Towards a brighter, better Sebastopol city council

Ballots are in the mail and election season is upon us!

(Image courtesy of Laura Hagar’s ‘Sebastopol Times’ blog)

I've had an absolutely fascinating time running my city of Sebastopol council election campaign so far! Here’s my story of how I decided to run and some observations of my experiences so far.  I’ll immediately add here how much I’ve enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people on doorsteps over the last few weeks, and I’ve been greatly encouraged by the tremendous support I have received! Thank you!

Whatever the election results, I now know the city (with all its strengths and weaknesses) much better and have met a lot of new friends street by street, including many who have been supportive with donations, displaying lawn signs and spreading the word. (Special shout out to our volunteer firefighters!)

My local political involvement began in the summer of 2020 when I first started both attending and speaking during public comment at council meetings and writing public comments to the councilors, after hearing rumors that Sebastopol’s only downtown hotel might be purchased by the county to ‘permanently house’ homeless people.

I started a blog, ‘Sonomacountyhomeless.com’, attended county Continuum of Care meetings, Board of supervisor  meetings and of course our local city council meetings to try to make sense of the logic, the bureaucracies and the huge state level pressure on small communities like Sebastopol to conform. I also talked to a lot of homeless people that fall, including a guy we were employing for gardening work who lived in an RV locally and who taught me a lot about outdoor living realities at that time. Sadly Jessie was killed in a head on collision between his RV and an 18 wheeler on 101 near Frog Woman Rock in 2021. 

In that same year my family sadly lost my young nephew and his girlfriend to his final Fentanyl overdose. My attempts over many years to help this opioid addicted young man get clean ultimately failed. My thoughts and concerns about the efficacy of project HomeKey and the Sebastopol Inn at Gravenstein Station at that time are pretty extensively documented here, and at that time I also became closely involved with Michael Shellenberger who subsequently published his excellent book San Fransicko, and also with Tom Wolf, a recovered opioid addict and expert in what actually works to help substance abuse addicts and their associated psychological problems. If I am elected, I would like to have Tom come and speak to our community.

Successful homeless strategies are a huge topic and something I am extremely interested in. I have a large network of contacts in California at Federal, State, County and consultant levels who specialize in that topic but that is not why I ultimately chose to run for Council.

Currently our City of Sebastopol council, some of whom have been in office for a very long time, have lengthy, rambling Zoom council meetings, with short citizen verbal comment windows of 90 seconds but little indication anyone in office is listening or contemplating what has been said.  Fortunately we have very hard working, dedicated city staff that hold everything together and deserve better.

I first met Jill McLewis, whose chocolate production kitchen and shop ‘Eye Candy’ in Gravenstein station was severely affected by the county buying the hotel, during these marathon council meetings in 2020. Here we are now both running for office in 2022 versus Diana Rich’s hastily assembled slate of candidates. 

Jill, with her experience of running our local chamber of commerce and community center, is tremendously knowledgeable about local businesses and how our city runs, and we have spent many hours discussing more streamlined and better ways to serve our local tax paying community over the last couple of years.

What we learned from attending so many Council meetings is that our town had more struggles than is apparent on the surface. We are facing a year over year budget deficit. We have a lot of vacant storefronts which is not only unappealing but also means we are losing the vital sales tax that supports our city services. We learned that our fire department is underfunded and needs more City focus and support. 

After we heard Diana Rich’s venerable mentor Sara Gurney was not running and neither were mayor Patrick Slater or Una Glass, we felt we had to run since there were three wide open seats. While it is very hard to beat an incumbent in an election, this appeared as a great opportunity for positive change and fresh efforts for a better future. To be frank we had failed to persuade anyone else to volunteer. 

When we met Dennis Colthurst after he threw his hat into the ring and qualified, I felt we all had complimentary skills. Dennis knows our city like the back of his hand, and as a retired beat cop he strongly believes in the effectiveness of community policing. I felt very comfortable aligning with his skill set, which is very different but complementary to mine and to Jill. 

For a few days the only possible other candidate was Sandi Maurer, who had ‘pulled papers’ but not filed. We briefly thought we might all get sworn in with no opposition, so no election!

I called Sandi for a chat and told her I wouldn’t be supporting the city’s plan to install digital water meters (Sandi’s platform is anti Electro Magnetic Frequency pollution, meaning no smart meters or public wifi. If I am in office but Sandi is not elected it is likely we will be on opposing sides of lawsuits - Sandi’s organization has sued the city in the past).

The concerns I conveyed to Sandi are the tremendous expense of these IOT devices which will have a short hardware lifespan, worries about your data sanctity/security (we don’t want your social security number being found in a dumpster in Delhi, India!) and potential software licensing issues and loss of cost controls going forward. 

Sandi was subsequently endorsed by Sara Gurney, who I believe voted for our public works SmartMeter water use measurement EMF devices, which allowed the 2013 city moratorium on these devices to be broken by PG&E for electrical and gas measurement EMF meters. She is also endorsed by Diana Rich.

At the last minute on the last permissible filing day former Chevron Oil lawyer turned public defender Stephen Zollman both pulled papers and filed to run as Diana Rich’s candidate colleague, giving her a slate to maintain the old order’s status quo and goals. I don’t think Stephen has ever attended a council meeting or written a public comment but I am aware he is involved with various advocate organizations and is keen to enlarge the county library in our city center that sits on city owned land.

So the election was on and I had to start thinking about raising funds and awareness!

I created a wordpress website oliver4sebastopol.com and designed lawn signs and flyers, using money donated by local people and businesses to get them printed by Vistaprint (who I can recommend, they did a great job in my opinion!) 

Laura Rush’s pro Rich slate post on her ‘Sebastopol Times’ substack blog featured a good photo of my sign out in the wild, which I put at the top of this post.  

I’ll be reaching out to Laura for comments about her local blog and her goals for a future post here. Laura is also currently employed by the City Council as part of the Council funded ‘Relaunch’ Program. It is unclear if her Sebastopol Times substack is a Council sponsored PR Tool or just a personal blog on Sebastopol.

The bulk of my election efforts have been walking, listening and learning what our local community is concerned about and what they think.  I will have to get back to my website and add some more materials there this week now that mail in ballots are on the way, including some of the community concerns and ideas I have heard, but walking and listening comes first! 

I haven’t responded to any of the special interest groups and non profits who asked me to fill out forms explaining how I would support their positions in return for their endorsements. There are two reasons for this. The first is I don’t have time to research them, and secondly I don’t want to be bound by anything I said I would do if I am elected. I did respond to the bicycle coalition because I like them and because I am concerned about the increasingly blurred line between electric ‘bicycles’ and pedal power which is causing injuries and inconvenience to pedestrians on our local trails.

Thus far the election comes down to the Diana Rich led and endorsed duo that could be called ‘Sebastopol Yesterday’ versus myself, Dennis and Jill as ‘Sebastopol Tomorrow’, old versus the new... We want to get back to basics, get our budget, fire service and heroic public works people properly funded and revitalize our downtown. Basic, commonsense logic working with our community in a much more transparent and modern way. More on that in a future post…