Sonoma County grapples with changes to enforcement approach as coronavirus continues to ravage community

Three months after calling for stronger enforcement of public health orders to slow the spread of coronavirus, Sonoma County supervisors said Sunday they must recalibrate their approach as the county remains mired in lockdown.

County leaders say it’s not clear that an expanded enforcement program launched in late July is working, as it has produced just three citations in the unincorporated areas of the county. But supervisors remain split between advocating for stronger policies and a push for a little more common sense.

That reckoning follows a pair of high-profile enforcement actions on Saturday, including two citations issued to the organizer of an outdoor race in Healdsburg. The other, a pre-emptive warning against a planned Halloween party on private land, also raised eyebrows for a Board of Supervisors that hasn’t received new data on its enforcement program in almost a month.

“We have to get serious about enforcement,” Supervisor Susan Gorin said Sunday, adding that residents and business owners are growing increasingly frustrated over the county’s current status in the most restrictive tier of the state’s reopening plan.

Three months after making the county’s code department responsible for enforcing public health orders, Sonoma County has ticketed a race director and the owner of a fitness center. It has issued at least 90 warnings and put an emphasis on education and outreach. But as the county nears 10,000 cases and the death toll climbs toward 140, it has not been able to climb out of its lockdown even while neighboring counties enjoy greater levels of freedom.

Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase has joined other health officers in the state in calling for greater enforcement of health orders as one way of reining in transmission rates. She has supporters in Gorin and Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who said the county has done enough talking.

“I just think we need to step it up,” Zane said. “The time for education has passed, and I really think it’s time to enforce.”

As county supervisors ponder a different path forward, they face a grim reality: the county is one of just a few statewide in the state’s lowest tier for reopening, and it must drastically reduce its caseload to move forward.

In late July, county supervisors demanded tougher enforcement of public health orders designed to slow the spread of the virus and pave the way for a broader reopening of businesses, schools and public activity.

County officials said the weekend’s enforcement actions were not part of a concentrated effort to take a tougher approach on people and businesses suspected of violating health orders. Supervisors said they were caught by surprise at news of the enforcement actions, which included a warning notice that threatened Santa Rosa businesswoman Molly Gallaher Flater and her husband, Scott Flater, with a $1,000 fine if they went forward with a planned Halloween party.

Zane said she’d rather see the county focus on big-box stores, which she said have been the source of numerous complaints regarding social distancing, face masks and other preventative measures.

Supervisor David Rabbitt, citing the anonymous tip about the Flaters’ Halloween party, said it rubbed him the wrong way.

“You’ve got a confidential informant telling code enforcement you’ve got a tent in your backyard and you might have a party?” Supervisor David Rabbitt said. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be part of that. I think we can do better.”

Tennis Wick, director of the county’s permit department, said he issued the warning to the Flaters after receiving a confidential complaint about the rental of three tents, with the capacity for 50 people each, for a Halloween event at the Flaters’ property. On Sunday, he said the department was investigating whether the Flaters requested permits to use such tents. Molly Gallaher Flater said the tents described by Wick were never on her property. “I never inquired for nor had any such tents,” she said in an email statement.

Mase, who said she was unaware of the weekend enforcement actions, said any decision to ramp up enforcement of public health rules, or to take a more aggressive approach toward it would have to come from the Board of Supervisors.

She plans to provide to supervisors a detailed comparison of enforcement data between Sonoma County and other counties that could be used to inform such work.

That’s exactly what Rabbitt has pleaded for since the summer, when he came out against a health order tip line that enabled hundreds of people to report violations.

“Eight months later, we should have some data,” Rabbitt said. “But if we still don’t have the areas of biggest impact defined, and yet we’re out there enforcing things — it’s no wonder people are scratching their heads. It’s no wonder there’s fatigue.”

There's not even agreement among supervisors on who should take the lead in enforcing these orders. Supervisor Lynda Hopkins felt the current system, a mix of code enforcement and law enforcement response, was sufficient. Rabbitt said the Sheriff's Office makes more sense, from an efficiency standpoint, but Zane and Supervisor James Gore said a uniformed police response amounted to overkill. Zane, though, was willing to deputize code enforcement personnel, along with public health staff and even District Attorney's Office investigators to combat scofflaws.

Sheriff Mark Essick did not return a telephone call Sunday seeking comment on the role of the Sheriff’s Office in enforcing public health orders.

Hopkins was noncommittal about boosting enforcement measures, but she acknowledged the frustration residents and businesses are feeling, and the impact that events like those in the county’s crosshairs this weekend can have on others. There are small businesses, including restaurants, that won’t make it through the winter, Hopkins said. It stings worse when “people do stupid stuff.”

“Fundamentally, people who are planning these kinds of things are very selfish and self-centered,” Hopkins said. “If we all followed the rules … we can move out of the purple and into the red,” referring to the state’s four-tier, color-coded reopening plan.

Hopkins said there’s a role for residents to play that doesn’t involve the type of insidious, Big Brother tattle-telling, and that’s modeling good behavior for your neighbors.

Gore seemed to agree, warning against using extreme enforcement of civil ordinances, some of which, he said, are “un-implementable.”

For Gore, it was about finding a balance.

"The goal in life is not to make this a ’show me your papers’ and create a post-apocalyptic Nazi Germany, where we're knocking on people's doors and doing other things. But if we get valid complaints that we follow up on, and they break the health order, then you have to enforce that. You can't play games with that ... and people need to see that that's taking place,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Tyler Silvy at 707-526-8667 or tyler.silvy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @TylerSilvy. You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.