From: Isaiah Green
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2026 8:34 AM
To: City Council <[email protected]>
Subject: A&M BBQ
Hello City Council, my name is Isaiah Green, I am 21. I was born in this town and have lived here my entire life.
I personally believe it would be a travesty to push, what is rapidly becoming a staple of the community out due to unfounded accusations.
I live directly across the street from A&M BBQ and I find it laughable that anyone would try to argue that it is creating traƯic problems or destroying the air quality.
If you want to talk about traƯic problems try driving north on Main Street at any busy hour or try entering the town from Santa Rosa. There are a multitude of traƯic problems in this town that need to be tackled before you could even think of blaming A&M BBQ for congesting the streets. The only direction that remains relatively clear is the one passing in front of the restaurant. While the lack of parking does frustrate sometimes it only proves the value of this establishment to the community. Plus if customers have to walk by the other businesses on our downtown strip maybe they’ll stumble in and buy something.
As for the air quality, while you can often smell the delicious aroma wafting from across the street, I have looked at the charts and don’t see a qualitative eƯect on AQI that you could reasonably contribute to the restaurant. There is an increase in pollutants year over year, but that is the case everywhere. If you check data from surrounding areas outside of the reasonable zone of eƯect from their smokers you see the same trend. It’s impossible to say that they aren’t aƯecting the air quality just as it’s impossible to say that they are.
What this all feels like to me is an attempt to hold on to the past and stifle the growth and change this town desperately needs. I volunteered at the Sebastopol chamber of commerce for a number of months and know first hand how badly downtown needs a revamp. The Barlow pulls much of the potential clientele of downtown shops and restaurants slowly strangling the historical heart of our town. I think that a restaurant that sells out every weekend is the type of business that will help, maybe just a little, to drive new customers through our downtown business doors.
I have always loved bbq and it’s made me sad to see the few other bbq restaurants fail in this town. I don’t think we should force another out. As long as they eventually move their production elsewhere as they expand I believe we should let them stay… unless their quality declines as they try to scale. If that happens my endorsement will be revoked.
As a youth in this community i want to see our town flourish in the future and shutting down successful businesses is not how we do that.
Thank you for your consideration
Local business owner,
Isaiah Green
Founder of Teleios Repair LLC