What happened at the City Council Candidate Q&A at Hopmonk?
Practice makes perfect: Political newcomers Kee Nethery and Phill Carter got better at answering questions, while Councilmember Hinton leaned into her experience
The lighting at the Sebastopol City Council Candidate Q&A at Hopmonk was more appropriate for a rock & roll show than a political forum, but that didn’t seem to bother the 28 people that showed up for the event on Monday evening to meet candidates Phill Carter, Neysa Hinton and Kee Nethery.
The panel was organized by the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Business Association. Chamber Director Myriah Volk introduced the panel and invited the candidates to give one-minute introductory remarks.
PHILL CARTER: My name is Phill Carter. I moved to town from Cape Town, South Africa, about three years ago, and when I moved in, I joined the Climate Action Committee. When I joined the Climate Action Committee, I wanted to take the town to Net Zero, or at least lend my skills towards it. And by doing that, I started getting into transportation studies and then started getting into learning how the city worked operationally. And as I did that more and more and more, I learned more about the budget and then became more involved with town councils, started going to meetings and becoming concerned about many of the other things that we have to worry about, as far as [inaudible], hotels and just general safety and other ways we manage our budget.
NEYSA HINTON: My name is Neysa Hinton. I’ve lived in Sonoma County. I’m a fourth generation. My kids are fifth, and I was born in this area, went away to college and then came back because I had great memories as a child and wanted to raise my children here. I have two grown children. Both graduated from Analy High School, and they went through the public school system. One is an RN, and my son has been a welder and is currently working at the Sonoma County Airport. I’ve been on council for eight years. I’m running for my third four-year term. Many people know what I stand for and how I vote, and I believe that basically the most important upcoming issue is the budget shortfall. I started talking about a sales tax measure—which now Measure U is going to be on the ballot—but I started talking about it last July as necessary. Also we need to grow our tax base long term so that we’re not relying on taxes one hundred percent.
STANTON ‘KEE’ NETHERY: My name is Kee Nethery. I’ve lived here in Sebastopol for about 13 years. Had a business prior to this for about 25 years, with 25 employees and such. I’ve been on the Library Advisory Board for three or four years, something like that. My daughter had graduated and moved out. I’m basically running for two goals. The first one is, is that I want to make sure that the city doesn’t go bankrupt. We intend to live here for the rest of our lives, so I want to make sure the city doesn’t go bankrupt, and I also want to make sure that we don’t run out of water. Right now, water is not a big issue, but that’s because it’s raining. So anyways, those are my issues, and that’s why I’m running.
Audience members then got up and asked questions of the candidates.
The first question came from Design Board member Lynn Deedler, who asked, “What—beyond the city budget—is your next biggest priority? What lights a fire under you for the next four years, and why?”
Phill Carter gave several answers to this question, mentioning reimagining downtown, creating an EIFD (Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District), rethinking zoning and parking near downtown. Hinton chose affordable housing, saying, she’d like to see Sebastopol’s large, barely used bank buildings turned into affordable housing. Nethery mentioned Sebastopol’s water supply, noting that he doesn’t want to see the city’s aquifer run dry as has happened to some other municipalities around the state.
Sebastopol Grange president Laura Shafer asked about the urge to increase tourism, especially through events, and how that would affect Sebastopol’s small town vibe?
Hinton said she felt the town had a good number of events as it is. Nethery said, “I don’t know that festivals are the way out of our economic situation—though I love attending them.” Carter, who has brought up the need for more local festivals at other candidate events, tried to allay people’s fears, saying he just wanted to dial up existing events 30-50% and figure out a way to have event goers spend more money at local stores and cafes. On the other hand, he said he’s not a fan of tourism-based economies, having grown up in one (Asheville, North Carolina). Carter went on so long, that Chamber Director Myriah Volk finally cut him off. He took it gracefully though and even joked self-deprecatingly about his long-windedness the next time he spoke.
Do any of you have things that you would like to take on personally that could make Sebastopol a better place to live?
Nethery echoed Hinton’s idea of turning under-used commercial buildings into small apartments—and he meant really small (250 sq. ft.). Carter, who said he was an outdoors enthusiast, mentioned improving Ives Park and adding more trails around town. Hinton referenced a recent story about zoning in the Sebastopol Times and said that idea had captured her imagination, especially as it relates to ADUs.
Oliver Dick asked how the candidates were going to help the city move forward financially—he mentioned the danger of bankruptcy—given that so much of Sebastopol’s electorate is resistant to change of any sort. He also said he didn’t think Sebastopol had a water shortage problem and asked Kee to explain his stance on that.
Carter said in addition to turning some of the city’s commercial areas into housing, he would like to make it easier to split properties, which would increase the stock of affordable housing while at the same time increasing the number of property-tax-paying properties in the city. He said he’d also like to widen the town’s business base, perhaps attracting more businesses from the natural food industry. He again mentioned events to draw tourists, as well as the need for downtown beautification.
Hinton said she felt Oliver was exaggerating the city’s financial situation. “I just don’t see bankruptcy,” she said, listing all the things the city was doing to improve its economic prospects—”running that tax measure, cutting expenses” and exploring an EIFD. “We are really working hard to turn things around,” she said. She also addressed the water issue, noting that she was the council’s representative to the Russian River Watershed Board for six years and was a current representative on the county’s Groundwater Sustainability Board. She emphasized that rate hikes and maintenance of the water system were the big issues for now, but also that, realistically, “droughts are a real thing that will happen again … we all have to be conserving water at all times.”
Nethery defended his concern for Sebastopol’s water system, noting that “what’s going to happen in 10 years depends on how we manage things now.” He went on to say that the city’s financial situation is actually pretty serious given its deficits—“normally you don’t spend more than you have, unless you’re spending on something to save you money in the future, and that’s not what I’m seeing,” he said. He then went into a long explanation of what an EIFD is (see our explanation here) and how it might help us capture some money from the folks who live outside of town but use city services.
Another questioner asked about parking and traffic, given all the development going on, let alone new events.
Both Hinton and Nethery said parking can be a problem around town, but they both expect that to lessen over time as people use Uber and other services and self-driving cars make their way north from San Francisco. “I’m fairly certain that in 10 years, we’re going to have cars that you can call up, and there’ll be a fleet here that will take you, and people won’t need cars. There’s a lot of people in San Francisco that don’t have cars. They don’t need them, so I’m not worried about parking,” Nethery said.
This question seemed to hit Carter’s sweet spot. “This is why I’m here,” he said. “I have been working on urbanism for like 20 to 25 years and human-centered design, and something that I’m very focused on is traffic flow.” He mentioned three traffic-related studies that were currently happening in Sebastopol, but also said he didn’t have a silver bullet for Sebastopol’s traffic problems. Then he gave a shout out to e-bikes. “I definitely think that our downtown can use just a little bit more support for walkable traffic, and I definitely want to get people on e-bikes and feeling safe biking around town. I bike around town all the time.”
The next questioner asked about public transit: “I love to use public transit. I would love to see more of it, because it’s extremely inefficient right now to use it in any capacity. I think that’s why people drive everywhere. What are your visions for enhancing public transit so we don’t have to constantly talk about parking spots?”
Nethery, who lives near downtown, said he walks everywhere and re-iterated his belief in the future of shared self-driving cars. He also went into a long digression about roads, streets and stroads, and advised that we be careful not to create the latter.
Carter referred to his experience creating a bus service in Boulder, CO. “If we were designing a bus service from scratch, I would have it going up and down our two main highways, dropping people off and picking people up. And you knew every five minutes you could get on a bus. That’s a dream world. But since we only have ridership that would probably use that at max an hour and a half a day, and we have to pay somebody 12 hours a day, I mean, it’s a very complicated thing to think about how we can utilize the bus.” He said he looked forward to being on the city council so he could work with the county and figure out how the buses could serve Sebastopol better. Then he jumped on the anti-stroad bandwagon. In the end, he said “It’s just going to take a lot of struggle.”
Hinton, who represents the city of Sebastopol on the Sonoma County Transit Authority, reminded everyone that the city already has a free shuttle, the 24 bus, that winds around Sebastopol. She also argued that the 5th district, which has the highest number of roads in the county, gets less than its fair share of transit money, something she said she was working on.
Lynn Deedler, obviously dissatisfied with the candidates answers to his first question tried again. “Let’s just say you got a $50,000 grant that would take care of your project. What kinds of things do you see would make this a better town?”
Carter said, “I’m on the board of Wesco and we play soccer on Ragle Field, and it’s horrible. So if anybody wants to donate to the Ragle fields, we are trying to improve that right now.” Hinton said, “I’ve been harping for years on the park project—Ives Park should be re envisioned. I would love to daylight the creek. Frankly, I know that would cost a lot of money, but I served on Ag and Open Space, and they daylighted a number of creeks in other parts of Sonoma County with matching grants. And we could do it in phases to go back to a natural state.” Nethery said he’d use $50,000 for deferred maintenance, but wasn’t specific about what or where.
The final question of the evening involved the police budget, which made up 35% of the city budget this year. The questioner asked if there was a way to reduce this while improving service.
Hinton said, “A lot of us would like to reduce the police budget. But we have replaced positions because when you really look deep into the police budget, if you don’t replace positions, the overtime goes crazy.” She also mentioned the city’s homeless outreach worker, who takes some of the burden of dealing with the homeless off the police department.
Nethery noted that Windsor uses the county sheriff as their police department. He noted that Windsor is three times larger than Sebastopol geographically, with three times as many people, but that their police budget is less than twice Sebastopol’s. He also mentioned the Cahoots model, where you send mental health workers, not police, to deal with calls involving mental health issues, which is less expensive.
Carter said he didn’t know enough about this issue to venture a definitive answer. “I’m talking with so many people right now, and I just want to make sure I have my i’s dotted and t’s crossed before I say things with certainty,” he said.
Closing remarks
NEYSA HINTON: For me, running for city council for a third term is a labor of love. I have lived in this community for a very long time, and it’s just like any job. When I first ran in 2016, I didn’t have answers. I still don’t have all the answers, but I do listen to everybody, study the issues, and at this point, I am the experienced council member—good or bad—on the council. That’s just the way it is. And we’ve had a lot of changes with the new city manager, all our department heads switching out and our fire department reorganization, which we’ll be working on in the next year. So I just wanted to wrap up by saying I’d be honored for your support again for a third term…We’re all trying to do what’s best for this community, and we might have different thoughts about how to pursue it, but at the end of the day, no matter who’s on the city council, I really am proud about how we all work together. You don’t get anything done alone. You’ve got to work with your colleagues for the betterment of the community.
KEE NETHERY: Definitely it’s a labor of love to be on the city council. I’m concerned, and I’m running because several people said I should, and I finally agreed with them. I definitely want to start putting the brain cells towards coming up with solutions, because I want to live here for the rest of my life, and I see trends that make me think, “Hmm.” So, you know, I figured I’d jump in.
PHILL CARTER: So I lean towards being an overly positive person, and I’m genuinely excited for what Sebastopol has and the people in it and what it can be. And I just want to help Sebastopol be as beautiful as the people in it, and as cheesy as that sounds, I’m going to be a servant leader. So you tell me what you feel like it should be like. Even though I have ideas, I genuinely, you know, love all of you here, and want you to remain committed and keep telling me how it can be a better place, and we’ll sort it out as a team.
Dang, I still don't know who I will be voting for. I watched the League of Women Voters forum also.