BITS and PIECES – Consent Calendar Items.
Agenda Item 2: Director of Emergency Services Change
This idea of moving responsibility for Emergency Operations from the Fire Chief to the Police Chief surfaced to meet a need when we did not have a clear vision for our fire service or a fire chief. We have both now and residents are paying everything they did before plus another $260 parcel tax. The Fire Service should be responsible for our EOC.
The police should be on the streets, surveying damage, coordinating rescues and preventing vandalism. You are putting them in a building, setting up map boards and computer workstations. Rediculous!!! Read the plan before you vote.
Agenda item 3: Transfer of funds to the Chamber:
Does not seem unreasonable but what happened to the discussion of expanding the business district to include more businesses and to increase the funds available to actually do something meaningful?
What happened to the problem that many businesses do not participate in the Chamber and do not feel the chamber represents them well.
How does this fit with the Growing the grass initiative. It seems like the city, the chamber and the businesses all need to be on the same page. Why not listen first then decide how to best use the money?
I commend the chamber for stepping up. Looking back through years of meetings where it was said our priority is improving downtown, increasing business to increase revenues and literally nothing has changed. There are two transportation studies going on that impact downtown, the city has done several studies over the last 10 years to reimagine downtown and at the end of the day nothing really gets better downtown. The Sebastopol Commons committee will also be approved on this consent calendar. A new approach should be welcome, let’s just make sure there is a PLAN! So far this looks like throwing money around.
Agenda item 5: ICE
We have so many problems that need to be addressed. Crime rates in the city (according to FBI database) were up again last year. Half our streets are in poor or very poor condition. Water and Sewer rate payers are being used to balance the general fund budget (illegal). The Calder Stom drain collapsed at one end getting attention but the other end is silted over and that can was kicked down the road so we can watch it flood again. There has been a water master plan study going on for over a year and still no report. Yet we have time to have meetings and work on our protocols in case ICE comes to town. The State has protocols/laws; the county has protocols/laws and they both have deep pockets to fight lawsuits. Why does Sebastopol want to put taxpayers at risk for a lawsuit that would require taxpayer dollars to address urgent needs in the city. Our police are already stuck between a rock and a hard place with conflicts between federal, state and county laws. Sebastopol City Council doesn’t understand the laws, does not have the legal resources to manage the consequences and should just focus on doing the business they were elected to do.
Agenda Item 8: Landscape Maintenance Contract
In principle $70,000 is quite a bit less than you are paying public works salary benefits and equipment costs. The city has invested Significant capital in mowers and new trailers for the mowers. The rationale that this is going to free up labor for mentoring strikes me as a bit nebulous. At some point there needs to be a serious review of what work Public Works is doing, what the city council wants them to be doing and how much labor is required to meet those requirements. Right now, water and sewer rate payers are paying more than ¾ of the cost of public works although their activity reports seldom mention significant work on the water and sewer system. Depending on where this contract is placed in the budget, water rate payers will be paying ¾ of the cost of mowing grass in our parks also.
Agenda 9, 10, 11 NOFA Measure O funding
At the last meeting it appeared to be a surprise that the Measure O funding deadline was 2 days. It’s great that we are getting some support letters out there. It is obvious we need someone responsible for making sure Measure O deadlines are known and anticipated and plans are made for what resources we need and a strong application developed ahead of the deadline. All of this could be accomplished if the city had a PLAN to deal with the homeless. It is a burden on small cities, but Cotati and Cloverdale have plans and almost no homeless in their cities.
Agenda item 13: Flags
Always good to have a flag policy. There are so many holes in the policy to be fair you need a lot more flag poles so you can be inclusive of everyone that drives a truck through the gaps in the policy. If the Analy student with the confederate flag on his truck asks to fly his flag would that be prohibited by this policy? Perhaps assigning it to the creed clause? A creed is “a formal statement of beliefs, principles, or opinions that guide a person or a community. Creeds are most often connected with religion.
However, the term can also apply to any set of principles that influences how people live or work. Is Pride a creed? Women’s equality could be a creed. I am not judging the legitimacy of any of these creeds or beliefs, only looking at how the policy opens the city to lawsuits. The flag policy could be 1: US flag, 2. State flag, 3. Sebastopol city flag.
Citizens have the right to fly any flag they want.