I appreciate your rapid review of the City Council meeting, Laura! The potential newsrack ordinance had my attention, so I submitted my suggestion that, yes, the City establish an ordinance. Too many racks get vandalized or abandoned, so they must be maintained on a regular basis to avoid blight. The spacing of 100 feet apart per rack doesn't make sense since grouping allows people to pick up more than one paper at the same location.
When I owned the Gazette, our distribution team was paid to clean and maintain the racks, but when Sonoma Media purchased the Gazette, they stopped that monthly maintenance, and the new owners even stopped printing the news magazine, but left racks on the streets. I have removed many and donated them for NARCAN distribution sites, but that non-profit has enough now. I volunteered to pick up Gazette racks and donate them to anyone who wants to refurbish them into Little Free Libraries for their neighborhood. I hope to hear back from the Council. Anyone who wants a rack to turn into a library or other imaginative use is welcome to contact me at vesta@sonic.net - the contact information that is STILL on racks even though I sold the Gazette in December of 2019.
It's interesting to watch a public meeting. Who are they for?
First, the stars of the show, the Council and Staff, clearly know more than they say. Council and Staff rarely say anything introductory about an issue. Comments and "discussions" often begin with weedy technical issues. A public council meeting is a terrible place to get an overview of either a problem or an opportunity. If you learn about something for the first time in a public meeting, you can be pretty sure your reaction will be an emotional response to sub-issues.
Second, public comments can come from anybody. It's hard to tell whether comments come from experts, prepared amateurs, local reactionaries, or unidentified identities with built-in conflicts of interest. We saw examples of all of those on display last night.
Third, ironically, clarity can come from the least informed. Perhaps it's the Dunning–Kruger effect. Those with the most at stake, the one's likely to understand a particular issue's place within the larger network of important civic issues, cautiously parse their words. It's so refreshing when a direct question is answered briefly and succinctly.
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Practicing what I just preached...
I am the Senior Center representative on the Building the Commons committee. I believe and have experienced professionally that working side by side will produce more opportunities to work together. I've seen that work lead to better outcomes. It is the underlying premise of the Commons. It is why we are looking to bring as many civic facing entities together as we can.
It is why the Senior Center and the library need to be together on a multigenerational and multipurpose campus. To the Pierce's point, the Community Center is a bit of a wobbler, in that their mission is best served when they have multiple kinds of venues at the ready. In the O'Reilly scenario, there is excellent transportation access and parking. We imagine the Community Center having program and event spaces there IN ADDITION to their existing midtown options.
There are all kinds of practicalities at play with the Commons. We could (and have) imagined that everyone stays where they are, and everyone gets a new right-sized, purpose-built facility. That would cost something like $100,000,000; probably take a decade to realize, and it sets up an immediate problem of where to temporarily house everyone during reconstructions. A past estimate of costs to only build a second floor on the library was over $30,000,000.
There are the hard costs and then there are intuitive hurdles. One of which is that no matter where you are along Sebastopol's North/South, East/West corridors, you'll find a group of students and pedestrians who can easily access it. A move of anything will necessarily change the group of people who can walk a few blocks to it. The practicality here is that the service areas for the library, the Senior Center, and the Community Center go far beyond their current immediate neighborhoods. We need to always balance someone's sense of local loss with someone else's sense of gain, and then put both of those in context of the greater community benefit.
Tibby Elgato has highlighted a Venn Diagram of priorities. Cities have commercial centers and civic centers. Only in the smallest of towns are they thought of as the same place.
In some ways, Sebastopol is an island in the larger county, and in some ways it is the hub of West County. In numbers, Sebastopol has a little over 7,000 residents, while its commerce and services support nearly 50,000 West County residents (that's how we can support 6 grocery stores). Another way to say this is that nearly 50,000 people support the businesses and sales tax income for a city of 7,000.
Living in or outside Sebastopol’s city boundaries makes a big difference in how you pay for things and which political bodies have a say in your situation. For example, inside the city you have to deal with water and sewer rates. Outside the city you are invested in or renting your own well and septic systems.
However, other aspects of West County living transcend city boundaries. The Library is a county wide system that locates its West County operations in Sebastopol. It’s a cooperative arrangement. Sebastopol provides a building and the Library system runs it. Some Sebastopol residents live near enough to walk to the library, while the tens of thousands of residents it is designed to serve need to drive to get there. No matter where in Sebastopol the library is located, some local residents will get to walk there and the vast majority of users will drive.
Same for the Sebastopol Area Senior Center. Their membership pulls from east of 101 to the Pacific, from Petaluma to north of the Russian River. Some Sebastopol residents live near enough to walk to the senior center, while the thousands of seniors it actually serves need to get there by car. No matter where in Sebastopol the senior center is located, some local residents will get to walk there and the vast majority of users will have to drive.
In formal and informal surveys, the number one issue for both the library and senior center is parking. Parking is a telling topic. West County is a magnificent place to walk, to hike, to bike, and to get away from what’s problematic in urban settings. And yet, those recreational ideals shouldn’t be confused with the very real ways we get about in our productive lives here. Yes, there are many who can walk to a local shop, restaurant, or office. It’s a pretty sweet setup. Yet, anytime you move a particular shop, restaurant, or office, someone’s sweet setup will be disrupted and someone else will gain it. And, it is equally true that whatever moves in to replace the previous operation will start the process all over again.
How is moving the Library, City Hall and all that so far out of town consistent with the plan to make Sebastopol a more walkable and attractive downtown?
We have so long thought about this and I am a strong walkable towns advocate. City design is import so here is how 1) It is along the west country trail just up from Analy, beside Sebastopol Charter, and near our Brookhaven area residents. 2) It's along a straight and existing bus route 3) the ample parking removes parking stress from downtown 4) can provide a reimagined area of downtown usable for infill housing or shops where there is lack of evidence that any civic traffic relates to sales in town - is is an opportunity 5) we have a linear city rather than a hub and spoke design or city square design - while the plaza is an attempt at the city square design really we have shops and services along Petaluma Main and Headsburg all the way north - where a bike trail continues to Graton. Seeing that the Graton and Forestville communites are along this road and trail - this livens up our northern area and reduces the traffic right a the junction that we all know has back ups certain parts of the day.
It is 1.4 miles from the current location of city hall and the downtown. This may not be considered walkable by many. How often have you taken the bus? Just curious. Will city employees and officials now commit to taking the bus to town hall every day? This proposed city square is far from town and increases traffic and sprawl because eveyone will drive there.
It will become less walkable for some and more walkable for others. Either of those groups is tiny compared to the population serviced by these institutions.
The city has to take care of all of its residents, not just those located in the adjacent blocks to current services. The overwhelming majority of library, city hall, and senior center users (and employees and officials) drive. A civic center in the north end of town won't increase or decrease drivers, it will just alter destinations. It will likely reduce the non-shopping traffic burden in midtown.
In a recent poll of senior center participants, only 1% said they walked. One percent. That's 99% driving or on public transportation. Confirming this was participants number 1 issue for improvement: Parking.
This infrastructure project makes financial sense for the city and conforms to how we actually participate with social and civic services. It neither enhances nor detracts from our midtown commercial/visitor vitality, and it gives a much needed boost to the north end of our 116 corridor.
As for the council not having reduced the cost allocated to the water/sewer fund to the proper levels, let hope the delay is truly because they want to research the matter more and not want to sweep it under the rug. As Sargent Schultz used to say " i see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing "
Thank you. Somehow, after watching the meeting on Zoom, I can go to bed, and when I start my day, you've already written and published your informative article.
I appreciate your rapid review of the City Council meeting, Laura! The potential newsrack ordinance had my attention, so I submitted my suggestion that, yes, the City establish an ordinance. Too many racks get vandalized or abandoned, so they must be maintained on a regular basis to avoid blight. The spacing of 100 feet apart per rack doesn't make sense since grouping allows people to pick up more than one paper at the same location.
When I owned the Gazette, our distribution team was paid to clean and maintain the racks, but when Sonoma Media purchased the Gazette, they stopped that monthly maintenance, and the new owners even stopped printing the news magazine, but left racks on the streets. I have removed many and donated them for NARCAN distribution sites, but that non-profit has enough now. I volunteered to pick up Gazette racks and donate them to anyone who wants to refurbish them into Little Free Libraries for their neighborhood. I hope to hear back from the Council. Anyone who wants a rack to turn into a library or other imaginative use is welcome to contact me at vesta@sonic.net - the contact information that is STILL on racks even though I sold the Gazette in December of 2019.
It's interesting to watch a public meeting. Who are they for?
First, the stars of the show, the Council and Staff, clearly know more than they say. Council and Staff rarely say anything introductory about an issue. Comments and "discussions" often begin with weedy technical issues. A public council meeting is a terrible place to get an overview of either a problem or an opportunity. If you learn about something for the first time in a public meeting, you can be pretty sure your reaction will be an emotional response to sub-issues.
Second, public comments can come from anybody. It's hard to tell whether comments come from experts, prepared amateurs, local reactionaries, or unidentified identities with built-in conflicts of interest. We saw examples of all of those on display last night.
Third, ironically, clarity can come from the least informed. Perhaps it's the Dunning–Kruger effect. Those with the most at stake, the one's likely to understand a particular issue's place within the larger network of important civic issues, cautiously parse their words. It's so refreshing when a direct question is answered briefly and succinctly.
-----
Practicing what I just preached...
I am the Senior Center representative on the Building the Commons committee. I believe and have experienced professionally that working side by side will produce more opportunities to work together. I've seen that work lead to better outcomes. It is the underlying premise of the Commons. It is why we are looking to bring as many civic facing entities together as we can.
It is why the Senior Center and the library need to be together on a multigenerational and multipurpose campus. To the Pierce's point, the Community Center is a bit of a wobbler, in that their mission is best served when they have multiple kinds of venues at the ready. In the O'Reilly scenario, there is excellent transportation access and parking. We imagine the Community Center having program and event spaces there IN ADDITION to their existing midtown options.
There are all kinds of practicalities at play with the Commons. We could (and have) imagined that everyone stays where they are, and everyone gets a new right-sized, purpose-built facility. That would cost something like $100,000,000; probably take a decade to realize, and it sets up an immediate problem of where to temporarily house everyone during reconstructions. A past estimate of costs to only build a second floor on the library was over $30,000,000.
There are the hard costs and then there are intuitive hurdles. One of which is that no matter where you are along Sebastopol's North/South, East/West corridors, you'll find a group of students and pedestrians who can easily access it. A move of anything will necessarily change the group of people who can walk a few blocks to it. The practicality here is that the service areas for the library, the Senior Center, and the Community Center go far beyond their current immediate neighborhoods. We need to always balance someone's sense of local loss with someone else's sense of gain, and then put both of those in context of the greater community benefit.
Tibby Elgato has highlighted a Venn Diagram of priorities. Cities have commercial centers and civic centers. Only in the smallest of towns are they thought of as the same place.
In some ways, Sebastopol is an island in the larger county, and in some ways it is the hub of West County. In numbers, Sebastopol has a little over 7,000 residents, while its commerce and services support nearly 50,000 West County residents (that's how we can support 6 grocery stores). Another way to say this is that nearly 50,000 people support the businesses and sales tax income for a city of 7,000.
Living in or outside Sebastopol’s city boundaries makes a big difference in how you pay for things and which political bodies have a say in your situation. For example, inside the city you have to deal with water and sewer rates. Outside the city you are invested in or renting your own well and septic systems.
However, other aspects of West County living transcend city boundaries. The Library is a county wide system that locates its West County operations in Sebastopol. It’s a cooperative arrangement. Sebastopol provides a building and the Library system runs it. Some Sebastopol residents live near enough to walk to the library, while the tens of thousands of residents it is designed to serve need to drive to get there. No matter where in Sebastopol the library is located, some local residents will get to walk there and the vast majority of users will drive.
Same for the Sebastopol Area Senior Center. Their membership pulls from east of 101 to the Pacific, from Petaluma to north of the Russian River. Some Sebastopol residents live near enough to walk to the senior center, while the thousands of seniors it actually serves need to get there by car. No matter where in Sebastopol the senior center is located, some local residents will get to walk there and the vast majority of users will have to drive.
In formal and informal surveys, the number one issue for both the library and senior center is parking. Parking is a telling topic. West County is a magnificent place to walk, to hike, to bike, and to get away from what’s problematic in urban settings. And yet, those recreational ideals shouldn’t be confused with the very real ways we get about in our productive lives here. Yes, there are many who can walk to a local shop, restaurant, or office. It’s a pretty sweet setup. Yet, anytime you move a particular shop, restaurant, or office, someone’s sweet setup will be disrupted and someone else will gain it. And, it is equally true that whatever moves in to replace the previous operation will start the process all over again.
How is moving the Library, City Hall and all that so far out of town consistent with the plan to make Sebastopol a more walkable and attractive downtown?
We have so long thought about this and I am a strong walkable towns advocate. City design is import so here is how 1) It is along the west country trail just up from Analy, beside Sebastopol Charter, and near our Brookhaven area residents. 2) It's along a straight and existing bus route 3) the ample parking removes parking stress from downtown 4) can provide a reimagined area of downtown usable for infill housing or shops where there is lack of evidence that any civic traffic relates to sales in town - is is an opportunity 5) we have a linear city rather than a hub and spoke design or city square design - while the plaza is an attempt at the city square design really we have shops and services along Petaluma Main and Headsburg all the way north - where a bike trail continues to Graton. Seeing that the Graton and Forestville communites are along this road and trail - this livens up our northern area and reduces the traffic right a the junction that we all know has back ups certain parts of the day.
It is 1.4 miles from the current location of city hall and the downtown. This may not be considered walkable by many. How often have you taken the bus? Just curious. Will city employees and officials now commit to taking the bus to town hall every day? This proposed city square is far from town and increases traffic and sprawl because eveyone will drive there.
It will become less walkable for some and more walkable for others. Either of those groups is tiny compared to the population serviced by these institutions.
The city has to take care of all of its residents, not just those located in the adjacent blocks to current services. The overwhelming majority of library, city hall, and senior center users (and employees and officials) drive. A civic center in the north end of town won't increase or decrease drivers, it will just alter destinations. It will likely reduce the non-shopping traffic burden in midtown.
In a recent poll of senior center participants, only 1% said they walked. One percent. That's 99% driving or on public transportation. Confirming this was participants number 1 issue for improvement: Parking.
This infrastructure project makes financial sense for the city and conforms to how we actually participate with social and civic services. It neither enhances nor detracts from our midtown commercial/visitor vitality, and it gives a much needed boost to the north end of our 116 corridor.
As for the council not having reduced the cost allocated to the water/sewer fund to the proper levels, let hope the delay is truly because they want to research the matter more and not want to sweep it under the rug. As Sargent Schultz used to say " i see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing "
Thank you. Somehow, after watching the meeting on Zoom, I can go to bed, and when I start my day, you've already written and published your informative article.