Healdsburg City Council race spotlights tension between tourism and locals

Ron Edwards has walked 3 miles a day since Sept. 8, knocking on doors, dropping off campaign literature, trying to convince people to elect him to the Healdsburg City Council.

As of Wednesday, Edwards said he was just two streets shy of covering the whole city.

A retired caterer and cannabis farmer, Edwards chose as his campaign logo an image of the historic truss bridge spanning the Russian River in Healdsburg. That wasn’t an accident.

“What I’m hearing is that people really don’t want to be divided,” said Edwards when asked about the feedback he’s getting around town. During his door-knocking, he picked up on plenty of strife between “long-time residents versus new residents versus second-home buyers.”

“The common thing is we all love Healdsburg, and we all want to come together to have a good city.”

Edwards is one of seven candidates running for three City Council seats in Healdsburg. Two of those are four-year terms. The other, a two-year seat, will fill the vacancy left by former Council member Skylaer Palacios, who abruptly resigned in May, 1½ years after being elected.

Edwards is vying for that short-term seat, along with retired high school English teacher Brigette Mansell, and Matthew Lopez Jr., on the ballot as Matias, a 23-year-old Ph.D. candidate in physics at the University of Connecticut who has taken a temporary leave of absence from his studies.

Mansell, who left city government in 2018, is returning because she sees a city that is “out of balance.” She is alarmed by the continued “influx of money;” the rise of “ultra-luxury” developments north and south of town; and the exodus of “local-serving businesses.”

Another appeal from The Ruse

One example of Healdsburg’s trend toward deluxe developments is a controversial project just north of downtown called The Ruse. Donations made by the owners of that property to two City Council candidates brought them unwanted attention earlier this week.

After purchasing the Honor Mansion, a sleepy bed-and-breakfast on Grove Street, a group of local builders spent $14 million renovating it. That group includes brothers Patrick and Jonathan Wilhelm, whose family built the Mayacama Golf Club, and longtime Silicon Valley executive Craig Ramsey.

On Sept. 1, the owners applied to the city for a conditional use permit for the facility, which they sought to run as a “private recreational club,” featuring an 18-hole putting green, six pickleball courts, a 2,392-square-foot outdoor pavilion with a full kitchen, bar area and lounge, which could serve beer, wine and spirits on-site.

That application was denied by the Healdsburg Planning Commission, which found it an inappropriate use for a residential area. The 3-acre property straddles two different Healdsburg zoning districts — one is “grove mixed use” and the other is residential.

The Ruse owners appealed that decision. Then, in a 6-0 vote, the planning commission rejected the appeal.

On Friday afternoon, Patrick Wilhelm submitted to the city an appeal of that rejection of his previously rejected appeal. The matter will now go to the City Council, which, on account of the Palacios departure, is down to four members, one of whom is Vice Mayor Ariel Kelley, who may recuse herself from the vote because she lives near The Ruse.

Returned campaign contributions

Earlier in the week, City Council candidates came under criticism — particularly on the Facebook group “What’s Happening Healdsburg” — for accepting campaign contributions from the Wilhelms and Ramsey and his wife, Kelly.

Evelyn Mitchell, who is now completing her first term on the Council and is running for a second, returned $2,000 to the Wilhelms and Ramseys.

Mitchell returned the donations out of an “abundance of caution,” she said, and to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

She described allegations of corruption leveled against her on social media as “highly offensive.”

“My integrity is one of my primary assets,” said Mitchell, who runs an accounting consulting business. “So I pride myself on that. And that’s part of why I returned the contributions.”

Susan Graf, who is running for a four-year seat on the Council, and whose name graces the boutique she’s owned for the last quarter-century on Matheson Street, returned $2,000 donated to her by the Ramseys and Wilhelms. She makes no apology for accepting those contributions in the first place.

“Jeez Louise — I go back to 1999 with the Wilhelms. I’ve gone to their weddings, their birthday parties, their christenings,” she said, who added she’s “not going to pretend” they aren’t her friends.

She returned the funds because “she didn’t want any gray area,” she said.

Meet the candidates

Candidates running for the two four-year seats are:

Linda Cade is a “nutrition/life coach” and retired financial adviser whose Healdsburg ties go back four generations. Her father, David Cade, was a mechanic for 50 years at a local Buick dealership.

“I am concerned about the future of Healdsburg’s people and feel it is my civic duty to serve,” she wrote in her candidate statement. If elected, she will provide “good stewardship of all our resources, including but not limited to workers, business owners, agriculture, water, and the environment.“

Vote for Linda Cade, she wrote, “For a breath of fresh air.”

Chris Herrod was born and raised in Healdsburg. A first-time candidate with two high school-aged sons, he has served six years on the city’s Parks and Rec Commission, and is currently its chair. In 2018, Herrod led a successful campaign to have the City Council adopt a moratorium on new hotels downtown. He is a musician, politically progressive and has endorsements from the Sonoma County Democratic Party, Mayor Ozzy Jimenez, Vice Mayor Kelley, the Sonoma County Conservation Action and North Bay Labor Council.

Herrod believes there should be more public input before the Planning Commission approves big projects. Part of that, he said, entails “sharpening” the city’s General Plan, thus giving the Planning Commission better tools as it weighs whether to deny or approve projects.

“Right now there’s too much fuzzy language in there,” he said.

Asked what he’s hearing from Healdsburg residents, Herrod said, “a lot of people, not everybody, say they feel cut off from downtown” — alienated by the development. “It’s kind of heartbreaking to hear them say that.”

Striving for “economic diversity” is not “taking any steps backward on what we’ve developed as a tourist economy, because it’s fantastic, it’s been really great for the community.” Moving forward, he said, “we have to address those issues that matter to the locals.”

Evelyn Mitchell is currently completing her first term on the Council and served as mayor from 2020 to 2021. Her broad base of support includes endorsements from the Sonoma County Democratic Party, Sonoma County Alliance, Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, all three of her current City Council colleagues and many notable local elected officials.

Despite the tumult in Healdsburg and around the region in recent years — from the Kincade Fire to the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement that led to the resignation of former Mayor Leah Gold — “we still moved on,” she said. “We got a lot done.”

As someone now serving on the Council, she’s more inclined to point out what the city is doing right. The L&M village, a renovated motel that will provide 22 units of housing for local homeless people, will “go online pretty soon,” she said, as will a number of affordable housing units in the Mill District.

Susan Graf is Republican and proud of it. In 1983 and ’84, during the Reagan administration, she worked in the West Wing in the public liaison office.

She opened her women’s clothing store 25 years ago on Healdsburg’s iconic plaza. “I’ve watched first-hand how this city has progressed,” she said. “And I think they’ve done a good job. But I’m not saying it’s been all fabulous.”

She is not opposed to growth. “Tourism is not a dirty word,” she said, but would like to see it “on a bit more thoughtful scale.” Some of Healdsburg’s larger developments “bit off more than they could chew.”

“I love this town,” she said. And she has helped feed many of its residents. As a volunteer and fundraiser at the Healdsburg Food Pantry, Graf has helped feed up to 2,000 people per month for the last 22 years.

“I want to get elected, and I hope I do. But if I don’t, I still won’t shut up,” she said.

Candidates running for the single two-year term are:

Brigette Mansell is a retired public school teacher and environmental activist battling what she and others see as Healdsburg’s drift toward becoming a luxury destination. Hers is the loudest, clearest “community-first” voice in the field. Mansell is a fierce advocate, not surprisingly, for public schools, and also has the backs of locals, Latinos, workers and many others from middle- and lower economic backgrounds. She is deeply concerned about water and the drought, and would act as a check on development plans because of it.

Before making any decision, said Mansell, she will ask, “How will this affect the city’s workers and residents?”

She did not seek endorsements from any organizations or elected officials — but got some anyway, along with the 200 or so locals listed on her endorsement page. She spent less than $2,000 on her campaign.

“I’m just really counting on people to see me as a voice that has served them before,” she said. “I just feel like my lens would be valuable on the Council right now.”

Matthew “Matias” Lopez Jr. was a wrestler and badminton player at Healdsburg High School, from which he graduated in 2017, before he earned a degree in physics at UC Merced, then enrolled as a graduate student in Connecticut.

In addition to representing the youthful demographic hit hard by the pandemic, Lopez Jr. hopes to boost the Latino presence on the Council. While Latinos comprise over one-third of Healdsburg’s population, he said their representation in local government has lagged.

“I wasn’t always as politically engaged as I could’ve been,” he said, “because I always felt someone else would do it, someone else more qualified would come around.”

He threw his hat in the ring for this race, he said, because “I had some savings and a lot of free time, and if I didn’t do it, no one else would.”

Ron Edwards ran a catering business for 25 years in Healdsburg. He also spent time in Mendocino, running a cannabis nursery, “but I was always a Healdsburg person,” he said.

He spends a lot of time on Highway 101, volunteering at a food bank in Marin County. While opponents may try to use his time in the cannabis industry against him, Edwards noted that it was a great education.

“I learned about (the California Environmental Quality Act), I learned about California’s water issues, I traveled to Sacramento and LA, and learned how government works at a big-picture level,” he said.

Some seek to pigeonhole him as pro-business — he’s endorsed by the North Coast Builders Exchange, the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce and the Northern California Engineering Contractors Association — but Edwards disagreed with such characterization.

“Business is fine,” he said, “but I’m my own candidate. I’m really pretty center-left. I just want everybody to focus on the things we need to work on. I want to be that bridge for community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.