CITY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES
MINUTES FOR MEETING OF OCTOBER 7, 2025
As Approved by the City Council at their regular meeting of October 21, 2025 CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Zollman called the meeting to order 6:00 pm ROLL CALL:
Present: Mayor Stephen Zollman
Vice Mayor McLewis Zoom – ADA Accommodation
Councilmember Neysa Hinton
Councilmember Sandra Maurer
Absent: Councilmember Phill Carter
Staff: Interim City Manager Mary Gourley
City Attorney Alex Mog
Administrative Services Director Kwong
Public Works Operations Supervisor Billings
Police Chief McDonagh
Vice Mayor McLewis replied she was attending by zoom via medical accommodation.
REMOTE PARTICIPATION UNDER AB 2449 (IF NEEDED): To consider and take action on any request from a Council Member to participate in a meeting remotely due to Just Cause or Emergency Circumstances pursuant to AB 2449 (Government Code Section 549539(f)). Assembly Bill 2302 (2024) (“AB 2302”) revises rules for when members of local legislative bodies may participate in meetings remotely. Specifically, it amends the number of meetings that may be attended remotely for just cause and under emergency circumstances and clarifies the definition of the term “meeting,” for purposes of remote attendance. AB 2302 caps the number of remote meetings a member can attend each year based on the frequency of a legislative body’s meetings: Five meetings per year for those meeting twice a month.
None Requested.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The City of Sebastopol acknowledges that we live and work within the unceded ancestral homelands of the Southern Pomo and the Coast Miwok people. We pay our respect to the past, present, and future generations of these peoples, including the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria.
1. INTERVIEWS FOR OPENING ON THE CLIMATE ACTION COMMITTEE: (One Vacancy) Responsible Department: Planning Department/ Interim City Manager Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact
6:00 pm : It is anticipated that interviews will take 15 minutes (however, the second interview will start immediately after the finalization of the first interview if the first interview concludes sooner than the anticipated 15 minutes.
Olivia House (Youth Applicant); followed by: Sunny Galbraith City Council Action: Interviewed applicant Sunny Galbraith Reference Order Number: 2025-298
2. APPOINTMENT TO THE CLIMATE ACTION COMMITTEE
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Responsible Department: Planning Department/ Interim City Manager Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact
The Council discussed the interview of the applicant for the one opening on the Climate Action Committee.
Mayor Zollman opened for public comment. The following member(s) of the public spoke during public comment: None
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
Council was in support of appointment of applicant.
MOTION:
Councilmember Maurer moved and Mayor Zollman seconded the motion to appoint the following to the Climate Action Committee with a term ending date of December 31, 2026:
Sunny Galbraith
Mayor Zollman called for a roll call vote. City staff conducted a roll call vote.
VOTE:
Ayes: Councilmembers Hinton, Maurer, Vice Mayor McLewis and Mayor Zollman Noes: None
Absent: Councilmember Carter
Abstain: None
City Council Action: Approved the following to the Climate Action Committee with a term ending date of December 31, 2026:
Sunny Galbraith
Minute Order Number: 2025-299
PROCLAMATIONS/PRESENTATIONS/INTRODUCTIONS:
The following were presented:
• Proclamation: Recognizing Survivors & Pets for Domestic Violence Awareness Month • Proclamation: Proclaiming October 2025 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Recognizing the YWCA Sonoma County for providing vital resources for local residents experiencing domestic violence • Proclamation: Proclaiming Zero Waste Week October 11-18 • Proclamation: Recognizing October Breast Cancer Awareness Month Reference Order Number: 2025-300
STATEMENTS OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Conflicts of interest may arise in situations where a public official deliberating towards a decision, has an actual or potential financial interest in the matter before the Council. In accordance with state law, an actual conflict of interest is one that would be to the private financial benefit of a public official, a relative or a business with which the Councilmember is associated. A potential conflict of interest is one that could be to the private financial benefit of a Councilmember, a relative or a business with which the Councilmember is associated. A Councilmember must publicly announce potential and actual conflicts of interest, and, in the case of actual conflict of interest, must refrain from participating in debate on the issue or from voting on the issue and must remove themselves from the dais.
There were no statements of conflict of interested announced.
PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA (FIRST COMMENT PERIOD): Up to Twenty (20) Minute Time Limit (Two Minutes for up to ten speakers). Additional public comment will be held at the end of the discussion and action items for up to an additional twenty (20) minutes. Mayor has discretion to allow for additional time beyond the 20 minutes allocated for public comment dependent upon the subject matter or number of speakers.
Process for calling on Speakers: Mayor or designee shall ask for public comment as follows: Speakers to be called on in an alternate manner (One speaker in City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
person to be called on first; then one speaker remote to be called on second with additional speakers to be called on in the same manner) based upon the time limit.
The following member(s) of the public spoke during public comment:
Oliver
Kyle
Mary
CONSENT CALENDAR: The consent agenda consists of items that are routine in nature and do not require additional discussion by the City Council or have been reviewed by the City Council previously. These items may be approved by one motion without discussion unless a member of the City Council requests that the item be taken off the consent calendar.
The Mayor will read aloud the title of each consent item (either full agenda title or a simplified version of the agenda title), and ask if a Councilmember wishes to remove one or more items from the consent calendar; and then open public comment to the members of the public in attendance. At this time, a member of the public may speak for up to two (2) minutes on the entire consent calendar and request at that time that an item or items removed for discussion.
If an item or items are removed from the consent calendar, the item shall be placed at the end of the regular agenda items unless otherwise determined by the Mayor. Council Members may comment on Consent Calendar items or ask for minor clarifications without the need for pulling the item for separate consideration. Items requiring deliberation should be pulled for separate consideration and shall be placed at the end of the regular agenda items unless otherwise determined by the Mayor.
Mayor Zollman read the consent calendar.
City staff stated that item number 6 was asked to be removed from this agenda by Councilmember Carter and considered at a future City Council Meeting where he could be in attendance.
Mayor Zollman asked if any Councilmember wanted to remove a consent calendar item.
The following items were removed:
Councilmember Maurer – Item Number 9 – Flag Policy
Mayor Zollman -Item Number 6 – CA Polluters Bill
Councilmember Maurer commented on item number 11.
Mayor Zollman opened for public comment. The following member(s) of the public spoke during public comment:
Kyle
Steve
Robert
Mayor Zollman called for a motion.
MOTION:
Councilmember Maurer moved and Mayor Zollman seconded the motion to approve consent calendar items 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10,
• Item Number 6 has been pulled and per protocols will be heard at the end of the regular agenda. • Item Number 9 has been pulled and per protocols will be heard at the end of the regular agenda. • Item Number 11 has been pulled and per protocols will be heard at the end of the regular agenda.
Mayor Zollman called for a roll call vote. City staff conducted a roll call vote.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
VOTE:
Ayes: Councilmembers Hinton, Maurer, Vice Mayor McLewis and Mayor Zollman Noes: None
Absent: Councilmember Carter
Abstain: None
3. Approval of City Council Meeting Minutes of September 16, 2025 Responsible Department: Interim City Manager
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact with approval of this item.
City Council Action: Approved City Council Meeting Minutes of September 16, 2025 Minute Order Number: 2025-301
4. Resolution authorizing MuniServices LLC to Audit Sales Tax Receipts for the new Measure U Local Transaction and Use Tax. Muniservices LLC has a contract to audit the reports on the City’s sales tax collections from the CDTFA. With the recent passage of the Sebastopol Measure U, the City must amend their contract with MuniServices to include the receipts for the new 1/2 cent transaction and use tax, which becomes effective April 1, 2025.
Responsible Department: Administrative Services
Fiscal Impact: There no fiscal impact with the approval of this item City Council Action: Approved Resolution authorizing MuniServices LLC to Audit Sales Tax Receipts for the new Measure U Local Transaction and Use Tax. Muniservices LLC has a contract to audit the reports on the City’s sales tax collections from the CDTFA. With the recent passage of the Sebastopol Measure U, the City must amend their contract with MuniServices to include the receipts for the new 1/2 cent transaction and use tax, which becomes effective April 1, 2025.
Minute Order Number: 2024-302
Resolution Number: 6707-2025
5. Receipt of Results from the Request for Proposals for City IT Assessment Audit and Rejection of Bids. In June 2025, City staff issued an RFP for IT audit assessment to 9 IT companies. The City only received one response.
Responsible Department: Administrative Services
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. Staff is recommending rejection of the proposal.
City Council Action: Approved Receipt of Results from the Request for Proposals for City IT Assessment Audit and Rejection of Bids. In June 2025, City staff issued an RFP for IT audit assessment to 9 IT companies. The City only received one response
Minute Order Number: 2025-303
6. Request from Climate Action Committee for Letters of Support for the California Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Assembly Bill 1243 (Addis, coauthored by Damon Connolly and Chris Rogers) and Senate Bill 684 (Menjivar).
Requestor: Climate Action Committee
Responsible Department: Planning Department/Interim City Manager Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. Staff is recommending not to support the request at this time and reconsider if the bill is taken up again by the Legislature. Per the Leage of CA Cities, Cal Cities does not have a position. These two bills did not get through the second house policy committees so they will not be moving this year– they can be reconsidered in January when the Legislature returns back to start the New Session of 2026
7. Authorization for the Mayor to Sign onto the “Mayors for Equal Rights Amendment “ERA” Petition.
California NOW (CA NOW), which has been working on a statewide effort to advance the Equal Rights City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Amendment is reaching out to Democratic House Members to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 80, and is also mobilizing support from local governments. Approval would authorize the Mayor to sign onto the “Mayors for ERA” petition in support of recognition of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
Requestor: Mayor Zollman
Responsible Department: Interim City Manager
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact.
City Council Action: Approved Authorization for the Mayor to Sign onto the “Mayors for Equal Rights Amendment “ERA” Petition. California NOW (CA NOW), which has been working on a statewide effort to advance the Equal Rights Amendment is reaching out to Democratic House Members to co-sponsor House Joint Resolution 80, and is also mobilizing support from local governments. Approval would authorize the Mayor to sign onto the “Mayors for ERA” petition in support of recognition of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
Minute Order Number: 2025-305
8. Adoption of Resolution approving Quitclaim Deed for Public Landscape Easement at 6921 Bodega Avenue. City owns a public landscape easement located on private property and the property owner is requesting that the City abandon this easement at the corner of Bodega Avenue and Petaluma Ave. (SR 12).
Responsible Department: City Engineer
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact.
City Council Action: Approved Adoption of Resolution approving Quitclaim Deed for Public Landscape Easement at 6921 Bodega Avenue. City owns a public landscape easement located on private property and the property owner is requesting that the City abandon this easement at the corner of Bodega Avenue and Petaluma Ave. (SR 12).
Minute Order Number: 2025-306
Resolution Number: 6708-2025
9. Approval of Amendment to Flag Policy. Policy is to Amend the recently approved flag policy to list specific banners on poles and Council Policy on discussion of Presidential Directives Responsible Department: Public Works
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact.
10. Receipt of Presentation by Zero Waste Sonoma re. Zero Waste Week October 11-18 Requestor: Zero Waste Sonoma
Responsible Department: Public Works
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
City Council Action: Approved Receipt of Presentation by Zero Waste Sonoma re. Zero Waste Week October 11- 18 Minute Order Number: 2025-308
11. Receipt of FY25-26 Budget at a Glance Format. To receive the informational item for "Budget at a Glance" which is a summary document that presents key financial information from a larger, more detailed budget in a simple, easy-to-understand format.
Responsible Department: Administrative Services
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
INFORMATIONAL ITEMS/PRESENTATIONS: Informational Items or Presentations are items that are informational only and do not require action by the City Council. Presentations shall be scheduled as necessary for the promotion of an event or service or general information items to the Council and should be limited to ten (10) minutes total in length of item (total length includes questions of Council to presenter and public comment).
12. Informational Presentation: Presentation from Hunter Scott, HomeFirst, on Coordinated Entry Requestor: Mayor Zollman
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Mayor Zollman presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation and introduced Hunter Scott Hunter Scott provided an informational presentation.
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Kyle
Robert
Galina
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-310
13. Informational Presentation: Presentation from Wendy Tappon – Mobile Crisis Team Manager and Dr. Jan Cobaleda-Kegler – County Behavioral Health Director, on Mobile Support Team/Sonoma County Mobile Crisis Services Continuum Update
Requestor: Mayor Zollman
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Mayor Zollman presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation and introduced Wendy Tappon – Mobile Crisis Team Manager and Dr. Jan Cobaleda-Kegler – County Behavioral Health Director.
Wendy Tappon and Dr. Jan Cobaleda-Kegler provided an informational presentation.
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Laura
Kyle
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-311
14. Informational Presentation – Police Statistics/Report on Crime Statistics for last 5-10 years Requestor: Councilmember Carter and Vice Mayor McLewis
Responsible Department: Police
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Chief McDonagh presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation.
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Kyle
Oliver
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-312
15. Informational Presentation from Gold Ridge Fire Department on First Quarter Statistics/Volunteer Participation: Presenters: Fire Chief Shepley Schroth-Cary and Deputy Chief Dave Bray Requestor: Former Fire Ad Hoc Committee (Part of Commitment from Gold Ridge to Provide Reports) Responsible Department: Interim City Manager
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Chief Shepley presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation.
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
None
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-313
16. FY24-25 Quarter 4 Financial Update for Enterprise Funds Responsible Department: Administrative Services
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Administrative Services Director Kwong presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Kyle
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-314
17. FY24-25 Quarter 4 Financial Update for General Fund (Item will include update as to use of Measure U funds)
Responsible Department: Administrative Services
Fiscal Impact: There is no fiscal impact. This is an informational item.
Administrative Services Director Kwong presented the agenda item recommending the Council hear the presentation; ask questions, open the public comment, and receive the presentation.
Mayor Zollman asked for questions of the presenter or staff. Council asked various questions of staff and presenter. The Council provided comments to the presenters.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Robert
Kyle
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council thanked the presenter for the informational presentation.
City Council Action: None Required; Informational Only.
Reference Order Number: 2025-315
PUBLIC HEARING(s): NONE
REGULAR CALENDAR AGENDA ITEMS (DISCUSSION AND/OR ACTION):
18. Consideration and Approval of Direction to the City Attorney to Research Options Available to the City Regarding Woodmark Apartments. The City has received inquiries and concerns regarding the displacement of tenants at Woodmark Apartments. At this time, there is uncertainty as to what actions, if any, the City may take within the scope of its legal authority. This item is to request the City Council approve direction to the City Attorney to research and advise on potential options, if any.
Requestor: Mayor Zollman/Councilmember Carter
Responsible Department: City Attorney
Fiscal Impact: It will take approximately 10 hours of City Attorney time to research and analyze the options for the City to address the situation described above. It is anticipated those costs could be included within the existing City Attorney budget for general services. If the City Council decides to move forward with any of the identified options, there would be additional costs (such as for the preparation of an ordinance)
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
City Attorney Mog presented the agenda item recommending the Council consider direction to the City Attorney to Research Options Available to the City Regarding Woodmark Apartments. The City has received inquiries and concerns regarding the displacement of tenants at Woodmark Apartments. At this time, there is uncertainty as to what actions, if any, the City may take within the scope of its legal authority. This item is to request the City Council approve direction to the City Attorney to research and advise on potential options, if any.
Mayor Zollman opened the public comment. The following member(s) of the public provided public comment:
Sandy
Robert
Beth
Katarina
Chernell
Galina
Member of the public
Melissa
Jenny
Kyle
Gabby
City Council Discussion/Deliberations/Direction:
The Council discussed the agenda item and request.
Mayor Zollman called for a motion.
MOTION:
Councilmember Hinton moved and Councilmember Maurer seconded the motion to direct the City Attorney to Research Options Available to the City Regarding Woodmark Apartments.
Not to exceed 10 hours
Mayor Zollman called for a roll call vote. City staff conducted a roll call vote.
VOTE:
Ayes: Councilmembers Hinton, Maurer, Vice Mayor McLewis and Mayor Zollman Noes: None
Absent: Councilmember Carter
Abstain: None
City Council Action: Approved direction to the City Attorney to Research Options Available to the City Regarding Woodmark Apartments - Not to exceed 10 hours
Minute Order Number: 2025-316
6. Request from Climate Action Committee for Letters of Support for the California Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Assembly Bill 1243 (Addis, coauthored by Damon Connolly and Chris Rogers) and Senate Bill 684 (Menjivar).
City Council Action: None - item continued
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Reference Order Number: 2025-304
9. Approval of Amendment to Flag Policy. Policy is to Amend the recently approved flag policy to list specific banners on poles and Council Policy on discussion of Presidential Directives City Council Action: None – Item continued
Reference Order Number: 2025-307
11. Receipt of FY25-26 Budget at a Glance Format. To receive the informational item for "Budget at a Glance" which is a summary document that presents key financial information from a larger, more detailed budget in a simple, easy-to-understand format.
City Council Action: None – item continued
Reference Order Number: 2025-309
ADDITIONAL PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA: Two minutes per speaker for up to twenty (20) minutes total for public comments but can be reduced at Mayor’s discretion depending upon the number of speakers or Mayor has discretion to allow for additional time beyond the 20 minutes allocated for public comment dependent upon the subject matter or number of speakers.
COUNCILMEMBER(S) REQUESTS FOR FUTURE CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEMS CITY COUNCIL/CITY STAFF REPORTS/COMMUNICATIONS/ANNOUNCEMENTS/FUTURE MEETINGS:
19 City Manager and/or City Clerk Reports: (This will be either verbal reports at the meeting, or written reports provided at or prior to the meeting)
a. Interviews with Two Proposers for Recruitment Services for City Manager Recruitment b. Agenda Review Committee Meeting Tomorrow Wed Oct 8th at 10:30 am
20. City Council Reports/Committee/Sub-Committee Meeting Reports: (Reports by Mayor/City Councilmembers Regarding Various Agency Meetings/Committee Meetings/Sub-Committee Meeting /Conferences Attended and Possible Direction to its Representatives (If Needed) on Pending issues before such Boards. ((This will be either verbal reports at the meeting, or written reports provided at or prior to the meeting)
21. Council Communications Received (Information/Meetings/Correspondence Received from the General Public to Councilmembers)
CLOSED SESSION: NONE
ADJOURNMENT OF CITY COUNCIL MEETING
October 7, 2025 City Council Regular Meeting will be adjourned to the next Regular City Council Meeting of Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 6:00 pm, Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris Street, Sebastopol, CA.
Mayor Zollman adjourned the Regular City Council Meeting of October 7, 2025 at 10:40 pm to the next Regular City Council Meeting of Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 6:00 pm, Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris Street, Sebastopol.
Respectfully submitted,
Mary C. Gourley
Interim City Manager/City Clerk
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Attachment: Zoom Transcript
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
City Council Meeting - October 7, 2025
Just let everybody know that the setup for the meeting is running a bit behind tonight. We're trying to get everything set up with the cameras and the microphones as soon as possible. And hopefully Mary will be in later with an update on how that's going.
Can you still hear me?
Sure can. Can you still hear me?
Yep.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can. I want to make an announcement to those people who are on zoom. We are running late right now.
We are trying to get I.T. set up on our side. So we have not started the meeting. We probably won't start the meeting until 6:30, probably 6:20, 6:30, so just want to give you all a heads up.
Hi, this is for members on zoom. The city council meeting is running late. We probably won't start for about another 15 or 20 minutes. So I you all know when it is.
Good evening, I wanted to let the people know on Zoom that we are having technical issues with I.T. They are late setting up. So our meeting will be starting but not for about another 10 to 15 minutes.
And Mary, are we ready on your side?
We're ready.
Okay, I'll call the meeting to order. It is 6:16.
Recording in progress.
Thank you all for being here in person and on Zoom. And apologies on behalf of the city for this delayed start of the meeting. Mary, if you could call roll call.
Thank you. And greg, if you can change -- that would be appreciated. Councilmember carter is absent tonight.
Councilmember Hinton?
Here.
Councilmember Mauer?
Here.
Vice mayor McLewis?
Here.
Mayor Zelleman?
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Present.
Please note four councilmembers are in attendance and councilmember carter is absent tonight.
Thank you, will you join me with a salute to the flag.
Who am I switching?
Sorry, can you do naturally, inorcaNorcal to vice mayor McLewis, please? Certainly can.
-- and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Next I will read the land acknowledgement. The city of Sebastopol acknowledges that we live and work within the unseated ancestral homelands of the people. We pay our respects to the past, present, and future generations of these people, including the federated Indians. First item on the agenda is interviews for the opening -- one opening.
Mayor, I'm sorry, I need to make it known I'm attending the meeting.
Oh yes, apologies.
With a medical accommodation. That's why I'm on Zoom. So I just needed to state that. And my husband is in and out of the room, so I just wanted to make sure I followed proper process.
Thank you, thank you. Agenda item number one, interviews for upcoming for an opening on the climate action committee. There's one interview, I understand that we were to have two interview, unfortunately, we're only having one. Mary?
Olivia has stated she's not going to be able to attend tonight.
The normal process is --
To have the applicant come up to the podium. Then you can ask questions. After that, you can go to the points.
All right, there we go. So the wonderful applicant, if you could come on up to the podium. And the reason why is is not to, you know, put too much pressure on you, it's to make sure that the folks at home can hear your information and our questions. So first --
I love a podium.
There you go. So thank you first for applying and for your time here tonight. And so we just let the applicant say whatever it is you would want to know X then each of us will probably have some questions. Then we can wrap it up, and the interviews, as I'm sure Mary has said, are 15 minutes.
My name is sunny, and I've been a Sebastopol resident for 26 years. I'm a high school teacher at orchard view school in Sebastopol, and I served on the zero waste committee as the chair for several years. And I've participated just as a member of the public in the -- in some of the climate action committees. And I've done a lot of work in the community. I'm currently the co-chair of the Santa Rosa junior college climate action night, which is an annual event where we work with students from high schools and FSU and SRJC highlighting state and local climate legislation and efforts and initiatives and through that have developed a lot of relationships City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
with climate partners in the area such as Sonoma water and the Recology and Sonoma -- oh, what's our energy? I'm blanking. Sonoma clean power.
There we go.
And as a homeowner, we in the past, I guess six years, we've been able to transition to go all electric in our home, which has been great working with Sonoma clean power, taking advantage of some of their incentives. So I bring that to the table as well. I'm a bike commuter, really enthusiastic about our bike lanes and making that more accessible and safe for everyone. I've done some work with bike coalitions and whatnot in Sonoma County. I ride the bus on occasion and work with bus-riding advocates and am an educator, and I would love to just, you know, bring a really positive, friendly spirit to the committee and really work on doing things locally that are very positive and invite people in. And you know, it's a bit of a challenging time for many, many things, including climate and environmental things, and so I would -- I, you know, chaired a lot of meetings and groups, and I think I'd bring a really positive, inclusive feel and would love to, you know, I have relationships with Anna Lee teachers and students and would love to bring our local students in like we did with the zero waste committee.
Thank you. I'm going to turn to my colleagues, councilmember Mauer? First of all, thanks for applying. You're like a stellar candidate.
I think I'm the only candidate.
Our one stellar candidate. So the climate action's really kind of a challenging environment right now and difficult, and I think it's sort of people are falling away from it because it doesn't inspire hope.
Yeah.
So I'm wondering do you have ideas, what are your ideas or your projects for just projects in general but also for maybe inspiring hope in people?
Yeah, that's a great question that I've thought about, and I've organized a lot with Kenna before who's on the climate action committee and spoke with her about this. And I think kind of what I was mentioning is really bringing in opportunity for education around things one can do, such as, you know, taking advantage of Sonoma clean power incentives, the, you know, transit bike, really bringing in high schoolers to do some education, because that's really positive and great for them. I have a good relationship with the library and my cousin's the teen librarian. I've done for the zero waste committee we've done some cool educational little evenings there.
Yeah, and then working with our local partners. I look forward to working with Sonoma County resource recovery. I would like to revitalize that. When I was part of the zero waste committee, we did an event ordinance, zero waste event ordinance, which I imagine is probably like in some pile I don't know how actively it's followed, but it, you know, was written nicely and I think is a usable plan. That could be something that could be revitalized. Yeah, just really looking at kind of local education, you know, actions, positive experiences. You know, whether it's like cleanup day in the Laguna, that sort of thing. I loved the compost giveaway. You know. I don't know that we have a huge effect on climate nationally, but I think there is a lot we can do. And I think just keeping and inspiring a positive attitude and building community around projects is in itself a valid and wonderful goal.
Follow-up, councilmember?
Are you familiar with, I think it's called wasteless Windsor. And they -- City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Yeah, I've worked with those folks.
They do, at events, they have people staffing the landfill, compost, and recycling bins, so they helm people right at the event at the cans so they know where to put what.
Yeah, I have served on the LCP -- is that what it was called -- I've served on like sort of countywide committees with those folks, and have organized events like that where we've had trash talkers.
All right, turning to my right.
Go ahead.
I usually try to defer my top.
Go ahead.
Okay, my normal one is about conflict. There is a question around each of the applications, and I'm wondering if you can espouse more on should there be conflict on the climate action, what is your way to work through that? Like personal conflict on the committee?
However you would define.
I'm really good at dealing with conflict. I've been a high school teacher for 25, 26 years, and I'm a very good listener. And I don't easily, like, activate. I'm good at keeping my cool and hearing things out. So I have a, I think, a real natural sense of conflict management, and I -- I'm good at like holding space in a meeting and making sure people aren't taking too much time and just -- so that we don't get to a level of frustration and conflict. So yeah.
Well thank you. We'll go down the line, and then we'll go to vice mayor, councilmember Hinton? Hi, sunny.
Hi.
I don't really have any good questions. You're extremely qualified. When I look at your application, I always -- I look that you don't want to have a published phone number, email address, so I always ask people what if the public needed to reach you to share an idea about climate or something like that, so I guess that would be my only question.
Yeah, I mean, is there -- that could be something to talk with the committee about. Like is there a shared email that comments could go to? Because I would be happy to check through that and respond to that.
So I have no idea, but I do think appointed officials should have a way for the public to reach out to them even if we set something up through the city.
Yeah, I would be fine with that.
I was curious about that.
Email.
Just for some access.
I am very responsive by email.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Yeah, so I would be open to sharing that if there wasn't a -- I just, I do get a little inundated.
Understood. Vice mayor?
Yeah, I just have a question on the application. It says how do you feel about the role a subcommittee member relates to the community -- the only legitimate power, I just wondered if you could help me understand that better, what that means.
It was a long time ago that I wrote the application, I think it was back in June. So the question -- can you repeat my question and response again.
Sure. It says -- it's the last question, how do you feel the role of a subcommittee member relates to the community and the answer was embedding local government inside the community is the only legitimate power. So I was just wondering how that relates -- if you would help me better understand how that relates to being a committee member.
Yes. I could have elaborated better on that. Yeah, I mean, I think local government is a place where people really can participate and have influence and power and I've seen that here, and I've appreciated the council's openness to that and people getting to speak directly to their elected leaders. And I really love especially bringing young people, you know, to a meeting and to an opportunity to, you know, state their opinion and try to influence how they see fit, direction that a council might vote on something. So yeah, I do feel like local government is a really great place to feel empowered.
Excellent. And I know we have about five minutes left, but I think it looks like we're going to run out of the questions, so just anything you'd like to say to kind of leave us with.
Yeah, I just look -- I know I've been, you know, sort of a hiatus from city workings for a little while. I've had to care for my father and brother, which I still do care for my father and brother, so I do look forward to dipping my toe back in in this way. And so yeah.
Well thank you. Thank you again for the time you spent with the application, being here tonight.
Yeah. You're welcome.
Thank you, thank you. So we'll go ahead and move on to number two, which is the point of the climate action committee. And Mary, if you could kind of walk us through our normal way of doing this.
Thank you, mayor. So typically what we would do for the points is the council would go through and make their recommendation as to the interviews. We only had one tonight, so I would recommend if it's council consensus that you could go ahead. But we just do need to open up for public comment too.
Okay, great. We'll go to public comment and then bring it back up to take those recommended actions.
Thank you, mayor. If you would like to make a public comment, I come to chambers first and then go out to Zoom. It is a two-minute public comment. Is there anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on the point? Seeing none, I will go out to Zoom, if there's anyone who would like to make a public comment on the appointment, please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. No public comment, so public comment is closed.
Thank you, Mary. So is anyone prepared to make a motion or further this motion? City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
I will make a motion.
I will second it. Mary, roll call.
So moved by councilmember Mauer -- I'm sorry, so moved by Councilmember Mauer and seconded by Mayor Zelleman. Councilmember Hinton?
> Aye.
Councilmember Mauer?
Yes.
Vice Mayor McLewis?
Aye.
Mayor Zelleman?
Yes.
Councilmember carter's absent, so the motion passes 44-0.
Thank you and congratulations and looking forward to hearing about all the great work.
Thanks, sunny.
Proclamations, presentations, and introductions. We have a couple proclamations this evening. The first is recognizing survivors and pets for domestic violence awareness month. I will be reading that one and the subsequent one. This is proclamation, again, recognizing survivors and pets for domestic violence awareness month. Whereas the city of Sebastopol stands with survivors of domestic violence, survivors of abuse show extraordinary courage as they protect themselves and their loved one, seek safety and stability, and rebuild their lives. This proclamation is offered on behalf of their voices. Whereas research from 12 studies demonstrates that 50% of survivors delay or decline to leave an abusive situation if they cannot bring their pets. 70% of households have animals, 71% of the survivors report their abuser has threatened, harmed, or killed their pets. These facts make clear what survivors have always told us, pets are family and safety of pets is inseparably linked to the safety of survivors. And whereas ruthless kindness is a proud on-site partner of the family justice center of Sonoma County and their great. Collaborator with other domestic violence and victim services providers throughout Sonoma county. This extends the reach of support for survivors and their families.
Now, therefore be it resolved that I do hereby recognize survivors and pets for the month. I have set my hand on the great sale of the city of Sebastopol the 7th day of October 2025. I know wonderful people from ruthless kindness are here to receive this proclamation, so if you could come up and shake hands and receive the proclamation, that would be great. Moving on to tour second proclamation, proclamation proclaiming October 25th as domestic violence awareness month and recognizing the YWCA Sonoma County for providing vital resources for local residents. Proclamation states whereas our local community and that -- and that nearly all of us know someone who has been abused, the crime of domestic violence violates individual's privacy, dignity, and security based on the use of emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, and economic control or abuse.
Whereas only an informed community effort will end the cycle of violence for local families, members of the community are encouraged to participate in the YWCA's scheduled events and programs to raise much-needed City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
funding to support their vision for every family in Sonoma County to live healthy, productive lives and to be safe in their homes. Now, therefore be it resolved that I, Stephen Zollman, on behalf of the entire city council do proclaim October 25th in the city of Sebastopol as domestic violence awareness month and witness thereof I am here to put my hand on the great sale of the city of Sebastopol this 7th day of October 2025. And I know also we have a recipient, so if she could come on up to the dais. The next proclamation is proclaiming zero waste week, October 11th through the 18th, and Councilmember Mauer? Whereas the city of Sebastopol has assumed a leadership role by setting zero waste as a goal and adding a zero waste resolution and sets a goal of zero waste by 2030. And whereas each year zero waste Sonoma and community partners host one day zero waste symposium for the public to gain insight on zero waste topics and trends, share ideas, and network. And whereas since 2022, the zero waste Sonoma has coordinated and promoted a week of events aimed at educating and empowering various sectors of the public to act towards zero waste and whereas since 2022 zero waste Sonoma has partnered with groups and volunteers to expand these event offerings which have included clothing and produce -- repair and reuse fairs, litter cleanups, food waste, reduction classes, environmental film screenings and more. And whereas the city of Sebastopol along with the public, private, and nonprofit organizations and community groups will be hosting zero waste events throughout the week of October 11th through the 18th. Now therefore be it resolved that Mayor Zollman of the city of Sebastopol, on behalf of the entire city council, proclaims October 11th through the 18th 2025 zero waste week.
Thank you, is there a recipient to receive the proclamation? If not, we'll pass it to Mary, and she'll make sure that we find an appropriate recipient. Not seeing any, we're going to move to proclamation recognizing October breast cancer awareness month and vice mayor?
Yes, so every October communities across the country come together to recognize breast cancer awareness month. Breast cancer awareness month is a time to raise awareness, honor the millions of lives affected by breast cancer -- I apologize, I swore I wouldn't do this -- breast cancer awareness month is also an opportunity to MIE light the fact that one in eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
Approximately one person every two minutes. October 13 is naturally recognized in the U.S. as metastatic breast cancer awareness day. It is estimated that about 168,000 women in the U.S. are living with metastatic breast cancer, a form of cancer that spreads to other parts of the body. It also affects men. In 2021, president Joe Biden designated -- according to the American cancer society, approximately 2,800 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2025 and about 51 are expected to die from the disease. This year's theme is every story is unique, every journey matters. Every breast cancer diagnosis is personal. Behind each diagnosis is a story of courage, resilience, and hope. This reminds us that breast cancer touches the lives of women, men, and their families differently. It reinforces the need for timely -- and compassionate care for all, regardless of geography, income, or background. No matter who you are, where you live, breast cancer may touch your life. Now therefore be it resolved that Stephen Zollman, mayor of the city of Sebastopol, on behalf of the entire city council does hereby proclaim October 025 in the city of Sebastopol and encourages everyone in our community to offer compassion and support to those affected by this disease. And may I, Mayor, for a second? Of course.
I just wanted to say as a breast cancer patient going through that right now, going through chemotherapy and losing my hair, I just wanted to encourage everyone out there, if you haven't been screened to please do so, because my early screening is saving my life. And while I am going through chemotherapy, I will be finished in City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
December, and if I hadn't done that early screening, it would have been a much different story for me. So just thank you for letting me say that.
Of course, and thank you. And thank you for reading the proclamation. I have signed the original. Mary has it and will make sure that an appropriate recipient receives it. Thank you. That ends the proclamation presentation part. Statements of conflicts of interest. Looking to my right, my left, vice mayor, any conflict you would like to declare? Hearing none, I am going to assume that that is a no, and so we are going to move on to the public comment for items not on the agenda. And this is the first comment period, Mary? Thank you, Mayor, so as you stated, this is a public comment for items not on tonight's agenda. It is a 20-minute time limit, which is about ten speakers. Two minutes per speaker. I will go to chambers first and then out to Zoom. Oliver?
Happy birthday, Mary.
Thank you.
I just want to make a comment about public comment, actually, and written public comment. One of the few things we actually got the previous mayor to do was that during the public meant period that written public comment is really important. So it would be really good if that would be brought up. Because a lot of people can construct a well thought through argument and put it in writing and send it to the council and to anybody that listens to it. You only have 120 seconds. I'm always up here, but a lot of people are too shy and can't get their act together so say what they want to say. I think it's really important. The press democrat have -- only if you had a subscription, you could only comment if you had a subscription. Same with festival times, you don't get to comment. There's a whole perspective there. So I think that written comment is really, really important. I have to say, got a minute left, excuse me, there was a member of public got a public records request for counselor Mora about some of the comments, the back chat about what was going on with the vice mayor. And I just happened to see going through it this evening or this afternoon that somebody said I don't care much about public comment, no one reads it, and it will fade. I don't know whether it was -- which counselor that was, I thought that was very inappropriate. Because to me, what people say about the city behind the scenes and in public meant is probably more important than the actual council meetings in a lot of ways, so that's my public comment. Thank you.
Thank you, Oliver for your public comment. I will go next out to Zoom. If you would like to make a public comment for an item not on the agenda, please raise your hand virtually. I'm not seeing anyone on Zoom. I will come back into the chambers, Kyle?
Thanks, Oliver, for bringing up a really important topic. At the last council meeting we had a large number of people here for items not on the agenda. The mayor said he has been advised he is not able to respond to public comment. And that is absolutely false. And that needs to be addressed. Our councilmembers absolutely have the right to respond to public comment. What they do not have the right to do is take action based on that public comment. That needs to be clarified in the record, because there has been a massive erosion of public comment over the last three to five years. In particular we had a mayor who reduced public comment from three minutes to two minutes. We had a reduction of public comment period. There is an attempt to take public comment from the beginning of the meeting to the end of the meeting. And there was the suggested justification is somehow the lengths of the meeting where a result of public comment. And not as a result of political grand standing, failure to maintain a meeting, failure to maintain the timing of a meeting, and it's really important that our councilmembers engage with the public meaningfully. So it's not surprising to me to hear City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
that a public information request results in that type of dialogue, because it's very, very clear public comment is not respected and not utilized in the decision making process. That was the purpose of public comment, and it needs to be valued and it needs to be demonstrated regularly that you are both responding to public comment and you are engaging with public comment, otherwise, what is the purpose of public comment? Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. Next I will go back out to Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment for an item not on the agenda -- Steve, can you, you have unmuted. Can you hear us okay?
Yes.
Go ahead, please.
Steve pierce, the chair of the climate action committee, and we brought the super fund endorsement -- I'm sorry, Steve, I'm going to pause you there. That is actually on the agenda tonight. This is time for comments on items not on the agenda.
I was informed --
It's on the consent calendar and has not been pulled yet.
Okay.
So it'll be during -- if you want to make a public comment, it would be during that time.
Very good, thank you.
Thank you. So again, this is for public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda. If you would like to make a public comment, I will come back into chambers, if there's anyone in chambers for an item not on tonight's -- seeing none in chambers, I will go back out to Zoom, if there's anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment. Mary, can you unmute yourself, please.
Yep, I'm unmuted.
Go ahead.
Thank you. Oliver was probably referring to my public comment. I did a PRA about how much time Neesa and Sandra spent talking to our city attorney and the staff and it was quite a bit of time talking to the attorney. I think it was 5.3 hours. And I think the -- I think the public should know that -- that a lot of our taxpayer's money went to that. And you can read my public comment. It's short. Oh yes, and happy birthday, Mary. That's it.
Thank you. Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come back into chambers, if there's anyone on chambers that would like to make a public comment? Seeing none, I will go back out to Zoom, if there's anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment for an item not on agenda, please raise your hand virtually? Public comment is closed.
Thank you, and thank you to the member of the public that did remind anyone who's mayor to reiterate the fact that, yes, we do encourage members of the public to submit their public comment about action items that have been published and for anything in the world. All you have to do is send it to Mary, and Mary will probably forward it to us within five minutes. I'm just going to comment on that. And I'm going to turn to Alex to give him an opportunity to respond to the other commenter about what we are allowed to do about public comment.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Yeah, so for items not on the agenda, the city council cannot discuss an item not on the agenda. So you can make brief comments in response, just like you just made a brief comment in response to someone pointing out written public comment, but the council can't engage in a discussion regardless of whether any action is taken or not of an item that is not on the agenda. You can make, you know, brief comments in response.
Okay, thank you. And Councilmember Mauer?
I just wanted to respond to the comments about public comments. And I just want to be clear with the public that I highly value public meants. To me they are the cornerstone of good council decisions. Our residents and even our west county residents have eyes and ears that we don't have. We need to hear from you. So somehow the idea that public comments isn't valued is just wrong. And I want to make that statement because I feel really strongly about that. Thank you.
Thank you. Moving on to the consent calendar items. There are several, so I promise to be as entertaining as I possibly can as I read these. Number three, approval of the city council meeting minutes of accept 16, 2025.
Number four, resolution authorizing MUNI services LLC to audit sales tax receipts for the new measure year local transaction and use tax. Five, receipt of results from the request for proposals for city I.T. assessment audit and rejection of bids. And if I do not say it, these have no fiscal impact unless I specifically state that they do.
Number six, request for climate action committee for letters of support for the California polluters pay climate super fund assembly bill 1243. Number seven, authorization for the mayor to sign on to the mayors for Equal Rights Amendment ERA petition. Number eight, adoption resolution approving quick claim deed for the public landscape easement at 6921 bodega avenue. Number nine, approval of amendment to the flag policy, policy is to amend the recently approved policy to list specific banners and poles on presidential directives. Number ten, receipt of presentation by zero waste Sonoma, zero waste week, October 11th through 18th. That proclamation was read earlier this evening. And finally, number 11, receipt of the fiscal year 25/26 budget at a glance to receive the informational item for the budget at a glance, which is a summary document that presents key financial information from a larger, more detailed budget in a simple, easy to read format. Turning to my colleagues to see if anyone would like to pull one of the consent calendar items. Turning to my right, seeing none, turning to my left.
I'd like to pull number nine, the flag policy, please.
Okay. So that will appear at the end of the calendar. And I'm sure Mary will remind me if I might overlook that.
And then I'm going to turn to our vice mayor. Vice mayor, would you wish to pull any of the items on the consent calendar? Hearing none, we're going to assume -- okay, see shaking of head no, there is no desire to pull an item.
I have one comment.
For sure.
Mary --
I just wanted to remind the mayor that Councilmember carter has requested item number six to be pulled to be discussed at a future city council meeting.
That is correct. So there was a request -- and so as I understand it, it'd have to be a second request from one of us in order to entertain the idea of pulling it from the consent calendar? Alex I see you leaning in.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Well, so one of you can pull it and honor his request. He cannot -- he's not here, he can't pull anything. But one of you, if you want, can pull it on his behalf.
Thank you, Mary, were you going to request? No? Okay, I'll request for him.
I have a comment.
Oh yes, sandy. Or councilmember Maurer.
Sorry, I have two comment, actually. One is number 11, the BUBLT at a glance. The budget committee did review this document and corrections were made, and I just want to say thank you to our admin Anna for the great work she did creating this document. And I think it's too bad it's not -- I'm not going to pull it, but I think it's unfortunate that it's not on the regular calendar, because it's a great document and maybe the public might have some comments. But I'm not going to pull it at this time. And then the other comment is about the zero waste presentation because a large part of what zero waste is is education. So if we had an in-person -- If we could ask somebody to pull the door shut. Thank you. Sorry, Councilmember Maurer.
It would be more impactful. So I'm just asking maybe for the future if zero waste gives us a presentation, we can have them come in person.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
And with that we'll go to public comment. Mary?
Thank you, Mayor, sorry, this is for public meant for items on the consent calendar. Item number nine, the flag policy, will be discuss at the end of the agenda, but we do have the consent calendar items right now. Kyle? I want to speak on budget at a glance. So what's not clear to me in the agenda as it's stated is whether or not they'll be accessible to the entire full budget. The reason I say this is because for many years I would utilize the budget of the city of -- to be able to do things like understand how many full-time employees the two cities had so we could actually see a lot of the differences between the two cities and the ways that the city of Sebastopol some may categorize as wasteful spending over many years. So to utilize that ability to transpose those two different cities and to make those comparisons. Well, when they went to city on a glance, many of the very specific details were removed. And so I just want to state publicly if the city is going in this direction of city at a glance that if we start to see the erosion of the actual details of the budget being publicly made available as a result of city at a glance, it was noticed early on in the process of that decision. Just wanted to make that known before we move forward.
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. Next I will go out to Zoom, if you would like to make a public comment on the consent calendar. Steve, can you unmute yourself, please? Thank you, can you see the timer? I can, thank you.
Great, go ahead, please.
Yes, Steve Pierce, the chair of the climate action mitt tee which brought the polluter's pay fund forward to the council. I'm speaking on behalf of the committee. I want to thank the council for apparently removing this measure from the meeting tonight as because the council liaison to our committee is not here. I think Mayor City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Zollman did that. I'm not totally sure. And I want to apologize on behalf of the climate committee staff that we could have beenmore clear that it's on a two-year cycle -- lined up before the start of the year to be able to hit the ground running in January. Now I'm speaking as an individual, not as committee member. The councilmembers may not agree with this statement, but climate action is one of the core values of the city as can be seen in the general plan, the climate action framework, and many city climate actions taken over the years. Part of the initial staff recommendation for denial of this endorsement is that the league of California cities has not taken a position on it. As city voters, we voted for you all to represent our city, not the league of California cities. And I understand that the league is now apparently starting to look at this and will come back with more information on this measure. And I want to know if a question can be asked, that is, is this a formal adopted policy by the entire council? 11 other cities in California have already passed a resolution in support. As a city, we have the capacity to do this and the responsibility to match our community values with action. We not only would be standing up for our values but with the passage and implementation of the climate super fund, Sebastopol could have new resources to help pay for climate impacts -- That's two minutes. Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come back into chambers if there's anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on the consent calendar. Seeing none, I will go out to Zoom. Robert, can you unmute yourself, please.
Yes.
Thank you, can you see the timer?
Can you hear me? .
Yes, can you see the timer?
Yes, I can.
Go ahead, please.
Just real briefly, the budget at a glance, I think Kyle already spoke to it, I think it's a reasonable improvement in the way information is presented. I think it's a big leap to think that the public understands some of the graphics that are included there. Unfortunately, it's not something that's part of everyday -- everybody's education. My only concern would be that water and sewer or water and wastewater revenue and expenses at the top section and water and wastewater, whatever you call it, it's still revenue and expenses in the bottom section, have much different numbers. I tried to reconcile them and couldn't, so I'm not sure that it's simply a matter of capital expenses included in one and not in the other, but whatever it is, either the numbers should be the same, or there should be some footnotes of some kind to explain why they're different. Thank you.
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come back into chambers, if there's anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on the consent calendar item? Seeing none, I will go back out to Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment on the consent calendar items, please raise your hand virtually. Seeing none, public comment is closed on consent calendar items.
Thank you. And I'm turning to Alex, because just want to make sure proceduralprocedurally -- what's going to happen with that item, right?
We can, if you want, as part of this motion you could all at once approve the consent calendar and continue that item to a future date. If the council wants to do that, we could just hold that item to the end and discuss at that time.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Is there a will of the body to keep it as far as the concept and grant the request to continue it? Councilmember Maurer?
I'd keep it on consent. There was no opposition to it. So I would keep it on consent calendar rather than pulling it. Or defer it to a later meeting.
Okay. And so, Councilmember Hinton? It looks like --
Well, I was, I mean, I -- it doesn't seem like there's opposition to it. That's why I'm not understanding why we're not leaving it on consent. I'm fine with it remaining on consent. I think Councilmember carter might have been concerned about it, but there's no reason. He didn't ask me personally to pull it, so I'm fine with it on consent as well.
Alex, can I comment about the reason why I kind of --
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
I mean, what I got from Councilmember Carter was the fact that he had not wanted to remain on consent, because as it stated on consent calendar, it would be actually a denial of the request, is what I understood. So if that is the staff's position is an outright denial of the request to grant the issue -- the letter of support, then I would like to pull it to have further discussion about what the will of the council wants to do in reference to that or actually to see if the council would be willing to continue it until Councilmember Carter can be here to argue it himself.
Yeah, and it sounds like that may be a desire from some councilmembers to just go ahead and authorize the approval of the letter, so I would recommend we just pull it and discuss it at the end of the meeting.
Okay.
At that point.
All right, great. So that's what we'll do. We're going to move nine and ten to the end of the calendar and is there a motion to approve all the items but for nine and ten, Councilmember Maurer? I'd like to pull number 11, budget at a glance, because there's been two comments about people confused about the numbers in the enterprise funds, and I'd just like to have clarity about that. So.
Okay. Great. Is there a motion now to approve all items one through eight? I believe it's item six, nine, and now 11 that are being pulled.
Oh, yes, apologies. 6, 9, and 11. Yes. Thank you.
I'll make a motion.
Thank you, councilmember Maurer.
Excepting, you know, to adopt the consent calendar except number 6, 9, and 11.
I will second that. Mary, roll call?
So moved by Councilmember Maurer and seconded by Mayor Zollman to approve consent calendar items 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, with items 6, 9, 11 to be discussed at the end of the regular calendar.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Oh, sorry. I guess we need a vote, right? Councilmember HINton? Aye.
Councilmember MAURer?
Yes.
Vice Mayor McLewis?
Yes.
Passes. Councilmember Carter absent.
Informational items, number 12. And this is the informational presentation, a presentation by hunter Scott, home first on coordinated entry. Just to give people the framework, we have been discussing under our goal of public safety how we can serve our unhoused, and through the presentation by Mr. Sullivan from department of health services earlier, the nature of the questions led me to believe that it would be good to go back up further into the food chain to understand how people get placed.
Hey, Brian. Whoops, sorry. My wi-fi isn't working, I apologize, I'm trying to get help.
No worries. How people get placed, how the unsheltered get screened, and how they ultimately get referred to permanent supportive housing projects. And the reason why the calendars, if anyone is interested, about why it seems to be so heavily focused, is because we do have -- comments coming available. So for me the timing was imperative that we hear about the process because when we heard from jack Tibbits it seemed like the city might be able to have an opportunity to influence who actually would be able to move into those projects. And if that is the case, it would be really good to know when that opportunity's going to arise so that everyone will know this process a little better than what happened with Burbank. So that's -- those are my comments, my introductory comments. So hunter, please, take it away, and thank you Caitlin also for being here.
Thank you so much for that introduction and having us here. I'm the vice president. Home first is a 45-year-old organization with the goal of ending homelessness. We've operated the coordinated entry system in Sonoma County for the last three years. During that time about 2,500 people have left the system into permanent housing and 3,600 people are served by the system each year. I just want to thank the city of Sebastopol, because you've provided incredible contributions towards addressing homelessness over to years with various supportive housing sites and your outreach team. And so thank you for that. But I also want to recognize that not every contribution has been entirely positive for everybody involved. There's some understandable fear about how -- how governing this is going to work. Our goal today is to talk about our role in filling these types of sites and what it's not. If there's time at the end, we'll provide some additional support that we can provide to ensure that these sites contribute to a vibrant Sebastopol. So I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Kaitlin Johnson-Carney to do the bulk of our presentation. If there's time at the end, I'll come back for a couple of closing comments.
Thank you, hunter, and thank you to the city council of Sebastopol. I believe we've got some slides, great. Do the next slide, please. All right, so the coordinated entry system is the system through which homeless housing referrals are sent. This is the basic flow of the CE system. People experiencing homelessness are assessed by a community-based organization. That assessment places them on a list prioritized by need. Then referrals are made from that list into housing depending on the specific eligibility of that housing project. Next slide, please.
This is the vision for the coordinated entry system, which was created through community feedback sessions City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
held when home first first took over operations of the coordinated entry system back in 2022. The bolded words are the values that we keep centered in this square. To make accessing the coordinated entry system as easy as possible, we've partnered with 31 different community-based organizations to serve as access points. When home fist started operations with coordinated entry, there were only 12 access points available for the public.
We now have 31. The access point role is to assess people and keep contact and keep those people connected and informed. Next slide, please. And here's our role as the coordinated entry system as the operator. We do a lot. The coordinated entry system's central role is to facilitate housing replacement referrals. Everything we do is centered around that core role. We have increased successful referral placements by 81% in the past two years, and all of our communications, partnership development, data quality work, that's all done to make sure our key system is upholding the values on the last slide. What we don't have a role in is putting people into a shelter, homelessness prevention services, new housing development or setting eligibility. Next slide, please. We train partner staff to make sure that everyone getting served by the coordinated entry system is receiving the same standard of service. We host a monthly training series to provide wider trainings based on community need. We now host 23 quarterly trainings when homefirst took over operations, that was one per quarter. Next slide, please. And we also facilitate the coordinated case entry conference every Friday. This is where housing referrals and housing placement is considered. We have partners that attend, clinicians, community health workers, anyone whose role touches people experiencing homelessness, we're trying to get them involved. Those partners know their participants and can speak to their needs. We often have people up for housing match referral and somebody speaks up and lets us know that that housing project is not going to meet that person's specific needs. That's especially helpful after things go awry when somebody moves into housing. We have a case to mitigate evictions where the housing provider can bring up the problems that they're having to try to bring more support in and solutions. Going forward, we will be having a renewed focus on these mitigations.
Next slide, please. Okay, so now we're going to get into some detail of how that housing placement referral process happens. First we need to differentiate between eligibility and prioritization. Eligibility is the criteria that individual housing projects use to set -- to screen households that are prioritized in our coordinated entry system. The coordinated entry system does not set eligibility criteria. Prioritization, then, is the order that households are ranked in for placement. That's determined through assessments completed by our partners at those access points. Prioritization just went through some huge changes that took two years to complete. Next slide, please. So he's the visual representation of the difference between eligibility and prioritization. We filter or screen for people eligible for that specific project, and then those who are eligible are prioritized by the level of need chosen for that specific housing project. We're going to go into more detail about eligibility and prioritization right now. Next slide, please. So eligibility is different for each housing provider and also each individual housing project. There are three main criteria for how eligibility criteria is determined for projects that receive housing placement referrals from the coordinated entry system. The first is a requirement for all permanent supportive housing, and that is chronic homelessness. That's a definition set by the federal government. Criteria two would be the property management criteria. That's usually things like screening background checks, income, that sort of thing. The third criteria is usually the most complex. That is funding stream contract requirements. That criteria can vary quite a lot between project to project, so there are some that have requirements that everyone being referred is enrolled in Sonoma County behavioral health. Others have requirements that everyone be within one of the sub regional by names list. That is something that potentially the city of Sebastopol could tap into to get some say. Next slide, please. So prioritization is how we rank households. The ranking is based on the needs that that person or household has, which the coordinated entry system determines through four factors length of time homeless, increased risk of death, increased risk of victimization, and institutional utilization. Prioritization is not determined by us at homefirst, it is determined by -- the federal government and the Sonoma County homeless commission. Next slide, please. So here's a City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
flowchart of how housing match referrals happen in coordinated entry. I'm not going to go into the final details, there's a lot of words up there. Unless anyone's curious. The most important thing to remember is we have a case conference full of professionals, including many clinicians involved with making all the decisions there.
Including that initial referral match decision and rejecting any referrals. We as the operator don't get a vote in that process. Next slide, please. So these last couple of slides are about how new housing providers are onboarded into receiving housing match referrals through the coordinated entry system. Going forward -- sorry -- we do have a checklist with all the things that need to get done in order for a housing project to be ready to engage with the coordinated entry system. This includes trainings, putting together a list of -- a listing page in our housing packet that details projects, its eligibility criteria, and its amenities. And we also support in the lease up process. Next slide, please. For Gravenstein commonsspecifically, in about June the CE system will assist saint Vincent DePAUL in those steps. At least two months before lease up we start sending housing match referrals at case conference and assisting with any that become problematic. And next slide, please. And thank you if anyone has any questions or wants to learn more about the coordinated entry system, please feel free to reach out to us.
Thank you. Hunter?
If there's additional time, I want to respect your time and maybe ten minutes.
Yes.
Just a couple of closing comments?
Yes.
Thank you, Kaitlin. I want to note that, you know, when we look at the data across the entire county, permanent supportive housing sites like this, 92% do remain successfully in those sites. You know, we could see maybe an additional few percentage points of folks that aren't doing well and need additional services, right? But the point I'm trying to make here is that, you know, the model generally does work, but it's clear that we need targeted additional resources or alternative resources for a small percentage of people going into these sites. In addition to everything Kaitlin mentioned, there's a couple of efforts underway countywide that homefirst doesn't own but we're involved in. I want to speak to those quickly. The first is just coordination of additional layered services, particularly behavioral health services. We have some folks here who I'm sure are going to talk about that tonight. Homefist is interested in finding ways the system can tap into that and coordinate better. The second is the homeless coalition is working on countywide standards that could do things like tackle what's the communication plan when these types of sites open in the community. I hope that city of Sebastopol actually adopts them for sites in your jurisdiction. Lastly, there's an idea we've been floating around with Nolan and DHS staff around taking some of the most vulnerable in our community and routing them into county shelters first with the idea they could stabilize there before going into permanent supportive housing.
And so that's the direction we choose to move in. We've been in communication about how coordinated entry could work with a homeless coalition to shift our policies to support such a move. And we'll be at the table to make that happen if needed. So that's it for us. Thanks so much.
All right, thank you both. And now I'm turning to my colleagues for questions, because if not, I have several.
Looking to my right, looking to my left. Councilmember? Okay, I'll go back to the vice mayor. Okay, so let me make sure that I got this and that it's clear for the public. So what I keep hearing is the fact that eligibility for who gets placed in these projects is driven by funding and that the permanent supportive housing providers are the ones that choose the funding from the very beginning. Is that correct? City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
I think the funders are typically driving the seat. What we see is that the permanent supportive housing providers are project managing that and combining the different funding sources to figure out what the appropriate eligibility criteria are.
Right. I mean, the funders can be anyone. Wells Fargo. But it's up to the permanent supportive housing project to pick what funding they want to accept, is that not correct? Correct. Yeah.
Okay, so for Gravenstein commons, it was saint Vincent DePAUL who chose the funding they were wanting to accept, which then drives the rest of this project, is that a fair assessment? Absolutely.
Okay. What I keep hearing from providers as well is there are no common definitions throughout this entire industry. None. Like those that are providers struggle with using the terminology that maybe you use, that DHS uses, which to you kind of agree with that statement? And if so, what would you -- what would you have to bring to the table to tighten up those definitions?
I mean, it's a dense field. That's for sure. You know, it takes a while to become an expert in the field. We do provide technical assistance, and so if it's CE related where the confusion is happening, we've provided hundreds of hours and will continue to do so as part of our scope of work to deal with and support that. I think I'll leave it there.
Okay. You did mention -- thank you for refreshing my memory -- that a lot of what you do -- and just to be clear, the county contracts with you.
Correct.
To do the services that you just described, correct?
Correct.
So you could be replaced by the county and another subbed in, correct? But what you mentioned earlier was the training, the training that you provide. With where you are now, do you feel comfortable with the training and the definitions that you use through the system? Do you believe they're consistent? In the coordinated entry system of Sonoma County, the definitions are consistent, unless, I mean, we're always happy to improve, right? Like we host quarterly input sessions with providers and look forward to that kind of feedback.
I will just say, I've heard from more than one provier, significant providers from the county, that the definitions are not the same. Just a heads up there. The timeline, I would like you to be more clear to us and the public as you sit here now, because I understand you email Jack to figure out the timing. Because just for those who haven't been following this thread, when Mr. Tibbits came, he said that we as a city would have a chance to weigh in with who may be placed in Gravenstein commons. So I'm taking that that that's true. So you put something forward six months before somebody gets keys to move in. I understand that timing has changed for some certain reasons. I would want to know when are you available and when would you recommend that that meeting takes place with Mary, myself maybe as the liaison, to sit with Jack and you to go over applicants to decide whether they would be a fit given what we know they will end up receiving if they get keys to their project. What month should we think about having that meeting? City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you for the question. So I do want to clarify. The eligibility criteria -- it would be unusual for eligibility criteria to get to the point where a city is reviewing individual applicants. It's not impossible. But I'm just sort of processing that idea live here. In terms of the general question of when is it appropriate to set eligibility criteria and get involved in that, we said June, right, that's generally when that process happens. It can happen earlier if Jack solidifies his funding streams earlier. That's really what it's dependent on.
Okay, interesting. So just want to be clear from you and your perspective, the fact that we will not be having a meeting to go over with Jack and you for the applicants.
It's up to the criteria that Jack sets.
Okay, sure, Councilmember Hinton?
I don't want to step in, but I just want to say as a councilmember when I heard Mr. Tibbits say that, and I've heard other people say that we would have some influence or say, I didn't think it would go to the level of we'd sit down at a meeting and be reviewing individual HIPAA-based applications. But I think, in fairness, that I know we have an ongoing conversation with our city manager, with Jack and this project, that we are, of course, concerned about having local applicants that need these services to stay within their community. That is why at least I have voted for these projects to serve first are our community and then -- and having a local preference.
So just want to make that clear from we are each individual councilmembers, and it was not my expectation that we would be sitting in a room picking the applicants for the project. Just want to make that clear. So that's not what I heard from Mr. Tibbits.
Okay. So maybe we'll be having a meeting and from what you just said, hunter, we should be looking to set up this meeting in what month? June?
June, yeah.
June.
I mean, again, it can happen earlier. And I'm happy to sort of help liaison and find out when he's solidified his funding streams if we want to do it earlier, right? Yeah.
So great, so probably we won't do what Councilmember Hinton said about like privacy data, that, I mean, maybe I went too far on that. Not individual applicants, but those with not delineated age, whatever, one level above that. But that would be the process from your perspective of us sitting in a room talking about large geographic parts that won't be tied to an individual person.
Yeah, I mean, if I can, yeah. There is a -- Kaitlin mentioned the by names list. I think Christy mentioned that recently. Jack as well. So there are some housing projects in Sonoma County that set their eligibility criteria to be a local bynames list. There is a west county bynames list. I think there's 123 people on it today. I think it's 100 -- let me check my texts, I got it earlier. I think it's 123. But you know, yeah, 123 today. Those are live numbers.
And I think I've heard some concern from councilmembers and when I've listened in past meetings that that's not specific enough to Sebastopol, you could potentially -- well, jack could potentially set the eligibility criteria to be -- they've had to have contact with an outreach worker in Sebastopol, right? I think the challenge there, this is getting into the nuts and bolts, but that makes the sort of eligibility group very, very narrow. And potentially too narrow to actually fill the project if not everybody meets that chronic homelessness definition that the federal government also requires, for example. At least currently, that could change. So those are the things that City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
we kind of have to math out together, and we're willing to sort of do that openly with you all and with Jack, yeah.
Okay, great. I'll have a follow up with our wonderful interim city manager about setting that date. So that answers that question, and then lastly, we have heard from members of the public, I too am concerned about what's going on with the federal government and how that's going to affect permanent supportive housing as a whole. Talk about like slashing up to 80% to 30%. So if that happens, like how is that going to affect your work? And as it flows to us with the timing that we just talked about for the opening of Graven stein Commons, can you comment on that?
I want to hand it to DHS. I don't know -- you're probably not prepared to take it either, but I think COC funding, which is the one that I think the article -- flows through department of health services, and so I think that DHS is -- they let me know they're best suited to answer that question. You know, what I can say is that coordinated entry could be defunded all together. We don't know. And so -- Great. Those are my questions, thank you for bearing with. And I don't know, Mr. Sullivan, if you want to just jump in on the status, because it is a thing that I keep hearing in the community of like, okay, so you're opening a permanent supportive housing. Dirt's being dug, but what's happening with the federal government? Yeah.
If they crash and burn everything, is it still going to progress? I think that's the billion dollar question for everybody. The unfortunate answer is we don't know yet. So we are hearing all sorts of things through the rumor mill. There have been rumors on hud since Junish. They range from devastating to status quo. The shutdown has exacerbated sort of all of the problems in the timeframe, to be honest. A lot of what was actually happening happens through the appropriations act and the budget, which is supposed to be happening now but is delayed. So there was anticipation that we would have some -- some input or some knowledge of kind of what's happening through the transportation, housing, and urban development appropriations act, the thud, it's all delayed. We don't know. There is a rumor we're starting to get firmer information out of the federal government and kind of the network of COCs is starting to hear about that. And again, anything more than speculation today would be, you know, I don't want to panic people or not, we just don't know yet. [ Captioners transitioning ]WE WILL KNOW VERY SOON. NOT JUST YOUR PROJECT, BUT ALMOST
ALL OF THE HOUSING PROJECTS IN SONOMA COUNTY, IF NOT CALIFORNIA, IF NOT THE DEPENDING ON WHAT IS ASK THE PAST, WHICH WE KNOW know percent for another couple of months, the jury is sort of out. I would add a three month stopgap to many of your planning purposes to really figure out what this looks like. I would put a pause on anything that is strongly federally based for 2 to 3 months before we figure out what's going to happen. And maybe all of this panic is for nothing and it's a status quo budget and nothing actually happens and it's all good. Again, we just don't know yet. More to come.
Thank you. Thank you for jumping in on that. Other questions? Oh, counselor. Vice. Whoops. Vice Mayor? Sorry, I didn't see her hand. Thank you.
That's okay. I was going to say, I'm glad you asked that question. And for those of you, I don't know if people are aware. Cal matters had a story out yesterday about this how the federal government is cutting this and it could happen before we even have time to wind down programs picks so glad you asked that, Mayor. That's something that I have read and am very concerned. And I have a friend that works for -- Anyways, thank you.
Thank you. If there are no more questions then we will go out to public comment.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
You can take a seat. Thank you. This is the opportunity for public comment on the informational item. If you would like to make a public comment I will go to Chambers first and then out to zoom. Kyle? Alex, have you met Hunter? I look forward to agenda item 18 and I really hope you have the opportunity to speak with someone like Hunter and the research that I would have expected to already be done tonight regarding what the city can do with supporting folks in housing situations where there are federal requirements of the tenants of those housing. And if the city could maybe mandate that those types of situations, some sort of a service like this, be tied to a housing development and the requirements of the housing development through an ordinance or through some means. Anyway, I'm getting too far off track. I really appreciate this presentation.
It's very surprising to me that we don't have objective standards in place that require things like this. I know that objective standards took a very long time, maybe years too long to actually get completed. And I don't think they have anything like this in them when it comes to low income, federally grant supportive housing. So it's really great to hear, specifically this housing development that are focused on, where there is transitional youth housing. That there's going to be an opportunity for the city to make sure, in advance, that there is transitional youth that will be placed in a situation where there is federal funding that is expecting that you are providing housing to those transitional youth. And it is surprising to hear that the definition of transitional youth isn't consistent across systems and it's very well the case that you are not able to find homeless folks are also transitional youth and you will have the decision to make how much leeway we have to expand our scope outside of this area, finding homeless folks that do fit the needs of the transitional youth housing as defined by the federal government with the expectation of getting those folks into housing. Thank you pick Thank you, Kyle. For your public comment. Robert, can you unmute yourself please? Go ahead, please.
I have a longer comment maybe. I just heard a recommendation to pause for three months anything is federally funded as it relates to housing. Isn't -- Team federally funded? Are we still breaking ground on the project? Second, it seems a couple of weeks ago we were told it would be opening in July and now we are hearing November? A lot has changed. It sounded like the mayor was surprised by that also. I suspect there will be more follow-up behind the scenes. Lastly, just to express to people that are listening to the county now, the frustration we feel about the cost of homelessness in our city, at times in the last couple of years we have had more than 100 homeless in our city and it has created a significant demand for police services. It was estimated one time 65% of our officers, their time was being spent on homeless issues. When Elderberry opened we were promised that our homeless would have an opportunity to get into this housing and that would reduce our burden. It didn't happen. When it reopened we were hopeful. But it didn't happen. But we have now is the homeless on the street costing us money. And the problems at Elderberry are costing us more money on top of that on top of police time to do with all the issues there. Somehow the whole idea of housing first was to take people off the street, reduce the cost of caring for them on the street for that's not happening in Sebastopol. It may be happening in Stone County, it's not happening in Sebastopol and we need your help to do that. Thank you.
Thank you for your public comment. Next, I will come back. If there is anyone in the chambers that will make a public comment period of seeing none. Let's go out to zoom. They you go. You've already unmute it. Can you see the timer?
I can. Thank you.
Great. Go ahead.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
This will be short. Understand that we are already on the agenda for the end of the night or something like that.
But I can't believe we are talking about homelessness now from stopping people from being on the street when somebody families are going to be homeless in Sebastopol in a matter of eight weeks or so. I'm going to be the first one losing my house. I'm 65 years old and I will be the first one evicted here comes the first one to move in.
Yet, we are talking about all of this other stuff. And if the elephant in the room, you have a huge apartment complex appear with all of these people. Seniors, people with children in school, disabled, we are about to be evicted. His home first going to contact us and try to keep us from falling on the street? I just find it almost obscene. I can't believe this. What is being done for us that you've already got people who are at risk of being homeless? We are vulnerable. And yet we are talking about all of this other stuff. Yet, we are the last people on the list tonight. I don't understand this. I don't understand this. Very disappointing. I've written to both the city Attorney as well as Pat McDonald on this issue. I haven't heard a peep back from either one of them. So that's rather disappointing too. I just think that there's nothing for us. We are going to worry about all of this other stuff when you got people right here that are going to lose their housing. I would find that pretty embarrassing myself. That's all I have to say on this issue at this time.
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come into chambers.
Thank you. The presentation was very good. The silver lining with Sebastopol, really good presentation. Your presentation was really good. I really sympathize with this horrendous bureaucracy we have. I appreciate all of the mayors probing questions. Very, very on tractable situation. I wish someone in the county could streamline everything and make everything more simple because I have been following this stuff for years in the county.
Some a different terminology and people coming and going. Supposed to be different roles. Some he can't do this, somebody can do that. It's a terrible mess. I understand the presentation. I don't know where we go. I read the Cal matters article earlier about California braces for devastating expected cuts to federal homeless housing funds. It's not good. Very dubious about what is happening. Obviously, I worry for all the people were homeless and so on as well. Just a sad situation all around. Thank you.
Thank you, Oliver, for your public comment. Next, I'll go back out to zoom. If you would like to make a common on this please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will come back into chambers. If there's anyone in chambers that would like to make a comment on this informational item. I'm seeing none. Public comment is closed pick
Thank you, Mary. This was informational presentation to receive pick Vice Mayor has her hand respect
Sorry, vice Mayor.
I just wanted to say very quickly that I expressed my concern about moving forward and just acknowledge that the statement of pausing for three months. I'm going to say this from a personal perspective. In the last week and a half a nonprofit that has been supporting manufacturers in the state of California has been over 30 years.
They relied upon $15 million from the federal government in order for their organization to run pick I relied upon them for a grant that came to the state of California. They were notified within four weeks. Their funding was pulled and they all just lost their jobs on Monday. So within a months time the whole project was just done.
So now it's flowing down to other nonprofits they have been working with throughout the state of California. So just through a personal, professional perspective I do have concern about us ignoring that statement about the three months because I just saw a 30 year organization go down in one month because of funding pulled. I just wanted to share that and express my concern. Thank you.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you. This was an informational item to receive and to file. So we can go ahead. Thank you very much to the presenters. If your time allows I would really like to you to stay for item 14, which is the presentation from the county on MST and if time will allow us for the points presentation. Because it's not ironic that all of these three got scheduled for this calendar. Hopefully people have connected the dots. It's all about on sheltered and the fact that our place is going to come right after the MST. For from the data, if anyone has reviewed the slides of at a time -- Ahead of time, everyone is running ragged doing mental health things and now with a really signed up for. I'm hoping that all of the presenters can stay at least until the presentation. I'm also going to check in with my colleagues. We have been going for an hour and 40 minutes. Do we need a five minute break? We do not. Okay. It's definitively been decided picks the next item is going to be number 13, which is an informational presentation, presentation from Wendy. Mobile crisis team manager and Dr. Jan Cobaleda-kegler.
I've got to go at that. County behavioral health director on mobile support team/Sonoma County mobile crisis services Continuum update again, I welcome you to come on up to the podium. For me, this is intricately tied to the next presentation because the data is a lot of what we are hoping that you can help us with through the county, through resources so that our place can do what we would expect them to do, which is serious crime and not the social workers. Please?
Thank you for that. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. Thank you for having us. I am Dr. Jan. I'm the division director for behavioral health services. Wendy is here with me tonight. We are going to do this presentation.
And our had director of health services, Nolan Sullivan, he's my boss. He will be here and will come for questions after the presentation. Next slide please. Wendy and I are going to talk with you about Sonoma County's mobile support team. We plan to share with you a little bit about the history of how he got started, as well as describe the mandate from the state to provide mobile crisis to support communities 24/7, 365 days a year. We will talk about our implementation of the mandate, how it's going and what we hope to gain as we move forward with expanding the services to Sonoma County communities. Next slide, please. Some of you I'm sure are aware that Sonoma County is doing mobile crisis response for a long time. We are not new to this here. We launched our mobile support teams and 2012. Providing support to communities across the county. It stands for specialized assistance for everyone. These teams were established in 2021, supporting communities in South County. In 2022 a response was created in Santa Rosa. Subsequently, in 2023, the California Department of healthcare services put California counties on notice that we would be expected to provide countywide mobile crisis response 24/7, 365 days a year. We were mandated to implement this I 24. This was a mandate. It was a requirement. The upside of this is by implementing this mandate we, in turn, will get reimbursement by providing the services. Currently, we have three teams, three separate teams operating in Sonoma County. The teams in response, and the mobile support teams. This is our goal to integrate these teams and build a coordinated, collaborative response to psychiatric crisis. Essentially, we are building out a fourth system of emergency response. Coordinating all of these teams together. Next line. When Department of healthcare services issued their mandate to counties that we need to implement MediCal mobile crisis benefit they were very clear that this service was to be a nonpolice response to folks struggling with psychiatric crisis. To do so they specified a few things. One, counties were required to create a crisis service hotline. The hotline must be one number that serves the entire county. And it must be operated 24/7, 365 days a year. If you or loved one, family member, client is in crisis remember that there is always a live person on the other end of the line who will take this call. This hotline must serve as the hotline for the dispatch of mobile crisis teams that are also in parallel the crisis teams are 24/7 365 days a year. And our number is 1-800-746-8181. It's up there on the board.
Secondly, the mandate required that when the crisis hotline takes the call they must also use a standardized dispatch tool and procedures to engage with the caller in crisis. Triage crisis and decide dispatch needs. What is the nature of the crisis? What needs to happen to engage with the crisis? What is the level of intervention City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
needed? If there is a safety concern the dispatch team does have the option to call in law enforcement to help support them. Safety is first, always first. If we need to call in law enforcement to help us out then we do that.
The intervention must be provided wherever the person in crisis is. So this is a service to be provided to anyone, anywhere at any time. Lastly, teams and the and respond to these crisis must be staffed by two providers who have access to a licensed mental health professional. At least one member of the team must be trained to conduct a crisis assessment and one member of the team must also carry and be trained to deliver Naloxone.
Narcan. I will turn this over to Wendy and she will share some really good data with you guys.
Next slide, please. So we've got this mandate. In April 2024 we did our soft launch. We are able to go full 24/7 on June 2nd of 2024. We launched our 24-hour call center at that time along with our full response so that we are able to both have the call center and our teams up and running at the same time. We did it very quickly. We were able to get that up and running within six months, which will means we went from a team of seven people.
Doing it for East County, was County and the city of Santa Rosa to a team of 30 people for all of Sonoma County for the unincorporated areas, West County, East County and now North County. And then our call center in addition to that. What we saw was an immediate success. Before, we were severely underutilized. We have always been a support to law enforcement on their calls when they needed us to come out and support them when it was a high acuity 911 call. But by opening up this call center where people can call us directly, we saw that we were able to respond to people's mental health crisis directly and people started utilizing us. Some of the things that we did to be able to utilize more, we got our own vehicles that had a secure barrier in the back so that we can do our own transports too. From call to finish we are able to go out, meet that person. Let me back up a second. We can take the call, get the information we need, go out to when a person is, help them with their crisis, do what we can -- That is the most -- If we are not able to do so, or that's not the safest thing for that person, we can author a 5150, get them to a higher level of care, transport them in our vehicles to either CSU or to a hospital and hopefully not include law enforcement if it is not needed to do so. But if there is a level of danger, violence, or something that makes us unpredictable then we still partner with our law enforcement partners. And if they ask us to come along then that's also priority for us. We also expanded our model. Before, we were just clinicians. And we changed our model to a multidisciplinary team. Now we are a mix of clinicians, alcohol and drug counselors. We call them senior client support specialists. That is like a mental health rehab specialist. By diversifying that team from just clinicians to a multidisciplinary team we are actually able to ensure staffing, which was one of our weaknesses before. It's incredibly hard just to staff a mental heist -- Health crisis team with clinicians. That was one of the things that has made this more successful for us. Next line please. This is a little challenging to read. I will walk us through it a little bit. If you take a look at March. I'm going to try to speak little bit better here. This is a side-by-side comparison for our fiscal year 23, 24. Which is us utilizing our old model before we expanded our services. When we were just a response team to our fiscal year 24/25, which is our new model where we have our call center and where we are able to respond to law enforcement as you can see, for example, March 24 and 25, Wheeling at 13 calls for service. Severely underutilized by law enforcement. They said good things about us except for the fact that we took too long to get to where we needed to go. That was the main thing is that we take a long time. Which is fair when we are responding to large swaths of the county. But when we started to remove the barriers of access and opening up our model where anybody can get a hold of us, and not having to respond with just law enforcement, you can see, if you look at the next months. Let's take a look at the first month that we were fully operational of June. Our numbers jumped exponentially. The blue number is dispatched. That means we actually went out to that person's home.
That brown number means that call was handled and supported in the call center. That means the people working there either give support from that person on the phone or they are looking for information how to access resources. Our call center staff are being utilized in more ways than just taking information and sending City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
the teams out. So there's a side-by-side comparison on all of those numbers. You can see how we are being utilized in the area. The other thing, just in general, is our data, countywide, is that 70% of our calls were responding without law enforcement. 30% of our calls are still responsive to law enforcement. So a lot of the work we are doing is we are not necessarily being seen because it's happening in people's homes. It's happening behind closed doors. It's happening on the street where there is not necessarily people that are walking by. It's confidential, it's quiet and sometimes it should be that way because we don't necessarily want someone's mental health crisis to be advertised. A lot of the work that we are doing is behind closed doors. It's been very interesting to see that before our call volume was 100% with law enforcement, but now it's 70% without law enforcement and 30% with law enforcement. Next slide please. Here is some information on Sebastopol specifically. This is for the fiscal year 24/25. We had a total of 278 calls. And this also includes calls for the call center also. Out of that, 142 calls, we were dispatched out to the person's home or wherever they were having a mental health crisis, which could also be into the public. Without law enforcement. And out of that, 60 calls were with co-responses to law enforcement. Out of our total call volume, 12% of the mobile support team calls in person, I'm going to say that again because I think I said that backwards, out of the calls we had for mobile support team 12 percent were for the city of Sebastopol. This little breakdown by our quarters for that year.
You can see the correspondence of what our county was compared to this Sebastopol response. And who is calling? It's a mixture of a lot of different people. We have criminal justice on their but that is for law enforcement. We have healthcare providers, family and friends, individuals themselves. Sometimes we are getting calls from schools and also getting calls from providers and people who were helping people, helping professions. Next slide please. Just to touch on what the other teams are doing through the county, we have the safe teams data, which is from May, 24 to 2025. They have upwards of 12,000 calls and 80% of the calls do not require law enforcement involvement. They have some divergent data here where their largest diversion were ambulance diversions. Like Dr. Jan was talking about, everybody is coming together to work towards this MediCal benefit so that we are all using the same information, the same model so that we are in compliance with what the state is asking us to do. There next steps in doing that is they are working toward getting Medi-Cal site certified and getting credentialing for our health record system. So that's a benefit. Everybody will be a part of the same electronic health record because we are using same systems, different ways of documenting, ways of doing things. What we are really trying to do is get all the systems together. So that's where they are at in their process. Next slide please. And the response team down in the city of Santa Rosa, they have just under 5000 calls. And 4000 of their calls did not require law enforcement. That's their largest diversion. They are doing the same thing. They are getting up and running with the E HR. They're working on mandatory trainings because the state requires that everybody was doing this is doing a lot of mandatory trainings. There's quite a bit. We're asking both of those agencies, and they are doing them. We had to do a lot of these things too to get us up and running. We just did it back in January of 2024 when we were on boarding everybody back then. Next slide please. This is the information. Most of this information is presented to the Board of Supervisors last month.
This is how we have been funded the last few years for the growth of MST and staffing operations. You can see, there is measure O, mental health services act and that is over fiscal year 2023/2024 and what it's looking for 25 and 26. It's a mixture of both. We usually use the mobile support team for start up costs to get us up and running. Most of our funding is there mental health services act. Because this is a benefit, our hope is that we will be drawing down the dollars that we can for those that have Medi-Cal and being able to be reimbursed for the services. But we are not just seeing people who have Medi-Cal. We are seeing everybody. For those that don't have Medi-Cal, we are not getting reimbursed for those services. And there's also the cities and jurisdictions that are down below for what it costs for them down there. For the next slide I'm going to hand this back over to Jan.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Okay. So this is where we are headed. This is what we would like to do. Our goals right now, we want to get all of our teams Medi-Cal certified and have the billing Medi-Cal. Our mobile support team and response included.
Why do we want to do this? Okay. We have been talking about budget. Fiscal concerns. We really want to maximize our revenue in any way we can right now. So that's what we are really pushing for to get these teams certified and trained and billing Medi-Cal. We want to get them integrated into our system of care and use our electronic health record so we can collect really valuable data and chart outcomes and evaluate efficacy. I'm going to pass this back to Wendy. Is going to talk to you about our timeline in response.
As you can see, the response team, the safe team and mobile support team, all of our data points are very different and we are collecting different information. That's one of the benefits of us all being on the same system, is using our electronic health record. We will be able to collect the same data. So we will actually be able to speak the same language, which we haven't been when it comes to what our data points are picks one really looking forward to us just in the fact of data to say what all of our teams are doing because we are all collecting different things, we are defining things differently. When we are all on the same system we will have the same set of definitions, we will have the same collection points and then we will all be able to use that. That's why it's so important. I'm sorry. Next slide. That's why it's so important that we are all working towards, right now, getting up and running on smart care. That's the main thing we are working towards. So we can actually do a consistent program evaluation. It's also going to lead to increased care coordination across jurisdictions. As we know, people don't necessarily stay in one area. Right now we are working in silos a little bit. And we really want to break down some of those silos so that we are actually helping the people that are coming in to contact.
Subsonic's crossover from Sebastopol to Santa Rosa, say they work in Sebastopol but they go to Santa Rosa, we want to make sure they are getting the care wherever they are at. No matter what's happening, they are getting a consistent response from his teams. It has been a big uplift because everybody is being asked to make significant changes to their infrastructure and the way they operate, and the way they set up their systems. But everybody has been making those changes and has been going along with those things. I'm going to pass it back to Jan.
Next slide, please. The slide talks about compliance with Medi-Cal, which really presents numerous challenges.
Like we have been talking about this tonight. It really is a lot. So all of our mobile support team providers, they must be credentialed. To be credentialed for mobile support team there is detailed training requirements that have to be completed, supervision plans for staff to meet the credentialing requirements, as well as training on how to use our electronic health record, which we use -- Call smart care. The sites have to be Medi-Cal certified as well. It's a lot. For our in response and save partners it is a challenge to have staff credentialed all at once.
Credentialing includes things like, you have to submit your education, what your education has been, what your degree is, if you have a license. They have to submit that. Also, everyone has to get a national provider number.
Some people don't have those. Have to submit that and get that number so they can be entering services in our smart care system. So I really need to commend our partners for tolerating this process, learning the process and hanging in there. We understand. Really, we are moving from street outreach and engagement to offering a Medi-Cal benefit service for psychiatric intervention. So this is a big change for all the teams.
Dr., not to interrupt too much, through our interim city manager we can do this in 50 minutes or a presentation of information and then an unlimited question and answer. I went through your slides and we are trying to figure out where the ending point is.
, The second to last line.
Okay.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Okay. Let's go to the last slide. I can skip. I think that I covered most of the strategies. It's constant. We meet biweekly and bimonthly with partners and try to keep everyone informed. These are our next steps. Right now, more than ever, it's important for us to utilize our resources as fully as we can. We want to support what has been created. We train teams, we have acquired vans, we put out a 24/7 call center available to the entire county of Sonoma. At the same time, we need to maximize revenue as much as we can. That means putting our Medi-Cal for us and our partners. The buildout to go 24/7 was a big lift. Wendy and her team worked hard to do so. Wendy has done an awesome job on her teams. I really have to commend her. She's just an awesome individual. We want to keep this momentum going. We want to sustain and keep away built, and buildout the collaboration across the county with regional stakeholders and community-based providers, and city partners.
As Wendy said, they use the same electronic health record as we do. Smart care. When we are all in one electronic health record the benefits are many. We are able to track services, we can monitor data, we can communicate with each other about a client and we can monitor the outcomes of our interventions. In keeping with the mandate of one crisis hotline number for Sonoma County residents to call, our goal and parallel is to unify with our partners into one system that will support all parts of Sonoma County. Thank you.
Two we want to take a break? The vice mayor requested one and I didn't catch it earlier. We want to take a five-minute break before we go to question and answer? Looks like I have is, you have some. My colleagues? Break? Yeah. Okay. We will definitely take a very firm five-minute break. We will resume at 8:15. Thank you.
Thank you for your presentation. Our question, he said that 278 calls for from Sebastopol and 12% of calls are from Sebastopol. Could you define Sebastopol? about the ZIP Code? Yes. I can get some clarity on this. Unfortunately, it's not as clear because, for our first year that we didn't have the best way of collecting this data. Right now that is the proper city of Sebastopol. And then the unincorporated areas that are the Sebastopol ZIP Code. So not all of West County. The proper city and then the areas around the say Sebastopol on the ZIP Code. We have changed our systems for this next fiscal year so that there is unincorporated Sebastopol and then Sebastopol .
Okay. Thank you. Just one more question. Is that a stable source of funding? That's the bulk of your funding. Is it stable?
Yes and no.
Is that federal funding?
Mental health services act is now the behavioral health services act, which people know is proposition one. It's a stable in that it to California funding stream. It's a 1% tax on people who make $1 million or more in California.
That fund funds behavioral health programs.
Thank you.
Other questions before I dive into mine? Looking to my right, left. Okay.
I'm sorry. I've had my head up for a while. Sorry pick
Vice mayor. Please.
Sorry.
I do have a couple of questions. One is I'm looking at the diversion slides here. I Siewert says ambulance, E.R., law enforcement, criminal justice. What I'm wondering is, I don't see any numbers in here that actually talk City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
about mental health beds. And what happens if you have a patient that is deemed needing more care than just a stabilization, but a long-term mental health? I'm curious to know. I don't know if you know this, how many beds are currently available in the county that are actually usable. Because I know there are staffing issues sometimes with that. I'm just curious, and all these two slides nothing delineates that. Are we to assume that they go to the E.R. and then that is determined? How does that work? If someone could help walk me through that.
That's a good question. I could do a whole other presentation on our crisis continuum. What I want to that tonight. I will say that when Wendy's team goes out they have to 5150 someone. They decide the person is greatly disabled and they need to be taken to a receiving center to be evaluated and see if they need further treatment or maybe they are going to de-escalate, destabilize and they don't need further treatment. So that's the first step. We have a crisis stabilization unit down here in West Santa Rosa. And they can go to the crisis stabilization unit for 23 hours and 59 minutes. That's the long kind of being sarcastic. Sometimes people stay there longer than that. Those are our guidelines. Within that time, you either decide the need for the treatment or that you can go home. Some people, if they need further treatment, we have a psychiatric health facility. We call it a puff. If we are full at our puff then we send people to private for profits like hospital, we have psychiatric hospitals, we have a contract with Santa Rosa behavioral health here in Sonoma County and then we also have contracts with hospitals in Oakland, Berkeley and so on. Sometimes you do not need to go to hospital. So we also have what is called crisis residential facilities. We have two of those. So folks will go to this crisis residential facilities. Those are unlocked and usually about a two week stay. People get counseling, they it stabilized, they get their medication and then they can go home. So that's it. There's more to the crisis continuum but that's the basic part of it. Does that answer your question?
It does. I was wondering in previous presentations we've had the number floated around that there's like 16 mental health beds at the county has and sometimes only five are available based on staffing. Where does that fall in there? Is that after the 5150? Do you have any idea how that is faring now? When you're talking about beds, there's all kinds of beds. We have the beds at the crisis stabilization unit. So that is a 16 bed facility. We also have 16 beds in our puff. The crisis residential programs have 10 beds each. We have bridge housing, which we have about 80 beds in bridge housing. Psych hospitals, that's unlimited really.
Our crisis stabilization unit, I think that might be what you are referring to. That goes up and down. The census depends on our ability to maintain staffing ratio, of which we are working really hard on right now to keep our staffing ratio up. When someone goes to something like a crisis stabilization unit we have about a 4 to 1 ratio.
One mental health professional to four clients. One licensed person. Within that environment you have a nurse, therapist and psychiatrist, as well as other support staff.
So just to push a little bit, I know it was as low as five beds at one point and zero at one point. Do you have any sense for how many beds we actually have available there? Right now we are averaging about 10. We are trying to get it up to 16. We are working really hard to beef up our staffing.
Thank you. I do have other questions. But I want to let the mayor get to his as well. I don't want to monopolize pick
Thank you. We will sort of alternate. Again, take my question start because I just keep saying that this is a tie into our police were going to hear from next. And the statistics that we are going to see are not related to serious crimes. They are related to, my estimation, untreated mental health and substance abuse. Also, our fire department is also up after them. So this is a combination of trying to get to what services we can from you, the City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
county, to help two of our entities. These are the context of the questions. First, I have heard from other law enforcement and I'm not going to say it's from ours. The fact that they don't want to do the MST. For one, you don't show up your perfect strangers. You are to the person who is decompensating. Versus having them have a warm hand off from an outreach worker. Somebody that maybe we contract with that they have frequent interactions with. That's my first question. Two, about the response time. Because I heard that apparently it has gotten better. But I would want to know, on average, should our chief call for you? What is the approximate amount of time before somebody from your team arrives here in Sebastopol? I will do the second question first. The response time depends on if we are in another call or not. If we are not on another call we are just right off of Highway 12. Left from our office to get here to get to this location in under 15 minutes. This area is actually one of our closest areas to get to. It depends on where we are going in the city. But if we are on another call and that depends on how long that will take. When it comes to an average time I don't have that information readily available. Can you ask that first question? The first question is that I have heard from law enforcement that they would prefer not to have to use the county MST. Because when you show up your perfect strangers. Like when you showed up to someone who is mentally decompensating or sidewalk, they would have no idea who you are. Versus having someone from heart or someone will be permanently embedded in our unit. Or summary from West County community services whose job is to retain and check in with them. How are you doing? The person is going to show up. It will be less traumatic than having to deal with a perfect stranger.
I will never underestimate the work that outreach workers are doing. Outreach workers are phenomenal and the work they do is just that. They are building relationships and building rapport with people. I will also say we were able to do the same too, especially if people are having repeated mental health crises. A lot of the times, people have called us or we are getting calls for people that we have had repeated interactions with, our team is really great at knowing people on a first name basis and they get out there. They know the histories, the remember the stories. I would love to test that out a little bit and wonder if that may be a little bit of a fear.
There is a difference between outreach work and crisis work. Sometimes people can be, I just remember back in the day when I used to work on a group home with the kids I used to work with, great report. I would have fantastic rapport. In a crisis sometimes you need that outside person to come in and tap you out. That's what MST can do. But I will never discount the work that outreach work does. Because it is really, it's absolutely needed and phenomenal. I would say what MST is doing is different. I think maybe we need to do a better job of explaining that.
Great. We have three shifts that work for the 24 hours. We have a 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Our second shift comes in at noon until 10:00 p.m. So we got about four hours, five hours of overlap during the day. Which actually is looking like our busiest area, busiest times. And then our shift starts at 9:30 p.m. until 7:30 a.m. We have a clinician on shift during our day and our swing shift. And a clinician and -- Clinician it's on-call for our overnight shifts. We are sending out alcohol, drug counselors and senior support specialists for those overnight shifts because it's our lowest call volume time. Our makeup during the daytime is a clinician with either an alcohol or drug counselor, or one of our senior client support specialists for that multidisciplinary approach.
Thank you. The next question will probably appear brusque. I do understand all the pressures that you deal with about trying to switch to 24/7 and all that stuff. But what would you say to those? And these questions have been asked in different forms. Why are there three of you? What I have heard is cities have ponied up the money to do basically what you are doing originally, which is safe and response. That might be the reason I cut short your presentation, Dr. Jan, about response and safe have been doing. Because those cities ponied up their City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
own money. And now, based on where we are now with the federal government, they may not be able to continue doing it. We cannot do it. That's the reason why we rely on a county MST. So the ultimate question is, why could you not, just the county, do your MST better? Why did it have to take two other entities to create their own? Now we are dealing with three entities and stretching the limited resources we have way too thin.
Some just going to pose that question.
I will jump in on this one. They are just legacy systems. So I think the systems were developed by police department in a lot of cases, or nonprofits that had a strong investment in those communities. Oftentimes, local governments to work very well together. Frankly, the county did not have an obligation to run a countywide crisis program until 2024. Really, at that point, there was no compelling obligation to do so. The funding for crisis is very bifurcated and fragile. Again, we are only being compensated for Medi-Cal recipients calling for crisis. So if you're uninsured, have Kaiser or some other insurance program, we get zero dollars to serve you . The mayor, your assumption is correct. I think cities were funding large amounts of the programs. Frankly, their budgets are in freefall and they are asking for very large, multi-million-dollar contributions to support these programs. We are moving into a space where the county will only be able to support Medi-Cal build programs. So anything that is extra that would be nice, a lot of folks have that Lamborghini response program, we are only able to pay for the used Honda Accord of crisis going forward. And those cities are going to have to make some drastic reductions. We don't pay for paramedics or homeless outreach workers. A lot of folks come to mobile crisis with outreach. Very different. Medi-Cal does not pay for our reach. Medi-Cal does not pay for heart. We can't bill for the services. The mobile crisis is super specific to what you're doing. There's a big difference between a nuisance issue and a mobile crisis issue, and a law enforcement issue. I think mobile crisis still is not going to solve your nuisance issues. You may have someone that is slightly inebriated. Maybe some benign mental health issues.
They are bugging people, their bothering people. It's not a crisis though. I want to set expectations. Mobile crisis will not solve hundreds of thousands of your police calls. A lot of those are just a nuisance calls him a call, outreach call. Again, there is hodgepodge. You've got fire, police, you've got us. Someone will probably handle one of those calls. Who gets paid to do that is the challenging question. The county is looking to expand mobile crisis across the entire county. At least to the standards of what Medi-Cal considers billable. We are producing some sort of revenue stream to build a large chunk of this. We are entering discussions with safe and in response now, that I think will probably get into very uncomfortable territory because of the budgetary situation. Yes, they have been shipping and lots of money over time to support these programs. The only other thing I will add, we hear you. I hear you need help here in Sebastopol. This is about my third eating that I've come. I understand that your Police Department has challenges with the number of calls. They want to focus on law enforcement calls. The county is going to do our absolute best to assist where we have homeless resources for outreach, and assist for crisis resources for crisis. They're still going to be a gap. There are still things that we need to figure out. Geographically, the county has almost half 1 million people. We have about 10,000 in Sebastopol. You will never have a five minute response time unless you are kicking in millions of dollars. That 50 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, it is what it is. It's the same with ambulance services. We are going to do our best to provide help and resources there. We are here, we are at the table, we are willing. But we are getting these calls. We are getting these calls from all of our partners wanting more. Again, we all have less resources.
More to come. We are very excited to have this program really hitting. It's kind of second birthday. We know we've got a lot of work to do in places like Sebastopol, places like Crystal, like Sonoma, Lincoln Grove . We are working on it.
Great. Thank you for that. That really helped at least me. What can we do from our point of view? I go to meetings and I hear, if you want to be responsible player figure out your reimbursement. Well, our police are here. Our fire are here. We can to be Medi-Cal hopeful.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
There's not much you can do in the Medi-Cal space as a city. Maybe a teeny bit with fire. Maybe a little teeny bit with police for homeless services. Even then, it's pretty tough. I think I saw Kristi online tonight, who is one of your county providers on the social services side. They do their best with the provision and other things.
There aren't any magic funding bullets that you guys are missing out as a city unfortunately. We are trying to sort of do some of that for you. The more we can collectively build together, the better.
One last question before he turned over to vice Mayor. Did I hear that training could be put in place? Because the police dispatch seems to be crucial. As I understand it, having a neighbor calling it going, hi, somebody is mentally decompensating, there is a list of questions that you go through. Doesn't seem that this person is a danger to themselves? A danger to other or gravely disabled? Does your outfit help our place for them to help their place dispatchers do the best thing that they can to have the right people deployed? I think we are totally willing to have conversations with any city or any dispatch, any law enforcement or public safety to really help. We provide now is called CIT training for local law enforcement. I don't know if we are actually doing dispatch training. We are certainly willing to sit down and talk. It's not something we do today, but it's a great idea. Honestly, questions like these are what help us develop new products and ideas, and different things. We are more than willing to sit down and chat on that front. Honestly, we have somebody different dispatch organizations throughout the county. We heard the PSH discussion and standards. Maybe we have something similar there. Great suggestion. Not doing it today, but we are certainly willing to come pick I appreciate it. Because you're going to from the police if you have a chance to stay long enough. Again, figuring out who to deploy, in what capacity to deal with the situations given, again, the fact that we are all struggling. So if they have a phone tree, a police dispatch, does that person have a weapon? Well, if the person has a weapon police are coming to be your backup. 100%. Do they not have a weapon? Do they have a knife? Nothing like that. Then maybe it is definitely just you responding instead of police responding with you. Thank you. Thank you for indulging, vice Mayor.
I have two questions. One, I would like to get in the nuts and bolts. Should be fairly simple. I hear that you have clinicians on duty during the day. What type of clinician is that? That can be either a family therapist or a social worker. Or the associate versions of them under supervision.
Thank you. The other question I have, the individuals that we're talking about the respond to, they often have comorbidities. Often drug and alcohol abuse issues. I'm just wondering if you also deal with that. If so, what resources are there for treatment in the county for that type of thing? Because it all seems to be interconnected most of the time.
Absolutely. That's one of the reasons we put alcohol and drug counselors as part of our multidisciplinary team.
They are able to help with navigating resources. We also coordinate with the local detox, if it's possible and get somebody in in that capacity.
The local detox? I'm sorry. I'm not familiar with that.
The one in Santa Rosa. I'm sorry. Detox versus anything outside of county.
I see. Sorry. I'm not familiar with it. Thank you.
No problem.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Other questions for me callings before we go to public comment? Looking to my right, looking to the left. On the screen I can see that the vice Mayor has questions. I'm going to get better at this. If not, public comment.
Thank you, Mayor. This is for public comment. Vice Mayor, can you lower your hand? Thank you. This is for public comment on the informational item. If you would like to make a public comment I will go to Chambers first.
Hi. This is me talking as a regular person, not a press person. I just wanted to say that we had an emergency in our household with a housemate who develop psychosis from taking too much prednisone. I know.
Unbelievable. We called the mobile response team. I suddenly felt like I was in a well resourced European socialist state. It was wonderful. They came out within an hour. In response to your fears, not knowing the person or the person not knowing them, they were incredibly gentle and responsive. They made her totally comfortable right away. And she really trusted them. I was just so incredibly impressed with the service they provided.
Thank you for your public comment. Next, I'll go out to zoom. If there is anybody on Zoom that would like to make a public comment on this item please raise your hand ritually. I'm seeing none. I will come back into the chambers. Kyle?
First, I need to say, today is a good example of why counsel decision to lower the data retention policy to three years is really unfortunate. I would like to take us back to 2020. So here we are in the height of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter movement. The city of Sebastopol decided to look at police reform. A big part of that conversation on police reform was revolving around the need for mental health services. This is the part where you get to chime in to help fill out the story here. The city approved $25,000 for mental health services. Six months later there was no actual allocation of that money for health services. Instead, it got reinterpreted as a manager position. I believe with West County services. Suddenly, now, that the health services that were meant to be in this cahoots model style, as it was defined at that time, something very similar to what we are seeing tonight. It got reallocated into this West County services manager position. Which is really unfortunate. Here we are five years later and we are finally kind of seeing the mental health services that we expected and decided on.
Trying to fund, by putting money aside for the purpose five years ago. I really hope that maybe now we can kind of think about the decisions that we've made along the way. I think it's important to be reflective. To think through may be doing an RV ban that, at that time, was decided. It warned the risk of litigation that might be coming around. And the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent in legal fees fighting against that RV band. Maybe some of that money could have actually gone to things like mental health services to supporting our community in the way that we had really suggested in 2020.
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. Next, I will go back out to zoom. If there is anybody on Zoom that would like to make a public comment on this presentation please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will come back into chambers. If there's anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on this item.
Seeing none. Public comment is closed.
Thank you. With that, this is an informational item. We have received it and it will be filed. Moving on to agenda item number 14. Informational presentation. Report on crime statistics of the last five to 10 years. Chief? Good evening. I would like to start out by saying in the over 26 years since I commenced in this career field the landscape has been very dynamic and changed a lot with, in my opinion, from law enforcement more into a policing capacity where law enforcement is a component of policing. Our partners that are here today are perfect example of that. We heavily rely on them and the partnerships that we have to effectively police the city City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
and my neighboring agencies are of the same opinion, as I understand. So we have a presentation here that was put together after a request from the Council member on crime statistics. I said 5 to 10 years, so I just picked 10.
Let's take all the way back as far as we can. We have very detailed reports, management system in the police department. We can pull all kinds of data out of it. It really depends on what we are looking for and what we can derive from the system. Some hoping this is representative of what they are looking for. When I first drew the statistics from the system we ended up with about 1000 different crime categories. It was extremely difficult to put into a format that would be something we could present here on a PowerPoint presentation, the informational and useful to the city. What I did was I basically took the 15 top represented crimes that we are dealing with across the 10 years. So there are a significant number of other crimes that are less representative in this, that are not represented here tonight. We can briefly talk about those as well. I just worked through bar graphs across. This is the 2015 crime statistics bar graph. You can see most of the crimes there. They are not what we call violent or significant I suppose in some definition. Violation of probation, another version of DUI, which is higher. Right there, driving on a license, petty theft. They are all crimes nonetheless. They are not violent felonies or things that would otherwise be extremely concerning. In the enormity that we see them represented. If we could go to the next slide please. You basically move year-by-year through the stats. And you will notice that the 15 categories really don't change a whole lot. They move up and down here and there. But they are basically represented much the same from year to year. We do start to see, as we move through the slides, some of the more serious crimes start to be represented. You notice on the bottom of the previous slide, that was burglary. And this one, here, in 2017. Third from the bottom. So we start to see some more serious crimes represented. So we can just move on through the slides slowly so that people can pay attention to them.
Essentially, they are all the same in many ways. By the time we get to 2024 we start to see things like shoplifting increase exponentially. Which we are really seeing in 2025 as well. But I didn't represent 2025 because we are only partway through it in the bar graph. I didn't think that would be entirely accurate for us to rely on that statistical data at this point. I did put 25 and there. Sorry, next slide. My apologies. I tried to represent a little bit more to give us a broader picture. And this is across the 10 years. The bottom of the slide is partially cut off. It's represented at the bottom there. For this right-hand indicator.'s you can sort of get an idea of the more common crimes. But we do see some more serious crimes in there. Battery, resisting police officers, burglary, disorderly conduct. A graph on the next slide, which was similar but more of a top category. It's difficult to read in this format, I apologize. If anybody would like a copy of the presentation that is more clearly readable I'm happy to send it to you. Reach out to the police department for that. You will notice across the trends here from 2015 on the left-hand side it would appear that there's less crime. I mean, that really is the case. Less crime is being dealt with by police. If we were to put that in some sort of context. The categories don't seem to change a whole lot. They just are very slightly all still represented in each stack for each year. Moving onto the next slide.
I'm just wondering what your thoughts are about the reduction in crime over the last 10 years. You have any thoughts on that?
I do. If you're happy for me to continue I will try to address that because it is tied into the rest of the presentation. Feel free to stop if you have any questions. Basically, I'm going to work through what I believe to be the answers to your questions relating to the stats. We've had a number of legal changes in the last 10 years that have hugely impacted not only police but also the prosecution process, the judicial system, and the impact that has on whether things are determined to be a crime or not. Shoplifting is a perfect example. In California we had a $1000 limit on shoplifting so people were just walking out with carloads of equipment or stolen items.
There's really not much that was being done about it. It became an accepted form of conduct. That has since been reversed recently and we may see some changes in statistics based on that. Especially here in Sebastopol.
With shoplifting being quite a prevalent crime here in town. Here, we got opposition 47, which reduces many of City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
the drug theft felonies to misdemeanors. And with that, what I'm saying is people who were defenders or committed the crime again, again, and again, if they are charged with felonies previously they may well be incarcerated, or more likely to be incarcerated for repeat offenses. It had an impact on the whole system is what I'm trying to say here. We've also got proposition 57. And maybe 109. All of these things had a huge impact on the statistics. Next slide please. For some reason we have a page M.I.A. here. There we go. Staffing resources, many California departments reported hiring difficulties. That was actually a nationwide issue. Worldwide issue.
Overtime spikes, something week spirits here in Sebastopol. And unfilled positions that impact the operations.
These shortages, whether they related to hiring difficulties or positions frozen due to municipal impacts, they have a ripple effect that can be seen statistically here in the city. The statistics that are presented here tonight show an increase to calls for service, which you will see later on in the presentation. But we have fewer officers to respond because of staffing shortages. With that, we have fewer officers to respond to the call. After work significant over time. They are working additional shifts in addition to that. They're covering sick vacation and mandatory training requirements that are so prevalent in this occupation. In doing that, they are requiring more reports to the calls for service that they attend. And they are then tied down with more administered of tasks.
So we are not outperforming any proactive police work. Much proactive police work. Which has an effect on crimes we detect. As the officers are being burdens with these increases, as I said, they are unable to produce proactive policing advantages to the city, such as proactively addressing our traffic compliance. We have a huge number of traffic compliance here in our city that we receive each week. Patrolling our schools, critical infrastructure, or generally patrolling streets looking for things that are just out of place. Any type of research will show you that proactive policing identifies a lot of crime before it occurs, or the process of occurring. So we are somewhat restricted with that. That shows an hour statistics as well. Please are responding more and more to calls of service that are called in to our dispatch center for matters that are not necessarily a crime. Such as homelessness or on housed issues, situations that are brewing and could potentially become a crime if not incentivized by our officers. We are also responding to calls that may be a crime. However, on arrival, find the victims do not wish to file a report or follow through with the process of prosecution. Or the parties have simply left the scene. We can go to the next slide please. We also have budget constraints, which are covered in a previous paragraph here, which reduces our hiring if the positions frozen right now. We are down a couple of officers and that impacts our investigation ability. Next slide please. The pandemic was a huge impact in this 10 year review of crime statistics here in the city. The effect from the ran for several years with arrest traffic stops and certain enforcement activities dropping sharply. Courts paused or delayed hearings, which produced a backlog that produced a temporary dip in arrests and -- Once courts reopen. Even after the acute pandemic phase the backlog and procedural changes continue to affect case flow, which impacted the defenders as cases have not reached their final disposition. And this is something that I was covering a little earlier. The impact of the final disposition in a court matter of the sentencing or a conclusion of the court matter had an impact on how we deal with that particular person in the future if they are an offender. Or person who continues to commit crimes. So that impacted our crime statistics as well. We had changes in the diversion of mental health and treatment resources. So that is being expended, as we've heard tonight from our agency partners. And stakeholders. There is a growth in alternative and drug treatment programs. There is a reduction in arrests and prosecution for low-level drug theft and mental health related incidents shifting accounts from criminal adjudication into other tracks. Next slide please. We've got a shift as well with retail theft and catalytic converter theft, which rose in some years if you look at our stats because of marketing centers. Property crimes rather declined. These trends -- Proposition 47 and the enforcement priorities to magnify increases or decreases in selective categories. Next line please. Next slide again please. Okay. While we are seeing a higher priority, higher property theft rather, burglary and shoplifting, and trespass with homeless or on housed issues have risen. That has been a factual thing that we are dealing with. We have had more calls for service tied to enchantments, City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
substance use and disorderly conduct. We are definitely suffering from a resource strain as we shift towards homelessness response. We have less capacity for proactive crime prevention strategies, as we covered during the presentation. We are working with expended shelters and outreach services for the on housed and the unfiltered populations. You can go to the next line please. Okay. This is basically our calls for service. We have been across the crime statistics, from year-to-year we saw that they dropped. But this is 2015 on the left, through to 23 five on the right. And the brown category above is projected based on current calls for service to the date this slide was produced. So we are anticipating will have 17,784 calls for service this calendar year. Last year, 24, we had 20,000. Almost 21,000 calls for service. So we are actually trending towards more calls per service than ever. I feel that is very much tied to these, working with our agency partners. A lot of these are not crimes. The still require a police response. They require us to go out and protect the vulnerable from harm. That doesn't necessarily mean we are arresting people. No longer just law enforcement. We are responding to calls that are coming into our dispatch center from the public and we are required to respond to the majority of them if not referred to the agency partners or other agency stakeholders. What is the next slide? Okay. So this is basically an overview of what I was trying to say about the presentation. We have a broad service role. We are not just enforcing laws. We respond to quality-of-life welfare checks, mental health and homeless issues and not just crime. Homelessness and behavioral health. We have arising visible homelessness issue. -- Has significantly increased. Rather significantly increased noncriminal service demands. Propositions in the assembly bill that we referred to. Shifting our workload towards different tracks. Community expectations is another big one here too.
That has been dynamic over the 26+ years I have been doing this job. We are seeing a trend towards noncriminal calls for service. We respond to those accordingly. We are here to provide public safety services to the city of Sebastopol and we will continue to do that. We will employ the partnerships that we have with W CCS or the Department of health services, my apologies. And home first. Agencies benefit the cities as much as we can. We do obviously suffer from staffing and budget limits. Having less resources to apply. We do the best we can with what we have. That does have an impact on our ability to be proactive. Moving on, quickly, just to cover some of the things that weren't in the presentation. Because they were represented as high in the top 15 categories. Looking a violent crime. Interestingly, Sebastopol, we are only a small population of less than 8000 people here. We actually represent higher than most of the other cities, if not all the cities in the county, for a lot of violent crime. Aggravated assault was highest represented in 2024 with 24 reported incidents. We had five cases, three robberies. In this reporting period we had two homicides. If you look at the graph related to those crimes, and working out on a basis, we are representing higher than all the other cities in the county. Including Santa Rosa in 2024. I think you will see that will change in 25. Because they've had an influx of homicides.
Nonetheless, it's concerning on a per capita basis. Property crimes was any different. We were the highest and that too compared to the other municipalities in the county. With 118 incidents in 2024. We were very close. In those categories include burglary, vehicle, theft and general larceny, such as shoplifting. That has been the thing that we see steadily increase over the last few years.
Chief, I do want to interrupt. We are above your presentation limit.
You can move straight to questions. I think I've covered as much as I can in the time that I have. It's very hard to give you a rundown of all of the stats. That's the majority of the things that really stand out in a breakdown from our reports management system. Can I answer any questions? Yes, Council member.
You just mentioned a couple of violent crimes. But I don't see that in your charts. So why aren't those in your charts?
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Because of basically only referred to crimes by what was represented the most. The most represented crimes, if that makes sense. I didn't do it by seriousness. I did it by what was represented the most.
I will jump in. Yes, I would like to see the data on the serious crimes. So if you could send it one way. I would like to be able to take a look at that. Questions that I had asked the representatives from DHS about training of dispatchers, because it seems like my general take away from all this, as I alluded to before, you were not social workers. You didn't sign up for this to be social workers. So just try to make sure that what resources we have employed in the best possible way, especially given the slashing of everything. So do you feel like you're dispatchers are comfortable with being able to do their criteria to determine whether the call can just be handled by MST? And not have to send out a. Because I heard from our director the he's able to come and do more training. So I'm just curious about what you think the status is now.
There's always a need for more training. Anyone that thinks they know it all just doesn't. So we would be receptive to any training that we could possibly receive for officers or dispatchers. As I have seen, and my current lease, as time goes on we are becoming more and more involved in these other types of calls that are not criminal, mental health, announced. People are in crisis. People are having medical episodes. We are somewhat expected to be paramedics or mental health clinicians in addition to knowing everything about the law. It's not possible. We have to do what we can with what we are represented with. Absolutely, I would love to have more training. That being said, there is no perfect solution to anything. Every situation we do is different, dynamic. It's no different for MST. They can turn up on what may seem like a completely routine individual. Next thing, it's not. It's the same for us. We had one of our sergeants assaulted a couple of weeks ago by an on housed person here in town. Break is can location's devices. We didn't know he was wrestling until someone called 911. What seems like an everyday call isn't always the case. Some training would be helpful I think. It's cut to help us in the right direction.
Great. Thank you. We will make the connections about what can be offered by way of trading for dispatchers.
That would be awesome. We would appreciate it.
Trying to keep everyone safe. About trying to take advantage the best we can with the limited resources, Nolan and his group have offered to our team. So they are coming sometime. I think we exchanged emails or something. What do you feel confident that when some person dropped in and sits at a desk at your station, do you feel like everything is ready for them to have a seat and go off on day one? Where is the connection here? I'm excited about it. As we like to say, it's another tool in the belt. We carry these things for our own protection or the protection of the public. We prefer not to use most of them. These are great tools that we would be foolish not to accept. Yeah, we are excited and certainly ready. We've identified an office in the building. People involved in the program are comfortable and able to do the best work. We will welcome them with open arms.
Also. The whole idea is to be able to position and get the good data so that we can come back to DHS and say, thanks for the pilot. We want this to be permanent. That helps you, helps us work everybody feel safe. Moving on to community placing, somewhere in your stats, or somewhere in your presentation, I thought I read something about committee placing. It has been a topic. There are a lot of us that would love to help.
Yeah.
Myself included. Just give me a vest and I'm happy to stand wherever, do whatever. So where we are with the community policing, to take advantage of all of us elders that may have extra time on our hands to help you do proactive policing or whatever. Where are we at with that? City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
That's a really great question and it's a very important aspect of any pleasing organization I would submit. Our unit, our communities volunteer unit sort of fell into most, if not all of the members that were basically told to go home during COVID for their own safety. At the time, we were unsure how that was going to unfold. They left. I don't know. I wasn't here for it. I guess they never came back or they were invited back into the unit just basically stopped. The vehicles that we had parked for a long time, stopped running. The flow in effect. It's very important to me. I love community policing. Anyone that lives in Sebastopol would see me out walking around.
I'm happy to speak to anybody . I really enjoy that part of the job. I'm embracing the opportunity. We are reviewing the application packet and state requirements for background investigations and things like that.
Because you are working with the police. We are working through that. We are trying to update the documents to be PDF so we can email them to people and move with the times. Currently, there's different documents and paper. They are not formatted the same. It looks unprofessional. We are trying to raise the bar a little here.
There will be some to review. That we need to figure out who the department is going to run this unit. We've had some changes in leadership. Not just me seven months ago. We've got a new lieutenant. He is still finding his place. We are dealing with some shortages. At times I cover patrol shifts to ensure we provide the best public safety that we can to the city. The lieutenant has been doing the same thing. So there's a few impacting or conflicting resources so to speak that are preventing us from getting it done at 100 miles per hour. But we are definitely working on it. It's something that we would love to do. I would love to do a citizens Academy. But it's getting someone to actually do it. Is a lot of work involved in prepping it and making it a valuable, educational tool and useful to the city.
Ray. I thought I had read somewhere where applications were sent out already. Somehow, you didn't get any response or whatever. That's not true?
No. It was published that we were looking for community volunteers and we didn't receive any from the, that publication. So maybe that's a blessing in disguise while we review what we spoke about. We had a more targeted pick
I appreciate that. I may bring an agenda review item tomorrow to talk about what needs to happen from a city perspective to get the applications together to take advantage of all the possible resources and people who would want to help for the citizen Academy, horse program, patrol pick There are varying aspects.
All of that. Great. Thank you for bearing with me to the questions for my colleagues before we go on to public comment? Looking to the left, right, vice Mayor. Any questions? Okay. Public comment? Thank you. This is for public comment on the informational item presented by the police chief. If you would like to make a public comment I will do Chambers first and then go to public. It is a two-minute time limit. Kyle? This is great news. Over the last 10 years we have 5X reduction in crime based on the police report. Again, there are some crimes that are not reported in the study. That's great. One thing I do need to make sure that all of you that are reading this bar graphs understand, is that beginning in 2021 the skill reduces by 50%. So it is not comparable to be winning as bar charts from 2021 forward. Because we are talking about skills of 150 that reduced to 75 very radically in 2021 and moving forward. Making claims about petty theft and those things rising up are just not accurate if we are talking about radically different scales from year-to-year. So you just can't make those types of comparisons in that way. Using terms like, especially growing, those are just not accurate. I think the real answer here is we have radically reduced crime over the last 10 years and it is clear to me, from the shifting priorities, that we have an opportunity of looking at resource reallocation in a way that City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
does meet the actual priorities with trained professionals doing the work that is needed based on what officers are currently doing. I would also like to push back on this idea of overtime. The city has had a rash of issues with police overtime where mutual aid requests by other local agencies were being abused in such a way that we were paying for overtime to have our officer serving out in Santa Rosa. Most egregiously, our officers going to participate in Black Lives Matter protests. Terrible stuff happening historically. I always want to be very, very clear about looking at police overtime and making sure that we've got oversight on actual valuable overtime and not things that are being farmed out to other agencies. Thanks.
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. Next, I will go out to zoom. If you like to make a public comment on the information presentation by the police chief please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will come back into chambers.
Yeah, that was weird by Kyle. You believe the data or are your lying eyes? I have lived here since 2014 and I've seen the crime, the number of homeless people, I know there is an Instagram group for all the local merchants.
Everything I've seen is the crime has gone through the roof here, not that it has all gone down. We can come back on police overtime. I think that's some kind of ideological fantasy myself. Having said all of that, I think this has been great. Having the different resources in the room. Thanks for sticking around, guys. I think this is good to get some collective thinking around this. Being really gloomy on the horizon, if all this funding is going to be drawing up, we will have a lot more crime I predict. Sadly. Because there will be a lot more people in the streets, a lot more people who desperately need money. The fantasy period is over I think. For the time being. That's my comment. Thank you.
Thank you for your public comment. Next, I will go out to zoom. If you like to make a public comment on the informational presentation please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will go back to chambers. If there is anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment. I'm seeing none. Public comment is close.
Thank you. I just want to thank everyone. I kind of said that the prior presenters could kind of overlap with gold ridge and fire. Probably too much of a leap. So if you guys do need to leave it is totally understandable. Much appreciation for the city to having you all be come as the commentor said, in the room working through how we are going to move all of us through this process. Our city and everyone else. Thank you. Moving on has promised to agenda item 15, informational presentation from gold ridge fire department on first-quarter statistics/volunteer participation. Our chief and our deputy chief.
It evening. Fire Chief of gold ridge fire district. Thank you for the opportunity to present and share some information. We will give you a brief update on where we are at with the consolidation and annexation.
Talk into the microphone? Is that what you're telling me? We closed the bathroom door pick
I will speak loud. Luckily, we don't have as much crossover with the department of public health. I'm excited to share with all of you, just because it's fresh, that we are in contact and we are excited for their services. We have occasions where we have crossed over. We already have a plan to train and receive training from them.
We are excited about that. I will try my best not to turn my head. But my eyesight is going on me. We are three months into annexation consolidation of the city fire services. I'm going to share a few metrics with you tonight.
One of the more important questions or concerns, as we went to this process, was the impact of the volunteer firefighters picks that happens to be the first line that we are going to talk about. And share with you the volunteer participation has not waned. In fact, I would say it's strong and thriving. There's a description of some City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
of the activities that the volunteers are still participating in. The first one is out of county fire responses. That's where volunteer will have the opportunity to respond out of county to serve other parts of the stay on while been fired or in response and other types of emergencies. Has always been your and dear, and important to the volunteers. It's a great service to us. It's not so clearly directly impactful for the city. The reason I encourage participation as they learn and bring experiences back to how they service in the community. Also, it's a great opportunity to serve and help fellow cities and areas of our state. Along with that, we have hosted two firefighters through the firefighter one Academy that originated out of the Sebastopol station. So they are paying their way through the firefighter one Academy , along with one for the firefighter EMT Academy. Next line. Again, continuing with the volunteer participation, this is an example of the training they have received through the last three months. Our expectation company officer and structured fire response. -- Vent, enter, isolate and search. One of the scenarios, and I'm highlighting it because that is like the most dramatic thing that a firefighter might do in a municipal area, is enter a burning building with the purpose of identifying or finding a victim, isolating them and rescuing them from a structure. While it is low-frequency it is one of those very risky things that we do. It's important training. Otherwise, a focus on structural firefighting, utilizing an inch and three-quarter hose lines and 2 1/2 inch hose lines. Next line. It's not lost on us that, again, the focus on what would happen to the volunteers is a major question as we embarked on this change. It's not uncommon, or was a concern, how many would we lose? Who would leave, who would stick around? Through that, it was important for us to do an exit interview with the members who chose to hang it up. So we have identified and shared with you that those members have left service. Along with that is an explanation of why. The chief has conducted an exit interview with all the members that chose to retire or move on and stop providing the service of volunteer. None of the explanations are alarming. They are reasonable. Either age, worklife commitments, new opportunities in the case of one member who went off to the U.S. Marines. Family commitments, nursing school. So a career change. One really cool thing to highlight is a volunteer at the Sebastopol station, he didn't own a home in town . He moved. But he still serves with the gold ridge fire department out of our Wilmar station. That's one example of how this broader network has actually been a benefit to the volunteers. We wanted to highlight that. Next line please. We knew immediately, and this was talked about a lot, station improvements need to happen. In particular, we need to make room to house a staffed engine company. We made some modifications to the station, which we lost office space. But we now have three dedicated bedrooms for 24/7 staffing. We have purchased new nozzles, improved the event system, which is the exhaust extraction tool to keep our firefighters healthy. A new ice machine, very important. Generally speaking, some station organization. We have staff in their 24/7. So there's opportunity to do some basic housecleaning and find some efficiencies. Next line please. There's just a picture of the dorm additions. Very comfortable, adequate housing. It doesn't mean that we are done making improvements to the facility. We still have some outstanding improvements to make. But this was the priority to accommodate the 24/7 staffing. Next line. In addition, the backdoors have been replaced. We anticipate, middle of this month or fairly soon, the replacement of the front bay doors as well. Those old doors were heavy and we are regularly breaking springs and burning up motors on the doors. Which have actually caused damage to fire engines and some near misses. So that was a priority, the backdoors have been replaced with lighter doors. Also bringing it into the station. And the front doors will be replaced here shortly, bringing light into the station as well. Next slide. Another key thing that we know and need, knew we needed to address, was a fire prevention efforts in the city. There were some outstanding business inspections. We have a dedicated 40 hour a week employee who is conducting fire inspections. We have also contracted, for residential and commercial construction plan review. We continue to level inspections.
One thing that is important, through this transition, we didn't want the business community needing a business license to have a delay in receiving inspection as part of their business license. Generally speaking, we don't want the community to really even know something happened. We want the continuity and continued high level City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
of community service and customer service. I believe, for the most part, we are hitting that mark. But I will remind everybody, we're three months into this. But am happy to say that we are making strides in the fire prevention effort. Next slide. Some response data. 345 calls for service through the three-month period, or nearly three-month period. We have the volunteer responses account for 560 volunteer responses. So that's either to the scene or covering the station while the first out engine is responding to a call, which is really important. Because there are a fairly high occurrence of back-to-back calls in the city of Sebastopol. Volunteer training hours. Again, that is representative of drills and online training system that we utilize. 845 hours of training. We have an improved, you will see in the next line, our turnout time, or time from receipt to call to being on the fire engine and initiating response. 79 seconds. Our average response time is four minutes. Next slide please. Pre-and post merger response times. You will see that we show both the turnout time. We see the reduction there. But the total improved response time is a decrease of a minute. That's fairly significant when you were talking about cardiac arrest. The growth and ability of a fire to get hold and expand. That's basically representing exactly what we hoped it would represent with the improved staffing at the station. Next line.
From my perspective, again, we are only three months into this. I couldn't be happier with the transition, the volunteers, the reception that we received from them. Overall, the response and the service we are providing to the community. The take away is that everybody is benefiting from this consolidation. I, of course, am biased.
These are just a few metrics. There's a lot of other things that are happy as far as community engagement.
Working with the department of public health, capacity to work with the senior center. There's some really good examples of, generally, that are hard to put into a graph and measure that are occurring, that I'm participating in, that the staff is participating in. Generally speaking, again, from my perspective, I think things are going smoothly. I know that there's better ways to exhibit the data. Over time, it will be easier to get sets of data, 90th percentile and things of that nature where we get a clearer picture of the improvements. The trend is clear to me, that there is an improvement to response time. The kind of things that are harder to measure are happening as well for my perspective. One last comment is, I want to invite everybody to this Sunday's pancake breakfast. I believe 7:00 a.m., 7:00 to 11:00. I'm making light of it I'm also not. That was another key concern or thing that we talked a lot about through this process. How does the community engagement continue? How do we maintain the local feel and feel like you saw the fire department? You still have a fire department. Got larger.
The community element, that component is still very strong and alive. I hope it continues to be that way.
Great. Questions for my colleagues? Councilmember?
Can you describe for us the 24/7 staffing? How does that work? What does it look like? Certainly. What that means is 24/7. So there is an A, B and C shift. There is a three-person engine company living out of the station. They work a 40 hour shift. So two days on, four days off. And they rotate A, B and C shift. There is a three-person engine company. You know, they are not in the station. They are doing other things throughout the day. Ultimately, what it means is tonight you have three people in that firehouse ready to respond at a minimum. There are certainly days where we have a volunteer in participation where there is a fourth person as well. And, again, supported by the volunteer response, which has remained robust so far.
Okay. Vice Mayor?
Yes. I just want to say, thank you, chief, for honoring the request to do this report. I know you have your own board meetings. I just appreciate you doing this for the community so that everyone can see how the transition is going. I just wanted to encourage anyone, if you ever do have any thoughts or concerns, or questions for the fire department you can attend their board meetings. It's on their website. I assure you, it is a much shorter City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
meeting and it's pleasant to be there and connect with everyone. There's a lot of dialogue that happens. I just want to thank you for doing this.
Thank you, vice Mayor. It's good to see. I wish you were here in person.
Me too.
Certainly. I would echo that. I definitely heard the concerned. As far as like the local and accessibility concern of going through this consolidation. I'm at retrograde every morning. My routine is to stop at the Sebastopol station, walk and get a coffee. It's my favorite part of the job as well, kind of echoing with the police chief said.
Engaging with the community is still very important. My area is larger. I would consider myself and the fire department very accessible.
Vice Mayor?
I had one other question. One thing I'm not aware of, and I haven't asked this question of the staff, is the communication working well with the firefighters? With you communicating. I know we discussed how we would let the staff know when there is a sort of important or, I don't know what you would call it, significant incident going on. How was that communication going?
I would say good to fair. And that's a matter of growing into it. I think I need the feedback. So if I'm not hitting the mark, let me know. Again, I would like to say that I'm accessible. We have a number of different ways to share communication. If I'm not hitting the mark to simply tell me and we will try to correct it. As we entered into this, the conversation was, how do we communicate significant events so that you guys are all aware of something that might rise to the level of you being put on the spot? You want to be asked about something and find yourself being unaware of a significant event that might occur in the city. The response was, well, my idea of significant event versus someone else's is different. I think the word of the day or the philosophy is just, over communicate. Sometimes I would say hit the mark and other times maybe I have failed to. So maybe I need that feedback and we will do better.
I appreciate that. Vice Mayor, go ahead.
I think there are some. I haven't seen many. I know that I witnessed the big vehicle fire and had up you -- Few people asking me about it. So I had to comb through social media to see what that was about. I just wondered, maybe you can get with our interim city manager and identify what is significant. Just because I haven't had questions and I hate having to go next-door or somewhere to look for something. But I had no idea about it.
Obviously a different situation going on here. At the same time, I just didn't know how that communication was happening. So maybe if you two could connect on that I think that would be good for all of us.
Yes. Thank you for bringing that up, vice Mayor. I have not received an email at all. So I don't know. If you guys can put your heads together, because we stay emails. There something going on down the street, smoke seen, or whatever. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. I haven't gotten anything.
Yes. We will have conversations with fire and police to make sure we are communicating. I think it's just a transition, as the chief has stated, the idea is different than ours. Over communication is what is going to be the key. So we will all work together to address that.
Okay. Active volunteer participation. I am heartened to hear what you have to say because I'm not going to say we heard it from. That was not what I got when I came into this meeting today. I had heard the fact that they had plummeted and the fact that is what happens when you get paid staffing. The fact that the volunteers do City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
not feel appreciated and they sort of all wander off. So if that is not the case I am happy to hear it. But the major point is, where do we find volunteer applications? Because, again, I keep remembering from a discussion many years ago, it doesn't matter how old you are, you could be seven years old had get trained, get a vest and direct traffic. I'm not seeing that. Had I seen it I would have already applied. So where do people go for that? The application exists on the website. There is no doubt that volunteer participation will be affected by the change in the response model. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that. When you have a fire engine you have individuals which, that was their life. The most meaningful thing. They got on the fire engine. They got to do the most rewarding part of the fire service, which was to go and help their neighbor. That opportunity has definitely diminished. There's no doubt about that. In return, you have an immediate response. While feelings are important, what's more important is that immediate response. So that is a fact of what occurred, which is 24/7 staffing. As far as the volunteers not feeling appreciated, granted, an exit interview when you're talking to achieve might be different than what you say outside. I acknowledge that people are not confrontational and they are not going to say, hey, I feel unappreciated. So far, the ones that we shared examples of, I believe those all to be true. Just by knowing the individuals. The volunteer retention, and just the nature of volunteerism and requirements, it is different than two years ago, three years ago. Generally speaking, if you are a volunteer firefighter there is not degrees a volunteer firefighter. You are a firefighter who is suppression. Expected to go into a burning building, crawl through a window, vent, isolate, search. So we have kind of gone away from is the varying levels of participation. Just because you can distinguish one from the other. You know? If you are riding on a fire engine the expectation is you can do a whole host of things. So that's a change. That doesn't mean there is not an effort to find room for volunteers. We have found creative ways. We found other ways of participation either to the foundation or support functions. But I will tell you, it's a diminishing return on investment to the summary through training at either, because of time commitments, their living situation, you know. You are always welcome. The application is on the website.
Duly noted. Connecting with scarce resources. I am trying to get the word out. The fact that is a free resource.
So where's the partnership between you and your entity, and the county and search? You mentioned fire extinguishers, all of that stuff. That's what we are trained to do. So can you speak to the partnership between your outfit and the county?
To the CERT in particular? It hasn't been great. Not that there hasn't been a ton of effort up to this point.
Understanding that CERT was countywide rather than them being hosted by city to city is really exciting. It takes a workload and makes a lot of sense to consolidate CERT and have chapters, providing service to the local community. We are excited about that. There's a conversation that kind of goes back and forth between police and fire, those sort of programs. It's not forgotten about. But I like the model better than having a standalone.
Definitely supportive of the direction it's going. I acknowledge we need more engagement.
Yeah. So if you connections, Dr. Nancy Brown, she is the person. Happy to connect to. Awesome. Thanks for indulging me questions. Any questions before we go to public comic? I'm seeing none.
Thank you, Mayor. This is public comment on the information presentation from the gold rich fired apartment.
If you would like to make a public comment I come to Chambers first. Seeing none. I will go out to zoom. If you would like to make a public comment on the presentation please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none.
There is no public comment on this item.
Another information received. Moving onto agenda item 16. Fiscal year 24-20 5/4 for financial update on enterprise funds.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just give me a second. Okay. Thank you again. This is the fourth quarter financial update for the enterprise fund. So this slide is the Q4 for the water fund. Revenue reaches 100.4% of budget. Why the operating expenses was at 93%. Coming under the budget for the year and having a net result of $786,000. The same situation applies to the wastewater fund where the revenue was a budget of 101% and expense was 96%.
These numbers are going in the right directions and the surplus is reserved to fund future major capital products -- Projects. These are some helpful hints and operational notes for counsel and the public. The department implemented a one month billing cycle in June so that we can avoid the overlap of the July rate increase. Staff provided resources for customers how to read their water bills. And also, resources on how to monitor water use through the water apps. On the July build I believe everyone has seen, and we are the concern that since the city have gone on the tear rates that it should be displayed. And I believe it has now been displayed on all of the bills. Going forward, the bimonthly billing has resumed for July and August, September and October. It will be bimonthly from here on out. I know that was confusion regarding one month for June. And when they got their September bill it was doubled. It was not double because of the increase, it was a one month versus the bimonthly pics I want to make that clear to the public now. We did have a lot of phone calls and we did explain it to all of the customers. This one month June billing with the third quarter update. It has been discussed when we have this financial update. With that, the staff recommends that the Council received this report and file the Q4 for the enterprise fund. We are here to answer any questions that the Council has.
Thank you. Questions for my colleagues. Looking to my right. Left. Tells member? No questions, just a comment that the budget committee did receive these reports. This one and the next one. I have no questions.
I just want to say thank you as well. Also, this ion water, that's available for anyone. Right? It's like residence and schools. Because I have been getting emails of schools not being happy, water raids. Can you just go on this app? Can they do that?
Yes. Anybody can go on this app as long as they have the account. I'm pretty certain that commercial and residential, they all have accounts. There's a link on the website. There's instruction. There is colorful instruction that would walk you through the process of setting up this ion water so that you can monitor your worn -- Your own water usage and that will be very helpful to citizens.
Got it. I can't really see if the vice mayor has any questions. If not.
I'm sorry.
Can you direct the public where that is? The ion water. Is on the water bill page? I'm just curious.
It would be on the city website. I can bring that up again. So if you go to the city website, if you type in ion water is searchable. It should be able to take you to that webpage. If anybody has any questions they can call the finance department, the admin services department. We are more than happy to send you a copy of that pamphlet. And more than happy to direct you to the right place on the website. Sometimes it's a little bit challenging to find something. But it is searchable. If you type in ion water it should come up.
Yes. I can't urge. My partner and I have it. It's lovely. Just go there, do the app, it will help you. It will also track if you have leaks. That is something. Anyway, if no questions, vice mayor we have questions before we go to public comic?
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you, Mayor. This is public comment on the informational presentation. If you would like to make a public comment, again, I will go to Chambers first. Sorry, Kyle. Go ahead.
There is a recent Council decision to have a oversight committee to be looking at the enterprise fund. I think that decision was made sometime maybe back in July or August as a result of some genuine concerns around a lot of the decisions around the enterprise fund, allocation of enterprise funding. And some general concerns. It was my understanding of that committee, if I can count correctly, advertised exactly twice for participation. It has not yet been filled. And has now been extended out into October. So I'm genuinely curious with the city's expectation of its own efforts to try to fill a board would be. And I can understand a conflict of interest. Here's this oversight board that is looking at city budgetary processes. Do they really have a vested interest in making sure everything it's advertised well enough that they get enough applicants to be on that board? Also, city Council members. One of the efforts that you have taken to get people to participate and apply for the oversight board? Again, we have a problem with active participation by members of the public. We have lots of vacancies that end up happening over the last number of years. And I continue to claim that it is as a result of failed advertisement. Failed engagement with the public to try to get people to be on these boards. Thanks.
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. I will go out to resume. If you like to make a public comment on the information, on the corner for report, please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will come back to Chambers. If there is anyone in chambers. Seeing none. Public comment is closed on this item.
Thank you. And because I have been told I can make comment briefly about comments I will say, can you give an update on this oversight committee thing so the application has been extended? Yes. Kyle is correct. We have published it. We have put in the community newsletters. We have posted it on the website. We have put it out at constant contact. I will need to verify with Holly on that one. We had an initial deadline. We had one application. We extended it again for two weeks. We had one more application. We do not have applications to fill the creation so far, which is why we extended it one more time. If we do not get applications we will be bringing that agenda item back to discuss it with the Council. In my opinion, I'm going to disagree with Kyle. I do believe that we are making every effort to get it out there on social media.
That was my next question too. I hear too that we don't do enough advertising. If you don't think that we are doing enough please send the public comment. Seriously. I brought it up with staff. I do believe, and Mary just vouched, that they do try. So if you have magical ways that you think the city can advertise for vacant positions, please don't be shy. That was that item. Yes. That was that item. And that was received and filed. So we are moving on to our last informational item, which is number 17. Fiscal year 24-25 for financial update for general fund. And this item will include update as to the use of measured funds. Back to you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Let me find my screen. Okay. This is the four quarter financial update for the general fund. So this is the general fund overview. As you can see here, the adopted budget, originally, it was estimated that the general fund would be in a deficit of almost $700,000. Doing the budget process, we did estimate that the budget deficit will be 349. The preliminary budget deficit was $340,000. Comparing to the adopted budget there is a three and $50,000 improvement from the original budget deficit. This is the general fund revenue by categories. These are major categories in the general fund. Property tax, sales tax, users tax and transient occupancy tax. Most of the categories met or exceeded the budget expectation Emma with a few exception, which is the building fees. There are some unexpected project that did not materialize. Originally, it was budgeted at $1.3 million. It was estimated at 845, or 300,000. It came in at about 500,000. There are some projects that are out of the city control that did not materialize in this fiscal year. And this is the expenditure.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Want to pause. I think I heard. I had a question too. Maybe that's what it is.
When will we get a final on this?
The field audit has been completed and conducted. So everything is with the auditor right now. I do want to say, this is the final final. I don't anticipate any movement in the numbers. I think this is going to be the numbers. But because we'll have a financial audited statement out I can't say that this is the final number. It is preliminary. But it's pretty solid.
Thank you.
Following up on the building fee thing, that did seem to be a process. It was high, that it was sort of medium high. Then low. The budget committee, all props to you, fabulous job estimating this. Just something to think about, what are we going to do better on estimating these building fees moving forward? You have to comment now. I'm just hoping that we hear something about this at some point. I don't know. It doesn't have to be now.
Just putting it out there. Please continue.
Yes, noted. It's really hard to gauge the building application. Something that comes through, something fell through because something has happened that is unexpected. The budget committee is meeting every month.
They will be on the 14th of October. Q1 is on the agenda for the budget committee to review. We are doing the Council gold where we update the Council on a quarterly basis as soon as the information is available.
Council member?
I would suggest that you look at at. I don't recall the building permits estimated that high and coming in this low in the past. I understand things happen. I remember we were shocked at how high they were in this budget when they were recommended. We kind of got excited. It sounds like it's a one-year thing. I mean, it happens.
Things fall apart.
Definitely. On this slide, this is June 30th. Total expenditure for all department. It comes in at 95.3% in the budget. Most apartments stay within their appropriation with a few exceptions. Which related to personnel issues or personnel paid out. That is just out of the city control. Also, there are some project reimbursements for staff time that did not materialize either in the planning department. There's a few of that going on. Overall, if you are looking at overall what was the appropriation for the general fund in all these departments, stay within what was appropriate. So this is the graph for the measure update. The very first two lines is the actual 24-25 that the city received cash. $370,000. 40% of that would be for road, and whatever that policy was, was 148, which is not been allocated. For 25-26 projected, it is estimated that the city will receive $1.5 million for measure you. 46% of that is $40,000. During the budget process, if you recall, the Council did allocate more than 40%, which was 100,000, which is in red, right there. For those projects, the emergency operating Center, the fueling station, and there's a small amount of unallocated. So this is where we are at with measure U right now.
Will have the first three months of the old fiscal year. With that, we recommend, staff recommend that the city Council receive the Q4 in file. Soon, I hope in December or January, staff will come out with the financial statement.
Also. Questions from a colleagues before we go out to public comment? I'm seeing that. Online? Nope. Public comment?
Thank you, Mayor. This is public comment on the second informational financial presentation. If you would like to make it public comment I will go to Chambers first. And seeing none. I'll go out to zoom. Robert, can you City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
unmute yourself please? Robert, can you unmute yourself please? While we are waiting for Robert to unmute I will come back into chambers. Is there anyone in chambers? I'm seeing none. Robert, can you unmute please? I don't know if Robert is having technical difficulties.
It seems like he is and we probably should move along.
I will go back out to zoom. Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment? While rubber figures of his technical issues. Once again, we see a budget, we have seen this many years in the past. We get these budget proposals that have these expectedly doomsday scenario revenues. Oh, the revenues are expected to be lower and our expenditures are expected to be high. Here we are, the end of the year, and what do we see? We see increases in many of these revenue categories outside of what I would's -- Expected be statistical rounding. And we see significant reductions in the expenditures. What this does is it puts us in a situation where we are regularly making judgment calls on things that are valuable to our community to be allocated in terms of a budgetary process when we are overestimating our expenditures and underestimating our budget revenues. It happens year after year. It is pretty consistent. And then we see hard decisions being made. Decisions like how we go out for revenue increases by taxing folks on increased water and sewage.
Increased sales taxes. Increased property taxes for emerging fire. All these things get built into the type of rhetoric that gets used to push these policies forward. And it's all relying on this budgetary information. We find out at the end of the year it's just not accurate. So I really hope that we have better accountability about those things. We have some auditing process. With that just audits that the numbers are correct. It's not auditing if the numbers are actually good and predictable for what we would expect to see year after year. Thanks.
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment. Next I will go back out to zoom. If you would like to make a public comment please raise your hand virtually. There you go, Robert. Your unmute it or can you see the timer? I can. It says 14 seconds.
Can you please reset the timer? There we go. Go ahead with your public comment.
It will be brief I think. The one issue that we have the doesn't show up, and the numbers look great on this report, and on the budget. And the city has done a great job of managing a fairly complicated budget situation.
Looking at the top line, particularly for sales tax, it is up almost 10%, 110% of what was budgeted. Showing numbers how they change from budget isn't the same as trend. When you look at the trend on the legacy sales taxes we have with the Bradley Byrne, the T and Q, they are all down. They're not down as much as they have been the last two or three years. So that is an improvement. They are still down. And it's likely with numbers next to we will see 110% increase in sales tax sales tax revenue is incredibly important component of this. The inability to grow it fast enough to cover the increases that you are incurring with salary and benefit increases is going to make this impossible. Somehow you have to get sales tax revenues to increase sufficiently that you can afford to pay people. If you don't do that, what is happening is salaries go up because we have a minimum number of people in have to pay them. Benefits are going up in high double-digit rates in most cases. The only way to cover that is to cut other expenses. So, eventually you end up in a situation where we've got people working here but no work being done because there's no money to do any work. It's nonsensical in the way I just said it. But that is the direction it is headed and somehow it has to change. Good work on last year's budget.
Thank you.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you for your public comment. I will come back into chambers. Seeing none. I will go back out to zoom. If there is anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment on this item please raise your hand virtually.
Seeing none. Public comment is closed on this item.
Now moving on to our calendar. Agenda items. That we have the first one that was scheduled for May 18. Then we have number six, number nine and number 11. Someone can pull the plug at 10:30. I just want to put that out there. Agenda calendar. Item number 18. Consideration of approval of direction of city attorney to research options available to the city regarding what marks apartments. The city has received inquires and concerns regarding the displacement of tenants at Woodmark Apartments. At this time, there is uncertainty as to what actions, if any, the city may take within the scope of its legal authority. This item is to request the city Council approved direction of the city attorney to research and advise on potential options, again, if any. The requesters are myself and councilmember Carter. The department's city attorney. I will read the fiscal impact because we have been called out on this. If there is a fiscal impact we need to state it. Which we do. And it is underlined.
Fiscal impact. It will take approximately 10 hours for the city attorney to research and analyze the options for the city to address the situations described above. It is anticipated that those costs could include, could be included within the existing city attorney budget for general services. If the city council decides to move forward with any of the identified options there will be additional costs, such that for the preparation of the ordinance.
So, with that, I'm turning it over to you, Alex.
Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Pretty good summary of their. As the council is well aware, the Woodmark apartment project is a project that was built with funding from the Department of Agriculture for farmworker housing. It appears that units were meant rented to nonfarm workers with the developer and owner getting the necessary approvals. And now the apartment owner has sent out notices to the tenants in the buildings telling them that their leases will be renewed. And as you heard from them directly, providing them with very limited options on trying to find them on other locations. At the last meeting the Council asked for an item to be brought in the future agendas to the Council to discuss whether or not to evaluate and look at potential options. The main potential here is, what role do federal regulations have? And do they preempt things that the city might otherwise choose to do? If the city adjusted a just cause eviction ordinance approving evictions from day one of tenancy without just cause would they require these units to be occupied by farmworkers as a result of the funding project? Would this preempt the best? I'm prepared to answer now. I will pause for questions.
The question I have is based upon your experience. There are shady developers everywhere. Probably happened to other municipalities up and down the state. Looking to you and your advice. Also, the advice of your firm. You guys do have a firm. What are the realistic expectations that there could be an option for all of us to help these residents?
Just cause eviction ordinance applies on day one is a tenancy. It applies to units that are subject for affordable housing. It says in the ordinance, this ordinance doesn't apply to the extent it is in conflict with the state or federal law. It says, you know, rental unit would -- Or contractual requirements for the federal government or the state of California, applicable to such unit. I think, often times, local agency doesn't spend the time. They are not adopting the ordinance and response anything so they just include this to say, well, if it violates federal law it doesn't apply and someone else will figure that out. We want a more specific answer in this particular situation because we are trying to respond to a specific situation. It would make sense to adopt an ordinance with that if it's going to apply to the situation. Yes? City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Wouldn't it be true, whether or not you had that stated in the ordinance, if there was a federal preemption it wouldn't really matter if you did it or not.
Correct. My point is, if the goal of the Council is to respond to a specific situation, you know, it's up to the Council. We could adopt the ordinance but not know if it has any effect. It is absolutely an option. But the Council may want to know before it chooses to do that or not. The second element of this, you've mentioned a shady landlord. Ordinances are not self enforcing. Right? Let's say a landlord chooses to pursue eviction. Still, despite this ordinance being on the book, issue an eviction notice to tenant. Then the city decides if it wants to spend. What does it want to do? Does the city want to enforce and represent, or help represent these tenants potentially? Tenants may also get help from legal aid in that situation as part of an eviction. Ultimately, someone needs to be attempting to force this ordinance or, you know, a shady landlord may ignore it just the same.
Is Sebastopol covered by the county ordinance that is already in place? It is not. It only applies in on incorporated areas.
Okay. My second question is, is the fair housing advocates of Northern California, is that an agency that can be helpful?
Helpful to?
To the residents.
I'm not familiar. It may be helpful. Tell them I can't speak to that organization.
We finish questions? Questions for my other colleagues. Looking to the right. Vice Mayor? Vice Mayor, I see vice Mayor's hand.
Alex, can you just reiterate? I just want to make sure I'm understanding. It's late. If we did put an ordinance in place you were saying that we could do that. But the enforceability is questionable. Is that what you're saying? Just to boil it down to that. Or did we misunderstand?
That is correct. Because of the role of the federal funding here, we don't know if it would be enforceable or not.
We are not doing additional research.
And even in that research, are you confident that you could find an answer in that? Anyone can sue anyone.
The legal system, we know. I'm just wondering.
I will say I'm 100% confident. I assume the answer is out there. Like the mayor said, this can't be the first time this issue has come up. I suppose you never know. I imagine we will be able to determine the answer.
Okay.
No other.
This counsel has taken up just cause eviction in the past. It is broad. We, as a city, I've sat on the dais. We have other constituents that will want to know if we are looking at that besides just Woodmark. You knew this agenda item was coming but you are still unsure really because we haven't allocated you to work on this.
Whether this would solve the Woodmark issue.
Correct pick
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Okay. And that's what we are really trying to figure out tonight. Okay.
If no other comments we will go to public comment on this issue pick Thank you, Mayor. This is a time for public comment on whether or not to give direction to the city attorney to review this item. If you like to make a public comment we do Chambers first for two minutes then go back out to zoom. Then we will come back in. Please.
Some people might know me. Right? Hello?
Yes.
Is that better?
I can hear you. Is that all right?
Yep.
I just want to say, I'm sorry point
Okay. Ma'am, ma'am? Our assistant general manager has called for in person comments first. We go back and forth. So we are going to start with this in person commentor. If you're next in line then you will be next.
Okay. I've got two minutes. Right?
Yes.
My name is Sandy Russell and I'm a resident at the Woodmark. I'm a retired nurse manager. I live here in Sebastopol . I've lived around the corner from Woodmark as it was being built, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The personnel that filled the units or they now live, they put out a banner on the building. Late last year I think it was. But there was nothing on there to indicate it was for farmers only. So what they did is they collected. They had all of us unknown people call in to inquire about it. They took our names and numbers. I just forgot about it.
They asked if I was a farmworker. I said I'm a retired registered nurse. They said, we are putting together an interest list. So can you put your name on the interest list? I said, sure, but I'm not going to be a farmworker.
They said, we will put your name down. Very early in December somebody, somewhere, I'm thinking TPC, must have said, get this place filled up. It is standing empty, get it filled up. That's my supposition. All of us that are here now, going in for an interview. It's the quickest interview I've ever had in my life.
You have about 20 seconds.
Sorry?
You have about 20 seconds.
Okay. Well I better hand this off to somebody else than. I had a lot to say. Anyway, basically, we need protection from eviction, as you were just talking about, because we do not deserve this. This is absolutely ridiculous that this has happened to us. We don't deserve it one iota and I'm fuming about it. I think we have to really come together as a community and take this mess on because this was so must so wrong.
That is two minutes.
Thank you pick
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you for your public comment.
I will go out to zoom. Robert, can you unmute yourself? Can you see the timer still? I can pick
Go ahead, please.
Another question for the project. I believe that if you established an ordinance that the way it would ultimately be determined whether the ordinance could be enforced would be legal action in a courtroom. And that comes with a cost. And that cost should probably be estimated as well, since we currently have almost $700,000 a year in legal expenses associated with other decisions that were made. That have cost us dearly for many years now.
Keep that in mind. Thank you.
Thank you for your public comment. I will come back into chambers.
Hi. I'm Beth. I'm a resident at Woodmark. I wrote words out to ask you to take the perspective of those of us that are being impacted. I want to look at each one of you. I'm wondering whether you have ever been witness to someone who has been a functioning member of society, who has been a healthy, charismatic, intelligent person. Kind person. And watched them deteriorate after they lose their housing. Because it is a very, very dehumanizing and destructive process. I want you to imagine why you are all housed right now because I can't imagine that one of the reasons, or some of the reasons might be that you attribute it to the superior skill set, that you don't allow yourself to be put in these kinds of precarious positions, that your intelligence or good work ethic, or your responsible adult abilities allow you to maintain civil housing. But I am here to tell you, that is not why. You are currently housed from a combination of factors. But a big one is locked.
You have about 25 seconds.
I had a thriving practice, a wonderful husband, a meaningful community. But COVID and a life-changing blood disorder, including kidney failure and brain damage, and ultimately my husband's diagnosis with dementia, created a cumulative hurdle that I could not overcome. I am still barely functioning because I was able to secure affordable housing here in Sebastopol.
That's two minutes.
Thank you.
With my medical team and my support systems.
Thank you for your public comment. I will go out to zoom. Can you unmute yourself please? Thank you. Can you see the timer?
No. I will time myself. It's okay pick
Go ahead with your public comment please.
Thank you, counsel, for listening to our topic. I just wanted to bring up that we spent this evening talking about the impact, the fiscal impact of homelessness, of mental health crisis, of crime in our communities. If you could approve all these households on the street I'm thinking that I'm going to leave this community. If not, all of the data that you presented today is obsolete. There's going to be an increase in mental health crisis, and increase in the cost of homelessness on the community, and increase on the medical providers, and increase possibly in City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
crime. There are teenagers, over 41 children living in this complex. The disruption on their development in some of the very sensitive, formative years can have tremendous fiscal impact on Sebastopol going years forward.
Consider those fiscal impacts as well. What this can cause to the community. Thank you. I wasn't really prepared. I was thinking about the disruption this causes to families. We are all coming from trauma, medical problems, dealing with poverty for years.
You have about 10 seconds.
We are hoping we can break the cycle of poverty establishing stable housing and that being taken away.
That is two minutes.
Thank you. Thank you for your public comment.
Thank you.
Next, I will come back into chambers. If there is anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment.
I just need to take a breath. I am a Woodmark tenant. I am also a mother and a full-time case manager. By now I imagine you are familiar with the basic facts around the situation at Woodmark. Today I want to speak about the impact this situation is having on me and my neighbors. Property management and companies preyed on vulnerable people. This is a level of betrayal that goes very deep. We are not just talking about units and apartment complex. We are talking about people's homes. We are talking about places where people can feel safe, where they can find stability in an increasingly hostile and unstable world. The tenants at Woodmark are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. We are human beings with families and responsibilities and struggles. Many of us have trauma from previous betrayals and abuse. These actions have added to that trauma. Do we want to live in a world where predatory developers and property management companies can scam vulnerable people and pull the rug out from under them? I certainly don't. This is why we need the city attorney to look into possible avenues of holding accountable and providing dozens of families facing possible homelessness. Thank you pick
Thank you for your public comment. Next, I will go out to zoom. Can you unmute yourself please? Thank you.
Thank you. Can you see the timer?
Yes I can. Thank you.
Go ahead please.
A lot has been said tonight. Is somebody just recently said, you were aware of everything that's going on. I was tenant number one to move in here. And my particular apartment, after I was baited and switched, looks out directly to the office. I am retired due to disability. I am home every day. I understand that there is at least five apartments that are vacant right now and yet nobody comes to this place to apply for housing. Nobody has been moving in. Those units sit vacant. So what is supposed to happen here? What's going to happen? Now we have even more vacant units because more people moved out and took that $10,000 offer this last weekend. All of these units are available yet nobody is coming to apply. I look at the office right out my window. I see it all day. I can see who is coming and going. And nobody is coming. So that's very concerning for me right now because we don't have a place to go, I certainly don't have a place to go. I thought I was good here and actually went to file a bankruptcy after I was kind of encouraged to do that because now I'm living in a place where I know what my situation is and I could not find work to help me take care of some bills. And that I was told I am judgment proof.
I called my creditors, now my credit score is lousy and I find that I have to move. I have written to the attorney City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
about this, as well as attorney McDonald about this. I have not received a response yet. But this is very concerning for me at almost 65 with nowhere to go. I would really like to see the city take an issue with this because it's not right to all of us. People especially with children and the disabled seniors living here. Thank you pick
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come back into chambers. If there is anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment.
Hi, good evening. My name is Paul. I was so excited the last time I was here, which was the first time at the meeting when I was told that we would be number one on the agenda. Now we are number 18. I want to be here because I'm reminded of a couple of things. When I graduated at the University of Santa Clara my instructor said to me, you know, -- Have smart babies too. Not knowing the community after eight months of living -- None of it. But what I found were some nice, young people. Other people too that were steadfast in their commitment. We didn't deserve any of this. And I met a lot of friends along the way, and a gentleman who is retired from the state of California looked at me coming out of church. He says, you know, I have been seeing it on the news. I said, what do you say? He says, you guys were all damaged. What? I didn't think about it. You guys are all damage. Okay. We are damage. So where do we go? Well, they didn't act in good faith. We all know that they are not honorable people. A situation of deceit and deception. We got them. But here's the deal, I am probably the least affected overall 40 people that are in that apartment. But I'm never going to leave my apartment, and that's the bottom line here. I see with the young ladies, men and -- Are doing. I said, I can't leave. I know now that there are a lot of options. The problem for us, this is the calm before the storm.
You have about 20 seconds.
We are going to be out by the end of December. Right now there are 48 tenants. Five have already vacated.
Probably an estimate of five or 10 that will be leaving at the end of October. Okay? That leaves about 20 to 25 families that will stick it out.
That's two minutes.
Thank you pick
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will go out to zoom. If there is anyone on Zoom that would like to make a public comment on this item please raise your hand virtually. See none. I will come back into chambers.
Thank you for your time. My name is Melissa and I am a tenant at Woodmark Apartments and a parent of a child with autism. I am here today to speak to you about family and community. I am the fifth generation in my family to be born into a cult. And I was excommunicated at 18. Since then, I have been searching for sense of family and belonging. I son and I have found that here in Sebastopol. The family we built around this may not be traditional, but it offers the love and support that my biological family could not. The community at Woodmark is really special. We are people of color, seniors, individuals with disabilities, single parents, farmworkers for people in recovery, and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. As a community, we contribute to Sebastopol. We shop locally. We hold jobs here. We care for elders. One tenant helps our daughter who runs Ruby Pilates on Main Street. Another babysits her grandchildren. Our children attend local schools and play in local sport leagues. We are active, invested members of the city. One definition of family is a group consisting of one or two parents and their children living together as a unit. Did you know that more than half of the 40 households at Woodmark fit that definition? And within those households, there are at least 41 children. That's 41 children with the potential to grow up and contribute meaningfully to the city. If they are allowed to stay in City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
stable housing. 41 children who will one day be the ones making decisions for all of us. The choices you make today directly shape the lives and values of their future. So ask you, what kind of example is Sebastopol going to set for them? Will this city stand up for those who don't have the same opportunities as others? Or allow greedy corporations to prey on the vulnerable? At the last council meeting councilmember Hinton said to a candidate, and a quote
That's two minutes.
Okay.
Thank you for your public comment. Next, I will go back out to zoom. Jenny, can you unmute yourself please? Yes.
Thank you. Can you see the timer?
Yes.
Great. Go ahead, please pick
My name is Jenny Edwards. My parents are residents at Woodmark. They are seniors and Woodmark was meant to be the last home. Our families devastated at what is happening and with the federal government shut down our ability to file complaints with the USDA has been halted. I think we are all feeling the strain of what that means. I have watched the toll this has taken only on my parents but on the other residents. Many of whom are here fighting for the right to stay in their homes. We are requesting our city helpless. I ask you to listen to your constituents. That is my public comment. Thank you.
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will come back into chambers. If there is anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on this item. Kyle? I'm really hoping that we can get some direction on this. I was under the impression that last council meeting you had already directed the attorney to be looking into what can be done. To have an item tonight that is like, and now we can improve for the city attorney to look at it. This should have been looked at for the last two weeks. So I really want to push back on Alex's idea here that federal regulations supersede local authorities in the case of Woodmark. Regarding some sort of an ordinance that could construct. This simply doesn't hold up when we look at what other California cities have done successfully. Cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, they have all adopted just cause ordinances that coexist with federal and state housing programs.
Including section 8 tax credit and restrictive housing. In each of those cities local law doesn't replace federal requirements, it supplements them. It is adding clear due process. Things like notice, documentation, limits, arbitrary eviction, and displacement. So this idea that somehow we are going to abandon this approach because there is some sort of an idea that the federal government would supersede any of that, I don't think that is there. In Berkeley, if they can apply just cause standards to federally subsidized housing, and if Los Angeles can do this across tens of thousands of regular units, Sebastopol can certainly do a local framework that ensures fairness at Woodmark. We are not asking the city to defy federal law only to affirm federal oversight doesn't erase local responsibility. Well-crafted ordinance with clear carveouts for true conflicts would strengthen tenant stability, reduce confusion and demonstrate what Sebastopol stands for an affordable and secure housing.
Really, it's about making progress and doing it quickly. The clock is ticking. The idea that we have now waited another three weeks to actually be making progress, that's really unfortunate. I don't want to see the dragged out further.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you, Kyle, for your public comment.
We are going to try to keep this going.
I'm sorry. Before we go further our city council protocols state that we have an ending meeting time at 10:30 unless there is a unanimous vote to move forward. So we would need to have unanimous consensus to continue. We can continue this item specifically and then close the meeting at that point. Or we can have a unanimous vote to go to 11:30 to see what other items we can do. I just want to remind you counsel.
I will weigh in. I would like to conclude this one and just be done. I can't stay beyond. Those are my thoughts.
My colleagues, vice Mayor?
I have until this is done. If it's done before 11:00. Otherwise, I am out. 11:00 is my time.
Thank you. My other colleagues?
I'm good. However long.
We will get done with this one as long as is and go beyond 11:00.
We have unanimous consensus. We have unanimous to go forward? I will go back to zoom. If anyone on Zoom would like to make a public comment on this item please raise your hand virtually. I'm seeing none. I will come back into chambers. If there is anyone chambers that would like to make a public comment on this item? Hello. My name is Gabby. I am a resident of Woodmark. Last time I shared with you some of the ongoing harm and emotional and educational impact. A lot of what has Artie been said. Displacement degraded by mental health, it's consuming my energy, I needed for education, my career. And my son's well-being. There was a lot of talk today about public safety. One of your vision statement is to strive to be a model of excellence by providing professional public safety services with integrity, accountability and partnering with our community. Being part of Sonoma County I would hope that the city attorney can collaborate with our district attorney in bringing criminal charges against this developer so we can have some sort of legal representation and really take this matter seriously if it feels as though there is no ability to intercept. We are being retraumatized over and over again. Just for a little bit. Real quick. This relocation alternative that they have tried to provide, it's not an option.
Affordable housing is practically unavailable. We know this. I know this because I used to work in basic needs.
That was my job, finding housing for homeless students, a program I was part of and how I became to be part of Woodmark.
Gabby, we've got 10 seconds pick
Thank you. There is more that can be done. I think the district attorney can collaborate with the USDA to come up with some sort of feasible and realistic plan.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.
Thank you for your public comment. Next I will go back out. Please raise your hand virtually. If there is anyone in chambers that would like to make a public comment on this item. Seeing none. Public comment is closed on this item.
Thank you. Bringing it back for my colleagues to discuss or make a motion. To my left. To my right. Okay.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
I know we are at the end of the evening. I am frankly not a huge rush because you all came and sat the this entire a lengthy meeting to talk to us. That's really important. My first home in Sebastopol was right around on Nelson way. I was a renter. I love that little neighborhood there. What's happening to you is awful. I just want to say that up front. I will be supporting our attorney to try to look into this. Hopefully, Alex will be able to recommend something that you is homeowners can do coming together as a group. Frankly, I think that is probably the strongest case. I'm not a lawyer. Sticking together in numbers would seem to work. I just want you to know that I personally am not delaying the item in any way. We were horrified to hear the last time but we have protocols to go through to get it on the agenda and action item. Thank you for waiting tonight so that we could take action on this. I think we probably went in and made some comments. I don't want to speak from other colleagues, but I just want you to know that we do here you and we care.
Thank you.
I have some thoughts. This is an emergency situation. It seems that it might be helpful to have an appointed liaison from the Council to work specifically on this issue because there's a lot of information that needs to be gathered. Or it could be an emergency ad hoc committee that would come together to work on this. It seems like partnering with advocates like a legal aid, or fair housing advocates. And then partnering with someone at the county at the state, like McGuire at the federal level. Like Jared Hoffman. To get to the USDA because this isn't right, what's going on. The thing is, how do we fight it? It's not right. How do we fight it? How will we be successful at fighting it? I don't think Sebastopol alone is strong enough. So if we can partner, I'm not sure having a just cause ordinance will be strong enough. But if we partner with other agencies and with our federal representatives, you know, working with them, that might help us, help us to be stronger. I would support directing the attorney to spend the time on this. I would just like to include the idea of how inclusive can we be in terms of other partners and possibly the idea of an ad hoc or liaison? I'm sorry. We are decorum, trying to move through, trying to address the issue. Please. Vice Mayor? Can I get a clarification? I hear support for having the attorney do the work. And I apologize, I keep going through the item. Are we talking about gates around the amount of hours that are spent on this? I'm trying to read through this again and I can't seem to find it. Alex or Mary? Just looking at these options. It wouldn't just be a just cause eviction ordinance or whatever options might be available through the city, legally separate for lack of a better word, political options the city might pursue of working with its representatives to put pressure on USDA. This was solely the estimate of time to explore legal options the city might pursue because that is what the agenda request was for.
Okay. Personally, I'm interested in having some sort of gates around the amount of hours that are spent. And I agree with councilmember Mauer. I don't believe that the city of Sebastopol is going to be able to solve this alone or fight it alone . We are a very small city. Many of you haven't lived here very long. I don't want it to sound callous when I say, it's just the reality of the situation. The city has had many, many financial problems.
We've been in a fiscal emergency for a very long time and in a huge lawsuit with the ACLU. There's been a lot of stuff going on over the last few years. I just know, with all that experience, that we are small. If there's anything to be done it's going to be with many other people. Whether it is political or legal. And also, you all coming together and finding the resources as well, as far as the experts to help. I'm interested in having some sort of gait around the hours for me personally to vote for this. We can't just say it's been whatever hours you want because we only have so many hours in the budget. I don't know where everyone else's. I would like to have a good idea of what we need to approve in order to move the needle, if at all, with this.
City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025
Thank you, vice Mayor. Yes, I think the guardrails for me are what was indicated here, the fiscal impact will take approximately 10 hours for the city attorney to do research and to come back and present options. I am definitely in favor of that. Hopefully, if the will is to do that, for you to say when we can get the results of that.
Would that be in a two week time period?
We can have it there.
So if that's the case, councilmember, you sound like you are already making the motion. If you'll make the motion I will second it. Or councilmember Mauer can second it.
I'm happy to make the motion to approve the 10 hours that are indicated on the agenda request. I also like the idea of if somebody wanted to work with on this, I don't know if you were volunteering, councilmember. I just recently started a new job so I can't spare the hours. I'm working out of town.
I didn't know if anybody else was already working on it. I didn't know if you are already working on it, if you had Artie gone to the meeting and were educating yourself.
I definitely went to the meeting and I also heard from several of the people here. So I'm kind of up-to-date. At least on that perspective. Yes, if that is the will of the group because this is an emergency to set up, I don't know. Alex should have to explain. Can we even do that? It's not on the agenda tonight to create a formal position. If the two of you want to say we are going to work on this informally there is nothing wrong with that tonight. And we can bring back a formal creation at the next meeting.
I'm interested in making the approval tonight and maybe that would be part of your recommendation based on the information that you find. And if we want to work informally on it. I will stick to the original motion.
I will second it.
Great. Mary, rollcall?
I just want to clarify, was that not to exceed the 10 hours? Okay. So moved by counsel for Hinton and seconded by councilmember Mauer to address the city attorney to research options available to the city regarding woodwork, not to exceed 10 hours. Councilmember hidden? Does member Mauer? Is pick
Vice Mayor Mike Lewis?
Yes.
Mayor Zollman?
Yes. Motion passes with four councilmembers -- In support and -- Absent.
Thank you. We are now injuring. Thank you. [Event Concluded] City Council Meeting Packet of: October 21, 2025