Santa Rosa Considers Ballot Measure to Increase Councilmembers’ Pay

After 17 years without a raise, the Santa Rosa City Council is considering asking residents to tie council members’ salaries to Sonoma County’s median income.

In June, a council subcommittee tasked with studying the city’s charter—functionally the city’s rule book—recommended that the full council debate adding a ballot measure to the Nov. 8, 2022 election to significantly increase councilmembers’ pay. The full council did so at a meeting on Tuesday, July 12, after the Bohemian’s print deadline. (You can watch the meeting online here.)

Santa Rosa has seven elected city council members, one of whom serves as mayor. Currently, council members are paid $9,600 per year, while the mayor earns $17,000. Council members also receive benefits, including healthcare and retirement, that are valued at between $19,400 and $33,700 per year, according to a city staff report. 

Even with the benefits, it would be nearly impossible for an individual to pay for housing and other life expenses on a council member’s current salary alone. 

The proposal recommended by the subcommittee would match the mayor’s pay to the median income of a family of three in Sonoma County, currently $101,500. Councilmembers would be paid two-thirds of the median income, or approximately $67,000. 

A staff report estimates that the change in salary would cost the city an additional $426,000 in the first year, plus unknown changes to benefits. As a percentage of the city’s overall budget, the increase would be relatively small—accounting for an increase of 0.34%, according to city staff. 

Backers of the wage increase argue that the low pay means that members need to either be independently wealthy or work a separate job, cutting into the time they can dedicate to managing the city. Under the current system, homeowners, retirees and successful business owners are more likely to afford a term on the council, while renters and younger, more diverse candidates are less likely to be able to take on a council member’s workload, estimated to eat up between 20 and 30 hours per week.

“The Committee heard evidence of the workload of the Mayor and Council members, of the difficulties of balancing private employment, child care, family and the responsibilities of Council membership,” the staff report states.

Recent resignations of local elected officials seem to bear out that logic. With the cost of living continuing to climb, some recently-elected officials have left public office, often citing cost of living as one consideration. 

After studying the issue, the Charter Review Committee concluded that the council’s wages should be increased to “enable a greater diversity of membership (including those with young families, those with lower paying occupations and those without independent means of wealth)… ensure continued strong commitment and professionalism, and… as a matter of fairness and respect for the extensive work performed by Council members.”

Still, if it’s added to the ballot, Santa Rosa’s measure may face an uphill battle. The optics of politicians giving themselves raises are never great, even though, in this case, they’re paid poverty wages. In 2002, Santa Rosa voters rejected a ballot measure to increase council members’ wages. While members could vote to give themselves incremental raises, they have not done so since 2005, according to a city staff report.

But the tides could be turning. In 2020, Berkeley voters passed Measure JJ, after which Santa Rosa’s new proposal is modeled.

Perhaps of note: Berkeley has a population of around 120,000, while Santa Rosa’s hovers near 180,000.

Petaluma Receives $13 Million for New Rail Station, Bus Improvements

The City of Petaluma and the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District plan to deliver a second rail station and electrify buses after receiving a $13 million grant on Friday, July 8.

The funds, which are provided by the California State Transportation Agency’s State Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, will mostly go towards the Petaluma North infill station and North McDowell Boulevard crossing upgrades. Petaluma Transit will use $3 million to electrify and improve its bus fleet, as well as renovate bus stops.

SMART board of directors chair David Rabbitt said the city will see “greatly enhanced transportation options” with the new station and 4.4 miles of new SMART pathway from Penngrove to Downtown Petaluma.

“We are grateful for the State of California’s support, and we are thrilled to begin building Petaluma’s transportation network of the future,” Rabbitt stated.

Petaluma Mayor Teresa Barrett said the grant money marks a “significant milestone,” one that the city has been waiting for since SMART service began.

“Not only will this funding deliver our eastside station but will substantially bolster our transit fleet electrification efforts, helping us reach our 2030 climate neutrality goal,” Barrett stated. “This successful regional partnership delivers for our community, our region and our future.”

Debate over Petaluma’s second SMART station has dragged on for years, with the city at odds with SMART over past development proposals. 

In January 2021, for instance, the Petaluma City Council effectively killed a complicated and controversial proposal to finance the development of the second station. The proposal involved multiple properties and agreements between private developers, SMART and the city.

The $13 million grant for the Petaluma projects came as part of a $800 million investment by the California State Transportation Agency, split between 23 projects across the state. The funds are meant to expand intercity rail service, improve public transportation options and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Call for Art and Poetry

0

Petaluma Arts Center is calling for submissions of poetry and art for an upcoming exhibition called Agri-CULTURED: Reflections on our Local Food’ by Land and by Hand.

This new exhibition and tandem lecture series explore cross-cultural intersections of food and farming in our region.

The project brings together food producers, purveyors, and artists who work locally and align with global concerns of sustainable practice and cultural memory.

It not only bridges art, science, and agriculture but also engages the spheres of hospitality, tourism, and the economy of Sonoma
County.

Call for Art

The center invites works from Petaluma and surrounding Sonoma County communities that respond to at least one of the following:

  • Food and the environment: through the lenses of drought, wildfires.
    and climate change
  • Food and culture: as an expression of family, community, and ritual.
  • Food and the economy: exploring labor issues, distribution, and ethical practice.

The center reminds artists that all artwork must be ready for installation. All framed, wall-hung work must be securely wired for hanging. Likewise, all work must have a label attached to the back of the piece that includes artist information, title, medium, year, price, and any special installation instructions. Wall-hung work must not be over 50 lbs. All work must be original (and the artist receives 60% of the sales price for any works sold).

Call for Poetry

The center is also seeking poetry themed on food and memory—all forms of poetry accepted.

The deadline for both art and poetry is July 15. Artists will be notified of selected works by July 22. Only two submissions per artist. Submission fees are $15 for arts center members and $25 for non-members.

Links to submit work online can be found here.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and from Creative Sonoma.

Burn This: Archival survival

0

By Daedalus Howell

I went to my safe deposit box in search of a backup hard drive that contained material I needed to share with a business associate. I turned the key and I pulled the box from the wall. Inside? Redundant copies of some legal papers and an allegedly rare Star Wars action figure with a snaggle-toothed grin—so happy he was to be liberated from this high-security sarcophagus.

I had never bothered to stash the hard drive in the box as planned. Instead, I found it under my desk, under a sheaf of unfiled, “important” papers. This baleful state of affairs is not unique to me; this is the way of the world, particularly when it comes to the fate of our cultural artifacts and, you know, the end of the world.

Attempts have been made. There are salt mines in Hutchinson, KS, where reels of studio-made celluloid are stowed in perfect atmospheric conditions. It’s a seed bank of cinema and it’s comforting to think that when the planet finally explodes, at least a few frames of Casablanca might someday rain upon another celestial body (“We will always have Venus”).

A Noah’s Ark chock-a-block with all of our art rocketed off this crowded little heat trap appeals to me. I’m sure I have some extraterrestrial colleagues that would get a kick out of what’s happened since Roswell. Otherwise, they’ve only had our broadcast TV waves, and those take a while to reach deep space. We’ve basically been sending Nick at Nite reruns into space. That and the Arecibo message make early Atari look like Da Vinci. 

I often think of the Voyager-1 satellite leaving our solar system as its 12-inch Golden Record crammed with Earth’s greatest hits played Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark is the Night.” Good for Blind Willie. I know I have no purchase on posterity. A wiser person might dwell on the evanescent ever-present and not the far-off future, but that’s not me. Instead, I embrace the inevitable bonfire of my vanities. And everyone else’s too. Destroy the evidence while we can because, frankly, our story has never been that great. You can’t paper over what we’ve done to each other and our world with Hamlet. So, let it burn.

Prior to the advent of fire season, I would recommend tearing out this page, folding it into a paper airplane and flicking your Bic to really send a message. But times have (climate) changed, so instead, fold one sheet into a paper hat and roll another into a “telescope” so you can peer into the starry heavens and let’s hope the future both forgives and forget us.

Glory Bound: Woody Guthrie musical to play Plaza

0

The Raven Players bring live outdoor entertainment to Healdsburg’s Downtown Plaza with their production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song: A Truly American Musical. Peter Glazer’s adaptation of the writings and songs of “America’s premiere folk poet” runs this weekend, through July 10.

Raven Players founder Joe Gellura is directing the production, which is not a traditional musical biography or “jukebox musical.” “Guthrie wasn’t much of a musician,” said Gellura, “He admitted that he stole liberally from old Appalachian and Irish tunes of his youth. The power is in what he said. He was writing in a time of turmoil that makes today’s headlines seem like tired whining. Some of his song lyrics read like an investigative article from the Press Democrat. He wrote about people who were trying to achieve or keep a place in the great middle class that drove the engine of our economic successes.”

No single actor plays Guthrie. Instead, three performers (Matthew Witthaus, Tim Shippey and Hans Grin) provide the voice of the folk poet at various stages in his life. Five other performers (Cecelia Brenner, Molly Larsen-Shine, Grace Warden, Lindsay John and Tika Moon) play various hobos, Okies, saloon keepers and others that Guthrie met along the way.

Several of the cast do double duty as musicians and join Karl Byrn, Carolyn Dixon and Kendra Levitan to bring such familiar Guthrie tunes as “Bound for Glory,” “Pastures of Plenty” and “This Land is Your Land” to life. The instrumentation is folk—harmonicas, banjo, mandolin, guitar, bass, fiddle.

After two pandemic-related postponements from its original planned November 2020 opening, Martin still feels that the current political environment adds to the show’s relevancy. “As we see the rich, the powerful, the old boys’ network continue to curtail, or just blatantly steal our rights, it’s important to remember that this land really is our land, that it does belong to you and me, no matter our color, religion, political beliefs, gender or sexual identity. And in the true Guthrie spirit, freedom and equality is always worth fighting for.”

‘Woody Guthrie’s American Song: A Truly American Musical’ runs through July 10 in Healdsburg Plaza, Matheson St and Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg. Fri- Sun, 7:30pm. Free general admission (bring your own chair/blanket). $25 VIP seating available. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org

Trivia – Week of 07/06/2022

0

QUESTIONS:

1 The national headquarters of the Guide Dogs for the Blind is located where in Marin County?

2 Abe Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you” … what …?

3a. The leading Tour de France bicyclist, the one with the lowest overall time, rides with a jersey of what color?

3b. This year’s Tour began in what capital city whose name begins with C, more than 700 miles from Paris?

4 The six strongest earthquakes in the U.S. all occurred in what state?

5 Each of these tennis tournaments is played on a different kind of surface (grass, clay, etc.). Identify each one:

a. Wimbledon b. U.S. Open c. French Open

6 The Gobi Desert stretches primarily through what two countries?

7a. What 33-year-old man wrote the original draft of America’s historic Declaration of Independence?

7b. In what city was this document signed?

8 What German automotive engineer, who worked on the original Volkswagen Beetle, later established a line of very expensive cars that he named after himself, and still exists today?

9 Give the titles of these biographical movies about the lives of these musical super performers:

a. Queen, 2018 

b. Elton John, 2019

c. Elvis Presley, 2022

10 Try to name four four-letter words that start with “F,” have only one vowel and contain a double consonant.

BONUS QUESTION: Walt Disney once said, “I loved ______ more than any woman I’ve ever known.” Fill in the blank with a name.

Want more live trivia?  You’re invited to the next Trivia Cafe team contest at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley on Sunday, July 24 at 5pm, hosted by Howard Rachelson. Free admission, and food and drinks are available. ho*****@********fe.com

ANSWERS:

1 In San Rafael, Terra Linda

2 “… can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

3 Yellow/Copenhagen, Denmark

4 Alaska

5a. Grass 5b. Acrylic hard court  5c. Clay

6 China and Mongolia

7a. Thomas Jefferson 

7b. Philadelphia

8 Dr. Ferdinand Porsche

9a. Bohemian Rhapsody 5b. Rocketman  5c. Elvis

10 Fall, fess, full, fuss… (others?)

BONUS ANSWER:

Mickey Mouse

Depth Charge – Swimming With Poseidon

0

By Christian Chensvold

Let’s skip—for a moment—whether or not the gods exist. That is, whether the seven “planetary governors” known to the ancients (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), and the 12 “fixed stars” (the wheel in the sky, or zodiac), have supernatural powers—as in “a higher kind of natural”—that human beings can invoke and channel.

Let’s skip for now, in other words, the scenario in which you’re cornered by ruffians and have no choice but to fight for survival. You invoke the planet Mars, the god of war, which happens to be perfectly placed in Aries in your natal chart. Your whole being instantly changes, you go into “rage mode” as if in a video game, and fight off three bad guys.

Let’s also skip the seduction scene you’ve planned of your new infatuation, who’s coming over on Friday night, the day of the week named for Venus. You prepare your home with flowers and fragrance, music and wine, and pray to Venus for a night of passion leading to an everlasting love, and sure enough it actually happens.

Yes, to placate followers of modern science, we will not try to prove that in these scenarios actual divine intervention has occurred simply because of the invocation and the positive outcome, foregoing all claims to objectivity and simply looking at what happens to the person who dares invoke the gods.

At the commencement of my awakening five years ago, I found myself staring at the Atlantic Ocean on a desolate stretch of beach. The sun was setting, the wind was picking up and the water was cold. I stood for ages trying to come up with a reason why I should enter the sea. Then my mind’s eye began to see images of ancient Greece drawn from a lifetime of movie-watching, and strange energies began coursing through me.

Suddenly, I shouted, “Alright Poseidon, show me what you’ve got!” I leapt into the brisk waters, swam as hard as I could, dove under waves, pulled up shells from the bottom and created a spontaneous ocean adventure, never for a moment letting go of the invocation I’d made. I exited the water in a state of exhilaration, and here I am years later writing about it.

Today it’s clear what happened. In summoning “the gods,” I made profane life suddenly sacred, magically conferring metaphysical meaning to otherwise meaningless action. The medium through which this took place was the imagination, which is not a faculty for envisioning material things that don’t really exist, but for connecting with immaterial things that actually do.

Great Divides – Different worlds, same universe

By Winslow Myers

Eight days of rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with my daughter promised to be an exceptional experience. Introducing myself to a fellow voyager, a Texan, I joked that surely Texas wasn’t really planning to secede, because it would be a pain to have to obtain a visa to visit Austin. This didn’t seem to go over very well. 

We had little in common except perhaps the experience of the river and the canyon. Sleeping outside in the dry 90 degree heat at night, we shared the closeness of the stars ringed by looming black towers of stone, stars that included a spiral arm of the Milky Way, a faint mist of light that feathered across the more familiar constellations.

Later, after a short hike up through narrowing walls of smooth stone, with no advance warning, we came upon a string quartet playing Elgar! Waterproofing their instruments, the musicians had arrived safely by raft to concertize in this most wildly improbable of venues.

The music drew us into the larger conversation of the universe with itself: an enigmatically self-organizing system had crushed and melted and swirled titanic masses of rock, which over hundreds of millions of years sank below and rose again above great seas, leaching out elements that combined into the first forms of cellular life—life that became self-sentient and sawed down other woody forms of life to fashion cellos to play notes derived from harmonies already built into the cosmos, harmonies drawn forth into distinct combinations by the mind of Bach or Elgar, now conveyed to insect-bitten, sweaty river voyagers by these generous performers.

Call this unfolding creative process God or evolution or what you will; we were in it together, regardless of the lack of a conversation that might have led to some affirmation of our group’s interdependence as citizens of one country, or at least as humans on one planet. Secession from the universe is not an option—even for Texas.

Winslow Myers, syndicated by PeaceVoice, author of ‘Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,’ serves on the advisory board of the War Preventive Initiative.

Sieck Look – Artist Catherine Sieck brings the cycle of life and death to her work

0

By Jane Vick

Good morning and happy Wednesday to all! I hope this finds heads high and hearts hopeful, despite the challenges we’re facing as a nation. May this week’s “Look” be a source of light as we navigate the darkness.

Catherine Sieck is an artist based in Sonoma County, whose work can be seen most easily on the A Street wall of The Spinster Sisters in the SOFA district in Santa Rosa. In Sieck’s mural, two sisters sit, one at a spindle, one attending to needle work. The detail of the sisters becomes even more inspiring when one learns that the pieces are painted replications of Sieck’s papercut originals—each line artfully and exactingly extracted.

An artist already, Sieck lost her mother in 2018, and she attended closely to the entirety of the process, inviting an element of sacredness and honor to death not always seen in western culture. This event had a major impact on Sieck’s work, deepening her connection to the cycle of life and death as it appears all around us.

In both her copper work and her paper cutting, Sieck includes bees and pomegranates, which, unbeknownst to some, are associated with the journey between life and death. A beekeeper and gardener herself, and an artist who lives with her partner in quite rural circumstances, Sieck is deeply connected to both. 

“Bees and pomegranates are recurring symbols in my work and cherished companions in my day-to-day life. Both are associated with the journey between this life and the afterlife, this world and the under/other world. Mythologically, they’re beautiful companions to people in big transition and loss; bees bring the souls of the dead to the other world. Persephone eats the pomegranate in the underworld that binds her to a cycle of seasonal death and rebirth. As a gardener and beekeeper, as well as someone who has attended to the death of a parent, the interplay of the mythos and the daily lived interactions feels really meaningful to me and is exciting terrain to make work in,” said Sieck.

Sieck’s work in both copper and paper is an intricate, evocative homage to the layered and multi-faceted experiences in between life and death.

Explore and purchase her work via her website, www.catherinesieck.com.

See you next week, everyone!

Love always,

Jane

Jane Vick is an artist and writer based in Oakland. She splits her time between Europe, New York and New Mexico. View her work and contact her at janevick.com.

Letters to the Editor

Originalists

So, the “originalists” on the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Roe v. Wade, and based their decision on the fact that the “original” text of the U.S. Constitution did not confer a right to abortion. Well, duh!

In 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, females were clearly second class citizens controlled by the white male patriarchal “Founding Fathers.”

Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to issue writs of mandamus, and that’s all. Constitutional judicial review began with the assertion by John Marshall, fourth chief justice of the United States (1801–35), in Marbury v. Madison (1803), arbitrarily deciding that the Supreme Court of the United States had the power to invalidate legislation enacted by Congress. That authority is NOT specified in the Constitution. So, pretty much everything the Supremes have declared since 1803 is (if we’re going to be “originalists”) simply “unconstitutional!”

Larry Lack

Marin County

Water Marin

I read the Marin water quality report 2021. In addition to dealing with fluoridation of people with fluosilicic acid that most cities must deal with, Marin water also contains 120 pCi/L of radioactive radon, plus carcinogenic 1,4 dioxane which at 4 ug/L exceeded temporarily the level at which the public must be notified (1 ug/L) with Marin averaging 0.6 ug/L. The report says that one site was used for this measurement and that subsequent measurements did not find detectable levels. But other sites need to be tested and a source for this chemical should be identified. Commonly nearby landfills leech this into water tables.

Richard Sauerheber

Marin County

Santa Rosa Considers Ballot Measure to Increase Councilmembers’ Pay

Santa Rosa City Hall - June 2021
After 17 years without a raise, the Santa Rosa City Council is considering asking residents to tie council members’ salaries to Sonoma County’s median income. In June, a council subcommittee tasked with studying the city’s charter—functionally the city’s rule book—recommended that the full council debate adding a ballot measure to the Nov. 8, 2022 election to significantly increase councilmembers’ pay....

Petaluma Receives $13 Million for New Rail Station, Bus Improvements

Click to read
The City of Petaluma and the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District plan to deliver a second rail station and electrify buses.

Call for Art and Poetry

Petaluma Arts Center is calling for submissions of poetry and art for an upcoming exhibition called Agri-CULTURED: Reflections on our Local Food' by Land and by Hand. This new exhibition and tandem lecture series explore cross-cultural intersections of food and farming in our region. The project brings together food producers, purveyors, and artists who work locally and align with global...

Burn This: Archival survival

Photo by Ante Hamersmit STORAGE WARS Put your head in a box.
By Daedalus Howell I went to my safe deposit box in search of a backup hard drive that contained material I needed to share with a business associate. I turned the key and I pulled the box from the wall. Inside? Redundant copies of some legal papers and an allegedly rare Star Wars action figure with a snaggle-toothed grin—so happy...

Glory Bound: Woody Guthrie musical to play Plaza

No single actor plays Guthrie. Instead, three performers provide the voice of the folk poet at various stages in his life. Photo by Ray Mabry FOLK POETS Tika Moon, Molly Larsen-Shine and Matthew Witthaus.
The Raven Players bring live outdoor entertainment to Healdsburg’s Downtown Plaza with their production of Woody Guthrie’s American Song: A Truly American Musical. Peter Glazer’s adaptation of the writings and songs of “America’s premiere folk poet” runs this weekend, through July 10. Raven Players founder Joe Gellura is directing the production, which is not a traditional musical biography or “jukebox...

Trivia – Week of 07/06/2022

QUESTIONS: 1 The national headquarters of the Guide Dogs for the Blind is located where in Marin County? 2 Abe Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you” ... what ...? 3a. The leading Tour de France bicyclist, the one with the lowest overall time, rides...

Depth Charge – Swimming With Poseidon

Photo by Kedar Gadge SPLASH Making the profane sacred with a little H20.
By Christian Chensvold Let’s skip—for a moment—whether or not the gods exist. That is, whether the seven “planetary governors” known to the ancients (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), and the 12 “fixed stars” (the wheel in the sky, or zodiac), have supernatural powers—as in “a higher kind of natural”—that human beings can invoke and channel. Let’s skip for...

Great Divides – Different worlds, same universe

By Winslow Myers Eight days of rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with my daughter promised to be an exceptional experience. Introducing myself to a fellow voyager, a Texan, I joked that surely Texas wasn’t really planning to secede, because it would be a pain to have to obtain a visa to visit Austin. This didn’t seem...

Sieck Look – Artist Catherine Sieck brings the cycle of life and death to her work

By Jane Vick Good morning and happy Wednesday to all! I hope this finds heads high and hearts hopeful, despite the challenges we’re facing as a nation. May this week’s “Look” be a source of light as we navigate the darkness. Catherine Sieck is an artist based in Sonoma County, whose work can be seen most easily on the A Street...

Letters to the Editor

Originalists So, the “originalists” on the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Roe v. Wade, and based their decision on the fact that the “original” text of the U.S. Constitution did not confer a right to abortion. Well, duh! In 1788, when the Constitution was ratified, females were clearly second class citizens controlled by the white male patriarchal “Founding Fathers.” Well, what’s...
11,084FansLike
4,446FollowersFollow
6,928FollowersFollow