Sonoma council race touches on housing, tourism, water issues

Ken Brown isn’t ready to relinquish his seat on the Sonoma City Council, one that he has held for 16 years, making him one of the longest serving council members in the city’s history.

But Brown, 67, will have to fend off a host of challengers if he wants a fifth term. He is the lone incumbent among eight candidates, including a city planning commissioner, retired fundraiser, personal trainer and a doctor, competing for three open seats on the council Nov. 4. Mayor Tom Rouse and Councilman Steve Barbose are not running for re-election.

The candidates have called on the city to create more affordable housing, secure its water supply and balance residents’ needs as tourism continues to expand.

Brown said there’s more he wants to see done on the council, including higher-profile crosswalk striping to make the city safer for pedestrians and approving a ban on smoking in housing complexes and public areas like the historic Plaza.

Last week, he and fellow council members voted unanimously to table until after the election discussions on a measure that could tighten regulations on tobacco retailers. The move pushed off talks on a smoking ban to the beginning of next year, after new council members settle in.

Brown, who first ran unsuccessfully in 1996 and two years later ousted incumbent Dick Dorf by one vote, has won his last three elections with greater margins, despite each race drawing numerous candidates.

“I’m not done,” Brown said. “I’m a much better council member now than ever before.”

The council has no term limits, which doesn’t sit well with Andrew Sawicki, a podiatrist and political newcomer. Without such limits, council members can become complacent and not focus on residents’ needs, he said.

“It just becomes your lifestyle,” he said. “I always felt that at any level (of government) there should be term limits.”

A 27-year Sonoma resident, Sawicki, 59, got his first taste of politics earlier this year when he fought against local government officials’ plans to create a water detention basin in the Montini Preserve near his home to control flooding.

He said his patients aired their city grievances with him and encouraged him to run. One of their top issues: the number of vacation home rentals popping up around the city, a popular local destination for tourists. He said some of his patients saw homes in their neighborhood turn into “big frat houses.”

“No one was policing them,” Sawicki said.

The city has been going after unlicensed vacation rentals for more than a year, seeking to halt the operations and collect back taxes. Sawicki called for tighter regulations on vacation rentals. He is one of several candidates to stress that residents, not tourists, be the focus of city decision-making, starting with moves to address traffic congestion in town.

“When I came here, it was more of a cow town,” he said, adding that “tourism is a good thing. But we can’t let them take us by the neck.”

Cameron Stuckey, 46, a personal trainer who sits on Sonoma’s Community Services and Environment Commission, agreed the city should focus more on local residents and their needs. He said he’s seen an imbalance for the past decade or so as more tourists have flooded the streets.

“Tourism went from a seasonal thing to a year-round thing,” Stuckey said.

Sonoma should provide more activities for residents and more incentives that attract small businesses and retain local shoppers, Stuckey said. He also wants to see more homes that firefighters, teachers, nurses and others in the workforce can afford to buy. A recent report revealed that 90 percent of Sonoma’s workforce lives outside of the city of 11,000 residents.

“There needs to be a shift in focus in our town,” he said.

Stuckey, along with candidate Madolyn Agrimonti, a former mayor of Daly City and retired fundraiser, ran two years ago for a council seat but lost.

Agrimonti, 67, said she’d favor strengthening a city rent-control regulation for mobile home parks to ensure seniors and families aren’t pushed out of their housing.

She also backed stronger limits on vacation rentals. “We have to find a way to protect these people who live here,” she said. “They’re changing the nature of neighborhoods.”

Agrimonti has touted her experience in government and various community service groups, including past stints with the Sonoma Valley Hospital Foundation and Sonoma Community Center. She is a current board member of the Sonoma Valley Health and Recreation Association, which recently secured enough cash to purchase the former Paul’s Resort in El Verano to build a public aquatic center. She said she also plans to push for improvements to sport fields and bike paths and has cited water conservation as a top priority.

Securing the city’s water supply is also a top concern for Rachel Hundley, a political newcomer and licensed attorney who owns a food and catering business. She said the city has done well addressing water issues on a year-by-year basis but she’d like to create a 10-year plan to secure water.

“The idea is to get people to adapt to a new lifestyle rather than get them to cut back temporarily,” she said.

The youngest of all candidates, Hundley, 31, described herself as someone who can bring a “fresh perspective” to the city council. Hundley practiced law in New York, handling commercial contracts and securities before moving to California about three years ago.

She said she’d like to see the city partner with local organizations to establish a small-business incubator program. Entrepreneurs could learn about financing, networking, and the city licensing and permitting process, she said.

“It would help people who live in Sonoma who have good business ideas turn them into reality,” she said. “It would create the tax base that we need (and) would create jobs.”

Gary Edwards, 55, a cheese marketer who sits on the city’s Planning Commission, has been pushing to allow homeowners to add second units on their properties, a move he said could add to the stock of affordable housing.

He said seniors could benefit from renting out a suite in their home, helping boost the number of affordable units available within city limits. Sonoma also could streamline its building and planning process, Edwards said, citing complaints he said he heard about unnecessary delays.

“Our community has a pretty difficult reputation as far as development goes,” he said. “There are ways to make the process a little more efficient for people.”

Edwards ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 2006 and will soon term out of the Planning Commission, where he has served for nearly eight years. As a cheese merchant, he’s traveled all over the world and witnessed how other cities have grappled with growth.

“We need to bring some of those ideas here,” Edwards said. “We’re always going to have that pressure. People are going to want to come here.”

The lack of affordable housing is an issue that candidate Jack Wagner experienced himself. Wagner, 34, who grew up in Sonoma and works as a restaurant server and community organizer for the Public Banking Institute, said that as a child he moved about once a year because his single mother couldn’t afford escalating rents. He proposed the city find ways to bring more affordable housing to the area, including building small, inexpensive units that it could rent out.

He also wants to provide more transit options to ease traffic congestion. Wagner said the city could provide a shuttle service to move people up and down the Sonoma Valley.

“It helps cut back on traffic, (and) it helps reduce pollution,” Wagner said.

Council hopeful Lynda Corrado wants to see traffic move away from the historic Plaza and pushed closer to Broadway. She said trolleys could shuttle visitors to downtown.

Like the other challengers, water supply is a major issue for Corrado, who proposed offering residents incentives to cut back on use and fix broken pipes and leaky faucets. But meeting the demand for more low-income housing is her top priority.

Corrado, 64, a former project planner for AT&T, manages a federally subsidized residential building for elderly and disabled people. The 34 units are nowhere near enough to accommodate the hundreds in need, she said, citing 300 people who remain on her waiting list.

“People have been on it since 2006,” she said.

Like Wagner, she’d like to see the city play a direct role in creating inexpensive housing. She suggested the city could bring in so-called Katrina Cottages - the low-cost, prefabricated homes that were brought into Mississippi after the devastating 2005 hurricane.

“That’s what drove me to run ... I need to do something about affordable housing,” Corrado said.

Staff Researcher Janet Balicki contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com.