Error nullifies committee vote on downtown Santa Rosa unity sculpture

The Santa Rosa Art in Public Places Committee will revisit its controversial decision to limit the number of languages that will appear on a unity sculpture planned for the city’s square after city staff subsequently found there were not enough “aye” votes cast to approve the proposal.

The error occurred during a Jan. 10 special meeting of the committee where members considered which languages and words would appear on Unum, a $300,000 stainless steel sculpture meant to symbolize the diverse cultures of Santa Rosa. It will be built downtown in the Old Courthouse Square.

Three of the four committee members present voted to proceed with a list of 17 languages for the sculpture, 15 of which represented those most commonly spoken in Santa Rosa households, as identified in census data.

Two other languages, Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok, were added by a community advisory group tasked with setting an equitable criteria for which languages would be included.

Public outcry over the omission of Japanese and Hebrew from the languages to be featured on the sculpture prompted inquiries about how the public could appeal the committee’s decision, Economic Development Director Raissa de La Rosa said.

And, subsequent meetings with the city attorney and clerk’s office determined that the three affirmative votes cast on Jan. 10 were insufficient to pass the motion, de La Rosa said. The committee needs a majority of its seven-member committee to vote in favor of a motion even though one of those seats is vacant, she said.

“We were not considering the full committee. We were considering the seated members,” said de La Rosa, whose department oversees the public arts committee.

The procedural error means the measure proposing which languages and words will appear on the sculpture will return to the committee for further consideration during a special meeting at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 22, Santa Rosa Arts & Culture Manager Tara Thompson said.

At that time, city staff will propose that the committee expand the list of languages that will appear on the sculpture to include the top 30 languages spoken in Santa Rosa as identified by U.S. Census Bureau data. They will appear alongside the two Indigenous languages previously selected by the advisory group.

It was important city staff followed the criteria set by the community advisory group ― the census bureau data ― to craft the list of languages in order to represent the community in an equitable way, de La Rosa said.

“They were very specific requests, very specific languages from very specific groups,” de La Rosa said of the calls to expand the list of languages following the Jan. 10 meeting. “And our interest is that not only those groups are represented but all groups are being represented.”

News of the invalid Jan. 10 vote led Nina Bonos, a Santa Rosa woman who opposed the committee’s initial decision to limit the list of languages, to breathe a “sigh of relief,” she said.

She was among the group of local Jewish and Japanese residents who argued that the sculpture, named after the Latin word for “oneness,” would represent exclusion if the committee failed to modify the list of languages to be more inclusive of the community.

Bonos saw the decision by city staff to expand the number of languages it will recommend to the committee as a step toward inclusivity, though Bonos said the list still may not be as comprehensive as it needs to be.

For example, Bonos questioned whether the committee considered making the sculpture accessible to people who are blind.

“If there are others (who feel excluded), then those people should speak up and see if they can be included,” Bonos said.

In a statement, the Sonoma County Japanese American Citizens League said it supported the committee’s decision to revisit the list of languages that will be included on the sculpture.

Phyllis Tajii, a member of the chapter’s Human and Civil Rights Committee, said she found it particularly important that Arabic was included in the revised list now proposed by city staff, as it could be one way to represent the area’s Muslim community.

The subsequent discussions city staff have had with community members since the committee’s initial vote has been an interesting part of the process, de La Rosa said.

“’Fair to whom?’ is one thing that brought people to understand position, privilege, access, belonging, all these things that I think people are grappling with right now,” de La Rosa said of those conversations.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.