Housing, homelessness, fire recovery dominate Santa Rosa City Council races

For the first time, Santa Rosa voters this year are electing City Council members by district, but citywide issues remain at the forefront of the two contested races.

Housing, homelessness and the recovery from the October 2017 wildfires are among the top priorities of candidates running to represent the three newly formed districts up for election in this cycle.

The candidates, all Democrats, generally agree Santa Rosa needs to reduce homelessness and increase housing construction, particularly in light of the more than 3,000 homes destroyed in the city in last year’s fires. But the differences among the contenders, including political alliances and experience, vary and could prove decisive to the races’ outcomes.

The Nov. 6 election marks the first round in a complete ?overhaul in how Santa Rosa elects its seven council members, a shift driven by the threat of a voting rights lawsuit whose backers took issue with the previous at-large system.

They contended it favored wealthier, predominantly white areas of the city while disenfranchising the Santa Rosa’s growing share of minority voters, especially the Latino community. In the city’s modern history, no council member has been elected from the poorer, more diverse southwestern neighborhoods.

That new seat will be up for election in 2020, along with three others. The trio of seats up for election this year include:

District 6, which covers the fire-ravaged Coffey Park neighborhood and other parts of the northwestern city. Councilman Tom Schwedhelm is running unopposed. Schwedhelm, a retired police chief, was first elected in a citywide race four years ago.

District 4, where three political newcomers are running for an open seat representing a central and northern swath of the city. Mayor Chris Coursey lives in the district but he is not running for re-election. District 4 includes Fountaingrove - the hilly neighborhood most devastated by last year’s fires - as well as Hidden Valley, Chanate Road, McDonald Avenue and the Junior College neighborhoods. About 14,700 people are registered to vote there, according to the city clerk.

District 2, where two Santa Rosa political veterans are hoping to represent the southeastern corner of the city, including the Doyle Park, Kawana Springs and Bennett Valley neighborhoods. The district has more than ?15,400 registered voters.

Whoever wins the two contested races will play a pivotal role overseeing the next four years of Santa Rosa’s recovery from the worst disaster in its history. They will also face the daunting challenge of trying to make progress on the housing and homeless problems that vexed city leaders long before the fires.

District 4 candidates

Dorothy Beattie, a 63-year-old Junior College area resident, says her background in housing finance makes her the best qualified of the race’s three candidates.

She works as a consultant on mortgage finance and technology issues and has been an executive at Bank of America and Microsoft, among other roles.

The city needs to help fire survivors rebuild while expanding the supply of affordable and market-?rate homes, Beattie said. Expanding the housing supply will also prove beneficial to the city economically, she says, as it will help attract new employers.

If elected, Beattie would be an avid supporter of concentrating new housing construction in downtown Santa Rosa. She said she wants to see a 10- or ?14-story residential tower built there to help the neighborhood become more vibrant and livable.

“We don’t have anything like it,” Beattie said. “If we had something like that, I guarantee you that a whole lot of people living in houses would go there and it would free up houses for young families.”

Beattie also has a “keen interest” in addressing homelessness, she said.

“I really believe we need to approach this regionally, so that Santa Rosa isn’t bearing the brunt of the expenses, and right now that’s true,” she said.

Beattie has been endorsed by seven former Santa Rosa mayors, including Councilman John Sawyer, who is running for the new District 2 seat, and Councilman Ernesto Olivares. Schwedhelm is also backing her, as is the Sonoma County Alliance and the North Bay Association of Realtors PAC.

Beattie is the only council candidate backed by independent expenditures from an outside organization. The National Association of Realtors Fund reported Oct. 18 spending more than $9,200 to support Beattie.

She said she opposes rent control measures but would have to recuse herself if the council revisited the matter because she is a landlord.

Putting aside the independent expenditures, Beattie has raised a similar amount of money as candidate Victoria Fleming.

Fleming, 37, is a clinical social worker who has served on the county’s Commission on the Status of Women.

She earned a master’s degree in social work with an emphasis in community and mental health from UC Berkeley and began her career by launching a homeless outreach program in the East Bay. Fleming says she would be Santa Rosa’s first council member with clinical experience working with homeless people.

“I do have a gut intuition about what works and what doesn’t from my years doing that,” Fleming said. “I have direct experience ... getting people who are chronically and persistently mentally ill and chronically and persistently homeless housed.”

Fleming, who lives near the Flamingo hotel, said she wants to work with county officials to improve the regional homeless services network and better leverage state funding. She supports the idea of city-sanctioned homeless encampments and revisiting the safe parking program until more units are available to house homeless people.

Fleming is the mother of a young daughter, lending her a parent’s perspective she said is needed on the City Council.

“I don’t believe you need to be a parent in order to be a community activist or a community advocate, but I do think that we need families at the table,” Fleming said.

Fleming has been endorsed by Coursey, the outgoing mayor, and Councilwoman Julie Combs. Her other supporters include Sonoma County Supervisor Susan Gorin, the Sierra Club and the North Bay Labor Council.

Supervisor Lynda Hopkins and Sonoma County Conservation Action have endorsed both Fleming and candidate Mary Watts.

Watts, the 30-year-old deputy director of the nonprofit Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County, is the youngest person in the race. She thinks she has the most relevant experience, noting the three years she served on the city’s Board of Public Utilities.

“I really understand how to maneuver through our bureaucracy and get things accomplished, and I have a track record of making policy decisions for Santa Rosa already,” said Watts, who also lives in the Junior College neighborhood.

Watts said her work at CAP has given her experience working with the homeless population. While she supports the prevailing strategy to focus foremost on getting homeless people housed, she said other programs such as safe parking - which allows people to sleep in vehicles overnight - are necessary until the city has more units available.

“People experiencing homelessness are being moved from one place to the next, and it’s not benefiting them, but it’s also detrimental to the communities around it,” she said.

Watts trails Beattie and Fleming on the fundraising front, according to the most recent reports. She stressed the grassroots nature of her campaign.

Had Santa Rosa stuck with at-large council races - which are more expensive and time-consuming - Watts isn’t sure she would have been able to run at all, she said.

Her other endorsements include Councilmen Jack Tibbetts and Chris Rogers, the Sonoma County Democratic Party, the Sonoma County Educators Council and the Teamsters local union that represents Santa Rosa city government employees.

District 2 candidates

Were it not for the 2017 wildfires and the many challenges posed to Santa Rosa in the aftermath, three-term Councilman John Sawyer, 63, might have considered stepping down from the council once his current term expires.

But he is running for a fourth time because he thinks the city needs someone with his governing background as the fire recovery evolves and as Santa Rosa is confronted with other complex and long-term policy challenges.

“There’s just a lot of unfinished business,” he said. “I think that my experience on the council and my history on the council would be beneficial in helping us to get through the next four years.”

Sawyer, who owned the former Sawyers News newsstand in downtown Santa Rosa, was first elected to the City Council in 2004 and has served in the rotating mayor’s post. He is the first openly gay man to serve on the council.

A fourth-generation Santa Rosan who was born and raised in what is now the 2nd District, he lives near Memorial Hospital.

Like other council members and candidates, Sawyer said he wants to steer housing development downtown and help make the area more “attractive and exciting and vibrant.” But he acknowledged there may be some sites around his district that could help the city advance its plans of dramatically increase the housing supply.

On homelessness, Sawyer does not support developing sanctioned encampments, which he believes would be met with intense blowback from neighbors and would be difficult to manage.

‘“I think we would be solving one problem, creating another,” he said.

Sawyer, like Beattie, is endorsed by seven former mayors, including Olivares. He is also endorsed by Rogers, Schwedhelm, Supervisor Shirlee Zane, the Sonoma County Alliance and the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber.

Sawyer is being challenged in the race by former councilman Lee Pierce, 71, who now works as a longtime consultant in the local solid waste industry. Pierce, a Kawana Springs resident, left the City Council after his term expired in 2008 and said he was hoping someone else would jump into the District 2 race this year.

“Seeing no one do that before the expiration of registration, then I stepped forward to make sure that people in this district had a choice, and to respect the idea that I think brought about district elections,” he said.

Pierce was Santa Rosa’s first black councilman. If elected again, he said he would urge the city to think beyond its own borders while working to address homelessness.

“We have to view the problem regionally, rather than by jurisdictions, because that’s just squeezing the air in the balloon to another jurisdiction,” Pierce said.

He said local leaders should try to find ways to develop larger amounts of housing for the homeless on public or private properties around the North Bay.

“I would like to think that the majority of people in that situation would prefer to have a nice place to eat and sleep,” he said. “To me, what we’re doing right now - there’s no end in sight. And I just think it’s going to continue to not be a good solution for everybody.”

Pierce has lived in Santa Rosa for 30 years, and he feels his perspective is seasoned by watching city government from “the other side” since he left politics 10 years ago. Asked about Sawyer’s long tenure on the council, Pierce said he’s a “fan of term limits” and that local leaders can be motivated to act more when they know they have a finite amount of time to accomplish their goals.

Pierce said he has been endorsed by the Sonoma County Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and the North Bay Labor Council, among other supporters.

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@thejdmorris.