Editorial: Another failure to lead

The Sonoma City Council has once again failed to exercise leadership, this time on the issue of leaf blowers. After months of dithering, debate and delays the final result of this week’s meeting was… let the voters decide. This is not what council members are elected to do, and it’s beyond disappointing.

‏This poor decision comes on the heels of other leadership failures; neither affordable housing, the impacts of exploding tourism or increasing homelessness have received the attention they deserve.

‏Here, the failure to lead was underscored by Council’s gross disregard of the time, money and effort of City Staff. Over many meetings, Staff and the City Attorney painstakingly helped a floundering Council conceptualize what it wanted in the way of an ordinance to vote on, only to have their work discarded when Council decided to put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide.

‏Placing items on the ballot is no simple matter. The precise language of any measure must be hammered out in detail; a simple “Shall leaf blowers be banned in Sonoma?” will not suffice. Thus, in order to place a proper measure on the ballot, Council will still have to develop the rules and regulations it was so reluctant to approve over these last few years. Arguments in favor and against will need to be drafted and included on a sample ballot.

‏A Council majority can choose to officially support or oppose any ballot measure, and if that does not happen, individual council members may author an opinion for the ballot. Of course, it would be unprecedented irony should Council take a position on a leaf blower ballot measure when, having had the opportunity to decide the issue, it refused to do so! But such “Through The Looking Glass” irrationality is not beyond this Council.

‏The better course would have been for Council to make a decision, and then, should citizens be so inclined, they could begin a petition drive to put a countervailing measure on the ballot. This, too, is not easy; the same issues of language and regulations need to be addressed. But the petition drive alone is an indication of voter interest or support, and by no means guarantees success. There are legal standards to be met and procedures that must be followed.

‏Those on the Council who supported a ballot measure may feel they’ve dodged a bullet, but in deciding to place the leaf blower issue before the voters they will discover that they have simply prolonged their agony. Sonoma may go down in history for its upcoming 2016 single-issue Leaf Blower election, upon which the future membership of the City Council may well rest.

‏And it won’t end there. Begging for leadership are issues of affordable housing, rent stabilization, homelessness, and the minimum wage, to name a few. At this point, Council may even be incapable of deciding whether to allow dogs on the Montini trail, another matter in which countless Staff hours and thousands of dollars – not to mention time and effort of citizens on both sides of the issue — have been invested. It appears, however, that voters can expect to face ballots chock full of decisions they thought they had entrusted to their elected representatives.

‏Leadership requires vision, and the courage to leap ahead of anecdotal evidence or noisy constituents. Leadership means taking risks, not licking one’s finger and holding it up to determine the direction of public opinion before voting. That’s following the herd, not leading.

–Sun Editorial Board