Sebastopol City Council Recap

At the Dec. 3 council meeting, the council considered the fate of the Climate Action Committee, a police audit update, and two important staff hires

The Dec. 3 city council meeting started a half-an-hour late due to technical difficulties and ended early due to new Mayor Stephen Zollman’s admirable whip hand with the agenda. The council heard presentations on the Climate Action Committee and an update on the police audit. They also discussed whether to continue using their own personal computers for city business and unanimously approved contracts for a community development director and a public works director.

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All council members were present for the Dec. 3 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Stephen Zollman, Vice Mayor Jill McLewis, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer.

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Proclamations

The council meeting began with a proclamation honoring Dante Del Prete, who retired from his position of director of public works after 28 years of service to the city.

Consent Calendar

During the consent calendar portion of the meeting, outgoing Mayor Diana Rich read the official results of the Nov. 5 election, confirming the election of council members Neysa Hinton and Phill Carter, as well as the passage of Measure U.

After approving the minutes of previous meetings, the council also unanimously approved an ordinance repealing the requirement for candidates to file campaign statements and financial disclosures via the city of Sebastopol’s campaign portal. Starting on Jan. 1, 2025, all candidates will be required to use the State of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission portal.

Ceremony

Outgoing Mayor Diana Rich gave a farewell speech, and City Clerk Mary Gourley swore in returning councilmember Neysa Hinton and new councilmember Phill Carter. Vice Mayor Stephen Zollman was automatically promoted to Mayor, and Councilmember Jill McLewis became Vice Mayor. (See our article on this ceremony.)

Presentations

Reorganization of the Climate Action Committee

Jane Reilly, the city’s interim community development director (a position formerly known as planning director), gave a presentation about the reorganization of the city’s Climate Action Committee.

In an effort to rein in spiraling costs, City Manager Don Schwartz has suggested reducing the amount of staff time spent on various city committees, including the Climate Action Committee (CAC) and the Public Arts Committee. According to Reilly’s report, the city spends an estimated $50,490 in staff time overseeing the Climate Action Committee, which is a standing committee and thus governed by the Brown Act.

Reilly said she’d been in talks with the committee about “how we can continue the Climate Action Committee’s work with less impact on the budget.” They came up with three options:

1. Reorganize the CAC as a non-Brown Act body. “This is the ultimate ‘save money’ option,” Reilly said, “but it’s also like the ultimate ‘throw a bomb into the middle of the CAC’ option.” The city could disband the standing committee, then the director of planning could reform it as an ad-hoc committee of the planning department, which would not be governed by the Brown Act. This would save approximately $40,436 annually.

2. Option two—and the one the CAC prefers—is simply to limit the amount of staff time they’re allowed to use to 10 hours a month. This would save $30,210 annually.

3. Option three is simply to leave things as they are.

Councilmember McLewis pressed Reilly very hard on what difference it would make if the CAC shifted from being a city committee to an independent community organization.

“What would we lose if it actually just became a type of community committee, and we had a council liaison just like we do with many of the organizations in the city?” McLewis asked.

Reilly struggled to answer this, finally coming up with the idea that transparency would suffer if the CAC was no longer covered by the Brown Act. During public comment, Kenna Lee, the chair of the CAC, did a little better, offering a list of things the CAC had done—creating a Climate Framework for the city and compost giveaways. Steve Pierce, who was instrumental in forming the CAC, argued that while the CAC was designed to provide climate expertise to the city, they were very rarely consulted by the city on anything—which he considered a waste of a valuable resource. New councilmember Phill Carter, who is a member of the CAC, reiterated that the CAC was composed of experts that the city could consult with for free.

“We need to get to net zero,” Carter said, referring to a goal of using zero carbon-based energy. “That’s what we decided that we were going to do as a town several years ago. And to get to net zero, you have to have a plan, and how are we going to incorporate that plan into the city’s plan without some advisors?”

There was also some discussion of the difficulty that the Climate Action Committee has had recruiting enough participants to make a quorum. It was originally set up to be a group of 14, with each slot reserved for members with specific backgrounds (youth, business, equity, etc.) Lee said the committee had already voted to reduce the size of the group to seven.

Several council members—Maurer, Hinton and Carter—indicated that they were leaning toward Option 2 (10 hours of staff time a month).

Because this item was on the agenda as a presentation and not an action item, Schwartz suggested that it be brought back for a vote at the Dec. 17 council meeting. For that meeting, the council requested a list of the CAC’s accomplishments, and Councilmember Maurer requested that Lee be given an opportunity to speak on the CAC’s behalf.

Update on the Sebastopol Police Department Audit

Police Chief Ron Nelson, back from retirement while the search for a new chief continues, gave an update on how well the department had done in implementing the recommendations listed in the police audit done by attorney Jerry Threet in June 2021.

“One-hundred-and-thirty-nine of the 146 recommendations have been completed, implemented and are now part of our policy procedure and our culture,” Nelson said. “This equates to a 95% completion rate on those recommendations. Seven of the recommendations, in my opinion, are not prudent either due to significant public safety considerations, and one of those items is, frankly, not feasible due to fiscal concerns.”

The seven uncompleted items are these:

46.19 - The use of force policy should more specifically define what constitutes force, including both a general definition and an “including but not limited to” list of examples of force. Among the examples of force listed in this definition should be any threat of force by an officer against a community member and any officer pointing a weapon at a community member.

47.4 - The Department should consider providing specific examples in its policy where bias in policing may arise, such as decisions to search a person or a vehicle, and explain that such practices are not allowed.

48.5 - A prohibition on the use of kinetic weapon projectiles into a crowd for any purpose.

48.6 - A ban on the use of tear gas to control groups or individuals who do not pose any immediate threat of serious harm to other persons.

48.9 - A prohibition on mass arrests; limiting arrests to individuals for which probable cause exists to justify an arrest.

49.7 - Conduct regular departmental outreach and engagement to immigrant communities whose members may work or reside in or travel through Sebastopol.

58 - City leadership should establish a community process to consider and create a model of independent, effective civilian oversight that is appropriate to Sebastopol’s needs.

There isn’t room in this city council recap to discuss the full reasoning for not completing these. Some seem obvious on their face, for instance the notion in 46.19 that a threat to use force should be considered an actual use of force.

Items 48.5, 48.6 and 48.9 deal with crowd control during mass demonstrations. At the meeting, Chief Nelson argued that these crowd-control methods are sometimes the only way for the police to maintain order, and if they were banned, neighboring departments would not come to the aid of the Sebastopol police in the unlikely event of mass riot on the streets of Sebastopol.

Regarding the creation of the civilian oversight board, Nelson suggested there was no need—in part because of the changes made in response to the audit. He wrote in the report, “SPD is not rife with problems, internal issues, nor are its officers engaging in acts that are cause for concern. We have not been sued in the last four years over the actions of an officer, had no excessive force claims and have not had any citizen complaints in 2024.”

In his presentation, Nelson also focused on the items that had been completed since his last report to the council.

“The last report was presented by me last December. (See our article on this report.) At that time, about 131 of the 146 recommendations in the Threet Report had been completed. Staff committed to reviewing and implementing an additional eight recommendations at that time, and since that time, I’m pleased to say that all eight of those recommendations have been implemented.”

Some of these included the following changes:

• Officers are now required to keep their body-worn cameras on at all times, including during transports to and from the jail.

• Language was added to the police department’s body-worn camera policy that nonactivation would be considered a serious disciplinary matter and be subject to serious discipline.

• Language was added to the police department’s complaint forms indicating that retaliatory acts for lodging a complaint are prohibited and will result in serious discipline.

• A transparency statement was added to the police department’s body-worn camera policy stating that the department is committed to releasing body-worn camera footage at the earliest possible time following a critical incident.

• Complaint/commendation forms were placed on the police department’s website and in the lobby.

Nelson called the journey of implementing suggestions from the audit “a labor of love.”

“The process and results of the audit and report have been successful and have implemented positive change within the police department,” Nelson said. “They modernized it and got the police department, frankly, on track and in a place where it needs to be to be responsive to the community, successful and a modern Police Department operating under best practices.”

He also suggested that the required yearly reports in response to the audit be discontinued.

Read Chief Nelson’s full report.

Regular Agenda Items

After these two long presentations and discussions, the rest of the meeting went quickly.

Council balks at new Electronic Device Policy

A new Electronic Device Policy created by staff for security, legal and insurance reasons would have provided council members with city-owned computers and discouraged them from using their own personal computers for city business. It would also have discontinued a one-time $600 stipend council members get toward the purchase of a personal laptop or tablet that can be used for city business. Staff included a line item for city-owned computers for council members in next year’s budget.

As it turned out, every single council member was happy using their personal laptop and wanted to continue doing so, rather than having a separate laptop just for city business.

Neysa Hinton, who requested that this item be removed from the consent calendar, chastised the staff for putting such a controversial item on the consent calendar to begin with.

In the end, the council instructed staff to bring back a technology policy that included rules for the use of personal computers for city business and reinstated the $600 technology stipend.

Two important hires

• The city council unanimously approved a contract offer to Emi Thériault as Community Development Director (a combo position that includes planning director and economic development director). Thériault will receive a base salary of $181,464 plus benefits. Read more about her experience and compensation in this staff report.

• The city council unanimously approved a contract offer to Mark Rincon-Ibarra as Director of Public Works/City Engineer, another combo position. Rincon-Ibarra will receive a base salary of $202,464 plus benefits. Read more about his experience and compensation in this staff report.

The full video of the December 3 council meeting has not yet been posted by the city. When it is, you can watch it here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is Dec. 17 at 6 pm at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol.