Was it really a surprise to anyone in town, that elections were happening this fall for Sonoma City Council?
Certainly, there’s been plenty of coverage in the Sun, as well as on the community radio station KSVY 91.3 FM, whose Morning Show host is council member Ken Brown. And SVTV27 has been carrying city council meetings live for over a year, with at least one rebroadcast and often two. The upcoming election has been discussed at length in all thee venues.
In fact, retiring council member Stanley Cohen announced early in the year his decision not to run for re-election, specifically so that people interested in running for city council would know that there’d be at least once vacant seat to be filled. And Laurie Gallian announced her intent to run for council well before forms were even available to sign up.
So it should have come as no surprise to folks that they could run for election, if they wanted to. The fact that no one else did run – well, it’s unusual, certainly. The school board election – also in November – has had a similar outcome, with two incumbents running unopposed and just one candidate for the one open seat. Are people that thrilled with the representation they have? Discouraged that it might not make any difference who’s elected? Simply too busy to care?
And being past the deadline to get on the November ballot, the council last week simply appointed the two candidates to the two seats, saving some $8,000 in election expenses. The 3-2 vote split the council, though, with council members Brown and Aug Sebastiani in dissent. On his blog afterward, Sebastiani again made an eloquent defense of “democracy,” decrying the crushed hope of someone who might still have come forward to sign up as an authorized write-in candidate. Leaving aside that oxymoron, it is unlikely that someone who failed to sign up in time to be named on the ballot would prevail in an election, nor does it speak well for that person’s preparation to serve as a representative.
Yes, we understand there COULD have been someone so inspired and this person COULD have prevailed against one of the two well-organized candidates, and we empathize with the principled position that no opportunity to stand for election should ever be denied. But politics is about compromise, balancing one interest against another in an effort to move the whole enterprise forward.
The offsetting interest here was the $8,000 savings. It may be a small item on the city budget, but it’s real money to any number of local nonprofits. Council member Steve Barbose said it well when he suggested that the money would be better invested as budget allocations to such groups as Meals on Wheels and the La Luz Center. “They’d love to have the money,” he said, “and they could put it to better use.”
And while there was a whiff of impropriety in Mayor Joanne Sanders breaking the 2-2 tie to vote in favor of appointing herself to another term, that was quickly cleared by the city’s attorney, who found no conflict of interest. Was he right? Arguably not, but it’s his job as a professional to protect the city and by extension its officials, both appointed and elected. Our representatives shouldn’t have to hire their own legal counsel, although that’s not unheard of – far better that they be able to rely upon the city attorney.
No, we doubt if any potential candidate was surprised that the election was coming. In our view, the city council made the right decision.
