Sebastopol City Council Recap

In a close vote, the council endorsed “the right to rescue.” Council also tightened the purse strings on city sponsorships and gave a thumbs down on mobile showers for the homeless in downtown

May 11, 2023

All councilmembers were present for the May 2 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Neysa Hinton, Vice Mayor Diana Rich, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, Councilmember Jill McLewis and Councilmember Stephen Zollman.

Note of Conflict of Interest: In addition to being the co-publisher of the Sebastopol Times, the author of this piece is also a part-time contractor for the city of Sebastopol, coordinating the Relaunch Sebastopol program, which is discussed briefly in this article. The news reported in this article, and any opinions reflected therein, are not dictated by or reflective of the opinions of the city council or staff of the city of Sebastopol.

PROCLAMATIONS: It was proclamation mania this month: May 18, 2023 was proclaimed Bike to Work Day, while the entire month of May was declared Bike to Work Month. May was also declared to be Building Safety Month; Drowning Prevention Month; Lyme Disease Awareness Month; Mental Health Awareness Month; Asian American Pacific Islander Month; and finally, Jewish American Heritage Month. May 14-20, 2023 recognized National Police Week, while the week of May 21-27, 2023 was declared as National Public Works Week

CONSENT CALENDAR

In addition to the approval of meeting minutes, the council unanimously approved a budget amendment to the Relaunch Sebastopol contract, reducing the budget from $146,000 to $118,500 – a savings of $27,500 to the city.

PRESENTATIONS: Ives Pool Yearly Presentation

Ives Pool manager Ricardo Freitas gave a short, number-heavy summary of what’s been going on at Ives Pool in the last year. He noted that 90,000 people used the pool every year before the pandemic. That dropped down to 80,000 last year, but Freitas feels it will hit 85,000 this year. They gave 2,000 swimming lessons last year.

He listed off all its programs: Aqua Aerobics, Gentle Water Class for Seniors, water polo and water hockey teams, as well as the Second Grade Learn to Swim program The pool is also home to the Analy High School swim team and the Sebastopol Sea Serpents, the youth swim team. (Several council members proudly said they were Sea Serpent parents.)

Councilmember Maurer asked if the county provided any financial subsidy to the pool, given that it serves, not just Sebastopol, but the larger West County community. City Manager Larry McLaughlin said the pool received no funding from the county. Councilmember Jill McLewis suggested that kudos were in order because the pool was a self-supporting entity; Councilmember Diana Rich clarified that the city provides the facility and some facility maintenance and that the Western Sonoma County Swimmers, the non-profit which contracts with the city to run the pool, also raises money for the pool’s $400,000 budget.

REGULAR CALENDAR AGENDA

The first items on the regular agenda were two requests for city sponsorship, one from the library and one from the Gravenstein Apple Fair.

Council rejects library’s request for a fee waiver for homeless showers

The Sebastopol Regional Library requested a $5012.50 waiver of City permit fees for mobile showers for the homeless that the library intended to station in the city parking lot on Saturday, from 11 a.m. to noon.

There was near universal revulsion to this plan—mostly along the lines of “wrong place, wrong time.”

Councilmember Jill McLewis asked if any local businesses had been consulted about this plan, while Vice Mayor Diana Rich asked if any of the local homeless organizations had been consulted. The answer was no on both counts. McLewis pointed out that showers for the homeless were already available at two churches in town: Sebastopol Christian Church and Community Church of Sebastopol.

Rich summed up the opposition to the mobile showers this way: “I am not convinced that there is a need for this shower, that it is the right day and time for the shower, or that it's the right location for the shower,” she said. “I don't have a sense that it has been vetted correctly.”

The council voted unanimously to reject the library’s request for a fee waiver for this project.

Budget-minded council reduces city financial support for Gravenstein Apple Fair

The Gravenstein Apple Fair requested $7,500 for traffic mitigation, parking-related expenses and promotional signage from the city. After being assured by Farm Trails Director Carmen Snyder that it wouldn’t break the bank or derail the fair if the city declined to fund these items, the city council agreed only to a $400 permit fee waiver to subsidize the lamp post banners advertising the fair in downtown.

Council votes to support the right to rescue—McLewis and Hinton dissenting

At the last city council meeting on April 18, Councilmember Zollman tried to get a resolution “in support of non-violent activists who attempt to expose the conditions of animals in factory farms” passed on the consent calendar. This resolution stemmed from the arrest of hundreds of protesters and the threatened prosecution of four activists in relation to protests at Petaluma-area poultry and duck farms in 2018 and 2019. The four activists are facing prosecution for felony counts of conspiracy and burglary, plus misdemeanor counts of trespassing, unlawful assembly and theft.

Obviously controversial, this item was removed from the consent calendar and discussed in length on the regular agenda at the last council meeting. That discussion ended with a request by Councilmember Maurer to bring back a re-worded resolution, based on those recently passed in San Francisco and Berkeley.

The discussion at the May 2 council meeting centered on that resolution. Numerous citizens and animal rights advocates (from Sebastopol and elsewhere) spoke in favor of the resolution, with few voices in dissent.

Councilmember McLewis and Mayor Neysa Hinton reiterated their opposition to the resolution, but it carried on a three-to-two vote with Vice Mayor Rich and Councilmembers Maurer and Zollman in support.

Watch the full May 2 council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council Meeting is on May 16, at 6 pm. You can find information on the upcoming meeting, including the agenda and Zoom link, here.