Confusion lingers over Windsor governance, as council grapples with Mayor Foppoli’s defiance

Opening the door to the faint possibility he may resign, Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli said Thursday he was “thinking and praying” about what to do after a six-hour meeting in which he was subject to scathing denunciations from dozens of residents seeking his ouster.

Closing out a drama-filled week that opened with explosive allegations that he was a repeat sexual assailant and ended with an imminent recall campaign and demands from his own council that he quit, Foppoli responded to a request for comment with a simple text message.

“I’ll be spending the next few days talking to residents, thinking, and praying about my decision of what comes next,” he wrote.

Foppoli, 38, has so far been adamant in his defiance of widespread, vocal insistence that he leave his post to allow the town to conduct business as usual, without the distraction and likely disruptions provoked by graphic allegations that now hang over its mayor.

His intransigence has provoked particularly strong outrage among sexual assault survivors, who say his continued grasp on power is a continued source of traumatic pain.

“You make every survivor in this county relive the terrible things that have happened to us,” one woman told him during Wednesday’s marathon public testimony. “You do not have a right to be a mayor in this county. It is not a right to be a politician.”

But even after fellow Councilwoman Debora Fudge and others urged him to consider the good of the town, he was still resistant when he left Wednesday’s meeting midway through, the lone “nay” in a 2-1 vote to demand he resign.

The uncertainty about his continued presence on the Town Council has thrown the community into disarray and cast confusion over the future of town governance, given disturbing allegations of sexual assault involving six women detailed in media accounts over the past week.

Critical budget deliberations loom, with cost-cutting strategies and revenue adjustments needed due to pandemic-related costs, as well as other, time-sensitive policy decisions beginning next week that would be jeopardized if crowds of people turn up to protest Foppoli’s continued claim to his seat as mayor, officials said.

“If he plans on attending that meeting and chairing it, I think it’s a big question mark for all of us,” Town Manager Ken MacNab said of the council’s April 21 meeting.

But a suggestion by Sonoma Mayor Logan Harvey at Wednesday’s meeting that council members block Foppoli by refusing to attend meetings in numbers sufficient to form a quorum appeared to find little traction in Windsor, though Fudge had initially expressed some interest.

“My duty is to serve the town,” Vice Mayor Sam Salmon said, “and it would be difficult to say, ‘We’re going to just not conduct the business of the town.’ The town didn’t hire the town manager to run the town. The council hired the manager, and the townspeople put the Town Council in their place to govern the town.”

Said MacNab: “My own feeling is we need to show the community that we are not in complete paralysis. We can still function.”

The crisis began April 8, when the San Francisco Chronicle published an expose in which four women and a number of witnesses detailed sexual assaults they said the mayor had committed dating back to New Year’s Eve 2003.

Two more accusers have come forward since, including Windsor Councilwoman Esther Lemus, who disclosed Saturday to The Press Democrat that she believed she was drugged by Foppoli to facilitate sex twice last year and was raped and sodomized on one occasion after he and another man took her home in a semiconscious state. She believes she was drugged a second time, six months later, by Foppoli and manipulated into sex with another man when she was unable to consent.

Foppoli also has accused Lemus of pressuring him into sex against his will, saying she “used her position of power to try and silence me.”

The totality of the revelations has provoked not only a political crisis in the town of fewer than 30,000 people, but a social and cultural one. The emotionally raw and painful responses of women, particularly, but men as well have made it clear the “me too” era is far from over in Sonoma County.

Several town officials said Thursday they were surprised and moved by the many personal tales of sexual assault and trauma speakers revealed during the meeting — both by the sheer number and by the exposed vulnerability.

“Just the depth of feeling and the amount of hurt and how people are hurt,” said Salmon, acknowledging he cried after the entire experience was over. To see “how widespread this abuse is, and hear it personally — people waiting hours to talk and to give their — to let their feelings be known. Because we went six hours.”

MacNab said he found it “very emotionally draining.”

“The testimony was powerful, heartbreaking. I learned a lot from that meeting, actually,” he said.

Lemus, who watched the meeting, said it was clear the allegations have “opened huge wounds in our community.”

“A lot of sexual assault survivors are coming out of the shadows and really wanting to be heard and wanting to be seen, and really demanding that sexual assault no longer be something where the victim is blamed and where victims are not believed.”

Lemus, a deputy county district attorney, said she is focused on framing up policies and procedures that might be used in the town to define when investigations into allegations take place, when trauma among employees is addressed and how the town might approach community outreach to “promote healing and rebuild trust in the community.”

Fudge said she was simply confounded by Foppoli’s ability to sit, blank-faced and unmoved, calling on each speaker by name as if nothing unusual were happening.

“I just don’t understand how anybody could listen to all that vitriol being thrown at him, and then take it to heart and not do something about it,” she said. “That’s just facing to me. It’s a psychological … I don’t know.”

Given Foppoli’s statement Thursday, it’s possible the comments did have some effect, though that may not be clear for some time.

In the meantime, as the town’s first directly elected, at-large mayor, he cannot be removed by council members.

He can only be forced from office if convicted of a felony or if recalled by the voters, a process that would take months, though a groundswell began building almost the moment the allegations were first published last week.

Adding complexity to the situation, Foppoli’s election to mayor last fall left his former at-large council seat empty, though it’s to be filled by special election May 4, and a fellow council member, Lemus, is now among his accusers and has recused herself from all matters about his position, due to conflict of interest.

So when Foppoli turned up to preside over Wednesday’s special meeting, even though the sole agenda item was a motion demanding he resign, remaining council members had no legal claim to the gavel.

Moreover, with Lemus absent, only Fudge and Vice Mayor Sam Salmon would have remained had Foppoli not attended, a number insufficient to form a quorum. In fact, when Foppoli did decide 3½ hours into the session to quit the meeting, an incensed Fudge insisted that a vote be taken before the quorum was compromised. The remaining 2½ hours of public comment was not part of the official record but rather constituted a “community meeting” presided over by Salmon.

The issue of a quorum also could hold up action on a formal censure that both Salmon and Fudge hoped to see on the council agenda soon, though Thursday was too late to have it written it up in time for next week’s Wednesday meeting.

A censure would stand as permanent, formal condemnation of the mayor and force him to relinquish a variety of appointments to regional boards and districts, including bodies like the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Northern Sonoma County Air Pollution Control District, and the Windsor Regional Library Advisory Board.

But it is rare and would require giving Foppoli an opportunity to challenge or refute the contents of the censure resolution in an open hearing before council members voted on it, said Joan Cassman, who is serving as town attorney on issues related to the mayor.

Foppoli’s recall also is widely expected, but the required notice of intent to recall him had not been filed with the town as of close-of-business Thursday. Assuming one eventually is filed, there are several steps and timelines that extend the time frame to four or five months before a recall election would be held.

That includes up to 120 days to get signatures from at least 20% of Windsor’s registered voters, or 3,376 of them, as well as up to 30 days for the clerk to validate the signatures and calling of a special election 88 to 125 days after the petition is validated, in order to give candidates for the post time to run, Sonoma County Registrar of Voters Deva Proto said.

Town Council members predicted the process would be cut short by how little time would be required to gather signatures.

“People are going to stop what they’re doing and go to where they can sign that petition,” said Salmon. “There will be lines.”

In the meantime, he said, his approach aims to ensure that Foppoli “is not part of Windsor’s governance,” though how that will happen is unclear.

“The mayor of Windsor has no existence to the town,” Salmon said. “He cannot be part of the town, and I think that’s one thing we have to kind of work on.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.