News

The Sebastopol City Council meets at 6 p.m. tonight, March 15. Agenda items include a public hearing item related to the city’s emergency operations center, a public hearing item adding language to the city’s municipal code about “police acquisition and use of government body specific equipment,” as well as regular agenda items about bike lane modifications to Morris Street, discussion and consideration of recommendations from Sebastopol’s Committee for Unhoused and more. The council will also be receiving presentations about the upcoming Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, the process of expanding the city's business improvement district and a presentation from the climate action committee.

Vote-by-mail ballots for the April 12 special election will start going out in the mail this week to all active, registered voters residing in the Town of Windsor. Voters should expect their vote-by-mail ballots to arrive within five to 10 days. This election does not apply to any Sonoma County voters who live outside of Windsor.

In September of last year, a Native American tribe from Lake County announced its intention to build a casino that could host 54,000 people a day just outside Windsor, south of East Shiloh Road. But as the Koi Nation pursues taking the land into trust in Washington, D.C., neighbors are organizing against the plans, touting the risk congestion to a residential area with poor accessibility would pose to safe evacuation in the event of a fire, among other concerns including the potential disruption of way of life to nearby residents.

After years in the making and several delays, the multipurpose building; science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) lab; and kindergarten classroom projects at Alexander Valley School (AVS) are finally taking shape.

With the help of Coastal Conservancy grant monies, the Healdsburg Fire Department, in partnership with the Northern Sonoma County Fire District Fuels Crew, recently completed a large vegetation management project on Fitch Mountain, including trimming back overgrown understory brush, thinning tree crown canopies and clearing trees where needed.

The City of Healdsburg’s budget is looking good and general fund reserves are expected to hit slightly above the 30% city council-mandated reserve requirement thanks to general fund revenue projections that are exceeding expectations. Unfortunately, the budget outlook isn’t too rosy for the water fund, which is suffering decreases in revenue due to water conservation.

On a recent visit to Jon Wright’s Feed Store for chicken feed, I noticed that Jon still has a poster of his customer Joe Montana in his #16 Jersey on the back wall next to the wood burning stove in his office. It brought back the memory of Nicholas Montana, a boy in my fourth grade classroom, who, while reading the book “Ishi: Last of his Tribe” and learning about California botany and the native buckeye tree, asked, “Ms. Kelley, are you talking about conkers?  It was what his grandfather called the nut of the buckeye, and in my mind I saw children throwing them at each other in the Mayacamas Mountains. That led to a parallel motion picture where I envisioned children of the Pomo or Wappo people, or Ishi from his Yahi tribe, also collecting and throwing buckeye nuts at each other, in their time and in this place we now call California.

There’s a collective groan, rippling across California, as drivers pull into gas stations and see prices above $5. 

We often banter about the word and the concept of what we call “community.” There’s probably no single definition we can use. Does community just happen, or does it require some sort of strategic planning? We combine the word when we talk about community policing, community mental health, community economic vitality, community diversity and even community journalism. When we say community, we don’t always mean communal; sometimes we also include conflict.