheel and have this conversation every few years when other, more pressing (and probably less expensive and less headache-inducing) traffic concerns should be dealt with first (like finish repaving Bodega Hwy out to Watertrough Road!). In fact, I have a lot of "why" questions about this issue:
-WHY not wait until we've lived with the other massive changes approved by the planning commission and city council that are going to affect Sebastopol traffic (the hotel on Depot Street and the condo-ification of the O'Reilly building) and see how they impact the town before deciding to create further chaos redesigning the flow of traffic?
-WHY not take an honest look at prior planning commission and city council approved measures that have made traffic worse and try to remedy those first (2-lane reduction to 1-lane)?
-WHY have a small number of people make decisions about huge issues like traffic flow and congestion when they admit that auto traffic is not their chief concern in redesigning city streets (Rubendall, Fritz)?
-WHY all this talk about making Sebastopol more walkable? This town is eminently walkable with sidewalks and crosswalks everywhere in the roughly 2-mile town radius. All the talk of turning Sebastopol into Amsterdam with bikes everywhere, or Brooklyn with closed-to-traffic streets, completely --and cruelly-- disregards the fact that Sebastopol is a town that serves a huge rural population in a hilly area that requires vehicular access by most of those people living in West County. These people not only outnumber the town residents many times over, they also pay Sebastopol sales tax with every purchase they make in town, yet they get no say in what happens in town. For all you town dwellers who pat yourself on the back for being green and buying local, try thinking about all of us who make and grow the goods you buy at your local stores but who need vehicles to transport them to you.
-WHY are the city planners and city council so unconcerned about traffic, and so blind to the fact that increased traffic is going to make their utopian vision of Sebastopol even more unattainable (walking and biking amidst angry drivers fighting traffic and who can't park their cars is no fun). Sebastopol isn't --and shouldn't be-- a theme park. It's a working town for working people. It’s an economic center covering a vast geographic area that's provides necessary goods and services to a broad area, not just constant entertainment for tourists, pedestrians and bikers. City planners and city council need to stop feeding this insatiable desire to somehow make a perfect Sebastopol. Recognize that it's a nice town with a lot going for it already, and trying to make huge infrastructure changes to it every few years, without the total support of the majority of its consumers and inhabitants (in the widest sense possible) is reckless and, ultimately, futile.
I couldn't agree with you more. It takes me a long time trying to get out into traffic each day.
Please don't include all of us who live in the city - we all don't agree with the planning commission and their pie in the sky view of a re imagined Sebastopol. In fact, most don't. The reality is this won't happen anyway as one of our past city council said it will just end up on a shelf at city hall with all the other studies (that have cost the city) gathering dust.
On a more positive note. - how about I rent a room to you and you can run for city council?
Cheers! And apologies if I sounded like I meant all town dwellers want to ruin things - I definitely didn't mean to imply that. But as far as running for city council goes, I'm afraid I just don't have that burning desire to inflict my own selfish wants on a whole town and pretend it's in the name of public good.
Cheers and no worries! I understand your reasoning completely and it made me think. My musing brought me to wonder what is going on behind the scenes of this "nightmare" (as Susan E. described it). May share later.
Thanks to the Sebastopol Times for ongoing thorough evenhanded reporting of this issue, and many others.
A link to comments on the One Way vs Two Way Street issue is attached. The comments highlight how the public surveys were ignored, Geoff Rubenall from Fehr and Peers was forced into backing away from his company's carefully considered trade study recommendation to back an undefined hybrid plan, the traffic situation was ignored, impacts to surrounding streets were ignored, safety impacts are not substantiated, impacts of removing parking from downtown businesses were ignored and there is no commitment to improve or maintain bicycle infrastructure.
Comments were made by authorities in the Commission Meeting regarding improved access to the Barlow and the hotel (that will never be built without tax abatements), that's may be what this was really about.
Here are detailed comments on the two way traffic plan.
But there is no need to be concerned, the time frame for this is so far out that we will all be in flying cars before it happens.
Lastly, there have been so many private meetings on this issue between City Council members and various interests that the Brown Act may come into play. Feed the following question into your favourite AI and see what you get:
Is the following statement from a City Council member in possible violation of the Brown Act in California? "Even if you attended, you're not privy to all the details, and council members have very limited time to explain their thinking at the mic. That's exactly why the conversation we had beforehand was so valuable — thank you sincerely for all of that input."
Rumor from a well-placed source is Paul Fritz met with all council members before the meeting. The consultant said in the meeting that he met with all the council people individually. Both have the potential to be Brown Act Violations. What could possess four city council members, facing overwhelming opposition from the public, many in attendance to vote in favor of this?
This may be related to why a council members comments can't be found on a google group where this meeting was mentioned.
You may dislike or object to AI, but it's here and making decisions right now and is being used to kill people without human oversight. Here is the unedited Claude discussion about our Sebastopol issue :
Q: More about the Brown Act. It has been learned that prominent individual X met with all council members before the public meeting regarding the two way street decision. The consultant person Y also said in the meeting that he met with all the council people individually. How close is this to a Brown Act violation, please be succinct?
A: This is very close — potentially over the line.
California courts and the AG have recognized that hub-and-spoke serial meetings — where an intermediary meets individually with a majority of members to share information and gauge or shape positions — can violate the Brown Act even without the members ever meeting each other directly.
The key question is whether X or Y were acting as conduits, carrying information and responses between members. If so, that's a textbook serial meeting violation. The fact that Y admitted it publicly on the mic is a remarkable piece of evidence.
A DA or city attorney would have real material to work with here.
These are almost certainly Brown Act violations. Ask Chat GPT. The hotel which will never get built anyway will pull out without a commitment for two way streets. The Barlow owners want two way streets and reduced parking to kill downtown and push customers their way. Nobody on the council wants to be blamed for killing the hotel or the dying Barlow. On the other hand far more decisions are made because of stupidity than conspiracy. The time frame is also so long for the two way streets that there will be flying cars before it's completed. If you think this is a joke, flying cars are available now for $300k, like when the first Tesla came out, adjusted for inflation.
Please understand that the hybrid plan was discussed and voted on in a public planning commission meeting. That means that whatever was shared/shown/discussed in that meeting is now public domain.
It means that information was all fair game for discussion prior to the public council meeting. If all the council members had the same person send each of them the same Wikipedia article, that is not a serial meeting. What's not fair game is the Council members sharing with each other how they intend to vote, or a majority of the Council members getting together privately to review the issue prior to their public discussion. The Brown Act is designed so that the public is privy to their officials' debate and conclusions, not their individual research.
It's also true that a private individual can't discuss individually with all the council members how the others intend to vote. But if one source or one person is a source for a bunch of information necessary to have a productive public debate, then nothing precludes staff and officials from including them in their independent research.
The problem with the comments here are that some of you are insinuating wrongful conduct for what can easily be understood as legitimate activities. There's clearly reasonable debate about what the approved plan should be, but let's keep unsubstantiated claims about professional conduct out of it.
Problem is there was never a full analysis or explanation of the new alternative. Questions to the consultant got the response: "we have not looked at this yet." The reason full two way and walkable 1 way were different is that the number of lanes required to accommodate turns is greater in the two-way version. Presumably, that either means, no parking, no bike lanes, no "walkable" sidewalks or no turn lanes and gridlock. Without understanding he concept there is no way to say better or worse at least as a member of the public not privileged to be invited to the "smoke filled room". The problem is confidence in the decision makers. The full council voted for this in the face of overwhelming public opposition. Are they under a stronger influence? Representatives of the planning commission have been outspoken that they don't care what happens to traffic. Does that mean two lanes of traffic - one each way with no turn lanes? Hopefully we can count on Caltrans to refuse that option. We could end up with two way traffic and the same sidewalks and street parking we have now. The council would not know the difference, we have no idea what they were voting for.
I do. You do understand that the vote was to move forward and develop an implementation plan for two-way streets with some (unspecified) elements from the Walkable 2 way. Council did not delay the vote until the extra $10k analysis was done. The grant deadline is April 29. They have to have an implementation plan complete and submitted to the State in order to avoid the city having to pay the full cost of the project. If this were to come back for reconsideration it would jeopardize the consultant's ability to finish the plan. The extra money was to cover for the extra work created by the planning commission deciding on a different option that had never been considered.
Also, while there is some strong opposition, it is not in any objective sense overwhelming. I do agree it is a lively civic debate. It is in that spirit that I offer my comments here.
According to the survey conducted by Fehr and Peers, about 60% favored one way, 25% two way and the remainder wanted to test the two way with the option of going back. If they had known that option would be called favoring two way would they have voted for it? Any reasonable person will interpret this is pretty overwhelming.
No, sorry, no it was not. The 41% includes people who wanted to try two way then go back to one way if people didn't like it. This caveat was ignored by the Planning Commission and going back to one way is not part of the plan. Surely not all those who wanted to try two way with the possibility of going back would have stuck with two way. Not all of those who wanted a trial period wanted two-way, otherwise, they would have just selected two-way wouldn't they? This is a classic "How to Lie with Statistics" technique. Let's face it, the survey was just ignored by the Planning Commission, the council, and when pressure was put on them, by Fehr and Peers. Council members have said the survey was ignored because the citizens don't have the expertise to make a decision like this. Do you want to see the email? It is very doubtful CalTrans will fund this when they see how this was forced through and they are asked to fund a project to undo the bike lanes they recently funded.
Here is what the Claude AI says about this, cast into Big Endian/Little Endian rather than one-way two-way. As they say, it's not who gets the votes but who counts them that matters.
Q. How about your opinions on this. A survey presents 4 choices:
A/ Keep Big Endian with minor changes
B/ Keep Big Endian with more changes
C/ Go to Little Endian
D/ Temporarily Little Endian, evaluate and maybe return to Big Endian
It was agreed the differences between A and B were slight and applied to pretty much all alternatives. The real difference was Endian.
A majority preferred A or B. About a quarter preferred C. A smaller fraction preferred D. So what happened is the proponents of C claimed those who selected D threw out any temporary aspects of the changes and claimed the "D" folks wanted Little Endian which was still a minority but closer. Obviously Endianess is a placeholder for a binary decision. Does this make sense?
8:49 AM
Claude AI: Yes, this makes complete sense, and it's a classic example of vote splitting / preference manipulation.
The core issue is that D was a hybrid/procedural option — it wasn't really a clean "Little Endian" vote, it was "let's try Little Endian cautiously and reassess." By collapsing D into C, the Little Endian camp is essentially stripping out the conditional, tentative nature of those votes and claiming them as firm Little Endian support.
That's intellectually dishonest for a few reasons:
D voters may have actually preferred Big Endian in the long run — their vote was essentially "I'm open to trying Little Endian, but I'm not committed." Lumping them with C treats a tentative preference as a strong one.
The framing of D was fundamentally different from C. C is a destination; D is a process with an off-ramp. Those are not the same thing, and voters chose them for different reasons.
The majority still preferred Big Endian (A+B), and that signal doesn't disappear just because the other side can construct a creative reading of D.
A more honest interpretation of D might actually be: "these voters weren't ready to commit to Little Endian" — which if anything supports caution and further deliberation, not a mandate for C.
This kind of maneuver — reinterpreting a cautious or conditional vote as a strong endorsement — is unfortunately common in organizational politics.
Tibby, thanks for clarifying the misunderstanding here. One Way/Two Way is a dependent variable depending on our City's vision and the rules of CalTrans we have no control over. Considering this as a votable independent issue makes no sense. It's all a system. Please see my original comment that you engaged with. If you don't agree with my logic there, then our exchanges here will be fruitless.
I've seen the document you are referring to and have first hand knowledge that the conversations were with constituents, not other City Council members.
Public officials consulting private individuals prior to meetings is exactly how the Brown Act is supposed to work. The Act is designed to prevent public officials consulting EACH OTHER before a public meeting. You want individual officials to have sufficient background and understandings, so they can have productive public debates with their fellow decision makers.
If a public official consults a private individual to gauge opinions, and then shares those opinions with other members to build a consensus (acting as a "hub" or intermediary), that is a "serial meeting." Serial meetings are illegal under the Brown Act.
The Brown Act requires that collective decisions, deliberations, and agreements take place in public view. A series of private meetings, calls, or emails that lead to a predetermined outcome violates this principle.
My understanding is that serial meetings are private meetings between public officials. It violates the act when more than a majority of a particular body of officials have participated in serial meetings, thereby potentially having come to a consensus prior to a public meeting. For instance, if there are 5 council members, 2 of those members could meet, discuss, and research a council related topic, but they couldn't PRE-publish their intended vote or discuss the topic with one or more of the other 3 council members prior to the public meeting where the topic is discussed.
The Act in no way precludes officials learning about topics at hand through conversations and meetings with private individuals and research materials.
In this case, I believe the conversations were not between public officials in the same decision making body. They were between a Council member and various constituents. And, in this case, the topic had already been presented in a public meeting prior to publication of the thank you for pre-meeting discussions.
I am not speaking as a lawyer nor am I representing anyone involved in this particular instance. I do serve on a Brown Act covered committee, so I have familiarity with its rules.
There is the part about one person cannot go around to each council member and facilitate the desired decision (serial meetings). We will never know what was said but appearances should matter. In this case the public has not seen the version 5 that they voted on. (No 72 hour notice). Apparently, Council received more information than the public. The "public debate" with colleagues was less than where to put the Narcan box. There is a troubling pattern developing on these big issues. Councilmembers Hinton and Zollman were both either just building or just completed ADUs on their property and were quick to quash any chance that council might specify design criteria for Condo ADUs. Appearances should matter.
This is the first step in returning Sebastopol to a healthier community downtown. Now the job is to raise the money to pay for the change to two way traffic. A big thank you to those who created the plan, and to those who supported it!
In 2023 there was a Sebastopol Times article reporting on a meeting that was billed as “Increasing Vibrancy in Sebastopol”. The article was entitled, “Can new hotels and two-way streets save Sebastopol businesses? At a mixer for local business owners, the Barlow’s Barney Aldridge made his case for another new hotel and two-way streets in downtown.”
The article stated:
“Seemingly rankled at the many hits directed at Sebastopol’s city government, Mayor Neysa Hinton stood up and said that the city had spent $500,000 in the last several years on economic development efforts. She said that city officials were not unaware of the economic challenges facing the town. She also noted that the people had voted to turn Main Street into a one-way street, and that if supporters of two-way streets wanted to change that, they could take it to the voters.”
Neysa had a good point then, why not do that now? Why didn't she suggest that idea?
The ongoing discussion is about whether Sebastopol is a Through Town, or a Destination Town. There are benefits and challenges with each choice. What does the ideal Sebastopol look like? How does it need to operate to have sustainable services and attractive amenities? How do we balance the desires of the 7,500 City residents with the 40-50,000 West County residents who engage with the City's businesses and civic functions?
There is a way that it is now. A way that informs all of our personal experiences. Any change will delight some, piss off others, and confuse the rest. We debate technical issues which are either already codified into laws or amply studied by reputable organizations. We bemoan a 4% parking loss that was going away anyways. We point to a survey, which captures less than 2% of the West County people who will be affected by Sebastopol's choices. We argue about details, which can only truly make sense in the context of the overriding vision: Through or Destination?
The only "truth" in this whole conversation is that change is coming. It can't remain the way it is now. Anyone arguing for sameness isn't seeing the big picture. Caltrans has new laws around safety and travel. The roads will change. The City has plans and opportunities enhance our business districts and create more housing. The traffic patterns will change.
Everyone will have an opinion about this or that. It's our right. It's also useful if any statement about what we are against can be embedded in a vision of what we are for, considering the changes that are already happening around us.
Sebastopol is a City not a Town, meaning we are financially responsible for ourselves even though we only get 20 cents on every dollar collected for property tax! We are still in a fiscal emergency and need to focus on what we can afford and what we can't in everything the council votes on. At this point, it's pretty clear, we can't afford much of anything.
While I don't know whether two-way or one-way is ultimately a better, safer traffic configuration, I do have to ask WHY we have to reinvent the wheel and have this conversation every few years when other, more pressing (and probably less expensive and less headache-inducing) traffic concerns should be dealt with first (like finish repaving Bodega Hwy out to Watertrough Road!). In fact, I have a lot of "why" questions about this issue:
-WHY not wait until we've lived with the other massive changes approved by the planning commission and city council that are going to affect Sebastopol traffic (the hotel on Depot Street and the condo-ification of the O'Reilly building) and see how they impact the town before deciding to create further chaos redesigning the flow of traffic?
-WHY not take an honest look at prior planning commission and city council approved measures that have made traffic worse and try to remedy those first (2-lane reduction to 1-lane)?
-WHY have a small number of people make decisions about huge issues like traffic flow and congestion when they admit that auto traffic is not their chief concern in redesigning city streets (Rubendall, Fritz)?
-WHY all this talk about making Sebastopol more walkable? This town is eminently walkable with sidewalks and crosswalks everywhere in the roughly 2-mile town radius. All the talk of turning Sebastopol into Amsterdam with bikes everywhere, or Brooklyn with closed-to-traffic streets, completely --and cruelly-- disregards the fact that Sebastopol is a town that serves a huge rural population in a hilly area that requires vehicular access by most of those people living in West County. These people not only outnumber the town residents many times over, they also pay Sebastopol sales tax with every purchase they make in town, yet they get no say in what happens in town. For all you town dwellers who pat yourself on the back for being green and buying local, try thinking about all of us who make and grow the goods you buy at your local stores but who need vehicles to transport them to you.
-WHY are the city planners and city council so unconcerned about traffic, and so blind to the fact that increased traffic is going to make their utopian vision of Sebastopol even more unattainable (walking and biking amidst angry drivers fighting traffic and who can't park their cars is no fun). Sebastopol isn't --and shouldn't be-- a theme park. It's a working town for working people. It’s an economic center covering a vast geographic area that's provides necessary goods and services to a broad area, not just constant entertainment for tourists, pedestrians and bikers. City planners and city council need to stop feeding this insatiable desire to somehow make a perfect Sebastopol. Recognize that it's a nice town with a lot going for it already, and trying to make huge infrastructure changes to it every few years, without the total support of the majority of its consumers and inhabitants (in the widest sense possible) is reckless and, ultimately, futile.
I couldn't agree with you more. It takes me a long time trying to get out into traffic each day.
Please don't include all of us who live in the city - we all don't agree with the planning commission and their pie in the sky view of a re imagined Sebastopol. In fact, most don't. The reality is this won't happen anyway as one of our past city council said it will just end up on a shelf at city hall with all the other studies (that have cost the city) gathering dust.
On a more positive note. - how about I rent a room to you and you can run for city council?
Cheers! And apologies if I sounded like I meant all town dwellers want to ruin things - I definitely didn't mean to imply that. But as far as running for city council goes, I'm afraid I just don't have that burning desire to inflict my own selfish wants on a whole town and pretend it's in the name of public good.
Cheers and no worries! I understand your reasoning completely and it made me think. My musing brought me to wonder what is going on behind the scenes of this "nightmare" (as Susan E. described it). May share later.
If it is ever implemented it will be a nightmare. But that is a big IF, as mentioned in the article, of course.
Thanks to the Sebastopol Times for ongoing thorough evenhanded reporting of this issue, and many others.
A link to comments on the One Way vs Two Way Street issue is attached. The comments highlight how the public surveys were ignored, Geoff Rubenall from Fehr and Peers was forced into backing away from his company's carefully considered trade study recommendation to back an undefined hybrid plan, the traffic situation was ignored, impacts to surrounding streets were ignored, safety impacts are not substantiated, impacts of removing parking from downtown businesses were ignored and there is no commitment to improve or maintain bicycle infrastructure.
Comments were made by authorities in the Commission Meeting regarding improved access to the Barlow and the hotel (that will never be built without tax abatements), that's may be what this was really about.
Here are detailed comments on the two way traffic plan.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jxpBcBoRBN3TxMdR9CQ0L-5i467SfXAF/view?usp=sharing
But there is no need to be concerned, the time frame for this is so far out that we will all be in flying cars before it happens.
Lastly, there have been so many private meetings on this issue between City Council members and various interests that the Brown Act may come into play. Feed the following question into your favourite AI and see what you get:
Is the following statement from a City Council member in possible violation of the Brown Act in California? "Even if you attended, you're not privy to all the details, and council members have very limited time to explain their thinking at the mic. That's exactly why the conversation we had beforehand was so valuable — thank you sincerely for all of that input."
Additional details provided upon request.
Rumor from a well-placed source is Paul Fritz met with all council members before the meeting. The consultant said in the meeting that he met with all the council people individually. Both have the potential to be Brown Act Violations. What could possess four city council members, facing overwhelming opposition from the public, many in attendance to vote in favor of this?
This may be related to why a council members comments can't be found on a google group where this meeting was mentioned.
You may dislike or object to AI, but it's here and making decisions right now and is being used to kill people without human oversight. Here is the unedited Claude discussion about our Sebastopol issue :
Q: More about the Brown Act. It has been learned that prominent individual X met with all council members before the public meeting regarding the two way street decision. The consultant person Y also said in the meeting that he met with all the council people individually. How close is this to a Brown Act violation, please be succinct?
A: This is very close — potentially over the line.
California courts and the AG have recognized that hub-and-spoke serial meetings — where an intermediary meets individually with a majority of members to share information and gauge or shape positions — can violate the Brown Act even without the members ever meeting each other directly.
The key question is whether X or Y were acting as conduits, carrying information and responses between members. If so, that's a textbook serial meeting violation. The fact that Y admitted it publicly on the mic is a remarkable piece of evidence.
A DA or city attorney would have real material to work with here.
These are almost certainly Brown Act violations. Ask Chat GPT. The hotel which will never get built anyway will pull out without a commitment for two way streets. The Barlow owners want two way streets and reduced parking to kill downtown and push customers their way. Nobody on the council wants to be blamed for killing the hotel or the dying Barlow. On the other hand far more decisions are made because of stupidity than conspiracy. The time frame is also so long for the two way streets that there will be flying cars before it's completed. If you think this is a joke, flying cars are available now for $300k, like when the first Tesla came out, adjusted for inflation.
Please understand that the hybrid plan was discussed and voted on in a public planning commission meeting. That means that whatever was shared/shown/discussed in that meeting is now public domain.
It means that information was all fair game for discussion prior to the public council meeting. If all the council members had the same person send each of them the same Wikipedia article, that is not a serial meeting. What's not fair game is the Council members sharing with each other how they intend to vote, or a majority of the Council members getting together privately to review the issue prior to their public discussion. The Brown Act is designed so that the public is privy to their officials' debate and conclusions, not their individual research.
It's also true that a private individual can't discuss individually with all the council members how the others intend to vote. But if one source or one person is a source for a bunch of information necessary to have a productive public debate, then nothing precludes staff and officials from including them in their independent research.
The problem with the comments here are that some of you are insinuating wrongful conduct for what can easily be understood as legitimate activities. There's clearly reasonable debate about what the approved plan should be, but let's keep unsubstantiated claims about professional conduct out of it.
Problem is there was never a full analysis or explanation of the new alternative. Questions to the consultant got the response: "we have not looked at this yet." The reason full two way and walkable 1 way were different is that the number of lanes required to accommodate turns is greater in the two-way version. Presumably, that either means, no parking, no bike lanes, no "walkable" sidewalks or no turn lanes and gridlock. Without understanding he concept there is no way to say better or worse at least as a member of the public not privileged to be invited to the "smoke filled room". The problem is confidence in the decision makers. The full council voted for this in the face of overwhelming public opposition. Are they under a stronger influence? Representatives of the planning commission have been outspoken that they don't care what happens to traffic. Does that mean two lanes of traffic - one each way with no turn lanes? Hopefully we can count on Caltrans to refuse that option. We could end up with two way traffic and the same sidewalks and street parking we have now. The council would not know the difference, we have no idea what they were voting for.
You do understand that the Council authorized additional monies for the Consultants to do a thorough analysis of the hybrid option, right?
I do. You do understand that the vote was to move forward and develop an implementation plan for two-way streets with some (unspecified) elements from the Walkable 2 way. Council did not delay the vote until the extra $10k analysis was done. The grant deadline is April 29. They have to have an implementation plan complete and submitted to the State in order to avoid the city having to pay the full cost of the project. If this were to come back for reconsideration it would jeopardize the consultant's ability to finish the plan. The extra money was to cover for the extra work created by the planning commission deciding on a different option that had never been considered.
Also, while there is some strong opposition, it is not in any objective sense overwhelming. I do agree it is a lively civic debate. It is in that spirit that I offer my comments here.
According to the survey conducted by Fehr and Peers, about 60% favored one way, 25% two way and the remainder wanted to test the two way with the option of going back. If they had known that option would be called favoring two way would they have voted for it? Any reasonable person will interpret this is pretty overwhelming.
The ratio was actually 59% to 41%.
No, sorry, no it was not. The 41% includes people who wanted to try two way then go back to one way if people didn't like it. This caveat was ignored by the Planning Commission and going back to one way is not part of the plan. Surely not all those who wanted to try two way with the possibility of going back would have stuck with two way. Not all of those who wanted a trial period wanted two-way, otherwise, they would have just selected two-way wouldn't they? This is a classic "How to Lie with Statistics" technique. Let's face it, the survey was just ignored by the Planning Commission, the council, and when pressure was put on them, by Fehr and Peers. Council members have said the survey was ignored because the citizens don't have the expertise to make a decision like this. Do you want to see the email? It is very doubtful CalTrans will fund this when they see how this was forced through and they are asked to fund a project to undo the bike lanes they recently funded.
Here is what the Claude AI says about this, cast into Big Endian/Little Endian rather than one-way two-way. As they say, it's not who gets the votes but who counts them that matters.
Q. How about your opinions on this. A survey presents 4 choices:
A/ Keep Big Endian with minor changes
B/ Keep Big Endian with more changes
C/ Go to Little Endian
D/ Temporarily Little Endian, evaluate and maybe return to Big Endian
It was agreed the differences between A and B were slight and applied to pretty much all alternatives. The real difference was Endian.
A majority preferred A or B. About a quarter preferred C. A smaller fraction preferred D. So what happened is the proponents of C claimed those who selected D threw out any temporary aspects of the changes and claimed the "D" folks wanted Little Endian which was still a minority but closer. Obviously Endianess is a placeholder for a binary decision. Does this make sense?
8:49 AM
Claude AI: Yes, this makes complete sense, and it's a classic example of vote splitting / preference manipulation.
The core issue is that D was a hybrid/procedural option — it wasn't really a clean "Little Endian" vote, it was "let's try Little Endian cautiously and reassess." By collapsing D into C, the Little Endian camp is essentially stripping out the conditional, tentative nature of those votes and claiming them as firm Little Endian support.
That's intellectually dishonest for a few reasons:
D voters may have actually preferred Big Endian in the long run — their vote was essentially "I'm open to trying Little Endian, but I'm not committed." Lumping them with C treats a tentative preference as a strong one.
The framing of D was fundamentally different from C. C is a destination; D is a process with an off-ramp. Those are not the same thing, and voters chose them for different reasons.
The majority still preferred Big Endian (A+B), and that signal doesn't disappear just because the other side can construct a creative reading of D.
A more honest interpretation of D might actually be: "these voters weren't ready to commit to Little Endian" — which if anything supports caution and further deliberation, not a mandate for C.
This kind of maneuver — reinterpreting a cautious or conditional vote as a strong endorsement — is unfortunately common in organizational politics.
Tibby, thanks for clarifying the misunderstanding here. One Way/Two Way is a dependent variable depending on our City's vision and the rules of CalTrans we have no control over. Considering this as a votable independent issue makes no sense. It's all a system. Please see my original comment that you engaged with. If you don't agree with my logic there, then our exchanges here will be fruitless.
Our city's vision is what the discussion is about. It was stated by everyone that all of the alternatives would be acceptable to Caltrans.
Hi Tibby,
RE: Brown Act.
I've seen the document you are referring to and have first hand knowledge that the conversations were with constituents, not other City Council members.
Public officials consulting private individuals prior to meetings is exactly how the Brown Act is supposed to work. The Act is designed to prevent public officials consulting EACH OTHER before a public meeting. You want individual officials to have sufficient background and understandings, so they can have productive public debates with their fellow decision makers.
If a public official consults a private individual to gauge opinions, and then shares those opinions with other members to build a consensus (acting as a "hub" or intermediary), that is a "serial meeting." Serial meetings are illegal under the Brown Act.
The Brown Act requires that collective decisions, deliberations, and agreements take place in public view. A series of private meetings, calls, or emails that lead to a predetermined outcome violates this principle.
Tibby, additional details?
Mary,
My understanding is that serial meetings are private meetings between public officials. It violates the act when more than a majority of a particular body of officials have participated in serial meetings, thereby potentially having come to a consensus prior to a public meeting. For instance, if there are 5 council members, 2 of those members could meet, discuss, and research a council related topic, but they couldn't PRE-publish their intended vote or discuss the topic with one or more of the other 3 council members prior to the public meeting where the topic is discussed.
The Act in no way precludes officials learning about topics at hand through conversations and meetings with private individuals and research materials.
In this case, I believe the conversations were not between public officials in the same decision making body. They were between a Council member and various constituents. And, in this case, the topic had already been presented in a public meeting prior to publication of the thank you for pre-meeting discussions.
I am not speaking as a lawyer nor am I representing anyone involved in this particular instance. I do serve on a Brown Act covered committee, so I have familiarity with its rules.
There is the part about one person cannot go around to each council member and facilitate the desired decision (serial meetings). We will never know what was said but appearances should matter. In this case the public has not seen the version 5 that they voted on. (No 72 hour notice). Apparently, Council received more information than the public. The "public debate" with colleagues was less than where to put the Narcan box. There is a troubling pattern developing on these big issues. Councilmembers Hinton and Zollman were both either just building or just completed ADUs on their property and were quick to quash any chance that council might specify design criteria for Condo ADUs. Appearances should matter.
Please see my reply to your other comment as they source from the same problem.
This is the first step in returning Sebastopol to a healthier community downtown. Now the job is to raise the money to pay for the change to two way traffic. A big thank you to those who created the plan, and to those who supported it!
In 2023 there was a Sebastopol Times article reporting on a meeting that was billed as “Increasing Vibrancy in Sebastopol”. The article was entitled, “Can new hotels and two-way streets save Sebastopol businesses? At a mixer for local business owners, the Barlow’s Barney Aldridge made his case for another new hotel and two-way streets in downtown.”
The article stated:
“Seemingly rankled at the many hits directed at Sebastopol’s city government, Mayor Neysa Hinton stood up and said that the city had spent $500,000 in the last several years on economic development efforts. She said that city officials were not unaware of the economic challenges facing the town. She also noted that the people had voted to turn Main Street into a one-way street, and that if supporters of two-way streets wanted to change that, they could take it to the voters.”
Neysa had a good point then, why not do that now? Why didn't she suggest that idea?
And, $500,000?
The ongoing discussion is about whether Sebastopol is a Through Town, or a Destination Town. There are benefits and challenges with each choice. What does the ideal Sebastopol look like? How does it need to operate to have sustainable services and attractive amenities? How do we balance the desires of the 7,500 City residents with the 40-50,000 West County residents who engage with the City's businesses and civic functions?
There is a way that it is now. A way that informs all of our personal experiences. Any change will delight some, piss off others, and confuse the rest. We debate technical issues which are either already codified into laws or amply studied by reputable organizations. We bemoan a 4% parking loss that was going away anyways. We point to a survey, which captures less than 2% of the West County people who will be affected by Sebastopol's choices. We argue about details, which can only truly make sense in the context of the overriding vision: Through or Destination?
The only "truth" in this whole conversation is that change is coming. It can't remain the way it is now. Anyone arguing for sameness isn't seeing the big picture. Caltrans has new laws around safety and travel. The roads will change. The City has plans and opportunities enhance our business districts and create more housing. The traffic patterns will change.
Everyone will have an opinion about this or that. It's our right. It's also useful if any statement about what we are against can be embedded in a vision of what we are for, considering the changes that are already happening around us.
Sebastopol is a City not a Town, meaning we are financially responsible for ourselves even though we only get 20 cents on every dollar collected for property tax! We are still in a fiscal emergency and need to focus on what we can afford and what we can't in everything the council votes on. At this point, it's pretty clear, we can't afford much of anything.