Santa Rosa council sees housing, homelessness and budget discipline as 2019 priorities

Discussions were wide-ranging, frank and occasionally tense Thursday when the Santa Rosa City Council met to shape the city’s top legislative priorities. The special session called for greater focus on crafting a balanced budget, increasing housing density downtown and helping homeowners continue to rebuild from the October 2017 wildfires.

Advised and cajoled by staff members, council members used the session at the Flamingo Conference Resort and Spa Hotel to whittle down a full slate of initiatives into tentative lists with three tiers: top issues prioritized by staff; secondary goals to be pursued as time allows; and a rolling list of projects deferred due to other commitments.

Vice Mayor Chris Rogers explained the tiers as Magic 8-Ball phrases: “?‘Most likely yes.’ ‘Ask again later.’ And, ‘Don’t count on it.’?”

The council will formally adopt its priorities sometime in the next two months. A special meeting Friday at City Hall will focus on the second round in the city’s transition to district election system, a step that will come in 2020.

Efforts to curb homelessness regularly come before the council, including the recent proposal to convert the former Bennett Valley Senior Center into a homeless shelter. The council was unanimous in opting to again consider homelessness a top priority this year.

Other topics weren’t considered so pressing, such as the proposed drafting of a travel and training policy for council members. That project, City Manager Sean McGlynn said, had been pending for about three years.

McGlynn raised another concern that may be more significant: high turnover among local government employees in the aftermath of natural disaster. He said his understanding was that such turnover was estimated at 40 percent. He urged council members to be conscientious about what projects - and how many - they asked staff to spend time developing.

“There is a tremendous amount of work going on and there does need to be some patience,” McGlynn said. “Otherwise I’m going to burn through the people in front of you. I don’t know how else to say that.”

The city’s ability to achieve its goals also are limited by its financial straits. The existing budget deficit, plus disaster response spending, has drained reserves to under $5 million - about five times less than the amount called for under city policy.

The City Council in January voted to temporarily freeze hiring of roughly ?50 vacant positions to save money. Given the grim outlook, McGlynn urged the council to prioritize financial sustainability.

“God forbid another disaster hits us,” McGlynn said. “We’d be insolvent.”

When council members were first asked to pick five top priorities, financial sustainability only received three votes. Post-fire rebuilding and homelessness received unanimous support, while housing development and action to confront climate change also received majority support.

McGlynn urged council members to reconsider. “It’s going to come out to the ratings agencies that you all demoted financial stability,” he said.

“I need you to back that as the chief priority to get our financial house in order,” he said. “Otherwise we keep kicking the can down the road.”

His case made, Mayor Tom Schwedhelm proposed adding financial stability as another top priority. Council members agreed, eventually settling on a draft list that includes five main focus areas and seven secondary priorities.

Schwedhelm, a former police chief, suggested creating a council subcommittee to develop metrics to measure the city’s success in achieving its goals and credited the group for working through conversations that were frustrating at times.

“The product we ended up with today is much better than if we had an emperor or one person making decisions,” he said.

The day began with more than ?40 speakers advocating for their causes over roughly 90 minutes while crammed into a small conference room at the Flamingo.

A crowd of senior tenants and advocates bearing signs called on the city to change its mobile-home rent control ordinance to tie costs to Social Security cost-of-living-adjustments instead of the relatively higher Bay Area consumer price index. Otherwise, they feared they would be priced out of their homes.

Their outreach before and during the meeting worked: The council added to its list of secondary goals increased rental protections for seniors. Other causes that earned support included adoption of a $15 minimum wage, support for cannabis businesses in the city, and short- and long-term help for the Roseland library, which is looking to relocate from its cavernous, temporary space near the Dollar Tree on Sebastopol Road.

The cramped quarters gave the meeting a different feel and some odd moments. As attendees jostled for space, moving in and out of the hallway during the public comment period, errant elbows hit light switches, affecting banks of overhead lighting.

“If we had this in Roseland’s library,” one attendee noted, “we probably would all have fit.”

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports.