PD Editorial: A warm welcome to Roseland, Santa Rosa’s newest residents

The celebration was postponed, but today remains a red letter day for Roseland and Santa Rosa. After decades as next-door neighbors, they’re finally combined in a single city.

With the long-overdue annexation of Roseland completed, Santa Rosa - already the fifth largest city in the Bay Area - now has a population of about 184,000.

But that’s just a number, an entry in an almanac.

What’s truly notable here is the promise that 7,400 residents of Roseland and four smaller unincorporated islands will begin to see improvements to their neighborhoods, improvements to public services, ultimately improvements to their quality of life.

There is no greenbelt, no community separator marking the boundary between Santa Rosa and Roseland. They are wrapped around one another like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, and urban development in Roseland has long since passed the point where it should have become part of the city.

Under county jurisdiction, Roseland hasn’t enjoyed the level of basic services, from sidewalks to police patrols, that are commonplace in Santa Rosa.

As the city pushed out at its edges, it took in some parts of Roseland but mostly hopped over commercial areas and residential neighborhoods to add vacant land to the west and southwest for development.

Beginning today, however, Roseland, like Rincon Valley, Montgomery Village, the JC neighborhood and fire-devastated Fountaingrove and Coffey Park, is officially part of the city of Santa Rosa.

As City Councilman John Sawyer said after the final bureaucratic steps were completed this summer, “It’s the right thing to do.”

But it took decades to do it.

The push for annexation started at least 40 years ago with the formation of a citizens organization dedicated to the cause. A key county commission also pressed for Roseland’s annexation into Santa Rosa and eventually put a moratorium on piecemeal expansions on the city’s southwest edge. But city and county officials were unable to settle on a plan to pay for upgraded services in the long-neglected neighborhood, and annexation efforts surfaced and stalled for years.

Negotiations led by Sawyer and then-Supervisor Efren Carrillo finally produced a financial agreement last fall, clearing the way for annexation. Santa Rosa will receive $12 million from the county to help offset increased costs for roads, parks and other services in Roseland, and the city also will receive a permanent stream of property tax revenue, starting at $226,400 and adjusting annually.

A tragedy, the 2013 shooting death of Andy Lopez by a sheriff’s deputy, helped focus city and county officials on the need to resolve the Roseland issue. Another tragedy, the cataclysmic fires that razed two other Santa Rosa neighborhoods, will complicate, and probably delay, efforts to upgrade streets, parks and other infrastructure in Roseland and the other newly annexed neighborhoods.

Still, a mistake of history finally has been rectified. And as the city gets past the fires, it has an obligation to bring better services to its new neighborhoods, which include pockets along West Hearn Avenue, Victoria Drive, Brittain Lane and West Third Street as well as Roseland. The city and county also need to address more than 50 other unincorporated islands scattered across Santa Rosa.

For today, however, we’ll finish by welcoming our newest neighbors. As Mayor Chris Coursey said, “You’ve always been part of this city, but now it’s official.”