Sonoma County 5th District issues: housing, wine, pensions

Housing affordability.

Neighborhood concerns about Sonoma County’s expanding wine industry.

Rising taxpayer costs for county employee pensions.

In the next 14 months, those issues and a number of others that continue to vex the Board of Supervisors are likely to come up either on the county’s formal agenda or in the wider public discussion of how to spend public dollars on local government services.

Lynda Hopkins, a political newcomer and candidate for the 5th District seat held by Efren Carrillo, says she wants to bring fresh ideas to the table. Yet she doesn’t believe, ultimately, that she and her opponent, Noreen Evans, would diverge on the most hotly contested votes.

“I honestly don’t see Noreen and myself voting differently on Tuesdays,” Hopkins said. “I see the way we spend our other six days of the week being more of the difference. I really consider myself more of a community organizer.”

However, Evans, a former state legislator and Santa Rosa councilwoman, ticked off a list of high-profile initiatives that could put daylight between the two candidates were they both voting on them today. They include proposals to spur affordable housing development, tighten winery regulations, upgrade county roads and reign in county pension costs.

“This 5th District seat is going to be the swing vote on a lot of critical issues,” Evans said. “I have fought hard for working people for the past 20 years. The question in this race is are we going to have their concerns represented on the Board of Supervisors.”

As mail-in ballots go out today, voters in the 5th District are poised to decide who will represent them on the county board and hold, perhaps, a pivotal say in policies and services that affect residents countywide. At its most basic, the choice is between two liberal Democrats, one a strong political veteran with a known record, the other a bright newcomer pledging to maintain an open door.

“It’s a tough call,” said Deb Johnson, president of the Russian River Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not like the past two or three election cycles, when we all mostly knew who we were going to vote for. This year, we’re all just asking one another ‘What are you going to do?’”

The two candidates have offered ambitious ideas on how to address some of the county’s most pressing problems, such as repairing its degraded road network, as well as launching new programs to assist low-income and middle-class families.

Evans wants to tax marijuana cultivation and use the revenue to fix roads and build new housing. Hopkins wants to seek a 1-cent per-ounce tax on sugary beverages to pay for early childhood education and childcare.

The Board of Supervisors next year is expected to take up potential new limits on winery development and special events at wineries, seen as a critical revenue stream for boutique businesses but an increasing nuisance for some rural residents.

Hopkins and Evans both said they support strengthening regulations for wineries, including perhaps limiting events, to address traffic and noise concerns in areas heavily visited by tourists, such as in Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Valley and along Westside Road.

Evans said she would allocate funding to hire additional code enforcement officers to police events on nights and weekends, and said she would work to protect future winery development or vineyard planting in coastal areas.

“I’m not opposed to wineries, but the problem becomes when they start cutting down our forests and start impacting our rural neighborhoods and roads that aren’t designed to carry big tour buses,” Evans said.

Hopkins, who has taken the larger share of money from wine industry members, said she supports additional code enforcement officers, but appears to favor a more restrained approach to regulation, saying the county should “start small and scale up if needed.”

She said she’d focus on spacing out winery events, as well as other draws such as bicycle events, by appointing a taskforce comprised of business and wine interests as well as rural residents.

“I believe in regulation,” she said. “I’m not suggesting any anarchy - deregulation of agriculture - but it’s more how do you craft intelligent regulations rather than punish people who are doing things incorrectly, rather than overly burdening some of these really small business owners who are struggling to make ends meet?”

Vintners have voiced support for Hopkins’ approach.

“She’s a practical person and does not have a preset hostile attitude toward wineries,” said John Dyson, proprietor of Williams Selyem Winery in Healdsburg and a key figure five years ago in grape growers’ fight against rules governing Russian River water used for frost protection. “She’s a farmer, so she understands business and she understands what problems we are facing.”

Both candidates say addressing the housing crisis is their top priority, though their ideas on how to address it differ.

Hopkins’ housing strategy focuses on streamlining the permitting process for new development and creating other incentives for developers to build new units. Her proposals include developing a program to allow homeowners to convert empty bedrooms into rental units and lowering permit fees for developers seeking to build apartments.

To address homelessness, Hopkins wants to erect temporary tent villages on county-owned land, and convert county-owned buildings into permanent housing sites, including the 117-acre former county hospital and health care complex on Chanate Road in Santa Rosa.

“It’s getting harder and harder to ignore that the new face of homelessness in Sonoma County is working men and women and families,” Hopkins said. “So let’s get people in some place safe, then we’ll have a coordinated entry point for social services and we can work on long-term solutions.”

Hopkins also voiced support for developing a program to use shipping containers and tiny houses to shelter homeless people - the latter effort already underway in the county - as well as seeking a tax increase to fund new housing development and emergency financial assistance for renters.

“If were a supervisor and I were going to ask anyone for money this November, it would be to address the affordable housing crisis and do something like the (Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District) but instead of open space, for affordable housing,” she said.

Evans said she would require developers to include on-site affordable housing in all new residential and commercial developments, expressing strong support for so-called inclusionary zoning laws intended to prevent segregating neighborhoods by race and class.

She has also argued strongly in favor of rent control and other tenant protections since the beginning of her campaign, a position Hopkins did not initially endorse but now does.

In her campaign, Evans has taken issue with that point in particular, raising concerns about an effort afoot to overturn Santa Rosa’s rent control ordinance, passed by the City Council in August. The issue is a pivotal one for the Santa Rosa City Council, and Evans brings it up often at forums and while knocking on doors.

“It has become a symbol of who is going to stand for ordinary people,” Evans said. “We have a candidate who is standing on the sidelines and doing nothing about this petition and meanwhile people are losing their homes left and right. The other day I encountered a man who was living in someone’s spare bedroom because his landlord of 21 years decided to remodel his apartment and he evicted him.

“I’m hearing stories like this every single day,” Evans said.

Evans said she, too, supports temporary shelter sites for homeless people, as well as expanded social services, including mental health care and substance abuse treatment. She advocated for the county to declare a year-round state of emergency on homelessness to provide additional shelter sites and perhaps, help the county qualify for additional state and federal funding.

Evans also wants to invest a portion of the county’s $2.3 billion in pension assets to build workforce housing projects.

“It’s being done elsewhere and we can do it here,” Evans said. “The benefit would be twofold - we would get to build workforce housing locally and we earn income for county employee pensions.”

On the issue of rising pension costs for Sonoma County government workers, Evans said she would, through collective bargaining, seek greater contributions for upper-level management and she would dedicate tax revenue to pay down taxpayer pension costs, though she characterized the county’s pension costs as largely manageable.

“My opponent describes it as a crisis, but there is a plan to pay it off over time,” said Evans, who has taken a large share of her contributions from organized labor groups and been criticized for being too cozy with public employee unions. “Some people would like to do that faster.”

Hopkins favors seeking greater employee contributions toward retirement plans, and said the county should consider adopting a plan with greater shared risk, whereby employee contributions would fluctuate with the rise and fall of pension fund assets. Hopkins has a grimmer assessment of the county’s retirement spending, up more than 500 percent since 2000.

“If I had to sum it up in two words, it would be ‘We’re screwed,’” Hopkins said in August at a campaign event in Bodega Bay.

Hopkins has faced heavy criticism lodged by Evans and her supporters about the campaign cash she has taken from development interests, including Napa-based Syar Industries, which for years has run a major gravel mining operation on upper Russian River near Geyserville. The company has no current proposal to expand.

“It’s a concern for anyone who cares about the river that these gravel miners want to come back,” said Ernie Carpenter, an Evans supporter and former county supervisor who represented west county for 16 years on the board. “It only takes a 3-2 vote and you can pretty much change anything.”

Hopkins said extracting gravel from the banks of the Russian River, however, could actually help restore it to a more natural state and help endangered fish species recover - an idea supported by some biologists and river advocates.

“Today, the river is stuck in a straitjacket,” said Don McEnhill, executive director of the nonprofit Russian Riverkeeper. “Most mining prior to today was done in a way that was very harmful for the river, but we are open to gravel mining if it can help the river spread out to bring down the natural flood plain.”