Los Cien leadership group warming to Santa Rosa’s plan to annex Roseland

Santa Rosa’s annexation plan for Roseland got a better reception from a Latino leadership organization on Friday than it did last year.

City and county officials were praised for the progress they’ve made laying the groundwork for annexation since January 2014, when officials last briefed members of Los Cien on the multi-year planning effort.

“I’m really very gratified … by how much it appears that you’ve listened to how unhappy we were with the draft plan that was presented,” Lisa Carreño, the regional director of 10,000 Degrees, a college scholarship and mentoring program, told presenters.

City and county leaders rolled out an early draft of their plan to the group just three months after the death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy as the teen carried an airsoft gun closely resembling an AK-47 assault rifle.

Many members of the group were disappointed the plan made no mention of annexing Lopez’s Moorland Avenue neighborhood, Carreño said

“It felt like indifference to the pain and agony that the community was experiencing,” she said.

Whether to include Moorland in the annexation plan has been a sensitive subject, with the county pushing for “comprehensive annexation” of all the unincorporated areas in the city’s southwest area and the city preferring to focus first on Roseland.

The city since has committed to turning its attention to Moorland soon after the annexation of Roseland and four other smaller areas is complete, which is expected in 2017.

About 7,000 people live in the five areas being considered for annexation currently, 6,400 in the 620-acre unincorporated area of Roseland and another 600 in a total of 92 acres of county pockets around Brittain Lane, Victoria Drive, West Hearn Avenue and West Third Street.

Unlike these areas, which are county islands surrounded by the city, the area of Moorland and Standish avenues is inside Santa Rosa’s urban growth boundary but south of city limits. It comprises about 420 acres and is home to about 2,400 people.

Fifth District Supervisor Efren Carrillo, who went to school in Roseland, said the “long and, frankly, drawn out” history of annexation now has the necessary political momentum behind it.

“The annexation of Roseland is finally a priority for both jurisdictions that cover it,” Carrillo said.

That sentiment was echoed by other city and county leaders, including Assistant City Manager Chuck Regalia, who stressed that the annexation was “absolutely necessary” for good governance of the area.

“This is a community that for all intents and purposes is part of Santa Rosa but from the official governmental perspective it isn’t, and in our view it should be,” Regalia said.

But the city and the county have yet to come to terms over who will pay for the $3.5 million it will cost annually for increased services such as police protection and $80 million in long-term investments needed to bring new roads, sidewalks and parks to the area.

Disagreement over costs caused the last annexation effort to fall apart in 2008. A joint city-county committee on the subject has been on hiatus since all three City Council members who served on it left office late last year. Carrillo, as he has in the past, emphasized the millions the county has or is investing in the area, even passing around a flier detailing county initiatives, from the $1 million toward Moorland Community Park to $350,000 to pay for preschool for low-income families.

He further stressed that as the city and county debate how to share costs, they should “also take into consideration the benefits and the revenues that have been attributed to this community” over time, including past annexations that encircled Roseland.

Similar comments in the past have been viewed by some city council members as a thinly veiled negotiating tactic aimed at minimizing the county’s future financial liabilities for upgrading the annexation areas.

The city, for its part, has taken a similarly tough posture, arguing that Roseland deserves to have assets equal to other parts of the city but that the rest of the city shouldn’t see its service levels drop in order to pay for those upgrades.

Interest in the steering committee for the annexation process has surged in recent weeks, with the city now expecting it to initially include upward of 50 people, Regalia said.

A list of committee members, who are being hand-picked by a city consultant and whose names are not yet public, is expected to be presented to the City Council at its April 7 meeting.

The first steering committee meeting is scheduled for April 22.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.