Dear Don Schwartz and Council Members,
As a Citizen, I agree with many recommendations presented in you long term financial pathway.
I agree that the Climate Action Committee and any Committees not directly related to City Core Services (Police, Fire, Roads, Sidewalks, Parks, Public Works, Water and Sewer, Infrastructure) should not be attended by staff and should not cost the citizens additional funds.
I agree that Planning and Design Review should be merged. You might want to note that Planning also includes Public Parks and Public Spaces. Parks are in dire need of basic upkeep and maintenance and should be at the forefront of the City’s attention.
Public Arts Committee should be disbanded and the remaining funds should be used to maintain existing public works. The Public Art fee collected by developers should be shifted to a Public Parks Fee to help bring our Public Parks to ADA compliance and to do basic upgrades like fencing in Ives and Willard Libby.
I agree that Sebastopol needs to staff appropriately and keep staff’s work focused on the core deliverables of the City which are Fire, Police, Public Safety, Parks, Roads, Water and Sewer, Infrastructure and Public Works.
The expenses paid by the City of Sebastopol for Park Village need to be collected from West County Community Services, the nonprofit that runs Park Village as they are collecting rent.
There is no reason why the Citizens of Sebastopol should be paying for Park Village, especially as they were told when the City took out the loan on the property that it was going to be a public park, not private residences. The Citizens of Sebastopol never agreed to subsidize a lowincome rental facility. It never went to vote, which is actually required by California state law.
The City needs to seek reimbursement from the County for the TOT and Sales Tax revenues lost when the Sebastopol Inn was converted to a Homekey Project.
The City needs to ask the County to fund our nonprofits such as the Senior Center, Ives Pool, the Community Cultural Center and the Center for the Arts. These nonprofits function in a similar way to the library as they serve all of West County, not just the 2 square miles of Sebastopol. These organizations need to poll their users to see where people live. The County should fund these organizations on percentage basis based on usage by non-residents of Sebastopol. If 50% of users are not Sebastopol residents, the County should kick in 50% of the funding.
Sebastopol must raise all of its revenue within its tiny, less than two square mile limits. The County has a huge and vast means of raising revenue. The County has access to over $2,000,000,000 in revenue. It is absurd that Sebastopol would try to fund these West County organizations on its own.
The City must establish how much it owes the Water and Sewer Enterprise Funds and honor its fiduciary duty to Water and Sewer Rate payers.
To help offset the City’s budget shortfall, I suggest the following:
1) A ½ cent sales tax, which would be divided into ¼ cent for the general fund and a ¼ cent toward repaying the debt to the Water and Sewer Enterprise funds so that water rates will be stable and water and sewer infrastructure can be funded; 2) A $400,000 annual reimbursement from the County to cover the on-going lost revenues when a crucial piece of the City’s economic infrastructure, The Sebastopol Inn (the only downtown hotel), was removed from the City’s revenue stream without a citizen vote by Supervisor Hopkins;
3) An annual contribution to Sebastopol’s nonprofit organizations which serve the greater West County population including but not limited to: Senior Center, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Ives Pool, the Community Cultural Center; 4) West County Community Services needs to reimburse the City of Sebastopol for the mortgage, insurance and maintenance costs which the Citizen of Sebastopol currently pay for Park Village.
Thank you for all your hard work on the budget.
Best,
Kate Haug