Sebastopol passes its first balanced budget since 2018
PART 2: Last minute additions to the budget, a welcome windfall, and a quick look at the budget department by department
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on the 2025-26 budget. (See Part 1, which was written before the final July 1 vote).
The City of Sebastopol’s 2025-26 Budget came back before the city council for the third time on Tuesday night, and three times proved the charm. The council passed a balanced budget with a wafer-thin margin of just $3,945 but maintained a healthy reserve of 25.8%.
Mayor Stephen Zollman, Vice Mayor Jill McLewis, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer were present for the July 1 Sebastopol City Council meeting. Councilmember Phill Carter, who is on vacation, called in for the first portion of the meeting.
The city is estimating next year’s General Fund revenues at $15,689,718. The city’s estimated expenditures for the 2025-26 fiscal year are $15,685,773.
This is a little different from the budget figures we saw at the June 3 and June 17 meetings. Here’s why:
The General Fund revenues are higher than expected thanks to a last-minute windfall of $375,000 in Measure U funds, based on the state’s decision to allow Sebastopol to receive Measure U’s full half-cent sales tax (as opposed to just a quarter-cent, which was what the initial numbers were based on).
There were also some additional expenditures that the council approved at the July 1 council meeting. These include the following:
$75K landscaping contract
$20K new trash cans for downtown. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis took photos of decrepit trash cans around town and gave a slideshow on them to bolster her case that they needed to be replaced.
$44K new fencing around the creek on the west side of Ives Park. There was some discussion of whether a new fence would need to be dismantled if the plan to daylight the creek through Ives ever came to fruition. The answer was yes, it would need to be dismantled when and if that ever happens, but there was a suggestion that it could be reused elsewhere.
$15K for beautifying downtown, including holiday decorations
$10K picnic tables for Sebastopol Fire Station to thank the volunteers for all their hard work over the years.
$5K additional for animal control services. Mayor Zollman noted that he’d read about the grand jury report on animal services in the Sebastopol Times and wanted to investigate changing providers.
$700 for public art signage
The council also had the opportunity to “unfreeze” a police position but declined to do so. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis and Councilmember Sandra Maurer voted to unfreeze that position but were opposed by Mayor Zollman and Councilmember Neysa Hinton, so the proposal went nowhere. Maurer and McLewis mentioned the increasing amount of time that police were spending at the city’s new homeless housing and the likelihood that that would increase with the construction of Gravenstein Commons, another Project Homekey development. Zollman and Hinton said that there were other ways to increase public safety other than by hiring police.
Looking at the budget department by department
At the June 17 meeting, the city council reviewed the budget for each city department. The department-by-department budgets remained substantially the same, even after the July 1 additions, except for the Public Works budget, which is explained below.
City Council Budget. City Council expenses are estimated to go down by 8.3% year in 2025-26 down from $200,125 to $183,214. The largest increases involved contracted video services (to decrease Zoombombing), allocated insurance costs (General Liability went up 37%), and shuttle fare subsidies.
City Manager. The City Manager Budget has seen a reduction of $193,000, or 24.9%. This decrease is due to several factors, including adjustments in health benefits costs and an increase in recruitment services. This position is temporarily being filled by Mary Gourley, who is also the city clerk/assistant city manager.
Legal. Vice Mayor McLewis questioned why legal expenses were still so high despite the fact that the ACLU case seemed to be winding down. Legal expenses were $647,900 for 2024-25 and are estimated to be $643,750 in 2025-26, a decrease of 0.6%. City Attorney Alex Mog said it was a conservative estimate, and that legal expenses for the ACLU case are expected to go down. Interim City Manager Mary Gourley noted that the city was also dealing with some personnel-related legal issues.
City Clerk/Assistant City Manager Budget. This budget is estimated to decrease by 1.4%. The biggest decrease came in election costs, because there are no election costs projected for the coming year. Total expenses went from $477,471 to $470,819.
Administrative Services Department. Although there was a $51,000 decrease in consultant services, a rise in insurance costs wiped that out and led to a 1.3 % increase ($19,000), going from $1,447,765 in 2024-25 to $1,466,539 in 2025-26.
Community Development and Planning. The budget reflects an increase of $61,000, or 9.6%, primarily due to staffing changes. Administrative Services Director Ana Kwong said this had to do with the reclassification of the job from planning director to community development director, which is paid more. Estimated benefits for the department also went up. The budget for this department went from $640,301 in 2024-25 to $701,666 in 2025-26.
Building Department. The budget for the building department went up 43.6% primarily due to staffing changes. It went from $305,035 in 2024-25 to $437,908 in 2025-26. Before the Fire Department’s consolidation with Gold Ridge, the Building Department shared an administrative support position with Fire, splitting costs 50-50. Now the full cost of that position has shifted to the Building Department. The city is also expecting to do an impact fees study this year, which is expected to cost $70,000. (Interesting tidbit from the staff report: “While the City has averaged fewer than one new home per year over the past decade, over 40 new homes are expected in the upcoming fiscal year—driven largely by the Canopy development.”)
Fire Department. The fire budget for the upcoming year shows a decrease of $301,000 or 19.6% compared to the previous year. The staff report details several key changes including:
A $320,000 decrease in salary and benefits due to consolidation.
A $347,000 increase in contracted services, attributed to the annual payment to Gold Ridge per the agreement.
A $328,000 decrease in other expenses, such as vehicle maintenance, utility costs, allocated insurance shares, minor capital outlay, and equipment purchases.
The City pays Gold Ridge $1,100,000, plus the pass-through of an estimated $40,000 in fire inspection fees.
Police Department. The police budget increased by 4.3% ($232,000), mostly due to an increase in benefit costs. Expenditures went from $5,530,165 in the last year to $5,762,329 next year. Vice Mayor Jill McLewis suggested that the $40,000 a year in the police budget that now goes to West County Community Services for homeless outreach should be kept in house to train police how to deal with the homeless.
Public Works Department. In the proposed budget, the Public Works Budget increased by 146,000 or 6.2%—but that was before the massive additions made at the July 1 meeting and described at the top of this article. We don’t have a full accounting of the increase with those additions, but we assume it will be substantial.
Public Works is also responsible for the upkeep on three civic institutions. Here’s the rundown on those from the staff report.
Sebastopol Area Senior Center building: This budget reflects an increase of $6,000 or 15.3%, primarily due to the carryover of the rain gutter replacement project originally scheduled for FY 2024–25, which will now be completed in the upcoming fiscal year.
Sebastopol Community Cultural Center building: The proposed budget reflects a reduction of $7,000 or 3.9%, primarily due to the removal of annual support services that were previously included. Despite this decrease, the budget continues to support key capital improvements, including the replacement of two HVAC units and the carpeting in the youth annex—both of which have experienced considerable wear and are due for renewal. Additionally, the budget allocates $6,000 for repairs to the Labyrinth Teen Memorial, ensuring its preservation and continued use.
Ives Pool: The proposed budget shows a significant decrease of $73,000, or 24.5%, primarily due to a downward adjustment in PG&E utility costs, as the previous budget had overestimated these expenses. Although the upcoming fiscal year includes planned building repairs and rain gutter replacements, the overall budget still reflects a reduction because these projects are less costly than the prior year’s pool heater replacement.
You can see the proposed budget from the July 1 meeting here. (The video for this meeting has yet to be posted.) Administrative Services Director Ana Kwong is still working on incorporating the final changes from the July 1st council meeting into the final adopted budget.