What else happened at the Sebastopol City Council meeting?
Recap of the June 3 city council meeting
The agenda item on Elderberry Commons provided the most drama at the June 3 Sebastopol City Council meeting. The pathos of that item was counter-balanced by the bureaucratic nature of every other agenda item: an update on the city’s risk pool, its 115 pension trust, the lighting district assessment, a long disquisition on the city manager search process, and line-by-line tour of the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).
On the face of it, the agenda for the evening looked impossibly packed and proved to be so. Several items were pushed to a future council meeting, including a full review of the budget.
Proclamations
The meeting started off cheerily enough with two proclamations: 1) a proclamation proclaiming June 19, 2025, as Juneteenth Day in honor of the day that the slaves were finally freed in Texas in 1866—eight months after the end of the Civil War. 2) a proclamation proclaiming June 2025 as Pride Month in the City of Sebastopol.
Public Comment
Katie Davis and Gary Bachelor repeated their call for the city to help the Senior Center find a larger space. Georges called for an oversight committee for water and sewer, a call that was echoed by Oliver Dick, who also took the county to task for not paying its fair share of Sebastopol programs like the Senior Center. Robert wondered if Mary Gourley was being fairly compensated for now having three jobs: city clerk, assistant city manager and acting city manager. “I think you should be doing something, and thanks to Mary,” he said.
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.
The council unanimously approved the following:
A resolution proclaiming June 2025 as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month” throughout the city; authorizing the flying of the pride flag over city hall during June 2025; and authorizing the use of pride colors in the city logo and communications during June 2025.
Some minor personnel reclassifications and re-titling as recommended by the Classification and Compensation and Staff Assessment studies. No fiscal impact.
An annual update schedule of user and regulatory fees for use in fiscal year 2025-26. This includes an inflationary factor (2.76%) that was previously approved by city council on 9/15/20. The anticipated fiscal impact is a $40,000 increase in General Fund revenues.
Budget amendment for video security system for police department to replace the current antiquated video security system.
Introduction of the State Fire Marshal’s Fire Hazard Severity Zones map, which shows certain areas (322 acres) in Sebastopol falling within the moderate fire hazard severity zones. Learn more.
Informational Items/Presentations
Increasing CIRA rates
The City of Sebastopol is a member of the California Intergovernmental Risk Authority (CIRA), a statewide Joint Powers Authority providing risk-sharing and insurance solutions to 53 cities, towns, and public agencies across California. The City of Sebastopol gets a wide range of insurance coverage and risk management services through CIRA, including general liability, workers’ compensation, property insurance, employment practices liability, cyber liability, risk management & risk assessments, employee training and education programs.
The bottom line of this presentation was that Sebastopol’s cost for workers’ comp was going up by 8% and general liability coverage by 21%. The council and public commenters noted that the presentation, while being a good intro to CIRA itself, provided no detailed information about Sebastopol’s situation, such as why its rates were going up and what, if anything, it could do about that in the future.
Selecting a city manager
The city’s personnel consultant Deborah Muchmore gave a talk about the process of choosing a city manager. (This is described in the staff report.) The takeaways were that this would take six to seven months and cost $35,000.
The city’s 115 Trust
The council received an update on its 115 Pension Trust from consultant Mark Shuster. The account is earning 7.4%, but Schuster said it’s hard to predict what it will do in the future given the many uncertainties in the current economy.
Elderberry Commons
See our full coverage of this item here.
Public Hearings
The council made quick work of the first two public hearings:
The council received a report on the status of city staff vacancies for 2025. The city currently has 53 positions and 9 vacancies.
Council unanimously approved the Street Lighting Assessment for 2025/26. For 2025-2026, the proposed annual assessment is $35 for a single-family home, an increase of $3 from the previous year.
The council opened the next two public hearings—on the CIP and budget—but continued them to the next council meeting.
The Captial Improvement Budget (CIP)
GHD Engineering consultant Toni Bertolero gave a line-by-line review of the upcoming year’s projects in the city’s CIP. The new items for 2025-2026 are bolded in the chart below. The presentation was too detailed to capture in this article. You can watch it here, starting at 2:46:33.
Budget Review
With just 15 minutes to go before the witching hour of 10:30 pm (the time any councilperson can call a halt to the proceedings), the council decided to listen to consultant Bob Leland from Baker Tilly give his big picture review of the budget, based on this slide:
Here are Leland’s remarks in full, regarding the city’s long-term financial position:
Now you’ll recall we talked a lot about budget over the last year, and what it’s come down to is this slide, showing you in blue, the unassigned balance of the general fund, and in orange, the pension trust, which we’re assuming would be gradually spent down over time in order to bolster the unassigned balance, because the pension trust would be used to reimburse general fund pension costs.
It is a slow decline.
This assumes the quarter cent measure U funding. Obviously, you’re trying to seek a legislative solution to get up to the full half cent the voters approved, but we’re assuming a quarter cent, and we’re also not assuming any impact from the Barlow Hotel. Obviously, that is in the works, but it’s not a sure thing, and the economy is looking a bit uncertain now so it’s uncertain as to exactly what time that [the hotel] will come along so we’re not counting on it at this point. But should either of those two things occur, or optimistically, both occur—that you get the extra quarter cent and the Barlow Hotel—then this situation changes markedly, and you are in a position where the fund balance levels off at about $6 million and then the out years begin to grow as your pension costs begin to level off in the mid 2030s and then decline in 2040s.
But this is where you’re at right now. There really aren't any surprises in the budget. The big uncertainty really is the economy, and while we have built in a moderate recession in 2026, our crystal ball isn't that clear at this point, given what’s happening at the federal level, so we have assumed a little more conservative pension outlook than CalPERS is predicting. We do have a moderate recession built in, but we don't have a severe one. At this point, you have time to undertake any corrective actions you might need. It’s not an urgent problem. The next couple of years look pretty good, but then you will gradually go downhill after that.
Councilmember Hinton and Vice Mayor McLewis requested to see what this slide would look like with the full Measure U half-cent sales tax. Recall that the state limited Measure U to a quarter cent because of its conflict with the county’s childcare sales tax, which also passed in November 2024, bumping up against the state cap on allowable sales tax. The county is currently paying Sebastopol an amount equal to what it would receive if the other quarter cent was in play.
There was some confusion on the part of the council over what percentage of Measure U this slide represented. According to Leland, the slide incorporated 6 months of the County of Sonoma making Sebastopol whole on Measure U in 2025 (during which it would seem like we were getting the full half-cent sales tax. After that six months, the slide only reflects a quarter cent sales tax.
Interestingly, City Attorney Alex Mog mentioned that the county might continue that additional quarter cent subsidy for the next 12 years so that it could continue getting the full childcare sales tax. This was clearly a new idea to everyone on the council.
The rest of the CIP and budget discussion was continued to the June 17th council meeting.
You can watch a video of the June 3 Sebastopol City Council meeting here. The next Sebastopol City Council meeting is June 17, 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol, and on Zoom.