Sonoma council elections about experience, housing, quality of life

The long-running battle over leaf blowers in Sonoma may get settled in November, but there are other concerns over housing and quality of life.

With two City Council incumbents running for re-election against two challengers, the political dialogue centers now on addressing the high cost of housing and striking a balance between tourism and small town identity.

“There are locals who don’t go to the square,” said Amy Harrington, an attorney making her first bid for City Council. “There’s so much more tourism now and not an effective plan to balance it.”

It’s a familiar cry that is heard in other towns like Healdsburg, which several decades ago began reinventing itself as a chic destination in the heart of Wine Country.

Sonoma’s draw goes back even further to the Bear Flag Revolt, early California history and adobes ringing the leafy, family-friendly plaza.

“Our main industry is hospitality-tourism, but we want balance,” Mayor Laurie Gallian said at a recent candidates’ forum, adding that meeting the needs of seniors and families, and having decent wages, jobs, schools and homes are paramount.

Gallian is running for her third four-year term and is the longest serving member of the current City Council.

She stresses her experience, leadership and valuable “institutional history,” given that three council members have only served two years. The city manager is retiring in December and the city clerk just left.

Likewise, incumbent David Cook, running for his second term, says “I think the city would do good having my leadership. I understand the process and what it takes to run the city.”

Both tout their years of perfect attendance at council meetings. Rounding out the field is Jack Wagner, a Sonoma native making his second bid for election to the City Council after losing his first try in 2014.

“I know this town like the back of my hand,” said the former video game industry employee and self-described “community organizer” who works at the Swiss Hotel as a bartender and server.

Harrington is especially critical of what she views as the current council’s lack of effectiveness tackling problems like housing.

After years of vacillating by various councils, the question of whether to ban gas-powered leaf blowers but allow electric and battery-powered ones, will be decided by voters in November. Three of the four candidates support the ban, but Harrington isn’t disclosing her position, saying it’s up to voters to decide.

Mayor Gallian, who makes climate action and reducing green house gases a top priority, is perhaps the most vocal advocate for prohibiting the “loud and polluting” devices.

All the candidates support Measure U, which would extend for five years the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2012 that brings in about $2.2 million in revenue to the general fund to pay for essential services.

Cook said the increased sales tax revenue has paid for a community police officer and K-9 unit. Without the revenue, he said road maintenance would suffer.

But the hot topic these days in Sonoma, as in many communities, is how to deal with housing.

“I feel what’s great about Sonoma is in jeopardy right now,” Harrington said. “The people we want to live here - seniors, people who grew up here who want to come back and raise families - there’s no way if we don’t take action right away that can happen.”

She said the development process needs to be made easier to produce housing for firefighters, teachers and nurses.

At a recent forum sponsored by the Sonoma Index-Tribune, none of the candidates was in favor of extending rent control beyond the current program in place for mobile home parks. Both incumbents said they are willing to have the issue vetted further but prefer other measures to address the affordability crisis, including “junior apartments” - 500-square-foot dwellings carved from the footprint of existing homes to provide accommodations for seniors, caregivers or workers.

All of the candidates are behind the recent moratorium the City Council placed on the creation of vacation rentals, the short-term rentals to tourists and alternatives to hotels criticized for eroding housing stock and driving up real estate prices.

Wagner said the city needs a full-time code enforcement officer to deal with illegal vacation rentals in the city, which he estimated at more than 50. Wagner takes credit for pushing the council to adopt a moratorium until the city decides a long-term policy on vacation rentals.

Harrington asserted it was only the pressure of the election that led council members to act and they have been to slow to take action.

For her part, Gallian said, “I am very satisfied with my job as a council member. Could we do better? Yes.”

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 707-521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@clarkmas.