Wildfires cloud Roseland’s future in Santa Rosa

When Santa Rosa agreed in 2016 to annex Roseland, it did so knowing the heavily Latino neighborhood of unincorporated county land was going to need tens of millions of dollars in public investments to bring it up to city standards.

Three weeks before the annexation became official, the most devastating wildfires in U.S. history decimated large swaths of the city.

Now, as the city prepares to officially welcome 7,400 Roseland residents into its boundaries Saturday, it is unclear what impact the wildfires will have on the city’s promise to invest in badly needed roads, sidewalks and parks for the historically underserved community.

“We’re not going to forget our obligations post-annexation,” Councilman John Sawyer said.

“I think our new Santa Rosa residents should feel assured that our dedication to see improvements in their quality of life is not wavering, but the timeline may have changed.”

The city’s pledge to bring Roseland up to the same level of public services enjoyed by other parts of the city was never accompanied by a deadline. Officials have always spoken not of years but decades, a point Sawyer reiterated Wednesday.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Sawyer said. “It’s going to take decades for those things that we most want to see Roseland acquire.”

Now, he said, with the city’s budget picture cloudy and its priorities dramatically reshuffled, Roseland residents will have to be patient about how quickly the city can deliver some of the additional infrastructure and services long discussed.

“We’re going to be lucky just to kind of just keep our head above water,” Sawyer said of the current budget picture.

The City Council is meeting today and Friday to discuss its budget goals. On Saturday, it will host the welcoming celebration that had been scheduled for Nov. 4. The noon to 4 p.m. event at the site of the future Roseland Plaza will include food, music, games for kids, a book giveaway and city officials providing information about their departments.

“We’re excited to finally be able to formally welcome everybody in and provide them with information about what it means to be a resident of Santa Rosa and what services the city provides,” said Jessica Jones, a city planner in charge of the annexation effort.

Many of those city departments have already been working in Roseland since the Nov. 1 annexation date. Police officers have been patrolling the streets, responding to 292 calls for service and making 13 arrests in November.

That’s compared to 10,800 total calls for service in the city and 292 arrests over the same time frame, a modest increase on a percentage basis citywide, said Capt. Ray Navarro.

Traffic engineering teams have been installing new signs, particularly near schools, to ensure they are modern and consistent with others in the city. Public works crews have been removing graffiti, clearing out storm drains and filling potholes.

And city planners are dutifully moving forward on long-term development projects, from the Sonoma County Community Development Commission’s Roseland Plaza project on the site of the former Albertson’s supermarket on Sebastopol Road, to smaller projects like a new restaurant, bar and billiard hall proposed for across the street.

“I think it’s going to be better for the community overall,” said Jorge Mondragon, the architect for the restaurant project, tentatively called Sebastopol Bar & Grill and Billiards.

Workers were busily smoothing out concrete curbs at the property Wednesday, the aroma of grilled meat from the neighboring market in the air as a man selling ice cream from a tricycle rode past. The project, underway for about two years, has been slowed in part by the requirement for it to be approved by both the county and the city planning departments, Mondragon said.

Now that Roseland is a part of the city, Mondragon is optimistic the project will move smoothly - he’s hoping for a Cinco de Mayo opening - with more investment following along the Roseland Avenue corridor.

“You get more attention, more services, if you’re in the city proper, rather than if you’re in the county,” he said.

There are signs of delays, however, in the rollout of new city services. Despite the City Council approving a budget eight months ago providing for a new sergeant and five new officers for Roseland, none has been hired, Navarro said.

Those hires are in process, and where they are ultimately assigned has not been determined, he said.

Also yet to happen is a project to repave a number of Roseland streets as well as making curbs fully accessible. Construction started in August and paving was supposed to take place mostly in late October and early November until the fires postponed the project until April.

Nevertheless, at Pepe’s Mexican Restaurant, longtime residents expressed optimism Roseland was finally getting the respect and attention it deserved.

As he polished off a burrito, Roseland native Saul Solis, 27, said there is a definite difference between the way sheriff’s deputies and police officers interact with residents.

Deputies, he said, seem predisposed to assume people have done something wrong, whereas police strike him as more interested in helping resolve situations, he said.

“It’s a step forward,” Solis said of the change.

Indeed, which law enforcement agency would be responsible for Roseland has been huge factor in the decadeslong debate about annexation.

A previous annexation push stalled in 2008 when, among other things, the city and the county couldn’t agree on the funding of public safety costs.

The 2013 shooting death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a sheriff’s deputy in the similarly underserved, unincorporated neighborhood of Moorland gave renewed urgency to annexation efforts. Lopez was shot while carrying an Airsoft pellet gun closely resembling an AK-47.

Some may worry whether Roseland will be able to retain its identity as part of the city of Santa Rosa, said Carolina Padilla, 22.

But she’s not one of them. Working the register at Pepe’s, Padilla said she grew up in Roseland, went through local schools and is on the cusp of graduating from Sonoma State University with a degree in psychology.

She predicted being officially part of the city won’t change the neighborhood’s identity much.

“I feel like no matter what they call it, I think Roseland will always be Roseland,” she said.