Easy election of Mayor Sanders

At its meeting on Wednesday, the Sonoma City Council unanimously elected council member Joanne Sanders to serve as Mayor for the next year. “As your mayor, there is no ‘I’ in my agenda,” Sanders said, thanking the other council members. “It’s about what you as representatives of our constituencies want to get done.” She did stress that financial pressures will likely worsen and that the council “must keep our budget in mind.” Council member Ken Brown was elected to serve as Mayor Pro Tem.
After a few routine items of business, including the ratification of the employment contract for Linda Kelly, the new city manager, the council then heard an hour-long staff presentation regarding the revised Montini Preserve trail design put forward by the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. That was followed by almost two hours of public comment. At the end, none of the council members was willing to support the proposal.
The $13.9 million acquisition of the Montini Preserve in December 2005 was funded by $11.5 million from the Open Space District, $1.15 million from the City of Sonoma, and $1.25 million from the California State Coastal Conservancy. The Open Space District proposed to build hiking trails with access from Fifth Street West in order to fulfill the Conservancy’s requirement for public access.
State Parks Trail Supervisor Don Beers, regarded as one of the foremost trail experts in the nation, had designed the trails. His expertise is trail design that requires the least amount of maintenance and that does not disrupt the natural hydrology and drainage of the landscape. Four trail segments were proposed:
1. Lower Trail: First Street West access through the Police Station parking lot/Field of Dreams
2. Upper Trail: Traverses the preserve from east to west
3. Rattlesnake Cutoff: Leads eastward from the connection of the Lower and Upper Trails to connect with the Overlook Trail on the adjoining Mountain Cemetery property
4. Western Spur: Provides access for neighborhoods on the west side of town.
The proposal brought out a crowd of some 80 people, 22 of whom addressed the council. Among the speakers were Larry Barnett and Al Mazza, who recalled the original discussions of the Montini acquisition while they were serving as council members themselves.
There were two principal issues of concern for them, as for most of the speakers: do the cows stay, and is there access across the meadows bordering Fifth Street West. To alleviate public concern over these issues, the district had, since its proposal was first aired several weeks ago, moved the Fifth Street access point north to the intersection with Verano Avenue and had reduced the proposed parking for handicapped access there from ten cars to two.
However, the possibility of accepting the staff’s recommendations foundered when, toward the end of the public comments, Bill Montini came forward and said he would pull his cows if the proposal were adopted. Noting that the examples of successful mingling of cows and public put forth by staff had involved beef cattle, not dairy cows, and citing his insurance carrier’s concerns, Montini said that he would not keep cows on the property any longer if the public had unfettered access across the Fifth Street meadows.
“This community loves its cows,” council member August Sebastiani said as he recalled fond memories from his youth. “For me Montini is a space of agricultural preservation.”
“I don’t think we can go ahead with this tonight,” council member Steve Barbose said. “We’ve tried to mesh what the people want – to see the cows – and we have to provide handicapped access; not only is that legally required, it’s the right thing to do.”
The council hopes that state representatives, including Assemblyman Jared Huffman, can help pressure the state parks system to accept access to the Montini property from the bike path through the existing Vallejo home park, thus avoiding the need for public access through the cow pasture on Fifth Street West. No date was set for the council’s next consideration of a revised proposal.