Last night in Guerneville, the West County EIFD became the second official Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District in Sonoma County. (Santa Rosa was first.) The EIFD’s Public Financing Authority (PFA)—made up of Sonoma County Supervisors Lynda Hopkins, Rebecca Hermosillo, and two public members, Pip Marquez De La Plata and Thai Hilton—voted the new district into existence, after the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved the EIFD’s Infrastructure Financing Plan on a vote of 5-0 at its meeting on Tuesday of this week. (James Gore is also on the PFA, but he was absent last night.)

An EIFD is a special kind of financing district that captures a percentage of the increase in property taxes that result from rising property values and uses it to fund infrastructure improvements within the district. An EIFD siphons off a portion of those increases, which would normally go to the County, and sets the money aside in a restricted account that can only be used for infrastructure inside the EIFD district.

An Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District is what California came up with after it killed redevelopment agencies in 2012. Nobody’s taxes go up. Nothing new is levied.

As the map above shows, the West County EIFD includes Guerneville, Monte Rio, Forestville, Occidental, Graton, Cazadero, Jenner, Bloomfield, Sereno del Mar, Sea Ranch and some unincorporated areas around Sebastopol.

The city of Sebastopol, which is slowly moving toward creating its own EIFD, isn’t a part of the West County EIFD.

What West County will get

The West County EIFD includes about $7.1 billion in existing assessed property value, roughly 6% of the countywide total. It is the largest EIFD planned for Sonoma County.

Over the next 50 years, the West County EIFD expects to bring in about $308 million. (That sounds bigger than it is — most of that money arrives decades from now, when a dollar will buy less. In today’s money, that comes to about $86 million.)

The list of infrastructure projects that this money will fund is long, and the plan sets it out alphabetically because nobody has ranked it yet. It includes affordable and workforce housing, community gathering space, dock and coastal infrastructure at risk from sea-level rise, emergency access, energy micro-grids, recreation, roads, a sheriff’s substation, sidewalks and bike improvements, and water and wastewater work (those last two each capped at 10% of revenues).

But don’t get too excited yet. Nothing on that list is funded yet. Every project has to come back to the PFA for a vote. EIFDs take time to build up their funds. Although the money will start flowing in the 2027-28 fiscal year, it doesn’t reach critical mass for several years. It takes five years to build up enough money to stand up a bond, for example.

This means that for a few years, while the money grows, the PFA will meet only once a year.

“We have to meet once a year at minimum. Once a year makes sense while we are waiting for enough time to pass so that we can accumulate funds and bonding capacity,” Hopkins said. “Once we have sufficient revenue, we would meet more often and engage with the community to prioritize projects. The PFA approves the projects with input from the community, including local government agencies like local park, fire and water districts.”

The board of supervisors contemplates the big picture

The West County EIFD is just the start of a wave of local EIFDs expected to be formed over the next few years.

“We are the tip of the spear here,” Hopkins said at last night’s meeting. “I mean, Santa Rosa did form theirs, but there is like a whole bunch of people falling in line who now want to do the same thing from other jurisdictions.”

For their board meeting on Tuesday, the supervisors asked staff to add up all the existing and planned EIFDs in the county and put a number on each one.

Seven districts are on that list. Santa Rosa’s is already formed. Unincorporated Sonoma Valley and the city of Sonoma are in discussion. Cotati has adopted a resolution of intention. Rohnert Park is in early conversations. Sebastopol’s EIFD process was on hold for several months, but now it’s moving forward again. Together, those areas hold 13.7% of the county’s assessed value.

If all of them come in at 25% of property-tax growth in their district, the county will have committed $639.4 million of future general-fund property tax over the next 50 years—or about 3.12% of its projected property-tax growth. (That’s $233.9 million in present-value terms.)

At $307.3 million, the West County EIFD is the biggest single piece, close to half the whole thing.

Three people spoke on the item at the Supervisor’s meeting. Cotati’s city manager, there to thank the board for considering his city’s request. A caller on Zoom, cut off by the chair for calling Hopkins names. And Duane De Witt, a longtime Roseland advocate, who asked the supervisors to help Santa Rosa make Roseland a district too. “Let that become a EIFD also.”

Then it came back to the board.

“Now it feels like the floodgates have opened, and everyone is interested in one of these things,” Hopkins said.

Her question was about staffing: Does the County Executive Office have the people to shepherd this many jurisdictions?

The representative from the County Executive Office said it has the staff for the districts already in motion, and it will size up what the rest would take in next year's budget.

Vice Chair Chris Coursey ran with it. “Whoever drew that map was a genius,” he said of the West County boundary. “The individual amounts are striking.”

He voted yes, then spent a few minutes naming places with the same argument and the same needs. The first one out of his mouth was Roseland. Then Moorland, Penngrove, the Springs, Larkfield. “I don’t think this is a complete list,” he said.

Supervisor James Gore noted that the county has been paying for this kind of infrastructure work anyway out of the General Fund, and that an EIFD at least commits to a plan of projects, instead of hauling one project at a time up to the dais.

According to the West County EIFD plan, the district will even make money for the county in the end — a net positive of about $26.3 million in present value over 50 years because the EIFD will catalyze development—new hotel rooms and retail—that will throw off lodging and sales taxes.

What impact will a West County EIFD have on Sebastopol’s EIFD plans?

After putting its EIFD on hold for several months, the Sebastopol City Council on August 4 approved a $60,000 consulting agreement with Kosmont Companies to carry the Sebastopol EIFD through its remaining formation steps.

According to the staff report, this includes “stakeholder and County outreach to confirm partnership, preparation of the required Infrastructure Financing Plan (IFP), and support through the public meetings and hearings needed to form the district.”

Unfortunately, some of the unincorporated areas near Sebastopol that the city hoped to include in its EIFD have already been scooped up by the West County EIFD.

These areas can’t be included in a Sebastopol EIFD, but the city may look at other nearby unincorporated areas to add.

“They’re looking at different areas now, Hopkins said. “They’re aware that they kind of missed their opportunity because originally, when we were meeting with Sebastopol, those were on the table as potential Sebastopol opportunity sites.”

When Sebastopol decided not to move forward, however, she said the county decided it “would move forward with incorporating those into the West County EIFD.”

One commenter at last night’s meeting noted the language of the West County EIFD resolution talked about “projects of community-wide significance that provide significant benefit to the EIFD or the surrounding community.”

Asked if projects in Sebastopol that served the larger West County area—like the Sebastopol Area Senior Center or the Center for the Arts—might qualify for funding through the West County EIFD, Hopkins said that was “less likely.”

“I think that when we went through this process of whether we were going to create one West County-wide EIFD or one that was unincorporated and one that was city-specific, there was sort of a lot of apprehension around like, “Oh, is all of the unincorporated funding going to go to Sebastopol or vice versa?” Hopkins said. “That would have to be taken into consideration as part of the deliberation—like, what is the percent being utilized by folks who live inside the EIFD boundaries versus inside the city of Sebastopol.”

Hopkins said that while Sebastopol projects were “legally, technically” allowed, “I would say that they would probably be less likely to be selected, given how huge our [meaning the West County] EIFD is, right? Thinking about the needs of the North Coast, and it’s a very wide area with very disparate needs.”

See the West County EIFD draft plan, which includes lot-by-lot maps, here. More documentation from the August 18 Supervisor’s meeting regarding the West County EIFD can be found here.

If you’ve walked on the Joe Rodota Trail recently, you’ve probably noticed that it feels a lot more open than it once did. That’s because the city’s Public Works Department and Gold Ridge Fire have been hard at work doing “fuel-reduction,” which is to say, removing brush in the city-owned Railroad Forest near the trail.

The Railroad Forest is roughly 10 acres, but initially the city is focusing on creating a buffer in those areas that are closest to homes and businesses in the city.

“Following the encampment fire on the property over the summer, the City and Gold Ridge Fire Protection District recognized the need to address the significant vegetation and fire safety issues on the City-owned property we refer to as the Railroad Forest,” said Sebastopol’s Public Works Director Oriana Hart. “Gold Ridge generously offered the assistance of its crews and volunteers and provided two days of work to get the initial vegetation management effort underway. Public Works has been following up with our maintenance staff to clear the vegetation that was cut and continue reducing the accumulated fuels on the property.”

Gold Ridge Fire Chief Shepley Scroth-Cary said his team did the initial clearing, and he knows it looks a little messy.

“We wanted to reduce the threat of fire coming from this city-owned property and impacting the infrastructure, specifically the back of the hotel [Elderberry Commons], the tow yard, and then ultimately down the road, the mobile home park [Park Village] and the apartments that abut up to city-owned property. What we started with is mechanical treatment. We used a masticator on a skid steer to start that initial buffer. We fully understand that’s not a very attractive end state with that tool, but it’s the most effective, quickest way to get through the blackberry bushes because most hand crews don’t want to touch blackberry bushes and poison oak. What it did is it gave us access. We also found a whole lot of trash, and they [the city] cleaned off probably three dumpster loads worth of debris out of there.”

Scroth-Cary said the public reaction to the clearing has been mixed.

“Mostly people were very happy about what we’re doing, and then a small minority of people were like, ‘Oh, you’re destroying the environment, and why are you doing this?’ And you know, it’s tough because I see this as only good—it was way overgrown. I do understand though that it doesn’t look very pleasant right now, but in a season it will look much better.”

Aamil Targow noticed the change when he was walking along the trail last week.

“The upside for me is the reduced fire danger for my neighbors immediately above the trail on Fannen and Eleanor,” he said. “The downsides are the mess they left, and the greenery no longer right next to the trail.”

Happily, help is on the way to aid in the clean-up.

Scroth-Cary said he’s applied for some additional aid through Measure H, which is the voter-approved 1/2-cent sales tax dedicated to fire protection and emergency services, passed in March 2024.

“There’s a Measure H hand crew that is administered by North Sonoma County Fire District. In order to get that crew to a project, you have to put it into a portal, where it’s compared to all the other projects that are submitted throughout the county…We’ve submitted a project to do some handwork, meaning chainsaws and hand tools, to reduce fuels even further.”

Hart said, “We expect to have more information about the availability of Measure H-supported assistance within the next month. At that point, we will determine the next steps for vegetation management on the property, including how the City can best supplement the work through our own resources.”

With or without those funds, Hart said the city would continue to chip away at the issues in the Railroad Forest.

“We want to address the fire, vector, and general safety concerns that have developed on the property while establishing a sustainable vegetation management program,” she said. “Public Works also has funding available in our operating budget that could be used for supplemental hand crews and potentially a grazing program to provide additional vegetation management. We anticipate that even after this initial work is completed, there will likely be another significant round of treatment in the spring as we establish a regular maintenance cycle for the property.”

Hart said the city is already considering longer-term solutions for the area, including developing it as a kind of naturalistic park, centered around the creek which currently runs in an underground culvert next to the trail. This idea is part of the Calder Creek Naturalization Plan adopted by the city council in 2022.

“At this stage, we have not undertaken vegetation work within the creek corridors because that work requires additional environmental review and permitting,” Hart said. “Longer term, we would like to pursue additional funding to develop the property into more of an open space and park amenity along the trail, with Calder Creek running through the center of it.”

Dr. Catherine Anne Williams—a Sebastopol clinical psychologist, educator at the Santa Rosa Junior College, mother, and Sebastopol resident of 20 years—recently made her debut as a writer.

The title of her book is Spirit Guided: Coming Home to Oneness, and Williams is keenly aware of the judgment that this spiritual language might elicit.

Early in her book, she writes, “I was raised by a wolfpack of skeptical scientists…the public admission that I communicate with spirits that don’t have bodies is more damning in my family…than if I were to admit that I was a robber or a telephone spam operator. Both of those identities still operate within their worldview.”

But Williams chooses to honor her personal understanding of the world. She didn’t arrive at it easily.

The book begins with a near-fatal bike accident.

“I landed on the pavement twenty-five feet from my bike, its front tire still lovingly cradled by the yawning pothole … Through teeth floating in my mouth, I gargled out a prayer.”

Although Williams started her spiritual journey before this traumatic event, it was this incident, she says, that led to her commune with a spirit guide.

The writing of this book began as Williams’ mediation of the guide’s voice. At some point, Williams said, the guide stopped speaking and pointed her finger at Williams, as if to say, now tell your story.

The book at its core is a memoir of a woman who has journeyed through addiction, life-threatening traumatic injury, and the spiritual and relational disconnection that plagues so many modern societies.

She reconciles these events through her personal process of understanding a tie that binds almost all human beings across time and space: a sense of connection to ourselves, each other, and perhaps a high power. This triad of connection constitutes Williams’ definition of spirituality.

Growing up

It’s called a spiritual journey for a reason. Williams was not raised with belief in a higher power at all. She was raised with the rather rigid pillars of Western scientific inquiry.

Her mother, a professor of dermatology at UCSF, and her father, a leader in the field of pharmacology, were analytical, driven and hyper-successful.

“If there’s a religion for Western science, I would say my parents are card-carrying members,” Williams said.

She grew up in San Francisco in the 70s, so alternative ways of thinking weren’t too far out of reach. When she was a teenager, her mother and stepfather moved to Muir Beach. Their new home happened to be next to the Zen Monastery.

Williams connected with adults involved in the monastery and asked them questions. Although as a child, Williams says, she saw auras and spoke to animals, her conversations with Kathleen were the first time she heard spiritual ideas verbalized by another person.

She was a teenager and in a time of exploration. Some of it was spiritual and intellectual, and also, she said, “Part of where I went exploring was through drugs and alcohol.”

Finding her way through addiction

Williams explained that addiction runs in her family. Her father and aunt both struggled with alcoholism, though they got clean when Williams was nine.

“All it took was my freshman year of high school and to feel like I was on the outside of the popular crowd and they were all doing it for my anti-smoking belief to vaporize. Then next thing, you know, I was smoking,” she said. “And my high school still had all the vestiges of being a hippie school where there’s no power trips between the faculty and students. So my high school had a smoking section where the teachers would smoke, and the students would smoke. Kind of mind-blowing now. So at 14 I was smoking with upperclassmen and also teachers, and it just gave me an identity.”

From there, Williams developed a habit of partying hard. She eventually got arrested for having a fake ID, and trust with her family deteriorated. “I crashed and burned early on,” she said.

At 19, as a sophomore in college, Williams found herself in a pattern of getting high every day.

“Eventually it became clear that all of my problems had a commonality, which was the substance use that I was doing. So eventually I did get willing—it’s the suffering that makes you get willing to go into treatment.”

She went home, said goodbye to all of her friends, and entered treatment. In 12-step treatment, Williams developed relationships with people who mentored her, including a woman named Teri.

“She was the one who really taught me what it would be like to be in a close, loving relationship with spirit…she offered that as a model to me. Relationships are essential to our own healing process. We need the love of others when we’ve been so cut off from self-love.”

In recovery, Williams took classes on psychic development out of curiosity. She began volunteering with teens who were in recovery and then worked for a year at a dual diagnosis (substance abuse and mental health) treatment facility for adolescents.

Ready to give back, and perhaps ready to follow in the ambitious footsteps of her doctor parents, Williams graduated from college with a degree in psychology and started a PhD.

Although Williams had developed a sense of her own spirituality, she chose the PhD route because it opened more doors for her career.

Bridging the spiritual and the psychological

In 2011, Teri passed away. Williams went with her friend Michele (who would later be present during the bike accident) to a psychic reading.

They felt Teri’s presence palpably, she said. “When I walked out of that reading, I knew I could not go back to how I was living my life before. I knew that if spirit could be that physically present, that intense, that everything in my life had to be about spirit at the center…I then kind of dove into developing these spiritual abilities of clairvoyance and mediumship at the same time that I was working as a psychologist and teaching college classes.”

But Williams’ research through her bachelor’s degree and her doctorate focused on the importance of spirituality. She studied correlations between spirituality and substance abuse in adolescents.

Bridging the spiritual and the scientific for therapeutic purposes has been explored by neuroscientists in recent years. A central point in Spirit Guided is the reconvergence of Western science with non-Western medicine and spiritual practice. For example, psychedelics, which have been used for millennia in spiritual sacrament, are now being studied again for therapeutic use.

Williams is fascinated by the states of “spiritual emergency” that psychedelics can induce, in the sense that one’s sense of self starts to fall away and forces you to question who you are.

She experienced a similar process during her bike accident: “I lost my ability to work, I lost my intelligence, I lost my beauty. I lost it in an instant. It caused me to question the core of my life.”

However, these acute events of intensity are not the only way to draw awareness and deep connection with others, she stresses.

“But,” she continued, “When we strip away all the layers of our identity, we understand that there’s still something we can come home to. So what is it that I’m coming home to?”

Coming home to oneness

There are many ways, she said, to begin answering this question.

“I think I make the point throughout the book A) I don’t want you to follow my path because everybody should follow their own path; and B) My path includes hitting my wall in drug addiction and then crashing my face on the pavement. So please don’t follow my path,” she said with a laugh.

“There’s an easier, softer way … than addiction recovery or taking hero doses of psychedelics.”

Williams said that she has practiced different methods over time based on what feels right to her. “For me, right now, it could be ecstatic dance — that’s the thing that helps me step out of my identities and get into the flow of the world.”

She emphasized that these practices could be anything, depending on the person: painting, prayer, swimming in cold water, developing meaningful relationships, or getting high from licking a toad.

“It is daunting, and it is personal, and I would be wary of anybody who offered me the way,” she said.

On her website, Williams explains how she brings her spiritual experiences to her practice as a psychotherapist:

“I am fluent in both languages,” she writes.

• I can talk with you about your twin flame, your galactic family, or your astral body—and also about attachment theory, the vagus nerve, and brain circuitry networks.

• I hold safe, ethical space with the training of a psychologist and the reverence of a minister.

• I believe in both/and healing: the best of Western medicine alongside indigenous wisdom, plant medicine, and energetic practices.

Williams said she’s excited to share her new book with folks in Sebastopol and West County: “From the volunteer firefighters who picked me up off the pavement that day to the friends and family who made my life possible while I was recovering from a brain injury, this is a Sebastopol story. It lives here. It is fed and nurtured here.”

Find Spirit Guided: Coming Home to Oneness at Copperfield’s Books on Main Street or online. Her audiobook will be released soon. You can find out more at catherineannewilliams.com.

Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce Luncheon with Carole Flaherty
Tuesday, Aug. 18, 12 pm to 1 pm, at HopMonk Tavern, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. Free for Chamber members, $25 for non-members.

Join the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce for lunch while welcoming guest speaker Carole Flaherty of Slow Food Russian River, who will share details about the organization and the upcoming “Celebrate Sonoma Apples” event planned for Sunday, Sept. 13. More information here.

Beginning Crochet: Next Steps
Tuesday, Aug. 18, 4 pm to 6 pm, at Gather Sebastopol, 122 N. Main St., Sebastopol. $90.

A two-part workshop for those ready to move beyond the basics, building confidence with techniques that open up a wider world of crochet patterns and projects. Reserve your spot. Get tickets.

Mend & Befriend
Tuesday, Aug. 18, 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm, at the Sebastopol Grange, 6000 Sebastopol Road (Hwy. 12), Sebastopol. Free.

Bring your mending or craft project to the Sebastopol Grange and socialize while you work. There’s also a clothing and fabric swap.

Sebastopol City Council Meeting cancelled. The regularly scheduled City Council Meeting for Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, has been cancelled. It’s the council’s usual summer break.

Family Storytime with Sebastopol Library followed by 15 Minutes for Mom
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 10:30 am to 11:30 am at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol.

Join Family Storytime with children’s librarian Jane Kennedy on the SebArts Patio from 10:30 am to 11 am with a stay and play to follow. A special program, “15 Minutes for Moms: Stress Relief and Pelvic Stability through Breathwork,” will demonstrate a simple, 5-minute breathing routine to help reduce stress and increase pelvic stability. Learn more.

Paper Arts: Mini Tunnel Books
Wednesdays, Aug. 19, 26 and Sept. 2, 11 am to 2 pm, at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. $195.

Tunnel books combine the magic of cut paper with the whimsy of making book report dioramas in grade school. The book art tradition is often used to visually represent narratives such as fables and is constructed with layers of cut paper, creating a dimensional and dynamic composition. This is a three-session class. Get tickets.

Sebastopol Area Senior Center Open House
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 4 pm to 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, 167 N. High St., Sebastopol. Free.

The Senior Center’s annual open house welcomes all ages with light bites, free trishaw rides, live music, and a chance to learn about everything the center offers.

Luther Burbank Experiment Farm Work Day
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 9 am to 12 pm, at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm, 7777 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Join a cadre of volunteers helping preserve and maintain the historic farm every Wednesday, with roles spanning gardening, leading tours, staffing the cottage gift shop, and more. All skill levels welcome.

The Indivisible Sonoma County Film Series: Gandhi
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 1 pm and 7 pm, at Rialto Cinemas, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. $11.50.

In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of ‘passive resistance,’ endeavoring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed. Panel discussion will follow the 7 pm screening. Get tickets.

Peacetown at Ives Park
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 5 pm to 8 pm at Ives Park, Sebastopol. Free.

From 5-6pm, Spike Sikes and his Get Real Gone Band will wow you with their incredible musicianship and hot licks. Then from 6:30-8 pm, it’s the Pulsators. The Pulsators’ brand of music is a spicy mix of hard-driving rockin’ Rhythm and Blues, New Orleans-style funk, and rock-steady Reggae with a steady dose of the blues thrown in. It’s a straightforward yet rough-and-tumble original sound. So come and dance to a rootsy mixture of feel-good music.

Peacetown at Hopmonk: Audio Angel
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 6:30 pm to 9 pm, at HopMonk Sebastopol, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Audio Angel and her Good Intentions bring funky soul music with her expert band of players. “Angel’s vocals are just that,” says Jim Corbett, aka Mr. Music. “I have seen her in action, and I can testify that she ‘brings it.’”

Film Premiere: “Flowers of the Earth”
Thursday, Aug. 20, 6 pm to 8:30 pm, at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. $15.

This new film by SAND (Science and Nonduality) about the Guarani Kaiowá people of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil is part of the Eternal Song series, about indigenous peoples’ efforts to heal and survive in the wake of Western colonization. Watch the film trailer. The film will be followed by a Q&A with local directors/producers Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. Get tickets.

Craft + Chat + Potluck Night at Hessel Grange
Thursday, Aug. 20, 5:30 pm to 8 pm, at Hessel Grange, 5400 Blank Road, Sebastopol. Donation-based, $5–$15+.

Crafters, makers, artists, potluck lovers, and anyone looking for a reason to get out and gather with community are invited to the first Craft + Chat + Potluck Night at Hessel Grange. Bring whatever you’re working on — knitting, crochet, embroidery, mending, painting, sketching, beading, carving, collage, or anything you’ve been wanting to try — or come without a project and simply share food and good conversation. Organizers hope this becomes a regular gathering. Questions: thehesselgrange@gmail.com

Audio Aquarium + Basilisk
Thursday, Aug. 20, 7:30 pm, at HopMonk (in The Abbey), 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. $22.28.

Audio Aquarium brings vintage feel-good original rock fronted by Devin Ruddick, while Bay Area up-and-comers Basilisk deliver prog-fusion that pulls from jazz to metal. Openers Ava Stubblefield and Dieneji Hernandez round out the bill with a warm singer-songwriter set of harmonic duets and Beatles covers. Mostly standing. All ages. Get tickets.

Vintage Art and Frames, plus Figurines Sale
Friday and Saturday, Aug. 21-22, from 9 am to 1 pm, at the Graton Community Club, Graton. Free admission.

A collection of 150-plus pieces of vintage artwork, frames, and needlework, plus assorted “fantasy” figurines and toy wild animals — many of them Schleich-brand — donated from local estates and priced to sell.

Live Music Fridays at Pax
Friday, Aug. 21, from 5 to 7 pm, at Pax Wines, 6780 McKinley St., Sebastopol. (In The Barlow). Free.

A casual Friday evening of live music from Brothers of Siren and local wines at this small, family-owned winery in The Barlow. No reservations required, though you can reserve a tasting.

Another Trip Around the Sun Concert
Friday, Aug. 21, 6:30 pm, at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center, 390 Morris St., Sebastopol. $30.

An evening of Grateful Dead and jam-band magic, hosted as a fundraiser for the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center. Erin Latham-Ponneck is a lifelong Sonoma County resident with a passion for local music, community, and supporting nonprofit organizations. Inspired to celebrate her husband's 50th birthday with a Grateful Dead-style concert, she transformed the idea into a fundraiser benefiting the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center, bringing people together through music and community spirit. 100% of proceeds go to the Cultural Center. Get tickets.

High Step Society + DJ Dragonfly
Friday, Aug. 21, 7:30 pm, at HopMonk (in The Abbey), 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. $26.94.

HopMonk presents a big-band dance party with High Step Society, a seven-piece, EDM-infused group out of Portland and New Orleans that fuses hard-hitting beats with jazz-age horns and sultry vocals. DJ Dragonfly opens with three decades of dancefloor experience, serving up a set of juicy funk and jazzy deep house. Mostly standing. 21+ only. Get tickets.

Customer Appreciation Day at Sebastopol Hardware
Saturday, Aug. 22, all day, at Sebastopol Hardware, 660 Gravenstein Hwy. N., Sebastopol.

Drop by Sebastopol Hardware for Customer Appreciation Day: Plant BINGO 2 pm-4 pm; Live Music from 11 am-4 pm; Mombos Pizza and Popcorn until 3 pm (or while supplies last); live T-shirt/hoodie printing from 11 am-3 pm; Master Food Preservers canner testing and food preservation booth 11 am-4 pm. Raffles open all day long.

Sebastopol Walks: Touring Sebastopol’s Queen Anne Homes
Saturday, Aug. 22, from 9 am to 12 pm, at 140 Weeks Way, Sebastopol. Ticketed.

Walk Sebastopol’s neighborhoods with Donna Pittman of the West County Museum, stopping at Queen Anne–style houses built from the 1850s through the 1920s. Drawing on the museum’s book, Sebastopol, California: History, Homes & People, Donna shares who lived where along with stories and anecdotes, including one Queen Anne home where the current owners are still uncovering artifacts of Pomo life. The roughly 1.5-mile route meanders along Pitt, N. High, Wilton, West, Florence, Bodega, Burnett, Calder, and S. Main, ending on Hayden Avenue with water and biscotti before the half-mile return walk to the Plaza. Expect some hills over about 2.5 hours at an easy pace.

Party with a Purpose: “Reggae to the Rescue”
Saturday, Aug. 22, 1 pm to 5 pm, at Goatlandia Farm Animal Sanctuary, 1567 Cunningham Road, Sebastopol. $100-$200, $50 for kids.

Sonoma County reggae band Sol Horizon headlines Goatlandia’s biggest fundraising celebration of the year at the farm animal sanctuary and education center. The event brings together live music, rescued farm animals, delicious food and drinks, and a shared commitment to creating a more compassionate world. Get tickets.

Community Market Summer Music Series: Dry Creek Station
Saturday, Aug. 22, 5 pm to 8 pm, at Sebastopol Community Market, 6762 Sebastopol Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Another free night of live music coming your way. Sonoma County’s beloved high-energy country rock band, Dry Creek Station, is coming to Community Market this week. Mark your calendars, shine up those dancing boots or whatever suits you and get ready to have some fun!

Class: Whole Grain Sourdough
Saturday, Aug. 22, 10 am to 1 pm, at Gather Sebastopol, 122 N. Main Street, Sebastopol. $165.

Take your sourdough baking to the next level by exploring the flavor and character of freshly milled, locally grown whole grains. In this hands-on workshop, Dan Ferreira of Bedstone Baking will guide you through baking with stone-milled wheat from Farmer Mai, featuring Sonora and Marquis wheat with an introduction to Abruzzi rye. Enjoy a guided grain tasting, compare each variety’s flavor and learn about their baking qualities and best uses, before mixing, fermenting, and shaping your own whole grain sourdough dough to bake at home. Reserve your spot.

See other Gather workshops here.

T.N.R. – A Burlesque Revue
Saturday, Aug. 22, 7:30 am to 9 pm, at the Main Street Theater, 104 N. Main St., Sebastopol. $25 general / $30 second row / $35 front row.

Thotty McNaughty’s burlesque and variety revue at the Main Street Theater features professional burlesque performers from Los Angeles and the East Bay, alongside local favorites. No refunds. Get tickets.

Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers + Sounds of Skynyrd
Saturday, Aug. 22, 8 pm, at HopMonk Sebastopol (in The Abbey), 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. $26.94.

HopMonk presents a Southern-rock tribute double bill: Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers deliver the boogie of ZZ Top, paired with Sounds of Skynyrd honoring the catalog of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Mostly standing. Age 21+ only. Get tickets.

Tai Chi As We Age
Sunday, Aug. 16, 10 am to 11 am, at Ragle Park (Lions Grove), Sebastopol. $17–$20, by contribution only.

This class eases beginners in while repeating fundamentals and teaching the Yang-style long form, so it doesn’t matter when you join. Qigong (internal energy work) is introduced during a posture-aligned warm-up, and each class includes a mindful, slow Tai Chi walk at the beginning or end, with breath work throughout to direct chi. The focus is on mindful movement and good posture for strong legs, stable knees, and released lower-back tension. Return to continue your practice or drop in to get a taste and begin — the more consistent your practice, the more apparent the benefits.

Nominations are open for the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce’s Community Awards. Do you know someone to suggest? Here’s the nomination form.

We came across this interesting “Bring in the Harvest” service by Celosia Moon, and with so many trees around town heavy with fruit, we thought some of our readers might be interested.

The recreational youth soccer season opened on Saturday morning at Ragle Park. Somewhere between two and three dozen fields were occupied with teams from Under 6s to Under 14s, girls and boys alike. Coming a week after the Gravenstein Apple Fair, Ragle Park was packed again, and its surrounding neighborhoods were filled with cars. WESCO organizes youth soccer leagues in Sebastopol.

Community support builds for Pitt Avenue neighbors behind Safeway

Our story on the racist behavior behind Safeway got a big response. In the article, we mentioned that Dezi’s mom, Althea Kai, was disappointed that she and her neighbors hadn’t gotten much support from the broader Sebastopol community. They felt like they were fighting this problem alone.

Well, that’s changed. Margaret Howe and others made signs they attached to the utility wall across the street from the Kais’ apartment building. Someone else chalked encouraging messages on the sidewalk. (And, of course, some joker chalked “Be gay, do drugs, hail Satan.”) Rob Moniz reached out to the Kais, as did Cindy Whitman Bradley, who’s been gathering the names of folks interested in providing community support to help solve this situation. (You can contact Cindy here.)

If you’re wondering how you can help, Dezi and Althea have a couple of requests:

“We would like parents of Analy students to bring this up at the school board meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 19, at 6 pm, at the Analy Library. I won’t be able to be there, but hoping some folks will. Both the NAACP and Holocaust Story Project are ready and willing [to give presentations at the school] but need to be invited by the administration. Also, come in person or on Zoom (or send public comment) for the next Sebastopol City Council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 1, at 6 pm, at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St. in Sebastopol.” The council is expected to have the Safeway issue on its agenda that night.

Correction

In our piece on the Sebastopol Commons, we accidentally left off a few important zeroes, writing $18,000 instead of $18,000,000. That sentence should have read: “A 2019 estimate for expanding the library alone was $18,000,000, which the committee said in today’s money would be roughly $32,000,000—and that would only solve the problem for the library.”

Gravenstein Apple Fair’s 1st prize winners in the apple pie baking contests

There are two apple pie baking contests at the Gravenstein Apple Fair: one for regular folks and one for professional chefs, called the Great Gravenstein Bake Off. This year Geneva Melby of the Sebastopol restaurant, The Redwood, took first place in the latter.

“The pie I made for the Apple Fair bake-off is a Gravenstein Apple Root Beer Float Pie,” she told the Sebastopol Times. “I made an apple butter with sarsaparilla from Rosemary’s Garden, which is layered throughout the pie. It has a cream filling flavored with sarsaparilla and other spices, which also has fresh apple folded into it. The crust is made with almond flour and graham cracker.”

This is the second year she’s participated in the bake-off. Her award-winning pie is currently on the menu at The Redwood for a limited time, available by the slice or as a whole pie with pre-order.

Meanwhile, home pie maker extraordinaire Lauren McNaughton took first-place honors this year in the annual home pie-baking contest with her apple-apricot pie. (She and her mom have taken second and first place honors for the last two years.)

Here’s the recipe for her award-winning pie this year:

Gravenstein App-Ricot Pie

Pie Crust:

• 2 1/2C AP flour (unbleached)

• 1/2 tsp fine salt

• 1TBSP sugar

• 1C COLD, unsalted butter, diced

• 6 TBSP ice cold water

Filling:

• 3TBS homemade apricot jam (organic apricots, lemon, sugar)

• 5 fresh organic apricots, pitted and quartered

• 5 organic Gravenstein apples; diced

• 1C White Sugar

• 1/4C Organic AP Flour

• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tsp lemon juice

• Dash nutmeg

• Drizzle of maple syrup (1-2TBSP)

Maple Oat Crumble:

• 3/4C organic AP flour

• 3/4C old fashioned oats

• 1/2 tsp coarse kosher salt

• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1/4 pure maple syrup

• 3TBSP brown sugar

• 1/2tsp vanilla extract

• 5TBSP unsalted butter, softened

Cooking:

Preheat oven to 400*

Prepare pie crust with pastry cutter or food processor by mixing cold butter into flour, salt and sugar until pea-sized shapes of butter are formed. Add half of your water at a time, ensuring a good mix before adding more. Dough should press into shape when pinched and not be overly wet. Form into dough ball; press into disc; cover and chill for 4-plus hours.

Once chilled, roll out pie crust and form into 9” pie tin. Poke a few holes in the bottom, and lightly coat the crust with apricot jam. Set aside. Pit. cut and core fruit pieces and toss with lemon juice. Add sugar and spices from filling recipe and toss again until all pieces are generously coated. Top with a drizzle of maple syrup and add to pie dish.

Prepare crumble topping with a pastry cutter or a fork by mashing the softened butter and vanilla with dry ingredients until the dry ingredients are fully incorporated with the moist ingredients. The crumble should be just that: crumbly with chunks of butter and oats. Cover filling with crumble.

Cover edges of crust with pie shield or aluminum foil to prevent any burning around the edges. Cook at 400 degrees for 45-45 minutes until filling is bubbling around the edges, and pie crust is golden brown. Enjoy!

Alissa Trinei, the former manager at Manzana and the new manager of the Gold Ridge Organic Farms Apple Press in Santa Rosa, was in charge of the pie contest. She said there were 12 pies submitted in the apple pie baking contest this year. Other award winners in the pie baking contest include Isabella Sevv (2nd place) and Pamela Davis (3rd place).

The Barlow opens a stylish new CoWork space

The Barlow opened a new CoWork space last month. It’s located upstairs in the small office complex on Depot Street.

“We noticed that the Barlow was missing quiet and more specific places to work,” said Barlow CoWork manager Jenn Speckhart. “We love that Barlow guests usually work at Taylor Lane’s amazing space, but we know some people need a more dedicated space with printing capabilities, meeting rooms, and quiet space.”

At the Barlow CoWork, you can rent a full office or a dedicated or floating desk. These come with high-speed Wi-Fi; free color and black-and-white printing services; a kitchen equipped with coffee, tea, and snacks; community meeting spaces; plus a private conference room you can book separately. You can also get a day pass for $35.

Find out more.

The week of August 10-15

Robert “Bob” Joseph Murnane, 85, of Sebastopol, passed away peacefully with close family in attendance on August 6th, 2026.

Bob was born in 1941 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to parents Margaret Ruth Murnane & Eugene Robert Murnane. He was the eldest of four siblings.

When Bob was 2 years old, his family moved to California, to the San Francisco Bay Area. The…

Read more

It was a full house Thursday night as locals bellied up to be first at the—freshly illuminated—bar at Hazel, the beloved Occidental restaurant that has moved into the former Barley and Hops space after a nearly year-long search for new digs.

Squint, and you might have thought it was still the old brew pub, especially with the crew of friends on the front porch holding pints of beer, a resting dog curled into a comma shape beside them. But inside, tasteful updates mark a fresh era: walls painted a deep turquoise, ceilings hung with bright new fixtures, furnishings decorated with floral wallpaper.

“Our customers are more food-focused,” said Michele Wimborough, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband Jim Wimborough. “So we wanted to make it a good space for people to hang out and have a glass of wine or beer but also be conducive for people to have their full meals.” That’s part of why the lighting is brighter; there’s no more Edison bulbs above the wooden bar.

Diners will also find an updated menu—some new additions alongside many fan favorites. Gone are the wood-fired pizzas that made Hazel so famous, and in their place are a variety of flatbreads. “Jim’s using a very similar recipe for the flatbread dough that we use for our pizza, so it’s a familiar taste,” Wimborough said. “And the weight of the dough is about the same [as our pizzas], it’s just a rectangle now instead of a circle.”

Mains include the return of the popular Mary’s roasted chicken, pot roast, pork schnitzel and ribeye, as well as a new addition of a burger made from local Panizzera ground beef. Conspicuously absent are any vegetarian entrees, though Wimborough said the menu would be expanding in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the mozzarella tomato flatbread eats like a main dish.

The vegan Caesar is again on the menu, with an addition of fried capers that give an extra crunch and zing. Wild arugula salad with plums and fromage blanc is back, too, and so are the fried Brussels sprouts. There are nearly as many dessert options as mains—sweets have always been one of the restaurant’s strengths—and beignets will now be a nearly permanent feature.

“When we did brunch they were definitely a huge hit,” Wimborough said. “Now we’re going to have them on the dinner menu most of the time.”

Reservations have been nearly fully booked out the first nights of service, but the restaurant is keeping the bar open for walk-ins and has also started using the porch as an extra space to serve food. The restaurant is open Wednesday through Monday evenings for dinner, with the Monday evenings a new addition.

“With Negri’s and the Union not being open as much, it’s been a little bit of a nighttime food desert here, so we’re happy to be back,” Kimborough said. “Eventually we hope to open a little bit earlier, too, so people can come and sit at the bar and have a beer or glass of wine and some French fries.”

The local community has been anxiously awaiting Hazel’s return, as made evident by the restaurant’s Instagram account and the excitement brewing on Nextdoor. On opening night, repeat customers hugged returning staff—and each other—as if they were greeting old family members. All of the back of house and around half of the front of house staff has returned for the new incarnation, Kimborough said.

It’s been a long road for the couple to get here. Various Health Department inspections kept delaying the opening day, but the wait had its benefits.

“One thing that was nice about the process, which took entirely so much longer than we thought it was going to take, was that we really did get the chance to do a lot of things aesthetically that we wanted to do to the space,” Kimborough said.

There had also been the search to look for a new spot. After the building housing their original location was sold in fall 2025, they looked at spaces in Sebastopol and Guerneville. At one point, the couple considered returning to regular jobs. In the meantime, they ran pop-up dinners at the Inn at Occidental. Then the opportunity came up to rent the Barley and Hops space—the building had previously been for sale—and they jumped on it. It felt like a full-circle moment, since they had looked at the building before they moved in down the street in 2015, and they love its history.

“A lot of the reason why we wanted to do it again was because of customers,” Wimborough said. “That’s what makes it fun, and as an extra bonus, we’re doing what we love with people we really enjoy.”

While the chefs looked elsewhere while trying to find a new home for Hazel, their first choice had always been Occidental. The co-owners have lived in the West County town since they moved here from Oakland to open their restaurant here in 2015.

“Occidental has been our home the whole time, and we love it so much,” Wimborough said. “It’s just kind of shocking how welcoming and how great everybody was here.”

The pastry chef is particularly grateful to the owners of the building, who had it on the market for a long time.

“I think he really loves the building and wanted to keep it, and I really appreciate him allowing us to open here and bring it back,” she said. “It was due to his dedication to wanting to have something great in town.”

Hazel, 3688 Bohemian Hwy., Occidental. Open Wednesday through Monday, 5 pm to 9 pm.

(Editor’s note: Our regularly scheduled Saturday Towns column will appear later today.)

It was standing room only at the first large public meeting staged by the city’s ‘Committee for Building the Commons.’ The meeting was held on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the O’Reilly complex—that handsome group of three, tall, peaked-roof office buildings at the north end of town.

The Sebastopol Commons is envisioned as a shared civic space and multi-use community hub that would house the Sebastopol Library, Sebastopol City Hall and the Sebastopol Area Senior Center, as well as an array of other local nonprofits and related businesses. The Committee for Building the Commons is an outgrowth of an earlier city committee devoted to expanding the library, and several of the Commons committee’s members are connected with the library in some way.

The Commons Committee has nine members, including Sebastopol City Council members Stephen Zollman and Phill Carter; Senior Center representative Kent Jenkins; Sonoma County Library Foundation’s Naomi Hupert; Sebastopol’s representative on the Sonoma County Library Commission, Fred Engbarth; Sarah Glade Gurney, a member of Sonoma County Library’s Measure Y Oversight Committee; branch manager of the Sebastopol Library Deb Hoadley; Gravenstein Health Action Coalition’s Mary Lou Schmidt; and a local business representative, Copperfield’s CEO RM Horrell.

For the last year, the committee has been working to identify a space for The Sebastopol Commons. In April, the committee released a list of six possible sites. In the intervening months, they say they’ve narrowed that down to two: the O’Reilly complex or a rebuild of the existing city-owned properties downtown, consisting of the city hall, the library, the current senior center and the parking lot.

Truthfully, they’ve narrowed it down to one—the O’Reilly Complex—and Thursday’s meeting was an extended argument for why that was the case.

The meeting began with a brief introduction by Councilmember Zollman, who heads the committee. Next came a short presentation from Mary Lou Schmidt of the Gravenstein Action Coalition and former Sebastopol City Councilperson Sarah Gurney, members of the committee’s Needs Assessment Subcommittee. They’ve spent the last several months interviewing community leaders, nonprofit execs and board members, potential partners/tenants, business people and others in the community about what their needs were.

“We wanted to hear from a broader swath of locals about what Sebastopol needs,” Gurney said.

“Here’s what we learned: Every group is sharing the same core problems: not enough space, not enough storage, not enough meeting rooms, parking issues—did I mention parking?—and serious funding pressure,” Gurney said. “A lot of the organizations are small, mostly volunteer-run, and they’re struggling with visibility and getting enough people in through their doors so they can be as effective as they want.

In other words, we are looking through this committee work to increase the potential in our community…Having a well-designed, centrally located commons would be a game-changer for our town to help organizations collaborate, share costs, boost visibility, and actually serve the community better.”

Copperfield’s CEO RM Horrell and Naomi Hupert led the next portion of the meeting, which was a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of all the properties the committee had considered—mostly city-owned properties and properties that are currently for sale.

“Essentially, what we’re looking for is a solution to all of these problems,” Horrell said. “The problems being overcrowding, lack of parking, shared expenses that are being individually paid by these different entities that could somehow be combined and centrally located in a way that’s going to make it possible for everyone to access all of these benefits. I think most importantly, an opportunity that could come from finding a place like that, such as creating an evacuation space that reduces traffic in the center of town, finding a place that has a fire-resistant building, finding a place that has high-speed internet throughout, the generator, out of the floodplain, etc.”

He went property by property through the original six options, explaining the pros and mostly cons of each. (See chart below for details.) Some, like the Railroad Property and Towing Company lot, were in the floodplain. The Calder Creek corridor, which encompasses two city parking lots and the commercial area in between, was judged to be the most complex to develop and likely the most expensive.

Horrell said he knew that many people were interested in the old Rite Aid building downtown.

“I know many of us, including me, would love to see something there that’s community oriented.But that building is privately owned. The city does not own it and does not have control over what that owner chooses to do with it, and they [the owner] are choosing to pursue a for-profit commercial lease, and we really don’t have any control over that.”

He also discussed the problems with rebuilding on the current site of the library and city hall.

“That, of course, would be lovely if we could keep our library and our city hall downtown and add in more space for both, plus more space for a senior center. But the amount of construction, the disruption, the cost, the length of time to do something like that are huge challenges.”

A 2019 estimate for expanding the library alone was $18,000,000 which the committee said in today’s money would be roughly $32,000,000—and that would only solve the problem for the library.

The final option: the O’Reilly Complex

There wasn’t much description of the downside of the O’Reilly Complex. This was clearly the committee’s preferred option.

Located at the north end of Sebastopol, just before the corner of Hwy. 116 and Mill Station Road, the O’Reilly complex is made up of three buildings. The two 41,781 sq. ft., three-story office buildings on the southern end are developed as office space, with identical footprints. The third building on the north end is a warehouse. The property is a stone’s throw from the West County/Joe Rodota Trail. The Canopy condominium project, which is currently under construction, is located just behind the O’Reilly complex.

“Now, turning to this building that we’re in, this does answer some of our biggest concerns,” Horrell said. “The first of which is, did anyone have any trouble parking when they got here? That’s the first time I’ve been in a room in Sebastopol where no one complained about parking … Something that’s not listed on this list [above], though, is also the fact that this building exists in real time right now that we’re in. There’s not a 10-year wait to build it. There’s also no concern about new construction and those costs rising slowly over time before we can lock in a mortgage or whatever that might cost. It’s here, it’s now, and it’s available, and it suits every need that we have. The space is comfortable. The space is beautiful. It’s very adjacent to this new housing that’s here. It’s very adjacent to schools. It’s solving a lot of the concerns that we have had right from the start.”

Councilmember Phill Carter was up next to discuss the delicate topic of how the city—with all its current financial challenges—could swing the purchase of the O’Reilly complex, which is currently on the market for $18,000,000. The buildings can also be sold separately.

A handout for the event described three scenarios: 1) purchase one O’Reilly building; 2) purchase all three O’Reilly buildings and keep all three; and 3) purchase all three buildings and sell one. It also included a timeline for a kind of lease-to-own deal.

The committee recommends the second option. Councilmember Phill Carter has created a fluid financial model, balancing several different variables, including financing, city funding, the EIFD (a tax-sharing deal with the county), rentals, real estate sales and fundraising.

He referred people to the Commons page of his website, which explains these funding options in detail—and includes a neat interactive chart that lets you see what happens as you change the variables. At the meeting, he showed three different possibilities of how this might work.

Kent Jenkins, the final presenter, talked about the Senior Center’s involvement in the project. Of all the institutions involved in the Commons project, the senior center is perhaps the most pressed for space. As their membership has grown, the Sebastopol Area Senior Center has outgrown its current location and is now renting additional space in various buildings around town.

“By 2030, a few short years, one out of every three people in Sonoma County will be over the age of 60,” Jenkins said.

“This place [meaning O’Reilly] is important to the senior center because we are out of space. We have a very nice center … It’s a lovely home built at the turn of the last century. We remodeled it at the turn of this century, but it’s too small. We just can’t physically all fit in there. We can’t remodel it. We can’t do anything to get us all together, and our mission is that we are together. This is a place we can do that,” he said.

Jenkins also showed a chart of where people who use the Sebastopol Senior Center come from, emphasizing that it’s really a regional center, drawing from far beyond Sebastopol proper.

Jenkins also highlighted the intergenerational possibilities of the site, with the library and senior center in one place and the possibility of a local preschool as a tenant.

There was no public comment or public Q&A period at the end of the meeting, but after the presentation, the audience was invited to come and ask questions to the presenters.

Afterward, people were invited to walk around the building, which appears to be in excellent shape—clean and well-designed with great light and warm honey-colored wood accents.

As people streamed back to their cars, it was hard to find skeptics in this mostly senior crowd.

“I think it was a wonderful and thorough description of a big bargain that the city or the whole of West County should take advantage of, and it’ll pay off in the end,” said Tom Meyskens, who lives just around the corner.

“I thought it was a real eye opener, and it seemed to fit everybody’s needs,” Kathy Sparrow said. She noted how great it would be for the senior center, but added, “I like the fact that it could be multigenerational too.”

Franny Minervini-Zick, who has lived in Sebastopol for 45 years and owned a daycare, also liked the multigenerational aspect of the project. She commended the work Phill Carter had done on the potential financing.

“It sounded like it was totally doable,” she said, though she noted she was going to take the information back to her finance-minded husband so he could kick the tires. “I think there’s a lot of excitement, and I hope it happens.”

“If they find the money and everything, this is going to be absolutely fantastic,” Svetlana Vanchugova said. “I went into this building for the first time, and I am absolutely blown away. It’s really beautiful. It’s in immaculate condition, even after so many years.”

Noting that the crowd was made up almost entirely of seniors, St. Stephen’s Christy Laborda Harris said she hoped there would be another meeting—not during the day and not on the first day of school—so that working people and people with children could attend.

And there were some doubters. One observer, a retired attorney, noted wryly, “It’s unusual to have a public meeting with no Q&A.” When I agreed that that was an oversight, she said, “No. That was purposeful. This was a pitch.”

The Sebastopol City Council will discuss the future of the Sebastopol Commons at the September 15 city council meeting.

When our son got to Analy about 16 years ago, he told us that he wanted to play football. He’s a bit of a bashful guy, and we thought it would be a good way for him to connect with other kids. My fear wasn’t that he might get injured (which he did, but never mind that) but that based on my own understanding of high school football players, he’d have to hang out with and would be influenced by a--holes. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Not only were the kids he met and bonded with on the football field some of the sweetest, most thoughtful, and decent kids you’ll ever come across, but so were their parents. We spent many a cold Friday night with the other parents, cheering on our boys from the stands, and discovering many different sides of Sebastopol. It didn’t hurt that in those years, the Tigers were a powerhouse team, and winning was common.

One family in particular, the Johnsons, was truly special. Kind and loving and supportive with all five of their children, it was clear that with Kerr and Sheila, we had met some especially decent people.

So now it’s late summer in 2026, and we’re gearing up for the mid-terms, with the political divide in our country being as sad and nasty as ever. I wanted to find a Trump-supporting Republican to better understand how that works, and to try in some small way to help bridge the divide. It wasn’t easy finding someone like that who was willing to speak openly. After a few polite rejections, I remembered that Kerr Sr. fit the description, and when I ran into him the other day, he immediately agreed to sit down and speak with me. Here he is.

We sat on the back porch of the Johnsons’ home off of Pleasant Hill, vineyards on all sides, and the evening chill setting in. Kerr had made us some herbal tea and cracked open a bag of popcorn. “I’ve never made tea for a guest before, but this seemed to be the time to do it.”

Where and when were you born?

I was born in 1976. I’m a Pisces. I love the water. It was Englewood, in Southern California, but we lived in Watts.

How did you land up here?

Here’s the short version. I went through a Big Brother program down there, and my Big Brother’s actual brother lived in Novato. We came up here to do a remodel in Novato, and I never went back. I was 15. I took a year off of school, and then went back and finished high school doing an independent study program.

Did you ever go to college?

I don’t know if it counts, but I went for a month when I was 40. Let’s just say it didn’t work out.

Four of my five kids have finished college!

So who’s in your family?

It’s my wife Sheila and five adult kids. Sheila graduated from Analy. And now, we’re on to the next generation. We’ve got a one-year-and-two-day-old grandson. They live on the property here with us, and we see the little guy every day.

Did you and Sheila want a family of five? That’s almost unheard of these days.

At least three and no more than six. I came from a family with six kids, so I wanted a big family too.

Your kids are all remarkable. Bright, respectful, warm. We could single out each of them for one thing or another, but one of them was a football standout and got a lot of attention.

Yeah. Kerr Johnson Jr. had a great few years at Analy, and then went on to the JC, and eventually to a Division 1 team at the University of Kansas.

Did he think he had a shot at going pro?

Oh yeah.

So what happened?

Three NFL teams showed interest in him, but he was just coming off an injury, and then COVID kicked in. That changed everything. It was just bad timing.

Did Kerr Jr. love playing?

Oh yeah. All our boys loved playing, and we were proud of all of them.

How old were you when you and Sheila got married?

I was 20, she was 18.

Wow. You beat the odds. Most teen marriages don’t last ten years, let alone thirty! How’d that happen?

I chose really well. Sheila is the foundation of this family. She got us through a lot. Of course, I played my part, but she is the glue that held us together.

Does religion or a church connection play a role in your family?

No. I’m not a church guy.

How come?

I’ve seen too many church leaders turn out to be bad. I think it’s best if it’s between me and my God.

You know, you’re a rarity here in Sonoma County for two reasons.

What? I’m so good looking?

(We both laugh for a while over that.) Yeah, there’s that. But I was thinking more along the lines that you’re both black and a Republican.

I say conservative, but I do mostly vote Republican.

So, has that been a challenge for you?

No. Not really.

So you don’t feel like a minority either racially or politically?

I’d have to say I don’t. I don’t see a lot of black people around here, but let me tell you a story.

I grew up in a neighborhood with Mexicans, blacks, whites, and Koreans. All of us had pretty similar struggles in life. Most of us only had moms. So I was about 12 years old, when about 15 of us were just sitting around hanging out. And I suddenly had this moment when I realized that we were all the same, with the same problems. I saw that day how little race mattered in our little world. I was blessed to grow up with them. Maybe that’s why I don’t even see race that much.

You know, I remember one of your kids telling me about being stopped by the police for driving while brown. Did that happen to you as well?

Can’t say that it has. I know which kid that was you’re talking about, and it happened to him more than a few times.

Have you stayed in touch with your parents?

With my mom. She’s still down in Southern California. Dad wasn’t in the picture.

Is your dad still alive?

I don’t know. He was a lifer in prison. Some of the time he’s done was spent in San Quentin. I know he had a hard life, but it’s no excuse for what he did.

I’m sorry to hear that about your dad.

Has being in an inter-racial marriage been an issue over the years?

Very little. Mostly looks every now and then. But I don’t really know what they’re looking at. We don’t even know what they’re really thinking.

Let’s get off of race and move over to politics. Can we talk about the president? Would you vote for him again?

Depends who he’s running against. He’s not running, and I don’t think he should or can run again.

Can you tell me what he stands for that’s important to you as well?

This term, I’d say that he stands for American strength. Ruling with a hard hand. I like that. You’ve got to be strong and willing to fight.

I hoped that when he got in a second time that the economy would boom again, like it did in his first term, but I’m not seeing that.

What about Iran?

I don’t know enough about it to say.

What about closing down DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts?

That’s complicated. Probably appropriate to shut it down in some areas, but not in others.

So where do you get your news from?

It used to be FOX, but I don’t trust FOX or the news in general anymore.

So where do you find any sort of truth?

I don’t know to be honest.

Do you read a paper?

No. I’m not much of a reader. The papers and news are just spreading their points of view.

I told you that I had been looking for a Trump-supporting Republican for a while and couldn’t find any willing to speak with me. When I told you that, you told me there were lots of “sleepers.” What do you mean by that?

Back when Trump was running, I wore my Trump gear openly. I had a bunch of people who would quietly approach me and say “I love your hat” or my buckle or whatever. There are many supporters who just don’t feel right about openly showing their political colors.

I was also able to have nice conversations with those who didn’t agree with me.

I’m glad you were able to have those conversations, but you gotta wonder why the Trump supporters feel like they can’t be open about it.

Kerr, you’re a small business owner.

Yes. Kerrent Electric. We do big and small electric projects. Commercial and residential.

Are you seeing any sort of uptick in work or income coming in?

No. It’s just been steady. For my playing field, there’s no boom.

How nice being in a line of work that AI can’t really touch.

Hard to imagine. Let’s hope not.

Here’s a few non-political questions. I know you’re into country music. Who are your three top performers?

Morgan Wallen, Loretta Lynn, and George Straight.

Well, I’ve heard of one of them.

Did you go on vacation this summer?

I’m not sure. What do you call a vacation? We’ve gone camping.

And we went to a musical in the city. Beauty and the Beast.

Really! And?

I loved it! I liked the movie, and now I’ve loved the play.

Have you been out of the country much?

Mexico. That’s it.

Where would you want to go?

Italy and Ireland. They look romantic and peaceful. Italy got on my map because of the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun.” Italy looked so beautiful in that film, or wherever they filmed it.

We do Taco Tuesday at our house, and I heard you guys do Wine Wednesday. Hadn’t heard of that. We used to see you and Sheila at the Blue Ridge Bar in the Barlow. Now that it’s gone, where to now?

Now, if we’re going out, it might be the Fern Bar or maybe Pax, a wine bar that’s also in the Barlow.

Kerr, I want to thank you for being open to having this conversation. It’s not easy for people to go on record like this.

Can I make a statement?

Of course.

I just want to say how blessed I’ve been to have led such a wonderful life, and in large part it’s because of the people in my life. I’m grateful.

Well, can I make a statement?

Ok.

You are a remarkable and devoted father, and have worked amazingly hard to create the wonderful life and family that you have. You’ve got to take at least some personal credit for how well things have worked out for you.

Yeah. I suppose so.

Thanks for the tea and popcorn. You’re a pretty good host too.

This Saturday, a new bagel shop will open at 280 S. Main St., between the Post Office and Taquería El Favorito.

The location of Bonnie Bagels has sparked controversy, especially since it’s opening just a few doors down from Sebastopol’s other bagel shop, Grateful Bagel.

Though the new shop hasn’t even opened yet, reactions to it have been mixed. Some Nextdoor and Reddit users lambasted its location as overtly competitive, while others welcomed the competition for a better bagel.

Michael Sousa, the owner of Bonnie Bagels, said, “We’re not trying to dismiss people’s concerns that competition is real, but we like Grateful Bagel! We’re customers!”

Greg Kalergis, Bonnie Bagels’ executive chef, added with a laugh, “It’s true, he goes there every day,” which makes sense, given that Sousa is sort of obsessed with bagels.

Sousa said the location the Bonnie Bagels team chose had mostly to do with traffic, price, and the size of the space. That, and they’d been wanting to open a bagel shop for a long time.

The story behind the store

Michael Sousa’s love of bagels started as a child. He grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, where bagels were a part of his before-school morning ritual with his mom.

The name, Bonnie Bagels, comes from the street where Sousa grew up, Bonnie Lane.

This image of Sousa as a child, which hangs at the entrance of the shop, was made by Cristopher Simmons. “It’s deeply nostalgic for him, evoking childhood memories of riding in the back (no seatbelts!) on the way to get their morning bagels,” said Simmons.

The 1984 Ford Country Squire station wagon in which Sousa and his mom would drive to school now serves as the Bonnie Bagels company car.

After college, Sousa moved to the West Coast. Eventually he landed in Sebastopol, where he’s lived for 20 years.

Although Sousa has enjoyed a successful career as a psychotherapist, working primarily with couples and men’s groups, he needed a new project. He decided to return to his bagel roots.

“I love my career, but the work itself is a little lonely…part of the reason for doing this was to build more relationships,” he said.

Inspired by Aqus Café in Petaluma, Sousa dreams of a small business that is “built around community organizing.”

More than this, Sousa has made a career in studying and supporting people in their interpersonal relationships. He wants to bring the therapeutic aspect of social fulfillment to the space. He imagines cooking and business lessons for high school students, and “for the people who work here to grow in their careers, lives, and relationships.”

The visual concept behind Bonnie Bagels is to merge East Coast nostalgia and the magic of childhood with a modern California feel. The shop itself is designed with bright colors and clean shapes. The large sign out front (which the team had to fight for) is a nod to the large signs of an earlier age of Sonoma County’s economic and cultural history. It was approved by the city’s Design Review Board in July, which granted it an exception to the size limits of the city’s current sign ordinance on the basis of it being hand-painted, stylish and a part of a locally owned (versus chain) business. (The Design Review Board is currently considering changes to the city’s existing sign ordinance.)

The practical concept behind Bonnie Bagels is to build community, and of course, to make really good bagels.

About those bagels

While Michael Sousa is a bagel enthusiast, hobbyist food critic, and an avid chef in his own home, he doesn’t quite have the chops to make a high-quality East Coast bagel.

A few years ago, Sousa was at a Friendsgiving. A strange man brought a turkey and dinner rolls, and Sousa thought to himself, “That guy knows how to bake.”

A little while later, when Sousa was thinking about starting a bagel shop, he remembered those dinner rolls and reached out to their maker, Greg Kalgeris.

Kalgeris had a relatively unconventional start to his baking career that, fittingly, was enabled by the kindness of a community member.

His first job was as a delivery driver for a bakery. Sometimes, when he was done with his deliveries, the chef would ask him to come into the kitchen to do an odd job or two: slicing pears, making a simple syrup.

“She Mr. Miyagi’d me, like I was her Karate Kid, training me as a pastry chef,” he said with a laugh.

When his boss needed a new laminated-pastry chef (think, croissant and puff pastry), she decided to give Kalgeris a shot. (Laminated dough consists of many thin layers of dough separated by butter or other solid fat, produced by repeated folding and rolling.) That’s how Kalgeris learned the art of French pastry.

After that, he felt confident enough to try anything. He worked in pizza in a Neapolitan kitchen for a bit, until he was approached by Sousa, who asked if he had ever made a bagel.

Kalgeris had never made a bagel, but he was game to try.

Sousa and Kalgeris sought guidance from Bageltopia in Berkeley. They provided training for Kalgeris and guided Sousa on design for the shop.

“The traditional East Coast bagel is hand-rolled, cold fermented, then boiled before it is baked,” Kalgeris explained.

First, the sourdough starter needs to be fed and then fermented in the fridge. “Cold fermentation allows the bagel to build a lot of flavor without a lot of gas, so you get a really dense and chewy bagel,” Kalgeris said.

The bagels are then hand-rolled into their shape, boiled, and baked. Commercially produced bagels are typically made in steam ovens, which simulates the labor of boiling the bagel ahead of time. They are also typically rolled by machines.

Kalgeris emphasized the artisanal quality of traditional East Coast bagels. It’s a slow process: the bagel you might get from Bonnie Bagel on a Wednesday starts its journey on Sunday afternoon.

But Kalgeris enjoys this process.

His goal is simple: “I hope to make the best bagel I can make, and for people to enjoy it.”

The son of a general contractor, Kalgeris grew up learning by watching and working with his hands.

He actually sewed the shade cloth and bench cushion covers on the Bonnie Bagels patio and the store’s interior.

Claire Addleman, the Bonnie Bagels café manager, joked that they call Kalgeris “Greg of all trades,” because he’s willing to roll up his sleeves and figure out how to solve a problem with his own two hands.

Addleman, who grew up in Santa Rosa and has worked in coffee for most of her career, also brings espresso expertise. She has been working with an Italian family in Oakland who runs Mr. Espresso to create a traditional espresso menu for the shop.

And of course, there will be bagels. In addition to all the East Coast classics (plain, sesame, everything, salt, cinnamon-raisin and more), Bonnie Bagels will serve gluten-free and vegan options, as well as a selection of closed-face and open-face bagel sandwiches.

Bonnie Bagels will host a soft opening on Saturday, August 15, from 7 am to 2 pm with bagels, coffee, wine, beer, and mimosas.

The behavior of the hordes of high schoolers who hang out at the front of Safeway during the school year is a common topic of discussion in Sebastopol. For much of this year, Mayor Jill McLewis, Police Chief Sean McDonagh, Analy Principal Chuck Wade and a changing cast of managers at Safeway met monthly to discuss the issue. Some residents see the kids in front of the store as miscreants; others see them simply as teenagers being teenagers.

But the kids who hang out behind the store—that’s a whole different story. Some of the neighbors who have to deal with their antics say they take adolescent misbehavior to a whole new level.

At the end of April, three high schoolers were cited for defacing a street-facing wall and a utility box with Nazi and anti-black graffiti, including the N-word, the phrases “Nigga-killer” and “Hitler was right,” along with a swastika and Nazi eagle. (See our article on this event.) They were referred to the juvenile justice system.

Vandalism of this sort would be worrying on its own, but its location—directly across the street from an apartment complex with both black and Jewish residents makes it doubly concerning.

One of those neighbors, Dezi Rae Kai, who is black, appeared before the Sebastopol City Council on July 21 to ask the city for help with what she and her neighbors say are ongoing problems behind the Safeway.

“I’m one of the neighbors that lives behind the Safeway. As a lot of you know, there has been an ongoing issue in the back of Safeway that has become out of hand,” Kai told the council. “There’s lots of individuals, but mainly the Analy High School students, and we’ve had our run-ins with inappropriate behavior at that spot.”

She mentioned the graffiti incident, but said that wasn’t the end of it.

“A few weeks back,”— this would be in early June — “we had a group of teenagers making monkey noises after seeing some of the black children that lived across the street,” she said.

One of the neighbors actually took photos of the teenagers involved in that incident. She sent the photos to Analy Principal Chuck Wade, and also to the Sebastopol Police.

“The principal seemed genuinely concerned,” she said.

The police came and took a report as well.

It wasn’t the first time the neighbors noticed peculiar noises.

“The noises have been going on for a while,” the neighbor said. “That was not the first incident. That was the first time I had specifically heard monkey noises. But every Thursday…I would hear screaming outside, and so I would come outside every single time that it happened, just to check and make sure everyone’s okay.”

She said when things get too rowdy—like when the kids start throwing shopping carts around—she calls the police, but the kids frequently run around the building and melt back into the larger group of kids in the front of the store.

Sometimes, she said, she also sees kids up on the roof of the Safeway building.

Neighbors have also seen teens drinking alcohol—Biggies Buzz Balls (an alcohol with packaging that looks like it’s designed for children)—and doing drugs at this spot after school. At a recent council meeting, one public commenter noted that she often picked up and disposed of needles she found there, though this may or may not be related to the teens who congregate there.

Monkey noises and the difference between a hate crime and a hate incident

As painful as it may be for the victims, Police Chief Sean McDonagh wrote to the Sebastopol Times that making monkey noises doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal offense.

“Unfortunately, despite the potential victim of this claiming the noises were directed at them, they cannot, with any prosecutorial level of confirmation, confirm this, and even then, the First Amendment provides significant protections for free speech, and there is no specific crime for making monkey noises,” McDonagh said. “It’s much like a protester voicing their opinion on Main Street, whether we like to hear it or not.”

“We as a police department must carefully consider the constitutional issues and avoid driving the city into unnecessary federal civil rights litigation, such as that recently settled from the incident, prior to my tenure here back in 2024. I do my very best to ensure our officers are educated on these issues … It’s a balancing act, sometimes.”

The website for California Attorney General Rob Bonta explains the difference between a hate crime and hate incident. Monkey noises seem to fall into the latter category:

A hate crime is a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim’s real or perceived protected social group. You may be the victim of a hate crime if you have been targeted because of your actual or perceived: (1) disability, (2) gender, (3) nationality, (4) race or ethnicity, (5) religion, (6) sexual orientation, and (7) association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. Hate crimes are serious crimes that may result in imprisonment or jail time.

A hate incident is an action or behavior motivated by hate but which, for one or more reasons, is not a crime. Examples of hate incidents include:

• Name-calling

• Insults

• Displaying hate material on your own property.

• Posting hate material that does not result in property damage.

• Distribution of materials with hate messages in public places.

At the August 4 Sebastopol City Council meeting, the council directed City Attorney Alex Mog to research the city’s legal options for dealing with this kind of behavior. Councilmember Stephen Zollman and Vice Mayor Maurer requested that these solutions emphasize restorative justice. (Sadly, a county-sponsored program that provided restorative justice programs free to schools and police departments ended this spring.) Mog said he could have a report done in time for the Sept. 1 council meeting.

The Kai family met with representatives from the city, including Mayor McLewis, the day of the August 4 council meeting, but the Sebastopol Times didn’t get any responses back when we inquired about what happened at that meeting.

The neighbors have some suggestions

The neighbors would like to see the area fenced off, or, at the very least, they hope that Safeway or the city could install security cameras. (The city can’t install cameras on Safeway property, of course, but neighbors say that the sidewalk is city property and cameras could be installed from there somehow.)

A few weeks ago, before they met with the city, the Sebastopol Times met with Dezi Rae Kai’s mother, Althea, who is Jewish, and two of her neighbors, Sarah O’Brien and Bonnie Summers. We stood in the late afternoon sunlight at the place behind Safeway where all the trouble was happening during the school year. There’s a small walled utility area and a large low planter with a big shade tree. On the back wall of the Safeway, two large white-painted squares cover up the Nazi and racist graffiti from earlier this spring.

Althea said the neighbors’ preferred solution is a tall, locked fence.

“Just fence this off,” said Althea Kai, gesturing at the space. “Fence this in and then have it completely covered on the top, and have a lock that the city has, that the police have, that Safeway has access to.”

“We were hoping that before school started, we’d kind of have a plan in place so this would be less accessible or less ‘friendly’”—by which she meant, less attractive to teenagers. “You know, if they can’t put a fence up, put a camera. It’s just a matter of figuring it out. It just feels like everyone is passing the buck. Like Safeway is saying they can’t do it. The police say they can’t do it because it’s Safeway’s property.”

Safeway's response has been less than reassuring.

“I talked to the manager [at Safeway], and he said, ‘Can you write this all up, and we’ll send it to corporate, and see what they can do about it.’ Then I didn’t hear anything back for two weeks, and I called, and he [the manager] no longer worked there, so I got a new manager. So I said, ‘Okay, well, I’ve sent this email. Can you confirm that you received the email? Confirm that it’s going forward.’ Nothing. I called three or four times and just didn’t get any calls back.”

The Sebastopol Times reached out to Safeway’s corporate offices in Pleasanton. This was their response:

“We understand and share our neighbors’ concerns, and we are working closely with local leaders to address issues affecting the area surrounding our Sebastopol store. Our Asset Protection team regularly meets with law enforcement, city officials and school leaders to discuss safety concerns, review incidents and coordinate response efforts.

“Ahead of each school year, we work with school leaders to prepare for increased student activity near the store. We promptly address graffiti and property damage when reported, notify law enforcement of safety-related incidents and collaborate with community partners to help maintain a safe and welcoming environment for customers, associates and neighbors. While not all reported activity occurs on Safeway property, we remain committed to supporting community-wide efforts to address these concerns.”

The Kai family and several neighbors on the street are frustrated by the lack of action.

And now, it’s back-to-school week at Analy High School. The first day of school is Thursday, Aug. 13.

“Once school starts, it’s going to happen again because this is their hangout,” Althea said.

She said she’s been disappointed by the responses of the city, the school and Safeway—but she was also disappointed by the response of the Sebastopol community as a whole.

“I’m really upset about the fact that this happened and these kids witnessed it, and then the response has been mom and neighbors trying to get someone to address it and trying to get someone to address it—as opposed to a big response of the whole community and the whole city, like ‘We don’t tolerate that here. That’s not something that’s acceptable.’ You know, ‘You belong here. You’re loved here.’ These kinds of things. I hoped that that would be the response. I hoped that people would have reached out. We did have one woman who came over, knocked on the door, told us she heard from your story, and came up and cleaned this whole thing like two or three days after. But that was it.”

At the city council meeting in July, her daughter Dezi put it this way: “We ask that City Council work with Analy, Safeway, the police and us neighbors to find a solution. We are a neighborhood of people of color and children that walk to school every day. We need to feel safe in our homes and need to know that our community will support us in finding a solution.”

None of the neighbors in this story wanted their pictures taken for fear of retaliation.

Alaisa Barone became the owner of Sebastopol’s beloved Launch Recycled Clothing more than a year and a half ago when she was just 24 years old. She brought to her new venture her love of fashion and thrifting and her expert skills as a seamstress.

“I had always wanted to thrift for a living and have some type of business, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that it would actually be able to happen—especially not a whole store,” Barone said.

Launch was opened in 2002 by local recycled clothing entrepreneur Shana Barrett (recently of Lucky Roots Clothing). She sold it to Nica Rice, who ran it for several years until she transferred ownership to Barone in January 2025. Each owner put their own personal stamp on the place.

Barone has taken the look and feel of the store in a new, bolder direction.

“I love color, I love saturation. I just want people to see something interesting at every turn. I know everybody has different tastes, and I think that minimalism is kind of rearing its head a little bit right now, but I’m so the opposite. I’m a maximalist at heart.”

In terms of the clothing, she said, “I feel like it reflects a lot of my personal taste and my personal style. I love like really unique and weird and quirky clothing.” But the store carries a whole range of items, including brands like Anthropologie, Free People, J.Crew, and denim from Citizens of Humanity, Mother, and Paige. The aesthetic is youthful, colorful and joyful.

“I want this to be a store that anybody can go in and find something from men’s to women’s, to crazy festival wear to really nice high-quality basics. My focus has been, I think, less on brands and more so on expanding the demographic that I can reach.”

“For me, as a plus-size person, I’ve always found it really hard to find clothes at curated thrift stores. Like, there’s not like a ton of options just out there period for cute plus-size clothing that has nice quality fabrics. So that was a really big thing that I wanted to incorporate into the business model was a plus-size section for anybody of any size to be able to come in and find something that is super cute and unique that they’re not going to find somewhere else.”

That said, most of the store is not plus-sized. Barone said she carries everything from extra-small to 4xl.

Right now, in addition to all the mixed racks of clothing, there’s a whole wall of beautiful linen wear. As the season changes, that’ll change to other interesting natural fabrics: silk and cashmere.

Where does she get her clothes?

“Everywhere,” she said with a laugh. “I buy from the public on weekends. So on Saturdays and Sundays, people can come in and bring in like two or three grocery-sized bags of clothes in good condition. We do have specific brands that we’re looking for, plus natural fibers are always good, and ’90s and Y2K vintage. When people ask if I take vintage, I tell them I take sexy vintage, like the really cute stuff that is timeless. So I get a portion of clothes from the public, and then I also source clothes from thrift stores all across Sonoma County.”

“I’ve always loved thrifting,” she said. “I started thrifting with my dad when I was a kid, at the time when it wasn’t cool to get clothes secondhand from Goodwill.”

Barone, who grew up in Petaluma, said she spent the first year getting on top of the business part of running a small business. Now that that’s running smoothly, she has more time to do what she really loves, which includes upcycling (i.e., using her sewing skills to improve or add a new creative touch to a piece of clothing). This is part of what gives this store its handmade charm.

She said that sometimes she finds a beautiful but damaged item when she’s thrifting — like a high-quality cashmere sweater with a hole in it. “Something that would otherwise probably go to the landfill because nobody’s gonna buy like a sweater with holes in it. So I take it, and I darn it and add flowers and make it look unique and fun, and then sell it here.”

Sometimes this upcycling is more dramatic.

“Like I’ll take two items and make it one item,” she said. “I’ve been really passionate about eliminating as much waste as possible, and using all the scraps that I accumulate to make garments and accents out of all this material that I have left over…I want to get a really nice collection of upcycled items to start a portion of the store for specifically upcycled and repaired garments.”

Barone, who has been sewing since she was a child, also does regular alterations for clients. Before she acquired the store, she ran her own mobile alterations business. She has a large back room, visible from the store, that’s completely dedicated to alterations. Right now, she said, her business model is two-thirds retail, one-third alterations.

“Eventually, I want to get to the point where I can be making garments from scratch and selling my own designs,” she said.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen Launch in its newest iteration, it’s well worth a visit. Barone’s joy is contagious.

You can find Launch Recycled Clothing at 961 South Gravenstein Highway (across from Fircrest Market). She also has a very fun and playful Instagram.

Film: Cookie Queens
Monday thru Thursday, Aug. 10-13, 12 pm, 2:10 pm, 7:20 pm, at Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. $14 to $16.

A warm, candid coming-of-age documentary following four girls, ages 5 to 12, through the whirlwind of Girl Scout Cookie season. Beneath the Thin Mints and sisterhood lies a crash course in commercialism — long hours, ambitious goals, and real pressure — as the film finds big truths in small moments about community and capitalism. Get tickets.

Science Buzz Café: The Science of Motherhood
Monday, Aug. 10, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm, at HopMonk Sebastopol, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. $10.

Science writer Eva Emerson, editor of Knowable Magazine and former editor-in-chief of Science News, explores the surprising, well-documented powers of breast milk and how it adapts to a baby’s changing needs. In collaboration with Kate Haug’s Mothership project at Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Learn more.

Produce Exchange at the Grange
Tuesday, Aug. 11, from 5 pm to 5:45 pm, at Sebastopol Grange Hall, 6000 Sebastopol Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Bring surplus garden produce to share and trade; leftovers are donated. Master Food Preservers are on hand for preservation questions. Held second and fourth Tuesdays.

Film: The Floaters
Tuesday, Aug. 11, at 1 pm and 6:30 pm, at Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. $16.

An offbeat comedy in which Nomi, freshly kicked out of her rock band, takes a last-resort job at her childhood Jewish summer camp — landing her in charge of a group of misfit teens called “the floaters” as a high-stakes rivalry with a neighboring camp threatens the place’s survival. Part of the Jewish Film Festival. Get tickets.

Deadline to file to run for city council extended to Aug. 12

Thinking of running for city council? There are quite a few things to do between now and the extended deadline on Wednesday. To file, contact mgourley@cityofsebastopol.gov ASAP. Find complete details on the Elections and Voting page on the city of Sebastopol website.

Luther Burbank Experiment Farm Work Day
Wednesday, Aug. 12, from 9 am to 12 pm, at the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm, 7777 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Volunteer with a friendly crew maintaining Burbank’s historic experiment farm — gardening, leading tours, staffing the cottage gift shop, and more. All skill levels welcome. Held every Wednesday.

15 Minutes for Mom with Sebastopol Regional Library Family Storytime
Wednesday, Aug. 12, from 10:30 am to 11:30 am, at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. Free.

Children’s librarian Jane Kennedy leads Family Storytime on the SebArts Patio, with a stay-and-play afterward. It’s paired with “15 Minutes for Mom,” a short program offering practical tools for caregivers’ health and well-being. This session focuses on Social Security and simple ways to strengthen retirement income while raising young children. In collaboration with Kate Haug’s Mothership project at Sebastopol Center for the Arts. RSVP here.

Fusion Teen Center Ribbon Cutting
Thursday, Aug. 13, from 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm, at Sebastopol Christian Church, 7433 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol. Free.

Celebrate the opening of the Fusion Teen Center, a safe, fun after-school spot for youth in 6th through 12th grade to hang out and connect. Though it’s hosted by the Sebastopol Christian Church, the center is not religious. Activities include a pool table, ping-pong, foosball, cornhole, video games, card games, free Wi-Fi, and movies, with snacks available for purchase.

Peacetown Summer Concert series
Wednesday, Aug. 12, 5 pm to 8 pm, at Ives Park.

Dry Creek Station, Sonoma County’s premier “Country-plus” party band, opens this week’s Peacetown from 5 pm to 6 pm. Then from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, it’s Tom Rigney and Flambeau lighting up the stage with his irresistible band of Cajun Zydeco musicians. Tom’s fiddling and infectious enthusiasm always produce the ‘happy dance’ from the audience. Backed by his All-Star Band, Flambeau, Tom Rigney has been a hot commodity in Peacetown for many years.

Peacetown at Hopmonk from 6:30 pm to 9 pm features the Michael Capella Band, bringing a rich blend of Americana to the stage with soulful originals.

Sebastopol Commons Committee Open House
Thursday, Aug. 13, at 3 pm, at the O’Reilly campus, 1005 Gravenstein Hwy. N., Sebastopol. Free.

Learn about the Sebastopol Commons, a proposed civic, cultural, and economic hub for West County, and tour the potential site at the O’Reilly complex. Meet members of the “Building the Commons” committee and city staff; refreshments served. More at cityofsebastopol.gov/commons.

Film: Hunky Jesus: A documentary about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Thursday, Aug. 13, at 1 and 6:30 pm, at Rialto Cinemas Sebastopol, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol.

A documentary chronicling the activism, radical resistance, and irreverent humor of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, from their beginnings to today. Director Jennifer M. Kroot weaves together footage from Hunky Jesus 2023, an annual satirical "Hunky Jesus" costume contest held on Easter Sunday at Dolores Park in San Francisco, archival material, and interviews with storied Sisters and friends including Sister Roma, Vish Knew, and Honey Mahogany. Presented by OUTwatch and Rialto Cinemas. Get tickets.

Plant Bingo at Sonoma Chocolatiers and tea house
Friday, Aug. 14, 4:30 pm, at Sonoma Chocolatiers, 6988 McKinley St., Sebastopol. $23.18.

Come on out for Plant Bingo at Sonoma Chocolatiers & Tea House, where there’ll be numerous rounds of bingo with chances to win a variety of plants and garden accessories every round. Guests can connect with new and old friends while enjoying teas from all over the world and indulging in handmade chocolates. It’s the perfect way to relax, have fun, and celebrate a delightful afternoon surrounded by great company, sweet treats, and plenty of plant-filled prizes. Get tickets.

A Cosmic Comedy Show with Swami Beyondananda
Friday, Aug. 14, at 7:30 pm, at Sebastopol Grange Hall, 6000 Sebastopol Ave., Sebastopol. $20 pre-sale, $25 at the door, $20 for Grangers.

Don’t miss this two-man/one-man show featuring cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda and his slightly-more-serious alter ego Steve Bhaerman. Enjoy the Swami’s playful and hilarious take on events of the day, the human condition, and of course, our human conditioning. Not only will the Swami answer your questions, you will question his answers. Drinks and snacks for sale. Get tickets.

Live Music Fridays at Pax
Friday, Aug. 14, from 5 to 7 pm, at Pax Wines, 6780 McKinley St., in The Barlow, Sebastopol. Free.

Casual Friday evening of live music from Jon Gonzales and local wines at this small family-run winery in the Barlow. Family- and dog-friendly; table service can be booked ahead.

SW100 grant application cycle extended to Friday, Aug. 14, at midnight

There is still time for nonprofits to get an application in for the Sebastopol West 100 giving circle 2026 grant cycle. SW100 exists solely to raise money as a membership for nonprofits in Sebastopol and West County. Nonprofits apply here. There’s also still time to join SW100 so that you can participate in choosing the winning grant awardees. Learn more about that here.

Soil Health: Nutrients, Cover Crop & Irrigation
Saturday, Aug. 15, from 10 am to 11:30 am, at Harmony Farm Supply & Nursery, 3244 Gravenstein Hwy. N., Sebastopol. Free.

Rick Williams covers building healthy soil biology — nutrient delivery, macro and micro nutrient levels, cover crops, and responsible irrigation. Attendees get a discount coupon. As always, Harmony Classes are free to attend, but space is limited and you must register in advance by phone at (707) 823-9125.

Plein Air Trees — Observational Workshop at Ragle
Saturday, Aug. 15, from 10 am to 2 pm, at Ragle Ranch Regional Park, Sebastopol. $85 ($75 plus $10 materials fee).

In this one-day outdoor workshop, each student picks a tree at Ragle Park to sketch, learning foundational drawing techniques like proportion before adding light and shadow in watercolor. All materials provided; all skill levels welcome. Led by printmaker and watercolorist Hannah Day. (This class is offered through Sebastopol Center for the Arts, but takes place at Ragle Ranch Park.) Ages 18+. Register here.

Crooked Goat 10th Anniversary Carnival
Saturday, Aug. 15, from 11:30 am to midnight, at Crooked Goat Brewing, 120 Morris St., Sebastopol.

Crooked Goat marks ten years with a full carnival — a striped midway of prize booths, cotton candy, fresh popcorn, cold beer, and games all day. Attractions include a bounce house, dunk tank, high striker, two lanes of axe throwing, baseball radar pitch, zap-a-mole, roller bowler, dart balloon, tip the clown, hit the bucket, and fish in a bowl. A real carnival, with better beer. Music from Nancy Fawson & Corner Pocket, 2:30-4:30 pm; Jane Blonde & the Goldfingers, 5:30-8:30 pm; DJ Gottsy, 9 pm to midnight. Food from The Lunch Box, 2:30-8:30 pm.

Film & Forgetten Felines Benefit: CatVideoFest
Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15-16, 12 pm, at Rialto Cinemas, 6868 McKinley St., Sebastopol. $16

CatVideoFest is a joyful compilation of the latest and best cat videos culled from countless hours of submissions, sourced animations, music videos, and classic internet powerhouses. Each year, local theaters partner with nearby cat-focused charities and shelters, and a portion of ticket proceeds from every show goes directly to local cats in need — in this case, benefiting Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County. Get tickets.

Draw Your Family/Draw Your Story Zine Workshop
Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 15-16, from 1 pm to 5 pm, at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. $60 general / $30 Senior Center members / $15 students.

Over two afternoons, participants use writing and drawing prompts to turn their family stories into a personal zine. Open to all ages and led by Portland-based illustrator and zine maker Yoko O.K., whose riso-printed zine Uncoiling: A Japanese-American Family’s History won a 2026 Society of Illustrators Award of Excellence. This event is part of Kate Haug’s Mothership project at Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Register here.

One Armed Joey + The Great Other + Gas Money
Saturday, Aug. 15, 7 pm, at HopMonk Sebastopol, 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. $24.35.

Rock out with melodic punk from One Armed Joey; alternative progressive metal from the Great Other; and classic rock grit with a modern groove from Gas Money. Get tickets.

Collage on Panel from Start to Finish
Sunday, Aug. 16, from 11 am to 3 pm, at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S. High St., Sebastopol. $130.

French-American collage artist Catherine Cruz guides students through the full process of making a finished collage on wood panel — from surface prep and design to varnishing, wiring, and professional presentation. Participants bring a supply list of their own materials (posted online) and a bagged lunch for the 12:30 break. Ages 16+. Register here.

Wine Down Sundays at Region
Sunday, Aug. 9, 3 pm to 6 pm, at Region, 180 Morris St., Sebastopol.

Join Region for live music with Jeremy Lipsin, a featured winery experience, and a relaxed afternoon filled with exceptional wines, great conversation, and the kind of atmosphere that makes you want to stay awhile. Whether you’re catching up with friends, welcoming visiting family, or simply looking for a place to unwind, Wine Down Sundays are your invitation to sip, settle in, and enjoy the final moments of the weekend. Get tickets.

A gorgeous day at the Gravenstein Apple Fair

Photos by Mark Fernquest

It couldn’t have been a more perfect first day at the Gravenstein Apple Fair. Early morning clouds gave way to a bright blue day at Ragle Park, and the Gravenstein apple, West County’s heritage treasure, reigned supreme.

The fair continues today, so get on down there. There’s lots of fun—and lots of apples—still to be had!

Drive-thru for apple pies at the Community Church

For many years, during the Gravenstein Apple Fair, the Sebastopol Community Church has had their own side hustle. Church members make and bake apple pies and then sell them out the side door of the church’s Memorial Hall. Today is the last day to buy an apple pie for $20. So worth it!

Deadline to file to run for Sebastopol City Council extended to Aug. 12

Thinking of running for city council? There are quite a few things to do between now and the extended deadline on Wednesday, August 12. To file, contact mgourley@cityofsebastopol.gov. Find complete details on the Elections and Voting page on the city of Sebastopol website.

Five candidates have pulled papers and/or filed thus far, including Sandra Maurer (incumbent), Jill McLewis (incumbent), Kyreen Jorgensen, Brandie L. Solovay, and Sam Flath.

SW100 grant deadline extended to Aug. 14 at midnight

There is still time to get an application in for your nonprofit to the Sebastopol West 100 giving circle’s annual grant cycle. The deadline has been extended to Aug. 14 at midnight. SW100 exists solely to raise money from its membership for nonprofits in Sebastopol and West County. Nonprofits can apply for a grant here.

If you’d like to be a part of an organization that’s really making a difference in West County in these days of government funding cutbacks, join SW100 here.

Pre-construction work begins on Well 4

You may have noticed a lot of activity at Spooner Park, across from Art & Soul, for the last two weeks. According to City Manager Mary Gourley, “This relates to the Well 4 Replacement Project. Task 4 of the scope of work includes: Initial site assessment consisting of well siting, hydrogeologic review and investigation of possible sources of groundwater contamination in the vicinity of the well site; test hole drilling and installation of a monitoring well. The monitoring well will allow for collection of zone-specific water levels and water quality samples. This task will include water quality sampling and analysis. This task includes preparation of a well-design report for the basis of the final design.”

Read the full plan here.

The preconstruction phase, including testing and design, is being paid for with $400,000 from the Water Capital Fund. The full project will cost $2,989,000, most of which will need to be financed.

Have you seen Tiny Treasures Trading Post on High Street?

We ran across this sweet little spot on the 300 block of S. High St., just south of SebArts. It’s the Tiny Treasures Trading Post! Got a tiny treasure you’re ready to let go of? Need a little (I mean, really little) something to perk up your day? Check it out.

The week of August 3-9

At the Sonoma County Fair, students as young as five stand up in front of an audience to show the livestock they’ve been raising and training for the past few months. Most of these students are either involved with Future Farmers of American (FFA) at their high schools or with their local 4-H groups, where they learn to raise various animals, including rabbits, poultry, goats, lambs, pigs and steers.

What is the livestock show at the County Fair?

At the County Fair, many of these students compete in the market category, where their animals will be judged for good meat. Market animals are sold at the auction, and the students who raised them get to keep the money. Students with market projects also compete in showmanship, where they will be judged on their ability to present their animals.

Michelle and Micah Sawyer, who run Sawyer Construction company and a harm reduction non-profit called Micah’s Hugs, volunteer as solicitors at the County Fair, to help kids find secure buyers for their market animals.

“They go off to the slaughterhouse and then come back as meat from the butcher. Some people think they’re gonna bring their animal home, and you know, cute little animal, they’re gonna keep it forever. So it’s also a lesson that the kids learn, the process of how food and meat gets to a store.” Michelle said.

For 20 years, Sawyer has supported the junior livestock community. She was a founding member of the Sebastopol Ag boosters group, which helps raise money for the Analy FFA, and she runs the Gold Ridge 4-H club.

As a girl, Michelle showed sheep. Her daughters inherited this tradition and also showed sheep. In fact, one of Michelle’s daughters, Missy, is now a sheep leader at Gold Ridge 4-H, which provides programming for children as young as five years old, though only children ages nine and up can show large livestock (sheep, goats, cows, pigs, horses).

One student at Gold Ridge 4-H club, Bryleigh Cook, is participating in her first County Fair this year.

Meet Bryleigh Cook

Bryleigh Cook is nine years old. She joined 4-H this year as a way to feel connected to her aunt, Kylee Johnson, who passed away last September at the age of 22.

Johnson competed in junior livestock shows with lambs, and this year, Bryleigh did too.

“I thought it would be kind of cool and honorable to do what she would do,” she said.

Kylee Johnson grew up competing alongside Missy Pendleton, and the two were very close friends.

Missy mentored Bryleigh in the early stages of raising her lambs. Cook now mostly works with her other sheep leader, Matt Casarotti, but Missy continued to be present and supportive at Bryleigh’s first show.

In February, Bryleigh got her two lambs from a breeder she connected with through her other sheep leader at 4-H, Matt Casarotti. The names of her lambs have evolved over time to increasingly reflect her love of country music. “First was Spongebob and Patrick. Next was Morgan Wallen and Posty,” she said.

Finally, she landed on Brooks and Dunn, after country music duo Brooks & Dunn.

“This one is Dunn because Dunn is the bigger, taller, country singer. His name is Brooks because he’s smaller. He’s the follower,” she explained.

“When I come to grab them, I slowly do this thing my mom taught me. It’s called a bear hug, and then I get into the position I need to, and just start walking them for about 10 minutes…Sometimes they will just do what they want. And when they don’t want to do what we want, we just keep walking them and walking them and walking them until they get tired, and then we put them in the position.”

“You have to be the boss of them, but you don’t want to be too angry at them,” she explained. “You just gotta keep doing and doing it until they’re tired. They feed off my energy. So say if I’m mad, he’s gonna be all mad and jumping and all that. He’s not gonna want to work with me. But if I’m all calm, he’s gonna want to work with me sometimes.”

Bryleigh had been working with her lambs as much as possible leading up the County Fair.

In addition to caring for her lambs’ health and hygiene to raise them to market quality, she trained them to be shown at the fair. It takes time and effort to build the level of trust between an exhibitor and an animal necessary to keep an animal properly positioned and calm during the show.

Bryleigh’s father, Brian Cook remarked that “committing to a thing and seeing it through” is the most important thing Bryleigh has learned in the process, beyond learning about breeds, nutrition and the daily care that goes into raising a lamb.

It was the first County Fair without her aunt, so emotions for the Cook/Johnson family were complex. But Bryleigh put her best foot forward and impressed the judges.

She placed third in her class with Dunn and second in her class with Brooks. In showmanship, Bryleigh placed third.

“I feel really confident!” she said.

Although Bryleigh did remarkably well for her first show, her parents emphasized the sportsmanship, responsibility and community-building she has learned.

Bryleigh has developed relationships with breeders, livestock leaders and potential buyers as part of this process.

Taylor Johnson, Bryleigh’s mom, lauded “the relationship that they build with the community when they have to go out and look for buyers. They have to get dressed in their full whites, have some type of portfolio or resume-looking document, noting what work they’ve put into it, and then they have to go out and present themselves to businesses, whether they’re going to buy the animal and keep the meat for themselves, or if they’re going to buy it and donate.”

She was able to secure two buyers for her lambs that will ultimately donate the meat to community food security initiatives.

Bryleigh has also made wonderful friends. Her dad remarked, “One of her competitors was having issues with her lamb this morning, and [Bryleigh] walked back after taking pictures with family, came over, and just gave her a strong hug, and told her it’s going to be okay. And that melted my heart because it shows that she can go out there and compete, but she still understands that there’s people around her that she cares for.”

Missy explained, “We all work as a club. We all help each other. We’re all making new friends and family. That’s what it’s about.”

Meet Ian Huffaker

The community building and self-evolution that happens within junior livestock shows is on full display with one of Analy FFA’s star pupils, Ian Huffaker.

Huffaker, who is now going into his senior year at Analy High School, emphasized how beneficial 4-H and FFA have been for his personal development. Between discovering a passion, a life path, a sense of responsibility and a strong work ethic, he has learned other important life skills and gained meaningful friendships.

“FFA isn’t just animals, there’s speaking contests and leadership development and career development, and the connections that it’s brought me are great…I would say like 90% of my friends are from FFA. I have friends in Texas, I have friends in Oregon from FFA, just from traveling everywhere...If you’re going into high school, and you’re worried about making friends, just join FFA, and you will. Just take an Ag class.”

Huffaker shows year-round in “jackpots,” competitions held all over the country for kids to practice showing their market animals without having to sell them. He started 4-H when he was six.

“I started out with rabbits, and I had breeding rabbits so I could just get into it because my family’s not in livestock. My mom’s a winemaker, and my dad’s a teacher, so I started out with rabbits. Then I started showing meat pens, and I was like I don’t want to. I mean ’cause the rabbits, when you’re little, you get attached…So then I moved on to pigs and just did that for like three years, and then after that I got into the cattle and the goats.”

Raising and showing livestock has become his passion.

“There’s a lot of kids my age that all they do is play Call of Duty all day. So I think just having something where you have to get stuff done, and something you’re passionate about is really good. And this is what I’m passionate about. So I don’t really mind spending all day doing this. Like I come here around this time in the morning, and then I work.”

In fact, he hopes to dedicate his life to this work. His plan after graduating from Analy is to go to school for livestock judging.

At this year’s County Fair market competition, Huffaker showed a steer and a goat.

The goat Huffaker showed this year is a wether (a castrated male) named Kenny.

“He gets treadmilled every day. And he loves it. It’s funny; like he just runs on there, and they’re running backwards on it, and it kind of just helps them build muscle.”

Huffaker spoke affectionately about Kenny and admitted that he does get attached to the animals sometimes. He added, “But I know what it’s for.”

He added again, “But like, he’s pretty cute. He’s probably my favorite animal I’ve ever had. He’s funny.”

They’ve spent a lot of time together, especially since Huffaker believes in the importance of keeping a routine: “I work showmanship with all of these guys every day. And I think becoming successful is understanding that you really have to practice and commit yourself.”

And successful he is. This year, Huffaker placed second in showmanship and second in his class with his steer. He also showed the winning market goat (Kenny) across all 4-H and FFA classes.

He explained why Kenny was a strong goat to compete with: “You rub your hand over their rack and their loin, and you basically want them to be expressive and hard, like literally hard. So my wether, I mean, like his back feels like a piece of wood.”

Huffaker was thrilled at his success this year. “I was really excited. I mean, I’ve been shooting to win something like this.”

Michelle Sawyer reflected on watching Huffaker grow to be such a passionate and promising competitor, “Every once in a while you get a kid that just melts your heart.”

She remembers Huffaker “shaking her hand and looking her in the eye,” eager to build connections with people in the livestock community—a self-starter.

It takes a village

Over the weekend, the market animals shown at the fair will be auctioned and sold for meat. Students will use their earnings to support their market projects for next year and future college tuition. “It’s really like a scholarship,” Michelle Sawyer said.

Although it can be sad for students to say goodbye to the animals they’ve spent so much time with, Huffaker feels prepared: “I think I’ve done it so long where it’s like I’m kind of used to it. But he’s really cute… But I don’t think Kenny’s gonna know at all. He’ll be okay.”

Besides, the students have their families, friends, coaches, and clubs to support them. Like Huffaker said, “It really does take a village.”

“Collaborative Practices,” a new exhibition of the work of artist, mother, and Sebastopol political critic Kate Haug, opens at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts on Saturday, August 8, from 2 to 6 pm.

Sebastopol Times readers may know Haug as a frequent commenter at Sebastopol City Council meetings and a tireless crusader on the part of Sebastopol’s water and sewer ratepayers. You might be surprised to learn that she is also a well-known conceptual artist. Her new show at SebArts is both a retrospective of her earlier work and an invitation to participate in her newest work, “Mothership.”

The exhibition runs from August 8 to September 9. Haug has planned a series of exhibition-related community workshops and events throughout the month of August. Most of these are a part of “Mothership,” but the final event is a “Neighborhood Cocktail Hour and Ratepayer’s Town Hall” on Friday, August 28.

That may seem like a non-sequitur, but it’s actually right in line with one of the main themes of the exhibit: turning politics into art through collaborative participation.

Haug, who was born in Missouri and grew up in California, got her BA in Art History from U.C. Santa Cruz. She was selected for a prestigious curatorial program at the Whitney, where she curated a show called “Dirt and Domesticity: Constructions of the Feminine” in 1991. She worked at a gallery for a while, then went to graduate school at UC San Diego. She got her MFA in experimental film and critical theory, after which she taught screenwriting and filmmaking as an adjunct professor. Now she and her husband, Kurt Noble, run a digital services business, KNI, in San Francisco.

Collaborative Practices: five intriguing installations and a chance to collaborate in art and politics

The exhibition at SebArts features five installations, made up of multiple art pieces, created over the last 12 years. Her work is diverse—some use archival photographs and political ephemera, while others are performance-based.

The exhibition’s featured image is from a performance on November 6, 2024, the day after Trump won his second presidential race. Haug commissioned a plane to fly a banner above New York City, displaying the message “We Hold Democracy Together.”

In titling the show Collaborative Practices, Haug draws attention to both the collective nature of politics and to the way some of her works are produced—with the help of other people.

“Like…I obviously didn’t fly that plane,” she said, laughing.

The subjects of Haug’s works are distinctly political: the absurdity of municipal bureaucracy, the decentering of mothers in pronatalist dialogues, the detachment created by digital culture, the forgetting of whole activist movements.

At the core of this body of work is a critique of how democracy—which is itself necessarily a collaborative practice—works or doesn’t work.

One of the installations in the exhibition, “News Today: A History of the Poor People’s Campaign in Real Time,” presents archival photographs from AP News. The photographs are arranged among text from activists, journalists and others involved in the Poor People’s Campaign, the last great protest led by Martin Luther King.

“News Today” hinges on the murder of King and showcases the arc of Resurrection City, an encampment on the National Mall that was part of the Poor People’s Campaign for economic parity. Although Resurrection City was conceived before King’s death, it was also a response to his death. It was a massive, sustained, 420-day protest against economic inequality.

It has also been largely forgotten.

“No one really knew about the Poor People’s Campaign, which is amazing because it’s the thing that happened right after Dr. King was murdered, right? You’d think it’d be more prominent in part of our national discussions, but it was basically erased,” Haug said.

“News Today,” made in collaboration with several other artists, restores this event to collective memory and offers a critique of the way that history is written. The title also suggests that not too much has changed; contemporary protesters are still fighting war, poverty and racism.

While “News Today” is tonally reverent, other works by Haug critique by way of irony and humor.

“Public Post” is a project from 2014 in which Haug and artists Veva Edelson and Ivan Uranga put up text-based wheatpaste posters all over Valencia Street in San Francisco. The piece uses humor to express the hollowness of digital communication. Here’s a brief description from the project’s website:

Our work asks questions about technology and its influence on our culture and our economy.

As public posters, we work with anonymity, random encounter, and public space—concepts which have been enlarged and complicated by the expansion of the internet.

All posters are individually produced silk-screen prints. We post in public spaces in an on-going dialogue with advertising, other anonymous posters, and the convivial flotsam of urban landscape.

Across from “Public Post,” a different installation displays feminist ephemera. Haug calls it “The Feminist Memory Shop.”

“It’s a joke concept…”The Feminist Memory Shop” is just a defunct thrift store basically. It’s the type of store that would have been closing down and abandoned in San Francisco at the time, Valencia 2014.”

The piece plays on the forgottenness of objects, curated as a bunch of thriftable objects in a store that’s about to go out of business. They are purposely and humorously detached from their original contexts, unlike “News Today,” which organizes historical narrative so that it can be remembered.

“Mothership,” a new, in-progress installation, features multiple different works by different people and several events.

The events connected with “Mothership” begin on the opening day of Haug’s exhibit. There will be a Drawing Rally with the theme, “Draw Your Mother/ Draw Your Child,” running from 2 pm to 4 pm on Saturday, Aug. 8, in the two hours before the opening Reception. The works made at the drawing rally will be hung in the “Mothership” section of the exhibition.

As part of “Mothership,” Haug has also organized a series of workshops called “15 Minutes for Moms” with Sebastopol Regional Library Family Storytime. The workshops address different issues and provide actionable advice—how to reduce stress through pressure points, postnatal health, and how to save for retirement. Haug wanted the workshops to be short because, as she half-joked, “Moms have no time.”

Other events connected to “Mothership” include a motherhood mandala drawing studio, a zine workshop and a clothing swap. There’s even a Science Buzz Cafe connected to the exhibit. (See the full list of events at the end of this article.)

“Mothership” also includes a collaborative piece, called “Mothership: Stellar Nursery” by mother-daughter artists Yoko OK, who lives in Portland, and Helen Oji, who lives in New York. Helen said Haug had a few suggestions for the type of work she was looking for. “She said, ‘I really want this piece to be about childbirth and a mother and child experience or giving birth.’ And then she sent us some pictures that were of her home birth and her friends’, and of babies and that sort of thing. And she said, ‘I want it to feel cosmic or celestial.’”

Looking at the photos, Yoko had the idea of doing simple hand drawings, inspired by constellations.

Helen, who has also worked in set design, said Haug wanted their piece to be on a medium that light could shine through. So Helen came up with the idea of having it digitally printed on theater scrim. Yoko and Helen collaborated on the final design via their iPads.

Haug said “Mothership” comes as a response to a larger discourse about birth rates that seem to neglect the fact that mothers are people. “Mothership” operates differently from her other works in its mode of political engagement—the work is more personal.

“I wanted to express the intimacy between mothers and children and the universality of it,” Haug explained. “Being a mother is an intimate act. You share your body with someone, you breastfeed someone, you change their diapers, but there’s also this whole other world, and you have to exist in society.”

Mothership does not function on the level of history, news headlines, policies and theories, but rather in the bodies and lives of real people. The political critique within Mothership rests in the idea that in a world which abstractly politicizes human beings, shifting one’s attention to the personal is a form of protest.

Another installation, “Summer of Love Trading Cards,” features prominent figures from San Francisco’s Summer of Love. Created as a San Francisco Arts Commission series, the large, poster-sized “trading cards” hang in the SebArts auditorium.

Local politics as a political art piece

The last event connected to the exhibit is a performance piece called “Water & Sewer Ratepayer’s Town Hall,” which will take place in the SebArts auditorium on August 28. In it, Haug will lay out the three-year saga that began with looking at her water bill and wondering why it was so high and ends with her efforts to get the city of Sebastopol to reimburse millions of dollars to its Water and Sewer funds. (That effort is still a work in progress.)

Haug went from a civilian critic of how the city handled its water and sewer funds to a member of Sebastopol’s Enterprise Funds Oversight Committee (EFOC), a committee she lobbied the city to create. In June, Haug and the committee released an exhaustively detailed 22-page report, detailing where the city had erred over the years in its handling of its water and sewer funds—and how much money it needed to repay those funds. (See our article on her report here.) The Sonoma County Grand Jury released a similar (though less detailed) report around the same time that suggested that the city owed its enterprise funds $5.5 million. (See our article on the Grand Jury report here.)

Haug sees her report as a roadmap for putting the Grand Jury’s recommendations into practice. At a city council meeting in June, she was given just two minutes to explain the report and her recommendations.

The Ratepayer’s Town Hall will begin with a lecture that is more comprehensive than the one she was allowed to give to the city council.

“It’s to give people a broader understanding of what the laws are. What’s going on here? What is this system? What is Prop 218? What is Prop 26?” Haug said.

And then there will be a discussion. “It’s going to be participatory because I want to actually hear what people think because we’re at this juncture, which is that the money for the infrastructure is not there, but we really need to get the infrastructure going. It’s pretty critical.”

The “Water & Sewer Ratepayer’s Town Hall” will be a performance piece, a PSA breakdown of a complex issue and a community meeting to find a practical path forward.

More broadly, “Ratepayer’s Town Hall” will open up a discursive meditation on municipal politics, bureaucracy and what it means to live in a democracy.

“There are precedents for artists, instead of just protesting, going into the system and seeing what happens to it,” Haug said.

She said she was inspired by artists like Susannah Dakin, who ran for president in 1984; Lowell Darling, who ran for governor of California in 1978 and 2010; Ravio Puusemp, who ran for mayor of Rosendale, New York, won and dissolved the town as a conceptual project in social sculpture.

She reflected on all her time spent in the world of Sebastopol’s politics: “It’s almost like being in a reality TV show…but that is democracy. That’s the thing. It’s civil bureaucracy. It’s people trying to be heard.”

The “Water & Sewer Ratepayer’s Town Hall” performance will take place on Friday, August 28, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm with a cocktail hour beforehand.

The opening reception for “Collaborative Practices” is Saturday, Aug. 8. The drawing rally, with the theme of “Draw your mother or child,” is from 2 pm to 4 pm, while the opening reception is from 4 pm to 6 pm. The reception features a performance from 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

Collaborative Practices events in August

15 Minutes for Moms/ with Sebastopol Regional Library Family Storytime - Aug 5,12, 19, 26

Studio Process: Mother Mandala - Aug 9

Science Buzz Cafe - The Science of Motherhood in Collaboration with Knowable Magazine - Aug 10

Zine Workshop “Draw Your Family / Draw Your Story” - Aug 15 & 16

Mom/Tot/Baby/ Kid Clothing Swap - Aug 22

Neighborhood Cocktail Hour and Ratepayer Town Hall - Aug 28

The seasonal AmeriCorps Trail along the Laguna de Santa Rosa at the eastern edge of the city of Sebastopol is not a very long trail. In fact, if you laid all the pages of planning documents, grant applications, conservation easements, environmental reports and work orders for this trail end-to-end, they might be longer than the trail itself.

Originally part of the city of Sebastopol’s Laguna Master Plan from 1992, the first trail work wasn’t begun until 2003, when a contingent of over 100 AmeriCorps workers and volunteers completed a one-day service project to clear blackberry brambles and to blaze a rough route along the edge of the wetlands. The work was difficult—with muddy terrain, a steep creek channel and restricted access. A full path was never completed that summer.

In fact, the full length of the half-mile trail has never officially been opened to the public until just a few weeks ago after a City of Sebastopol public works crew mowed and weed-whacked the trail’s route between the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center to the meadow just north of the Highway 12 bridge.

The formal entrance to the Americorps Trail is located at the southern end of the Community Center Parking lot. The trail parallels Morris Street, offering multiple access points.

What took so long?

The story of the AmeriCorps Trail is either one of a dogged vision and decades of volunteer efforts, or it is a saga of multi-layers of government permits, bureaucratic delays and years of mounting expenditures. In the end, the full story of how a short trail took such a long time to complete probably contains elements of “all of the above.”

After the AmeriCorps youth volunteer workday in 2003, the trail was reclaimed by invasive Tibetan blackberry vines and other plants. AmeriCorps made another visit in 2007, which was described this way in a recent report: “The unpaved, seasonally used dirt trail was modestly improved by AmeriCorps service members in 2007.” In 2011, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation won a restoration grant, which funded several more workdays that cleared portions of the trail.

But then, it languished.

A 2015 Laguna Wetlands Preserve Restoration and Management Plan described the state of the trail this way: “The AmeriCorps Trail’s main formal entrance is in the Youth Park, on the south side of the baseball fields. Often this entrance, and the sign denoting it, are obscured by fast-growing Himalayan blackberry. The trail itself is frequently flooded in winter. Two other unmarked entry paths lead from Morris Street to the trail; these are frequently used by illegal campers and are not well known to the general public. Another entry is immediately south of the wastewater lift station. Park signage is present on the back of this property, but is not readily noticeable to passersby on Morris Street. South of this area, the trail is not maintained, and dead ends at Zimpher Creek. Homeless campers and others looking for a hidden place to gather are currently the main users of this section.”

In 2018, the city of Sebastopol applied for a $126,943 matching grant from the County’s Ag+Open Space District to rebuild the trail. According to an Ag + Open Space document from the time, the city cobbled together matching funds from several sources, including at $1,439 City in-kind project management; $87,079 City CIP Budget; $28,000 Laguna Foundation WPP grant; and $10,425 City in-kind operations and management. The total budget for the project was $253,887.

Consultants for the city designed a permanent trail with portions of infill, sections of boardwalk and a pedestrian bridge over the outlet of Zimpher Creek. But the county Open Space District later required an environmental impact study and prohibited the infill and boardwalk. The California Department of Fish and Game also raised concerns that blocked future trail work for several more years.

While the trail disappeared beneath a jungle of vegetation, the grant project itself stalled in a thicket of bureaucratic documentation. It took six years to get all the easements and covenants—and then the amendments to them—correctly submitted to the county.

Council awarded the construction contract for the 48-foot-long pedestrian bridge to Pat Nelson Construction in June 2023, but it wasn’t completed until 2025 at a cost of $214,877. The bridge work was delayed twice by added environmental requirements from the state Regional Water Quality Control Board and by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Until a few weeks ago, it was a bridge to nowhere, ending in a patch of overgrown blackberry vines.

Planning and work on the trail has taken so long that it predates the longest tenure of any current city councilmember. Councilmember Neysa Hinton, who was first elected in 2016, has repeatedly voiced frustrations over how long it has taken to complete the trail.

“It’s hard to believe how long this has taken,” Hinton told the Sebastopol Times this week. “But I’m glad the AmeriCorps Trail is open, and I can’t wait to walk it.”

Despite the delays, she said the many years of work and volunteerism have shown how the Sebastopol community “values our walkable community and parks.”

Councilmember Phill Carter has also made opening the trail one of his goals. This spring, several volunteer workdays were scheduled then cancelled due to wet conditions. Carter said another volunteer workday is planned for September.

“We had hoped to hold a trail opening in conjunction with the Climate Action Committee this spring,” said Oriana Hart, Sebastopol’s Public Works director. “We had late rains and an early cool summer that has kept the area too wet for our equipment.”

Hart said that the City public works crews “finally had some success with vegetation management” during the final weeks of July.

“Longer term, I would love to continue the discussion about installing a raised boardwalk,” she said. “That would allow year-round access while protecting the wetlands, but it will require additional funding.”

Over the past five years, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation has organized work crews to control invasive plant species throughout the Laguna. However, those funds from the county’s Sonoma Water agency and Watershed Partners Program expired this year.

“We don’t have an active involvement with the [AmeriCorps] trail,” said Brent Reed, Stewardship Director at the Foundation. “But we’re always asking the City how we might help. We’d like to see the ongoing maintenance needs minimized, and we’re good at organizing volunteers. But you always need more money for these kinds of efforts.”

Open at last, at least for now

After more than three decades of planning, permitting and repeated clearing, the full length of the trail is finally open to the public. The total cost for the project hovers at about $800,000, and it remains a “work in progress.”

The trail is not a paved or flat path. It is a rough and difficult walk with very muddy spots and uneven terrain. Only lots more footsteps will improve this latest access to the unique habitat of the Laguna and the eastern edge of a city that prides itself on being “trailblazing” (though this word is usually meant in the political sense).

Every year, the city of Sebastopol sets up a seasonal footbridge connecting hikers to the east side of the Laguna Trail system. Now that bridge is finally connected to the newly opened AmeriCorps Trail.

The AmeriCorps Trail also connects, at its southern end, to the meadow that hosts artist Ned Kahn’s 28-foot-tall shimmering tower called “Sebastopol Spire,” which was dedicated in September 2024.

Like the AmeriCorps Trail, Kahn’s sculpture was another saga of government-induced delay. Eight years in the process, the public art project that eventually became the Sebastopol Spire was originally planned as a series of kinetic “banners” along the Highway 12 bridge, with metal scales that captured the movement of the wind. Caltrans nixed that design, fearing the flags would prove so entrancing as to cause traffic safety issues.

Redesigned as a spire covered in metal scales that move with the wind, Sebastopol Spire was sited far enough away from the road that Caltrans had no say over its design. Its location also made it relatively inaccessible. That problem, at least, has now been solved by completion of the AmeriCorps trail.

On July 25, Sebastopol Walks sponsored a walk that joined the AmeriCorps Trail where Zimpher Creek pours into the Laguna. Walk leader Peter Schurch started the walk in the Town Plaza and led about 40 hikers along the submerged course of Zimpher Creek, through the Barlow commercial district. At the Laguna, Schurch introduced the group to artist Ned Kahn, who shared the story of the “Sebastopol Spire” on the AmeriCorps Trail.

The AmeriCorps Trail is currently open to the public during daylight hours. Following the September volunteer workday, a ribbon-cutting or modest ceremony may still be in the offing.

Once the rains return this fall, the city’s shortest trail may again be facing another long closure.

This is Part 2 of a two-part recap of the Aug. 4 Sebastopol City Council meeting. Read Part 1 here.

After Enterprise Funds Oversight Committee member Kate Haug’s scalding public comment at the beginning of the evening (see Part 1), the council quickly adopted one of the low-hanging fruit suggestions from the EFOC report: reimbursing $350,354 in legal fees that were charged to Sebastopol’s Water and Sewer funds. As Haug pointed out in the EFOC Report, money allocated for legal services for water and sewer far exceeded the time that the city attorney actually spent working on water and sewer issues.

According to the EFOC financial report, “Prop. 218 and Prop. 26 explicitly state that the City cannot make a “profit” or use Ratepayer Fees as a tax. The City charged ratepayers $184,587 for legal fees for FY 2024/2025. Records show that only $13,850 was billed by attorneys for services rendered to Enterprise Funds. That means the City made a profit of $170,737. For FY 2025-2026, $189,263 was allocated. I have requested the attorney bills, and thus far, that shows $9,651.50 was billed, resulting in a $179,617 profit for the City. A total refund of $350,354 is owed to the Ratepayers/Enterprise Funds for this excessive allocation of Attorney’s Fees.”

On Tuesday, the council voted unanimously to reimburse its Water and Sewer funds the full $350,354.

Councilmember Stephen Zollman thanked Mayor McLewis for bringing this item forward, but also offered a defense for how such misallocations occurred in the first place.

“We need to start making amends and make amends as quickly as possible,” he said. “So even if this does affect the General Fund, the reserves, whatever, we can just start doing what’s right in acknowledging the fact that it’s probably true that past councils probably did defer to staff. You know, like, why shouldn’t we? … We’re not experts in this. We pay staff to deliver the best advice that they can, and then we try to be the best that we can with this. And clearly, that’s what happened with prior councils. And so now we know better. We should do better.”

While Councilmember Phill Carter agreed with the reimbursement, he also stepped up to defend the staff. “I just want to defend staff just a little bit because it wasn’t a choice to overbill the enterprise funds. It was a function of the cost-allocation plan that we all adopted a few years ago.”

In reality, that cost allocation plan—and the previous one from 2000—was the work of a paid consultant, hired for their expertise in the field of municipal finance.

The $350,354 will be divided between the two enterprise funds: Water will receive $130,867 and Sewer, $219,487. The money will come from the city’s reserve.

Councilmember Maurer asked Finance Director Ana Kwong how the reimbursement would affect the city’s reserve percentage. The city of Sebastopol’s General Fund Reserve Policy sets a minimum floor of 15% of annual operating expenditures, with a stated long-term goal of maintaining a 20% reserve.

After the reimbursement, the reserve will drop slightly to 24%. Because the city is in a structural deficit — meaning it’s currently spending more than it’s making—any spending down of the reserve brings the City closer to the precipice and gives it less time to make the needed adjustments.

Should people be allowed to sit or lie on the sidewalks in Sebastopol?

The mayor introduced a proposed ordinance that would have made it illegal to sit or lie on a sidewalk in Sebastopol between the hours of 7 am and 11 pm. According to the staff report, “The prohibition is intended to maintain safe and accessible pedestrian pathways, support walkable neighborhoods, and protect the vitality of local businesses during peak hours of commercial and residential sidewalk use.”

Mayor McLewis said she has heard complaints from some local businesses about homeless individuals sleeping in their doorways—and has seen this herself.

Police Chief Sean McDonagh argued for the ordinance as a tool for his officers to use in dealing with certain individuals. “This just tightens up the availability of enforcement for us, rather than us having more of a gray area … we can really come in and actually have that conversation with the person and say you need to move. We’d like you to vacate the front of this business so they can open and commence serving their patrons, rather than just having words of encouragement that are not followed through.”

A citation would have to be preceded by a warning, but penalties included a fine of $100–$500, community service, and/or up to ten days in County Jail.

Modeled on similar ordinances in Santa Rosa and San Francisco, the proposal immediately raised the hackles of the other councilmembers.

Councilmembers Maurer, Zollman and Hinton said they thought the ordinance was ripe for selective enforcement. Zollman and Maurer said they feared it could be used against political protesters doing a sit-in.

Mayor McLewis argued that it was never intended to be used in the case of civil disobedience, but was clearly focused on people, i.e., the homeless, sitting or lying in on the sidewalk and in front of businesses, a problem she said has gotten worse over the years.

“I lived here only 12 years, but I see it as a bigger problem now than I’ve ever seen it. And businesses are becoming frustrated. I’m becoming frustrated, and we need to give the tools to our public safety officers to actually be able to help us out here.”

Her colleagues weren’t having it.

Interestingly, public comment was more mixed.

Michelle Kelly argued that sleeping in town was safer than sleeping in the Laguna. She said she’s rarely seen people sleeping in front of businesses on her early morning walks, and even if she did, she would consider that an opportunity for compassion, not punishment. “When I see folks in rough conditions, I ask if they need a cup of coffee and a pastry. We have the ability to be compassionate … I’m frustrated even hearing this conversation.”

She also pointed out the anecdotal nature of the evidence supporting this proposal.

“I walk early mornings in downtown. I don’t see high numbers. We need some evidence. Let’s do an evidence-based ordinance. We don’t have that. Anecdotal doesn’t work. Please look at me,” she said to the mayor. “Anecdotal doesn’t work. This is a big ordinance, and the evidence just isn’t there.”

Commenter Kate Haug argued that Sebastopol is doing more than its fair share for the homeless already, in terms of various programs around town, as well as two permanent supportive housing complexes and other low-income housing.

“So Sebastopol is actually pulling like three or like maybe even 10 times its weight when it comes to homeless services … I’m downtown a lot. There are a lot of people who are using public spaces in pretty selfish ways. I would say you can’t privatize a public sidewalk by turning it into your bedroom. You can’t privatize a public park by turning it into your apartment.”

Oliver Dick agreed. “Again, this is the weakest link problem that we have a lot of in Sebastopol. The more you put out the welcome shingle for people who are unhoused, disadvantaged, mentally ill, whatever it is, the more people will come here, and then that’s more and more expensive for the city, more and more of the police’s time, and it just doesn’t work. So yeah, I approve of this measure absolutely.”

Kyle Falbo argued that the law was not written to simply keep the sidewalks clear. “It’s a law against poverty,” he said. “It would make it illegal to sit or lie on public sidewalks anywhere in Sebastopol from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. even when no one is blocking pedestrian access. That distinction tells us what this ordinance is really regulating: it’s not obstruction, but poverty and the public visibility of poor people.”

Recalling the ACLU lawsuit over Sebastopol’s RV ordinance, Falbo said, “Are we that amnesiac here that we don’t understand that when we try to do laws against poverty, we’re gonna get sued?”

When the discussion returned to the dais, all four of the Mayor’s colleagues lined up against this ordinance.

“There’s just no way I’m supporting this,” said Councilmember Hinton, who noted that in her all her years here she’d only seen a homeless person blocking a business once. “We are Peacetown. I take that seriously. We’re a liberal town, I think, but we’re peaceful, and we appreciate people—all people,” she said firmly. “There’s just no way.”

Zollman said “Ditto,” and reiterated his concerns about selective enforcement, the legal risk, and the unintended consequence of providing the police with a tool against civil disobedience.

Maurer echoed these concerns.

Clearly frustrated, McLewis said, “I just implore my colleagues to pull your head out of the sand and look at what’s happening to our downtown. And as a business owner, I don’t know what to tell you. I see this all the time. I have businesses complaining to me, so I will be referring them all to you, and I’ll be giving them your names when they have trouble. And then, I implore you to come up with some other solutions to help deal with the challenges that are downtown.”

She made a motion to pass the ordinance; no one seconded it, so it died on arrival.

Her comment about her fellow councilmember having their heads in the sand didn’t sit well with them. Zollman pointed out the efforts that the council (and he in particular) had made to deal with homelessness in downtown: from the HEART Program to his work with the Homeless Coalition to the Citizens Police Academy, which he said the police have been reluctant to organize.

Dealing with racist harassment by high school students behind Safeway

This spring a small group of high school students sprayed racist and Nazi graffiti on a wall behind Safeway. (See our article on this unfortunate event.) The perpetrators were found and cited by the Sebastopol Police within 24 hours, and they were referred to the juvenile justice system.

Then in June, a different group of students hanging out behind Safeway on Pitt Avenue began making monkey sounds at two black children at the apartment complex across the way. This was also reported to police.

Neighbors say this is not the first instance of this behavior, and they are dreading the start of school, when they expect groups of students to appear again at this spot.

Victims of this harassment, which includes adults as well as children, say they’ve reported their concerns to the police, the high school, and to Safeway, but somehow their complaints have fallen between the cracks.

At the last council meeting, one of the victims of this harassment asked the city council to add the issue to the agenda at an upcoming council meeting, which Councilmember Zollman did.

Mayor Jill McLewis said she has been in contact with the victims. She, the police chief, Analy’s principal, and the ever-changing management of Safeway have also been having regular monthly meetings—though these mostly focused on the problems of shoplifting and of students hanging out in front of Safeway.

The victims of this harassment and their supporters decided they wanted to postpone this item so that everyone involved could attend the council meeting, but since it was already on the agenda, Zollman decided to move forward with a request asking City Attorney Alex Mog to prepare a report on what the city could do about this problem.

Mog noted that the neighbors have made several suggestions: that Safeway build a fence around this area to keep people out; that either Safeway or the city install cameras to identify troublemakers; that graffiti be cleaned up immediately (Safeway has committed to cleaning up graffiti within 24 hours), or possible legal action around the area being “an attractive nuisance.”

There was a tense interchange between Mog and Zollman around the question of restorative justice. Zollman, a former juvenile public defender, asked if there was some way the city could offer a restorative justice option to juvenile perpetrators before embroiling them in the legal system.

Mog clearly thought that restorative justice was an option offered once you are in the juvenile justice system; otherwise, how could you compel someone to do it?

Zollman said there were programs where restorative justice was offered as an alternative to entering the juvenile justice system.

“Because having represented youth, that is an option,” Zollman said. “You bring the parents in and go, ‘Listen, little Johnny has been accused of X, Y, and Z. Here’s what’s going to happen. Here’s an option to do restorative justice, or our police can haul them away, do fingerprints, which will be logged in the system for probably the rest of their life, and they’re going to look at jail time.”

Mog asked Zollman if he had any examples of a city with such a system.

“No,” Zollman snapped, “because this is not my job, but this is your job.”

“I’m not aware of a single local municipal authority because what it seems you’re implying is that this interaction on the street or wherever this occurs before someone is arrested or cited, this offer should be made.”

“Of course, they’ll be cited,” Zollman said hotly. “They’ll be cited, and then you have the policy saying these are your options: you can participate in restorative justice, or you can go ahead and address the prosecuting agency.”

Then he threw up his hands. “Never mind. I’m exhausted.”

The final motion went like so: “Councilmember Zollman moved and Councilmember Carter seconded the motion to approve 10 hours for city attorney time to research legal options on the response to the community concerns of the graffiti and the racial mockery associated with the Safeway area, focusing on the restorative justice model and returning this item to the September 1st City Council meeting.”

The motion carried 3 to 2, with McLewis and Hinton dissenting.

The EIFD moves forward

Cast your mind back to 2024 and early 2025 when most everyone on the council—except Jill McLewis—was all aflutter about the possibilities of creating an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District or EIFD

An EIFD is a special kind of financing district that captures a percentage of the increase in property taxes that result from rising property values and uses it to fund infrastructure improvements within the district. An EIFD siphons off a portion of those increases, which would normally go to the County, and sets the money aside in a restricted account that can only be used for infrastructure.

It’s a complicated municipal financing instrument—and it was late, and everyone was exhausted—and Councilmember Phill Carter’s attempted explanation of the EIFD was so garbled as to be incoherent.

Councilmember Hinton said Sebastopol’s efforts to create an EIFD with the County were put on hold for a while because the city wanted to focus on passing its sales tax measure. Now the effort to create an EIFD is back on track—and it requires some investment up front, with hopes that it’ll pay off in the future.

That investment involved the hiring of a consultant from Kosmont for financing district formation advisory services, which include, according to the staff report, “carrying the EIFD through its remaining formation steps: stakeholder and County outreach to confirm partnership, preparation of the required Infrastructure Financing Plan (IFP), and support through the public meetings and hearings needed to form the district.”

The council voted to approve the agreement with Kosmont Companies for Financing District Formation Advisory Services in an amount not to exceed $40,000, plus an additional $20,000 to look at including some areas outside of the City.

In discussions, it came to light that the effort to form an EIFD would also require city staff to devote about 10 hours a week for six months to get the district off the ground.

That soured Councilmember Maurer on the deal, and McLewis was already dead set against it. Public commenters were also skeptical of this project.

Hinton defended it as one of the only ways for Sebastopol to wring more monetary support from the county. “I’ll just say that this replaces, in many ways, the old money cities used to get that was called redevelopment funds…It’s a long-term project, and it helps us pay for big infrastructure projects.”

The final vote was 3 to 2, with Zollman, Hinton and Carter in favor and Maurer and McLewis opposed.

Well, that was rough. Despite a host of important and provocative items on the agenda, there were just a handful of council watchers in chambers at last night’s meeting, and some council members—and public commenters—got a bit testy.

Work still got done. Council voted to remove some newspaper racks from public spaces but declined to prevent people from sitting or lying on local sidewalks. They voted to reimburse the city’s water and sewer funds for $350,354 in misallocated legal fees, approved 10 hours of legal research on the question of how to deal with racist incidents behind the Safeway, and gave the go-ahead for the city to spend money on the EIFD (Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District) in hopes of profiting from that arrangement in the future.

In Part 1 of this two-part recap, we’ll cover the beginning of the meeting, which included an unusually substantive public comment period, the consent calendar and the newspaper rack debate.

Mayor Jill McLewis, Vice Mayor Sandra Maurer, Councilmember Phill Carter, Councilmember Neysa Hinton, and Councilmember Stephen Zollman were present in chambers for the Aug. 4 Sebastopol City Council meeting.

Proclamations

The city proclaimed August 24 as Ukrainian Independence Day.

Public comment for items not on the agenda

Public comment seemed particularly interesting this week:

• In public comment, Steve Levenberg of Sebastopol World Friends thanked the council for the proclamation above and reminded the council that Sebastopol has a sister city, Chyhyryn, in Ukraine. “The people in Ukraine really appreciate any show of solidarity. It just makes them not feel so alone,” he said. “Sebastopol World Friends has been a strong supporter of Chyhyryn and has raised funds since 2022 to benefit humanitarian projects in and around Chyhyryn. The most recent one being that of renovation of a dormitory that’s housing internally displaced people who have lost their homes and often lost their cities as a result of the war. It’s very exciting tonight to announce that Sister City International recently awarded Sebastopol World Friends the award for Innovation in Humanitarian Assistance.” He noted that Sebastopol World Friends continues to raise funds for the dormitory project, and said that Rotary Sebastopol, in coordination with a Ukrainian Rotary Club, received a $140,000 grant to help with the completion of that project.

• Bianca Blomquist praised the work of “Keep Sebastopol Local,” a group opposed to Grocery Outlet coming to town. “I just wanted to recognize the work that the Keep Sebastopol Local campaign is doing, and how important it is that the City Council sticks to its General Plan. Keep Sebastopol Local campaign is doing a great job of reminding folks of what that General Plan is,” she said. “But we just really encourage the City Council to continue to evaluate how the Grocery Outlet proposal will impact our workers and the small business owners and the small grocers and independent grocers that already exist in Sebastopol. Economists like to call this the local multiplier effect. That for every $100 spent at a locally owned business, it generates about $68 in local economic activity, and then this is compared with just $43 at a national chain … As the famous economist Michael Sturman says, ‘The more times and the faster $1 passes between hands without leakage, the more income, wealth, and jobs in a community.’”

• Laurie Ogg, representing the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, presented a resolution proclaiming August 26, 2026, as Women's Equality Day in Sonoma County.

• The indefatigable Kate Haug held the council’s feet to the fire regarding the City's alleged misallocation of Water and Sewer funds:
  “I am here to ask why the council and city did not respond to the financial documents produced by the EFOC in the city’s Grand Jury reply? [See our article on the Enterprise Funds Oversight Committee report.] The EFOC has at least 50 pages of financial documentation based on actual city budgets. Why was this not included in the Grand Jury reply? When the council says they want to research more to determine the dollar amount owed to the enterprise funds, why didn’t they respond to all the financial analysis the EFOC has provided? The city organized the EFOC. The ratepayers pay probably $1,500 or more for each meeting, as staff is paid to prepare for and attend the meetings. Why is there no response to the fact that the finance administration cost tripled in nine years to almost $1 million, even though the number of accounts and services remained steady? How come there’s no response to the fact that the cost allocation plan wasn’t adjusted after doubling the size of the finance department, which most likely accounts for the fact that expenses tripled? How come there’s no response to the fact that the current council has allotted the enterprise funds for over 50 percent of their entire budget, even though we all know this is not a true allocation. The EFOC has recommended efficiencies in the finance department. Why hasn’t council responded? The EFOC has recommended getting bids for third-party vendors for billing to reduce costs to ratepayers. Why hasn’t the council responded? Why are ratepayers paying for the EFOC if the council is not going to address the issues with which the EFOC is presented? Why is there no response to the council from valid work that has been done? One of the EFOC’s recommendations is for a forensic accountant.”

• Lisa and Steve Pierce shared a 2-minute comment period to respond to a recent suggestion by the Building the Commons committee to move the library, city hall, the senior center, the community cultural center and other nonprofits to the O’Reilly site. Lisa said she hoped the library, at least, could remain downtown. “The library should be central and easily accessed by students and pedestrians in town, while the community center, which hosts events with hundreds of people, requires ample and available parking by the event space,” she said. “These two needs don’t lend themselves to being under the same roof.” Steve elaborated on this idea, noting that, if City Hall moved to the O’Reilly site, the library (9,400 sq. ft.) could remain where it is, and expand into the space between it and what is currently the city hall property—the in-between space being roughly 5,000 sq. ft. He noted that the existing city hall building would have to be torn down and replaced with a two-story building (8,000 sq. ft.). Altogether, these would add up to the 22,000 sq. ft. space the Sonoma County Library would, ideally, like a new Sebastopol Library to be.

• Kyle Falbo accused the council of “not representing the needs or the interests of the residents of the city of Sebastopol. These council members here are serving the interests of the city employees and city management.” After accusing councilmembers of never questioning the advice of the city manager, financial director or city attorney, despite the questionable recommendations staff has made over the last several years, he said, “We need electeds that serve our residents and the interests of our residents and are not just puppets for the city administration.”

Quick look at the Consent Calendar

The consent calendar consists of items that are routine in nature or don’t require additional discussion, often because they’ve been discussed extensively at a previous council meeting.

In addition to approving the minutes of earlier meetings, the council unanimously approved the following:

• Approved an amendment to the municipal code to give the City Manager the authority to hire a City Clerk.

• Approved voting delegates and alternates for the League of California Cities Annual Conference & Expo. Mayor McLewis will be attending the conference.

• Extend the contract with 8th Wave, a contractor hired to deal with HUD compliance and other issues involving Gravenstein Commons.

The issue of creating a TOT sharing arrangement with the Barlow Hotel—reimbursing the hotel for 50% of its TOT taxes—was moved to the regular agenda for more discussion, but we’ll cover it here.

Public commenters Kyle Falbo, Michelle Kelley and Bianca Blomquist argued that the wording of the amendment to the development agreement gave the city no leverage to ensure those funds would be used to market all of Sebastopol and not just the Barlow Hotel.

Here was the language in question:

“The Developer is required to use the TOT rebate for advertisement of tourism in the City of Sebastopol, including the Barlow Hotel. The City is entitled to request and receive, at least annually, documentation on how the TOT was spent.”

The council seemed satisfied with the amendment as written and voted to approve it on a 3 to 1 vote, Maurer dissenting. (Mayor McLewis recused herself because she runs a small business across the street from the proposed hotel site.)

Regular Agenda

Most newspaper racks to be removed from public right of way

As part of Mayor McLewis’s ongoing efforts to spruce up the city, the council asked city attorney Alex Mog to come up with an ordinance to deal with unsightly, often abandoned newspaper racks. He introduced this ordinance at last night’s meeting.

According to the staff report, the highlights of this ordinance include the following:

Under the ordinance, newsracks are prohibited near certain critical access points, such as within ten feet of any fire hydrant, crosswalk, curb ramp, or driveway. Additionally, the ordinance prohibits newsracks in locations that impede the flow of pedestrian, wheelchair, or vehicular traffic.

There are a number of other rules regulating placement of newsracks in order to minimize blight by overconcentration of newsracks in certain location. For example, the ordinance requires newsracks to be located at least 100 feet of each other, and prohibits more than three (3) newsracks on any individual block. A permit is required before any new newsrack can be installed, and the ordinance establishes requirements for staff to process the requirement in a timely manner.

Under the ordinance existing newsracks have six (6) months to come into compliance with the various location requirements or be removed.

The proposed ordinance’s maintenance standards are intended to ensure that newsracks are maintained in a safe and clean condition. Among other requirements, newsracks must be kept free of graffiti and any plastic/glass parts must be unbroken and free of cracks.

Additionally, the name, address, and telephone number for the owner must be affixed to newsrack.

Newsracks remaining empty for sixty days will be deemed abandoned under the ordinance. An abandoned newsrack may be removed by the City and disposed of if it is not claimed by the responsible party within thirty days.

Vice Mayor Maurer noted that this language would require the removal of the large 8-box rack in front of the theater at the corner of Main Street and Bodega. She also raised a concern about impeding the freedom of the press to distribute their work.

Speaking of the 8-box rack in downtown, she said, “So in that rack, there’s a little library. There’s the Community Voice. There’s La Prensa, which is a Spanish news, and there’s the Bohemian. So were any of these papers reached? Did anybody reach out to them to ask them their opinion of removing the rack?”

No one had.

The problem, according to City Manager Mary Gourley, was that the city didn’t know who (if anyone) actually owned the racks around the city, though she said they were endeavoring to find out.

In public comment, Michelle Kelly “liberated” an old, defunct, faded red plastic realtor circular box and wheeled it into the council chamber. She wondered if realtor and other advertising boxes raised the same constitutional issues as newspaper racks. (City Attorney Alex Mog said commercial speech was a form of free speech.) Kelly also noted how these racks and boxes crowded the sidewalks and wondered why the ordinance hadn’t mentioned ADA sidewalk-width requirements. Finally, she questioned the “3 per block, 100-foot spacing” and asked for more objective, evidence-based design standards. Regarding boxes like the one she brought in, she said, “They’re blight wherever they are. This is horrible … Nobody wants this.”

Kate Haug worried about the cost to the city of this ordinance and wondered if the problem of junk racks couldn’t be dealt with in a more forthright way.

“I’m just wondering how much all of this is going to cost to notice and re-notice and go back and forth. Many of these boxes, I too have seen over the last four years, they’re completely shot and abandoned. They look like garbage standing on the street…It almost just seems—if it’s not in use for like three months—that it should just get picked up and put into the garbage.”

Oliver Dick worried about the liability of having defunct metal racks cluttering the public right-of-way. He suggested that the unhoused might pick them up and throw them at passing cars, and the city might be held at fault for that if the owners of the racks couldn’t be identified.

As the co-owner of the Sebastopol Times, I suggested the city simply call up the few remaining print newspapers—the Press Democrat, the Bohemian and the Community Voice—all of whom have or use distribution services, and ask them for their help in dealing with the issue of unsightly or unused racks.

In council comment, Councilmember Zollman echoed the concern about the liability —though not about rack-throwing homeless people—but said he was worried about the cost of enforcement. Oddly, he seemed concerned that the street-level enforcement of this ordinance would be left up to the police. (Enforcement would actually be up to the building inspector.)

Hinton said she was comfortable with the idea that sticking a notice for six months on racks to be removed would be enough to notify newspaper distributors and the owners of the racks about their impending removal.

In the end, the council voted 3 to 2 (Maurer and Zollman dissenting) to approve the ordinance and pave the way for the removal of at least some of the newspaper racks around Sebastopol.

Weather experts agree that a “super” El Niño season is developing this fall. In this community meeting, McGuire and a panel of experts will dive into what weather forecasters project in the coming months and how you can stay informed and keep your family safe during severe weather events.

What: Super El Niño Town Hall - Separating Fact from Fiction
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Where: Virtual
Who: Senator McGuire, climate researcher Dr. Daniel Swain, Bay Area meteorologist Mark Tamayo, and leadership from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the California Office of Emergency Services.

RSVP or send your questions here.

If you need help registering for this event or with any other legislative matter, call McGuire’s office at (707) 576-2771 or email Senator.McGuire@senate.ca.gov.

Thanks to Tasha Beauchamp for passing this information along.