What happened at the Feb. 20 City Council Meeting?
Gaza ceasefire protest, HorizonShine update, and bad news for the city's bottom line and Recology
Mayor Diana Rich, Vice Mayor Stephen Zollman, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, and Councilmember Jill McLewis were present for the Feb. 20 city council meeting. Councilmember Neysa Hinton was absent due to illness.
Public comment
Though removed from the agenda, the Gaza ceasefire resolution still dominated the council meeting, with more than two dozen ceasefire advocates in the council chambers—and more on Zoom—with signs, some wearing Palestinian keffiyehs. All in all, it was a remarkably subdued demonstration, with protesters politely lining up to speak during public comment. (This somewhat undercut the city’s reason for dropping the resolution for public safety reasons.) Only one person, Ernie Carpenter, spoke in favor of Israel’s current actions, though one other commenter suggested that the resolution be revisited with the help of more mainstream Jewish voices. The vast majority of speakers at the meeting, many of whom identified themselves as Jews or Palestinians—spoke in favor of a ceasefire and praised the current resolution as is.
Consent Calendar
In addition to approving the minutes of previous meetings, the city council unanimously approved a revision to the description of the Fire Chief’s duties, removing the requirement that he act as both Fire Marshall and the City’s Assistant Emergency Operations Manager. It is hoped that these changes will make it easier to find qualified candidates for the position.
Regular Agenda
Indirect Cost Allocation Plan and Study
The city council heard a presentation by Clear Source on an Indirect Cost Allocation Plan and Study. The last update to the city’s Indirect Cost Allocation Plan was done in 2001, which means an update is long overdue.
The study looked at how certain overhead services funded by the general fund, such as HR and Finance, serve non-general fund departments like water and waste water, which are enterprise funds, funded by rate payers. The Indirect Cost Allocation Plan provides a way of ensuring that the appropriate amount of general fund overhead costs are paid by the enterprise funds.
The study found the current allocation of those costs assigns too much to the utility funds. To adjust, the city will shift roughly $714,000 in costs from the enterprise funds to the general fund. That’s good news for the bottom lines of the city’s water and sewer departments—and the ratepayers because this will reduce the need for rate increases. It’s bad news for the city's general fund, which was already in the red and now has a higher deficit, which will require reducing other city services.
HorizonShine Update
Police chief Ron Nelson gave an update on HorizonShine. Since nothing much had changed since the last update—there are still 21 residents there that need housing— the council agreed that he could update them on an “as needed” basis rather than at every council meeting.
St. Vincent de Paul-Sonoma director Jack Tibbetts said that they are still waiting on a $9.6 million loan from the state’s Project Home Key program, but that they have enough assets to begin construction of their new low-income housing project on the Horizon Shine site regardless.
City to put out an RFP for waste hauler
A city ad hoc committee and Recology have been negotiating new garbage rates for months but have been unable to come to an agreement. Therefore the ad hoc recommended—and the council agreed—that the city put out an Request for Proposals (RFP) to see if any other waste haulers could do better.
Recology’s most recent offer included garbage rate increases of 30% for residential users and 23% for commercial users.
“A majority of Sebastopol’s rates, depending on size of container, would have been higher than other incorporated cities in the county,” wrote councilmember and ad hoc member Sandra Maurer in her city council recap email. “This would have been hard to justify, especially in comparison to Cotati’s rates, which is a similar size small town.”
In addition to voting to put out an RFP, the council agreed to dissolve the ad hoc committee and hire a consultant, R3, to help negotiate with potential haulers.
Watch the full meeting here. The next regular city council will be on Tuesday, March 5, at 6 pm at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St., Sebastopol.