From: Joe
To: City Council
Subject: Ashamed to be a Resident of Sebastopol
Date: Friday, April 01, 2022 5:58:12 PM
Dear Council Members,
While I used to defend Sebastopol as not being entirely white and elitist, I can no longer do this after the restriction of RV parking on city streets.
What I used to think of as the Berkeley of the north might as well be the Mill Valley of the north, but I think even Mill Valley does not pander to the wealthy elite like this town does currently. How far we have come from being a small progressive town with inclusive values to today when there is nothing but blatant nimbyism everywhere I look. The city council meeting regarding this new ordinance was disturbing as I heard citizens of this town using racist and elitist language such as "our streets are a scorecard for how our town is doing”.
How easy it must be to have that attitude when you live in an overpriced mansion and do not have to worry about paying rent or taxes. Yet these are the voices that the council sided with to pass this ordinance, which is very disturbing to me.
I am an early educator who loves their work but can hardly afford to live here any longer and we recently saved to buy a trailer in order to have a means to evacuate and not pay high hotel or Air BnB charges should we get to travel. Now my tax money will go to putting up signs that say no RV Parking, ticketing working class citizens for parking their own trailers in front of their homes and sending police to do this job when they could be benefiting the community. I work in Santa Rosa and plan on doing all my shopping there just to avoid giving Sebastopol may sales tax revenue to use on this appalling ordinance. We can not afford to store our very small trailer (smaller than the abundance of oversized trucks that pollute our roads and park on our streets) and we do not have the luxury of owning a large home to park it in the driveway.
After the census came out and named Sebastopol the whitest town in the county one of the council members said that we are "embarrassingly white” and ordinances like this just add to the white elitism that Sebastopol is now known for. I understand the need for businesses on Morris Street to not have people living in their trailers but as citizens of the Valley View neighborhood we are a purely residential neighborhood and many of us own trailers. There is no reason not to have a permitting process for tax paying citizens such as ourselves. The climate of this town has changed so much we now face the decision to have to leave being that this is becoming a playground for the wealthy. This saddens me deeply as a long time resident and I remember when different types of people could coexist and bring harmony to this small town. It is obvious who the council favors and it is the rich and white who have made this town a place for only upper class people to live in.
As an educator of young children we teach equity and compromise but why do that when they will only encounter a world run by the rich who will take what they want and own small town councils like the one here in Sebastopol.
Incredibly Disappointed Citizen
Joe LeBlanc