City Budgets
On Sept. 4, 2025, a letter to the editor made some comparisons about legal expenses for the cities of Healdsburg, Sonoma and Petaluma. We value community engagement in city finances and appreciate this opportunity to highlight some nuances of governmental budgets.
Every local government is unique in the range of services it provides and how those services are delivered. For example, while both Healdsburg and Petaluma provide police, fire, water and sewer services, Sonoma does not. Additionally, Healdsburg is the only one of the three that provides electric services. Petaluma employs five full-time legal staff whereas Sonoma and Healdsburg contract with outside legal firms. These differences among many factors influence the total size of the city budgets and lead to inaccurate comparisons if not considered.
A helpful tool for comparison can be looking at legal costs as a percentage of total budget. For Fiscal Year 2025-26, Healdsburg’s legal costs are 0.4% of our total budget of $128 million, Sonoma’s are 0.6% of $45 million and Petaluma’s are 0.5% of $348 million when including the costs of salaries, benefits and specialized contracted services.
In Fiscal Year 2024-25 Healdsburg paid $1.03 million for legal services; however, $320,000 was funded directly by project applicants for services relating to development, resulting in $710,000 in City-paid expenses. One advantage of the contract model is that Healdsburg has access to an array of legal specialists through our agreement with Burke, Williams & Sorenson. In the past year, over a dozen attorneys supported Healdsburg under the direction of the City Attorney.
Healdsburg’s budget process for the next two years will kick off in January. We welcome the community to participate by sharing their questions, concerns and ideas. Please stay tuned for more opportunities to engage in the process early in 2026.
Katie Edgar, Finance Director
City of Healdsburg
Hold your nose
Regarding the upcoming Prop 50 redistricting election: We should hold our noses and vote “yes,” but it should never have come to this. Texas and the GOP continue to play unethical games, fully aware of how crucial the 2026 elections will be in determining control of the House.
They have politicized what redistricting is meant to be: the fair re-drawing of voting districts to reflect population changes and ensure balanced representation. Instead, partisan maneuvering has undermined public trust. We all know how pivotal the 2026 elections will be in restoring balance to both the House and Senate and in repairing the damage done to our country. Vote Yes on Prop 50!
Yvonne Martin,
Santa Rosa
Clarification
In the Aug. 21 Tribune issue, the print edition mischaracterized Councilmember Chris Herrod’s role in the Measure O campaign. A more accurate reading would be that found in the online story here: “Herrod’s overt support of the initiative raised eyebrows over his failure to clearly define his role as a councilmember as separate from a measure supporter: although city representatives are legally permitted to advocate in such elections, it is difficult to separate the two roles fully, in public perception if not in fact.”
Editor
