From:
To: City Council
Subject: How the Council can encourage community engagement.
Date: Monday, March 3, 2025 6:52:13 PM
Dear Council Members,
After living in Sebastopol for 30 years, my level of awareness of many new dimensions of our community, especially including City Council matters, increased dramatically through the detailed, highly professional reporting available to me in the Sebastopol Times. This has been a deeply engaging development, as matters that had been opaque or hard to access suddenly appeared clearly explained in my email inbox. The level of reporting has been amazing, and to have it here in our small town has been a gift to everyone in our community. It’s been a point of pride that I brag about to friends who live in nearby communities and I have encouraged many friends to subscribe.
The Council is now considering (or has already endorsed?) a policy that will make that reporting much more difficult, time delayed, and cumbersome. It’s ironic that here, in our progressive enclave with 5 liberal minded Council members, the Council is de facto embracing procedural changes that echo the increasingly controlling ones at the national level.
And that it is spearheaded by our mayor, about whom I learned so much, and found so much to admire in his embrace of differences in our community, in the Times interview with him not long ago is especially baffling!
I strongly urge you to reconsider that policy. The present system is producing a wonderful outcome. The new policy smacks of the City wanting to hide, or censor, information and curate the public’s understanding of city affairs. I cannot imagine why the Council would want to do that… it is so out of alignment with everything I know about this Council as well as pretty much every other one over the last 30 years.
Thank you,
Paul Tamminen
Sebastopol