Letters to the Editor

Republican firm
conducted
Sebastiani’s survey
Editor: I am dismayed that the story about Don Sebastiani’s voter-attitude survey does not delve into the fact that it was conducted among approximately 300 Sonoma residents by Dresner, Wickers & Associates in San Francisco, a political consulting firm specializing in Republican candidates and causes. Why use a Republican consulting firm unless you are looking for biased results? That is the story. Should all wealthy Sonomans that can afford a survey hire their own politically biased surveyors so we can fight about that? A survey by a company that supports Republican political causes is nothing new, but it is being covered by the newspapers as common and legitimate. Another item not even touched by the “press” is that the creche was, of course, one of the questions on the survey. A Republican, conservative cause. What a surprise! It just happens to be one of the Sebastianis’ objectives to revive the creche in the plaza. I believe we all know that how questions are asked can alter a survey. A politically neutral survey is the only legitimate survey that should be considered by the community and reported as factual. It should be funded by the city if the results are to be used by the city to initiate or alter policy. This should be obvious to anyone. Pushing the creche controversy back onto the front page by the Sebastianis is divisive to the community and is their personal agenda. Don’t let them use the paper for their political agenda. Please cover the complete story. We already have a newspaper that does half the story in this community. I think of your paper as different.
Diana Lee Craig

Vallejo descendant
offers clarification
Editor: Gerald Hill mentioned in his June 7 historical article about Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson that Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado was a cousin of General Mariano Vallejo. He was a nephew of the general. He was the first-born son of Maria Josepha Vallejo; the general was her brother.
Maria Josepha was my great-great-grandmother. Her first husband was Fancisco Alvarado. When he died, she married by great-great-grandfather, Jose Raimundo Estrada, who was an officer at the presidio of San Francisco. One of the offspring of their marriage was my great-grandfather, Jose Tomas Joaquin Estrade, who was the grantee of the Santa Margarita Rancho near San Luis Obispo. This rancho and the others that he owned covered about 45,000 acres.
Thornton Jenkins

How Sonoma got its democracy back
Editor: After a bitterly criticized aberration from long-traditional council practice, and despite fierce opposition from councilmembers August Sebastiani and Joanne Sanders during a wide-ranging debate that lasted more than an hour, the Sonoma City Council, by a 3-2 vote on June 6, formally approved a norm that restored and formalized the right of any individual councilmember to put on the meeting agenda for council consideration any issue that any councilmember judges is deserving of councilattention.
Why is this such a big deal?
Because a three-member majority, on Feb. 7, by a tricky maneuver never before seen on the council, denied councilmember Ken Brown, with the support of Steve Barbose, the opportunity to have a resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq discussed and voted upon by the Council.
Brown was able to put it on the agenda, and some 46 supporters were able to address the Council on the issue, but Mayor Stanley Cohen had craftily set up a novel two-part procedure, whereby a majority vote was required, after public discussion (legally required by California’s Brown Act), to even admit the measure for Council consideration and action. In other words, the Council couldn’t even talk about the resolution, much less vote on it, if a majority voted against considering it. As councilmembers Sanders and Sebastiani and mayor Cohen duly voted, thus effectively muzzling two councilmembers, banning the issue that Brown and Barbose regarded as of important concern to many Sonoma voters, and hence disenfranchising those City of Sonoma voters who elected Barbose and Brown to represent them.
Each councilmember has been elected by the voters of the city at large, who have expressed faith in his or her position on current issues, and in his or her character, responsibility, personal and political judgment. For three members to decide to reject consideration an item proposed by another member amounts to denying official voice to that member, denying respect to that member, and, hence, denies a voice to the voters he is representing. If those who elected him are unhappy with the issues he is sponsoring, they will decide that at the next election; that is not for other councilmembers to decide.
Democracy and respect were restored to the Sonoma City Council on June 6, even though the last word in the proceedings was uttered by Ms. Sanders: “Crazy.”
Dave Henderson