What else happened at the June 17 Sebastopol City Council Meeting
Emergency plans, salary increases, weed abatement and more
(Editor’s note: We know that some of you are waiting for Part 2 of our proposed budget review. Since the council will be discussing the budget further this evening at the July 1 council meeting, we will be wrapping the promised department-by-department budget discussions into the budget update from this evening, which we’ll post later this week.)
The June 17 Sebastopol City Council meeting began with the local scout troupe leading the pledge of allegiance. Although the budget (which we covered here last week) was the main issue of the evening, there were a few other items, including emergency preparedness and some salary adjustments.
Mayor Stephen Zollman, Vice Mayor Jill McLewis, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Sandra Maurer were present for the June 17 Sebastopol City Council meeting.
Public comment for items not on the agenda
Oliver Dick asked for an update on Elderberry Commons, in particular what the county was doing. He noted the council had promised it would be on the agenda until things were sorted out there. In response, Mayor Zollman said those reports would be included in the ‘report outs’ at the end of the meeting. You can read the City’s update report on Elderberry here.
Kate Haug urged the city to create a special district for water and sewer, arguing that “The formation of a separate and distinct water and sewer district would provide focus and management on the water and sewer system, total financial transparency, be Prop 218 compliant, and eliminate unnecessary expenses to free up money for more capital improvements for water and sewer.” See a very interesting and detailed letter to the council on this issue here.
Haug also took 5th District Supervisor Lynda Hopkins to task for blaming the Sebastopol City Council for the problems at Elderberry Commons. “Why in the world would she criticize our council when she should have had a meeting day one to discuss protocols and problems with all the stakeholders involved?” Haug said. “Where is the apology to the council, to our police, to our residents, to our small business owners, to Sebastopol taxpayers? Shouldn't Hopkins say, ‘I’m sorry for putting this mess in the middle of your town?’”
Elderberry resident Deirdre Dooling said Burbank Housing should be held accountable for enforcing the rules of the lease at Elderberry. She complained that both management and security have been ineffective in creating a safe environment for residents. “I've talked to all the security guards. None of them are actually enforcing the basic rules,” she said. “They have all told me that they are afraid to ask people to show their IDs because they fear harm to themselves. Imagine how I feel! I am not a security guard. I’m just a person trying to live here.” Dooling praised Vice Mayor Jill McLewis for “being the one who’s been consistently supporting” the law-abiding residents at Elderberry.
Helen Baum of Gravenstein Health Action asked the city to consider adopting a program that has therapists coordinate with law enforcement to help people with behavioral issues.
Michael Zeigler, a resident of Elderberry Commons, also thanked Vice Mayor McLewis and 5th District Supervisor Lynda Hopkins for their help with the issues at Elderberry Commons. He said that Burbank Housing had shown “zero accountability” for the issues at Elderberry, and for ensuring that he and his daughter, who stood next to him at the podium, had a safe place to live.
Consent Calendar
The consent calendar consists of items that are routine in nature or don’t require additional discussion, often because they’ve been discussed extensively at a previous council meeting.
In addition to approving minutes from previous meetings, the city council unanimously approved the following:
An agreement with the Sonoma County Community Development Commission (CDC) for the administration of Sebastopol’s Mobile Home Rent Stabilization Program.
Adoption of the State Fire Marshal Fire Hazard Severity Map.
Receipt of the informational item from CIRA from the last council meeting.
Letter of support for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Supplemental Planning/Demonstration grant application.
A resolution approving SB-1 List of Streets. SB 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, requires that the City approve a list of projects proposed to be eligible to receive funding from the Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation Account. The city is estimated to receive $218,537 for 2025-26.
A Letter of Intent with Sonoma County Agriculture and Open Space for the AmeriCorps Trail Extension Project, regarding a conservation easement.
Approval of an agreement with the Sebastopol Police Officer Association (SPOA) to switch to a full Kelly Schedule, a rotating shift pattern that uses a combination of on-duty and off-duty days, along with a "Kelly day" — a regularly scheduled day off — to keep hours worked within limits over a given work period. This should reduce overtime costs.
Informational Presentation
Status of Emergency Operations Plan. The city is undertaking an extensive update to its Emergency Operations Plan. (See the staff report here.) Responsibility for this plan used to lie with the fire department, but since the consolidation with Gold Ridge Fire, responsibility for this plan has shifted to the police department.
Chief Sean McDonagh said, “Our ability to focus on that particular project is quite restricted, just because of staffing issues.” He said his department was in discussions with other police departments, like San Rafael’s, in an attempt not to reinvent the wheel. “But getting back to the staffing aspect of it, it’s just that the daily operations impact a lot of our time to be able to sit down and focus solely on a review of that particular document. It’s very involved. It’s detailed, and there’s a lot of other reference material we need to refer to while working through that.”
In the meantime, the old Emergency Operations Plan is still in effect.
Interim City Manager Mary Gourley told the council she believed the new Emergency Operations Plan would be done in six months.
In a public comment on this issue, Skip Jirrels spoke to the importance of shifting from emergency response to preparedness. “Every dollar spent on preparedness means $13 to $18 in savings during the time of an emergency. Those are significant numbers, and we didn't make them up. They come from the Congressional Budget Office.” Jirrels, who ran the city’s emergency preparedness program Meet Your Neighbors before it was defunded and moved to Gravenstein Health Action, also said, “I know that there are lots of people associated with the Meet Your Neighbors program that are also very interested to participate in any way they can.”
In another public comment, Robert said that he felt the plan was “completely unrealistic.” “There’s 238 pages,” he said. “I love this stuff, and I had a hard time reading through it. I can’t imagine how people who are going to implement this are going to read through all of this, particularly if there's just been an earthquake, or if there’s a fire moving into the area…It just seems unrealistic for a town of our size to be trying to implement something some place like San Rafael could implement in their sleep.”
Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map. Although this map was approved on the consent calendar, Councilmember Maurer requested on June 3 that this item come back as an informational item. Gold Ridge Division Chief Dave Bray gave a good overview of Fire Hazard Severity Zones and on wildfire safety for Sebastopol and West County. See the full staff report, including his presentation here or watch his presentation, which starts at 39:24 in the video.) Councilmembers Carter and Maurer were so impressed with this presentation that they requested that parts of it be posted on the front page of the city’s website.
Here are a few slides of interest from his presentation. (These are best viewed on a computer instead of a phone.)
Public Hearings
Weed abatement. Every year, the city council approves a resolution declaring weeds (namely, high weeds) on private properties within the city a fire hazard and a public nuisance. The city publishes a list of properties it considers hazardous due to weeds. Property owners can appear at the public hearing to object to the proposed removal of weeds from their lots. If the weeds on these parcels are not removed by July 30, the city will remove them itself and bill the property owners for the cost. No property owners appeared at this hearing, and the city council unanimously approved the weed abatement effort.
Hearing on the 2025-26 budget. See our initial article on the proposed budget here. This budget hearing was continued to the July 1 council meeting, which we will report on later this week.
Regular Agenda
Because of the lateness of the hour, the Sebastopol Library Staffing and Facilities Ad Hoc Committee Report was continued to a future meeting.
Community Center Building Improvements. The council quickly approved a budget amendment, adding $12,153.14 to the Earthtone Construction to finish some flood repair work it was doing at the community center. According to the staff report, “The work performed by the Contractor was the installation of drywall called densglass for fire resistance in the main hall of the Community Center. Community Center staff then reinstalled fabric over the walls to make them look nicer in appearance. The Fire Department did a project walk-through at the completion of the work and noted that the fabric is a fire risk and should be removed. In order to improve the appearance of the installed drywall, the walls would need to be painted. The work entails applying a skim coat to make the drywall smoother and give the paint a suitable surface to adhere to.” This changed the total cost of the contract from $59,252.00 to $71,405.14.
Pay rates and ranges for unrepresented employees. The council also unanimously approved an amendment to City Pay Rates and Ranges for employees not represented by a union, providing increases of 3% on July 1, 2025, and 2% on January 1, 2026, for three positions: Accountant/Analyst, Public Works Operations Supervisor, and Administrative Services Director. The council also unanimously approved a connected resolution revising the City’s Publicly Available Pay Schedule.
Change of title and duties to police support position. The city council unanimously approved a resolution to retitle ‘Police Records and Support Services Manager’ to “Police Support Services Manager’ and approved an 8% increase in the pay range due to increased duties.
You can watch a video of the June 17 Sebastopol City Council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is tonight, July 1, 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol, and on Zoom.