Town Hall Q&A, Part 2

We continue our coverage of town hall question and answers.

This is Part 2 of our two-part series on last week’s town halls, featuring questions from citizens and answers from city staff. See Part 1 here.

What would happen to the money Sebastopol would get from Measure H, the fire tax, if the consolidation with Gold Ridge goes through?

City Manager Don Schwartz: The money from the Measure H tax, which is about $1.1 million a year for Sebastopol, would transfer over to Gold Ridge, because we would no longer have the fire function in terms of the city. Also, we’re spending about $1.5 million a year on fire services. Now, exactly how much would be included in transferring over to Gold Ridge is something up to negotiation as part of the consolidation discussions, so we don’t have a definitive answer on what that dollar amount would be. There would be an additional property tax overlay—I believe it’s $265 a year on average for single family home. That would go to Gold Ridge as well, as part of the consolidation.

How are the streets rated?

Public Works Director Dante del Prete: The PCI (pavement condition index) looks at all of the streets in the city, and it actually rates it from zero to 100, and so ours is in the 40 range, meaning that it’s very poor. That report was completed in 2023, and the city actually updates that report every two years. It’s based on a physical inspection of the streets.

Will combining Engineering and Public Works result in an increase in the contract with the current outside consulting firm representing the city for engineering?

City Manager Don Schwartz: The short answer is no. Tony, can you elaborate on this?

Engineering Consultant Toni Bertolero: The intent is to have staffing in house. And so right now, because of staffing that is not available in the city, GHD has been contracted to provide what we call “on-call” engineering services. But once the reorganization takes place, GHD will no longer be providing that on-call service. There will be other engineering services, but not the day-to-day routine on-call services.

The city has increased taxes in the past and talks about improving our roads, but folks aren’t necessarily seeing the improvement in the infrastructure. What can we do to guarantee that the money ultimately goes to infrastructure?

Robb Korinke: The potential new revenue, if the voters approve it, will go into the general fund. That’s ultimately down to the city council to adjudicate how to spend that.

Engineering Toni Bertolero: There is a deficit in terms of what the city collects for street improvements. It collects money from the state—called Senate Bill 1 payments—and the city received about $200,000 a year for that. Obviously that’s not sufficient. I think the minimum amount we’re hoping to see is about $650,000 so I’m not exactly sure where that money is going to come from, because a grant monies are not really available for street improvements. They’re only there for bike lanes and pedestrian enhancements and things like that, but not for street improvements. So there needs to be another source of funding, and so maybe, Don, you can talk about how this would be part of the big picture for the revenue coming in.

City Manager Don Schwartz: So one of the things that we’re doing in the proposed budget for next year is—and we already have some money set aside for building infrastructure—is we can set aside and dedicate some of the money to improving our streets. It’s not going to make a huge difference with the amounts that we have readily available to us, but that is an option, and ultimately, of course, that’s a city council decision on how they allocate those dollars…We have about a million set aside for the building infrastructure piece now, and it’s got a lot to cover with those funds, but that is a potential source and the council really gets to decide how to allocate those dollars.

Comparing spending at the department level in Sebastopol to those in other communities, it feels like we’re paying more for similar or even lower levels of service. Have we looked to other cities to tried to emulate the efficiencies that they have?

City Manager Don Schwartz: We actually tried early this year at the request of the Budget Committee, which is Vice Mayor Zollman and Councilwoman Maurer, to do a bit of an apples and apples comparison with some of our functions, with some of the other, especially smaller cities in the county. What we found is it’s largely impossible without an incredible level of effort we weren’t able to take on to make that a meaningful comparison. And part of the reason is that in some cities, what we call administrative services, or which is finance and HR and technology, are divided up differently in other cities, so you can’t really compare us well to others. We have a combined city clerk/assistant city manager. Most other cities around here don’t have an arrangement like that, so the cost of a city manager’s office sort of depends on what you count in it, for example. So that makes it challenging to do that kind of apples-to-apples comparison. Public works in some cities, along with parks maintenance, is handled by a Parks and Recreation Department. In other cities, the maintenance of the parks is handled by Public Works. And so you might see different staffing levels in one city, but the functions that they perform are really different, and so it requires a deeper dive than what we’ve done to try and fully understand that.

The senior and community center is a small portion of the city’s expenses, about one and a half percent. Can you leave that alone and cut from other area like Police and Public Works? Who could better share the burden of cuts?

City Manager Don Schwartz: You’ll see on the proposed budget for next year that there are reductions in place, in terms of the senior center facility, compared to what we spent in the prior fiscal year. So we’re looking broadly the when we started the budget process this year. Our mantra was, all options are on the table, and we would try and avoid layoffs, because that’s difficult. In the organization clearly, if you lay somebody off, there’s a direct service impact as well. And so we have looked across the board. The community center in particular is making a strong effort to become more financially self-sufficient, not fully but more so, where they won’t need city funding to help maintain their ongoing operations, but they would still have city funding to help with some of their maintenance work. But in terms of the day-to-day operations, they’re looking to become more self-sufficient, and the city council approved last week—in the capital improvement budget—funding both to help fund needed repairs to make sure it’s fire safe, as well as a longer term master plan to figure out what the future of that service might be. It’s a treasured resource in the community, and we want to keep it, but we also know it’s in a flood plain, so we want to be thoughtful about how we do that. But they have asked for funding, and the recommended budget includes funding for that reduced level of operational support for the next six months.

The senior center is a relatively small portion of our budget. We do provide maintenance services for them in addition to operational support. We’re reducing the proposed budget about $38,000 in the operational support, which is a pretty modest amount of their budget. But again, we’re looking citywide with all options being on the table, and that’s one of them. They have indicated that they’re not going to protest that reduction. We appreciate that and the recognition that this is kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation that we’re in, and we need everybody to help contribute to savings or revenue.

What are we doing to help local businesses?

City Manager Don Schwartz: We are looking to do some things on what probably we think of as economic development support, trying to bring in additional businesses, support the ones that we have, and bring in additional tourists that will generate tax revenue, as well as support our businesses, which is a really crucial, absolutely crucial, part of what makes Sebastopol special.

So we are, for example, looking at consolidating our planning commission and design review board to simplify the approval process. We’ve had conversations with them, and I think we’re receiving generally a positive reception to that idea from them, with obviously, a lot of details to work out, but that should make it that much easier for businesses to open that want to come here.

I was in a call just a few hours ago with the owner of The Barlow about their interest in opening a hotel in the city. Just the other night, the council approved a development agreement with the Hotel Sebastopol to give them additional time to keep their permits active while they search for financing for their hotel.

One thing I’m really interested in is investigating how we can work with the business community collaboratively. There’s really opportunities for us to collaborate on marketing the city and to do so in a cohesive fashion, with a cohesive message, with perhaps one website, so we’re leveraging the power that together we would have.

How much does the city currently spend on homeless services? I know that we have a homeless outreach coordinator. I know that we pay the mortgage insurance and maintenance on Park Village. I know that a certain percentage of the police calls are for homeless individuals. And I also know that a certain percentage of Public Works goes towards homeless individuals. And then there’s, I believe, a lawsuit with the ACLU that’s been filed by homeless individuals...So I’m just curious about the total amount that we’ve spent. And then I’m also wondering, what you think the economic impact of having two Homekey hotels in our town will have, since we’re the only place in the world I think that has two Homekey hotels in a town of 7,500 people.

City Manager Don Schwartz: Let me see if I can take on some of these. I know Mary’s most familiar with the legal cost question and the Chief on the police time, but the Park Village contract is, I believe, $52,000 for next fiscal year; they’ve reduced their ask for city support by, I believe, $20,000 from last fiscal year. The Outreach Coordinator expense is about $38,000. Mary, you’re in the best position to address the legal costs, and Chief, maybe you can speak to the amount of time your team spends responding to homelessness issues. (Editor’s note: In response to a similar question later in the evening, Schwartz said the total was around $100,000, not including police, public works, or the ACLU lawsuit involving homeless overnight camping. Later in the evening, Mary Gourley noted that the legal fees related to the ACLU case were $520,000.)

Police Chief Ron Nelson: My staff is telling me that approximately 50% of their time spent in the field right now is directly related to homeless people, in combination with people with mental health issues. That’s not necessarily just calls for service, but that includes them walking the trails of the Laguna, that includes them walking downtown to address the homeless issues, that includes dealing with the RV situation up along Grav North and the Horizon Shine Village, when it was operating. So a significant amount of their time is taken related to homeless services. I don’t have an exact number, or what those calls look like, or what an exact percentage is, but anecdotally, I can tell you they’re telling me it’s about 50%, and I think that’s probably fairly accurate. We are going to modify our tracking system in our dispatch center to be able to quantify it better. Steps are being taken to do that right now. That’s where we’re at as far as impacts on the police department.

How does Sebastopol compare to other cities in terms of sales tax?

Robb Korinke: So at the current sales tax rate, the highest in the county are Cotati and Petaluma, which are a quarter percent higher than ours. Sebastopol and Santa Rosa are the same. Then below that, a quarter cent lower than us, are Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, the city of Sonoma, and then Cloverdale and Windsor, slightly below that.

Is some of the new housing (i.e. the big apartments going up on Bodega Highway) going to increase city revenue? How does new housing contribute to additional revenue for the city?

City Manager Don Schwartz: So in the short run, the new housing is going to help us considerably. We’re anticipating a substantial increase in revenue next year and the year after from building permit fees, but that’s not one of those sustainable, long-term sources of revenue that Robb referred to earlier in the evening. But for this coming year, as well as, we hope, the following year, it will definitely make a considerable difference in the close-to-million-dollar range. In the long run, housing does not pay for itself in terms of municipal finance. It tends to be a money loser in terms of the requirements for roads, police, fire, and recreation, all those sorts of things.

New houses do not make money, but rather cost cities more. That’s why you have seen historically, over the years, this competition with city governments for things like shopping malls and auto dealers, because those are the big tax-generating land uses or businesses—hotels, as well, because of the transit occupancy tax. So housing typically doesn’t pay for itself, while some of these other businesses do. Infill housing tends to do better at paying for itself because it doesn’t cost as much to serve than housing that’s more of a sprawl nature.

What is the city doing to make Main Street and the Town Square more inviting?

Interim City Planning Director David Woltering: Some of the things the city is doing at this time is reaching out to look at trying to make the downtown more safe, looking at transportation improvements, looking at improved bicycle lanes, looking at more visible crosswalks, trying to improve the overall safety in the downtown for pedestrians and bicyclists and make it more inviting.

In addition, the city council the other night was working with a hotel developer to try to give more time to find financing to see a project come to the downtown, really anchor the downtown and provide the opportunity for 66 guest rooms, with those guests coming and shopping and enjoying the downtown.

So those are some of the things that the city is doing at this time.

Instead of us seeing good faith efforts at looking at some non-tax revenue sources here we are looking again at a regressive sales tax measure. What is the city’s plan to actually look at non regressive revenue options and put those forward to the public?

City Manager Don Schwartz: The size of the dollars that we need are going to require a significant, or several significant, major sources of revenues that only will come with things like sales tax increases and hotels. We are pursuing and just extended the development agreement for one possible new hotel to ensure they have time to get their financing in place. And we have a proposal from The Barlow for a new hotel there. Those are mega tax generators.

Not that the other opportunities [such as vacancy taxes, etc.) aren’t worth pursuing, because they are, or at least some of them are. What we’re pursuing that was not on the list that came up earlier this year, but some of the staff saw the opportunity, is to shift some of our planning staff time so that instead of receiving grants and then we contract with a third party to do the work associated with that grant, keep more of that work in house to support the staff that we have instead of contracting as much of them out as we have. We’ve also been increasing our fees to align them to actual costs, so that, for example, those who are trying to build new pay for it themselves, and so we adjusted our fees accordingly.

What happens to city services if a sales tax isn’t approved or doesn’t go through?

City Manager Don Schwartz: Over the last 10 or so years, our reserves have gone up and down. The last few years in particular, you see a significant downward trend. Our goal is to have at least 15% of our general fund expenses at a minimum with ideally a 20% goal. You can see that over the next three or so years, the fund balance goes negative. [That is, if we don’t make] any kind of significant changes, and those changes could be significant increase in revenue or significant reductions in service, or some kind of blend of the two. We do not want to go below the 15% minimum fund balance level, much less go negative. That would be really a horrific situation…Without some kind of major revenue increases, we would have to slash services dramatically. There’s really no two ways about it.

How does the city support nonprofits?

City Manager Don Schwartz: I look at nonprofits as one of the wonderful aspects of the town of Sebastopol. I’ve been here six months as city manager, and perhaps the most impressive aspect of this community has been the level of commitment of the folks who run the nonprofits, from the senior center to the community center to Ives Pool. We’re just really fortunate to have some committed, dedicated folks here. To me, they are a core piece of the fabric of what makes Sebastopol a special place.

They provide really some crucial services, like the senior center. We have a fairly elderly population, and the senior center is a core part of what it means to age gracefully and successfully in Sebastopol. They provide the socialization, they provide the meals. It’s really a wonderful gift for our community to have them.

The Ives Pool Board has been a great partner with us in providing that pool and maintaining it well for all these years. We’re partnering with them to share the cost for new pool heater that’s in process now, and that’s, I think, a really terrific collaboration.

The community center, likewise, we have a good relationship with them, and we hope to continue to build that relationship further as we look towards the future of that center and what we might do in the long run.

How is the library funded, and what is the county v. the city’s role in that?

City Manager Don Schwartz: The library is what’s called the Joint Powers Authority, meaning it’s created by an agreement with the county and all the cities together who essentially authorized the library system. The city’s role with the library is basically at this point to provide the facility, which we do. I believe it’s the third most heavily used branch in the county, so it’s probably overly used, but we serve not only Sebastopol, but much of the West County area as well. It is divided: as we provide the facility, they provide the services. We lease the building to them. We’re interested in revisiting the nature of that lease to have a little more equitable sharing of the costs.

What city-provided services are available to low-income seniors that maybe not everyone is aware of? Are there programs to help low-income residents pay their water and sewer bill?

City Manager Don Schwartz: If the question is about support for low-income or fixed-income residents and our water and sewer rates, we did hear quite a number of comments about that during the hearings. The city is not allowed to use the rates from one set of customers to underwrite or subsidize the rates for another set. That’s illegal, so we can’t do that. We do have plans for people who need help at a particular time. Another part of the new rate structure with the tiered rates is that to some extent, your bill is under your control, because the bill depends on how much you use. The less you use, the less you pay, and you pay even at a lower rate for your initial levels of use. So that is meant, in part, to encourage conservation, but as well, to help those with lower incomes to be able to manage their utility bills a little more on their own, if they’re able to do so.

[Editor’s Note: It was later mentioned that there’s a local nonprofit, North Coast Energy Services, that residents can apply to. If you qualify, they will send money to the city to pay your water bill on your behalf. We will be doing an article on options like this in the upcoming weeks.]

How will the fire department merger change response times?

Dave Bray, contract fire chief from Gold Ridge: The desired goal and outcome of consolidation will be to improve the staffing level—to move from two people covering the fire department to roughly six full-time employees, which would provide a two-person engine 24/7. We still need volunteers to achieve the desired level of staffing, which is a three-person engine on a 24/7 basis.

Has there been any thought given to citizen commissions or other kinds of committees so that the community can be more involved?

City Manager Don Schwartz: One of the virtues of democracy is that we do have a resident or citizen group that oversees what the city is doing, that does set the priorities and that is accountable to the residents. That would be your city council that you get to vote on and elect. Elections are coming up this fall. There’s an accountability built into that—facing and engaging with the voters. So I would suggest that, to some extent, we have something very much like that in place now.

We also have, and I can speak to this as someone who’s been in other jurisdictions as well as Sebastopol, we have over 100 people on this call this evening, and we’ve had over 500 responses to our community survey available to folks online. We publicize heavily. We are very much a community, a city that values engagement and participation from our residents. We have a couple of public comment sessions every city council meeting—as well as public comment on particular items on the agenda. We post comments on the website that we get. We have plenty of opportunities and avenues for people to contribute on social media, on email, at meetings, phone calls and other ways of reaching out. We have “Coffee with a Council Member,” where council members are going out to the community frequently to meet with residents and invite them in. We try and publicize those really heavily to make sure that everybody knows that the doors are open. Council members are interested in hearing from residents. This is an incredibly engaged community, but it’s also a very engaged city council as well.

There’s always more you can do, but I would say, for a city of our size, that we do already a very healthy amount of community engagement and opportunities for people to have input, and we really welcome that. One of the charms or virtues of Sebastopol is the level of engagement. Especially when there’s so much cynicism about democracy these days, to have people so engaged is a very healthy sign for this wonderful community.

Do you have a question about city government? You can email Assistant City Manager Mary Gourley, and she’ll get the answer to you. Email mgourley@cityofsebastopol.gov.