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Annexation with representation

I’ve recently had a chance to chat with some Sonoma Valley Unified School District people, teachers, parents, administration, decision makers, about District issues. 

In this essay, I will connect the dots on SVUSD issues, as they stand in relation to a pattern of Sonoma and Anglo dominance of urban Sonoma valley affairs. In this essay, on the basis of universal civil and human rights, I will call for SVUSD district elections and for city annexation of the full Springs urban service area.  

Structural issues in the valley and at SVUSD

The school District is one of two in the county that is funded by property taxes, all other districts are funded on a per student basis. No and very low growth in housing here means no growth in SVUSD funding to pay teachers. The low turn-over of the residential property market, plus very low turnover of commercial property means a low appreciation of taxes to support the school system.

In 1956, the school District went from city-based to its current valley-wide scope. The idea before that was to encourage municipalities to incorporate and to have their own school districts. For various reasons, the Springs area has never incorporated nor been annexed into the City of Sonoma. Having a valley-wide District, with general elections for Trustees allowed for a pattern of Sonoma voter dominance of the District. Voters in Sonoma vote at proportionally higher levels than Springs voters

School, hospital, fire, water, sanitation, and police are all districts common to local residents that extend throughout the valley, while Sonoma stands as an island of disproportionate benefit in the middle. What this shows is that structurally, the actual municipality is at the level of the above districts and/or at the level of the combined urban service area, not just the city.  

Structural remedy is annexation

The benefits of municipal government accrue to primarily Anglo Sonomans. Keeping the city boundary static and not including the other side of the tracks amounts to structural discrimination through protective zoning. Because the Springs area is not incorporated, it has way less say and power per voter, even as residents there are members of the same common districts.

Springs incorporation is not a likely option because there is not enough tax base to support a Springs local government. Anglo Springs residents are known to be against annexation, seeing city government as an amalgam of onerous regulations and taxes. For Springs Latinos, annexation is more a matter of enfranchisement and fair representation. The onus falls on Springs-area Latinos, maybe with the help of Los Cien, to agitate for annexation, to put wind in the sails of local decision makers. Onus also falls on local citizen who feel annexation will result in fairer more adaptive planning, climate, and housing policies.

High-end hospitality tourist town

Sonoma tourism, and the city, have resisted embracing triple bottom line sustainability. The tendency is to try and frame sustainability as only a green, environmental thing. As is typical in most policy situations, social equity comes in last. Sonoma’s form of hospitality-based tourism economy results in a segregated, older, wealthier, whiter demographic. This becomes all the more pronounced coupled with the effects of Silicon Valley-generated gentrification.  

A consciously sustainable tourism policy would integrate social equity, and serve not only the visitors, but also the municipality’s people, and the future. Sustainable tourism would distribute benefits more equitably. (1) 

School systems are known to suffer in Sonoma’s type of tourism economy pattern. (see Samuel Mendlinger’s research) Rents and costs get too high, families with children are displaced, school enrollment goes down. 

 

In SVUSD, the Latino percentage of students has gone up. The Hidden in Plain Sight study and the Portrait of Sonoma County/Springs, show systemic poverty for local Latinos right next to the opulent wealth of Sonoma. District Latino families that do stay have to bear higher and higher costs on less money. 

Teacher pay and AMI

SVUSD teacher pay tops out at $76,000 after a whole career. The state average is $80,000 

For a single person, $76,000 is above 100% of the 2019 AMI (area median income) but below single person 2019 120% AMI. This means teachers make too little and would not qualify for the city inclusionary housing ordinance which only captures those who make 120% AMI.

2019 AMI is $6,500 higher than 2018. Yet, earnings for the lower end of the AMI cohort have not increased. Latino county AMI is $59,000 a year; this is below the “low income”, 80% AMI level. 65% of Latinos live in low income neighborhoods compared to 36% for whites. 11% of Latinos have bachelor’s degrees compared to 39% for whites which impacts future earnings by $22,000 a year. Starting out segregated and disadvantaged is a structural impediment with consequences for future health and earnings.

For an analysis of current and future county low wage work, see the Alliance for Just Recovery’s State of Working Sonoma report by Jesus Guzman. Guzman’s conclusion: low wage work in the county will be increasing. With the higher 2019 area median income, it’s reasonable to conclude that numbers are being manipulated to hide the true extent of regional poverty. See the new book by Seth Donnelly on how poverty is hidden through false statistics: The Lie of Global Prosperity, How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation. (2)

SVUSD is $11,000 below average pay, per teacher. Half of teachers live out of town, and commute to SVUSD for lower wages. District administrators who have recently left are making $40,000 more per year in Novato. The 90/10 medical benefits package offered by the District is good for older teachers, less valuable for younger ones, but older teachers are becoming less and less a percentage of the teacher population. 

One conclusion that can be made here is that preserving Sonoma as is will have the inevitable result of the undoing of the local school system, and keeping in place factors that contribute to negative costs of segregation. School enrollment is projected to be down 10% in ten years. 

Economic and demographic patterns

There is a connection between a high-end tourism-hospitality economy, housing costs, and school-age population displacement. As Silicon Valley investors are attracted to Sonoma by calculated regional advertising, formerly working class residential property is bought up, and area median income-level families are displaced by a rising inflation of rents. These people are not able to find other more affordable options in the valley, they are leaving the area. Five years ago, El Verano School had 500 students, now there are 350.

Baby boomer generation teachers are retiring. Older, more experienced teachers won’t move here for lower pay. The teacher mix is sorting to younger, lower-paid, and less experienced.

You could say, accurately, that the District ship is leaking and people are bailing out. 

The SVUSD population center has shifted from Sonoma to the Flowery school area in Fetter’s Hot Springs. The overall population center in lower Sonoma valley is in the Springs area, yet Sonoma and associated wealthy foothills Anglos, retain the bulk of local political and economic power. 

Student achievement

Student achievement is flat. Teachers see an a la carte consultant-based approach by administration, where one-thing-at-a-time band aids substitute for needed systemic change. District and county plans for upstream investment on younger students has moved to programs focused on older students. 

 Admittedly, “systemic change” is easy enough to call for and much harder to realize. Yet the scope of our collective problems, and the relatively small size of Sonoma valley, gives hope that actors here may be able to come together and work for a common good. If not, we’ll be locked in our same old intractable public policy disputes as the metaphorical Titanic goes down. 

District elections

The District is gerrymandered. 50% of District voters reside in two areas, Prestwood and Sassarini, and with their votes they can choose Trustees for the Dunbar, Flowery, and El Verano areas. Voters in Sonoma vote at proportionally higher levels than Springs voters. This was the case in the last Trustee election. This is a salient social justice issue that stands against California Voting Rights Act. Lines can’t be drawn to disempower a historically under-represented group. This same rationale plays into Springs annexation as well. 

 

If school district elections were to be held, the District would hire a demographer and then the Trustees decide where to draw the sub-district lines. This loops back into potential for the same gerrymandering issue, if Trustees and the school system are all Anglo dominated, how can they be fair to the under-represented?

With a letter of notice to District of a Voting Rights Act violation, the District would have 85 days to start correcting the situation, or else the District could be sued and have to pay attorney’s fees. Whoever wrote the letter would essentially have a free attorney if the District didn’t act. 

 Segregation and fair representation 

The Hidden in Plain Sight study, the 2010 Census-based Springs Portrait, and Alliance for a Just Recovery’s State of Working Sonoma report show significant local structural segregation, with multiple negative effects for local Latinos, school system and otherwise. Demographic, municipal boundaries, housing, land use, representational, and school district issues are linked.

Sonoma is 14% Latino and 80-some percent white, the Springs is 50% Latino. The City of Sonoma is to lower valley land use as the City is to the School District. The City has outsize, controlling influence over the other side of the tracks. 

Overall, school district elections and lower Sonoma valley structural segregation are fair representation issues, one party has all the power and influence, the other little to none. Political power and control in the valley is unfairly divided up. 

While the Springs MAC (Municipal Advisory Council) and the SVCAC (Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission) are efforts at fairer, more accurate representation, these are advisory bodies only, no decision-making power.

Call for Springs annexation

The city has most of the economic development, big supermarkets etc. The Springs is disenfranchised on multiple levels, under-represented, and structurally discriminated against. There is no justice in systemic lack of representation. This basically an East and West Germany-type situation, where what is called for is the West (Sonoma) to sacrifice to integrate their less well-off fellows. As locals bemoan the poor treatment of immigrants on the border, here in Sonoma valley we all have a chance to fix the same exact inequities. Let’s do it! 

Expanding Sonoma’s urban growth boundary (UGB), and then the city sphere of influence, and then annexing the full Springs urban service area is the only viable answer to existing local structural discrimination. Having the same UGB for 30 more years will not help; the city needs to take a big bite out of the Springs and divest some Anglo privilege in the name of social equity.

Possible plan: start with a 10-year UGB that takes in the Donald Street and El Verano areas, and also Sonoma east and south-side city edge areas that are similar to the 285 Napa Rd, possible Habitat for Humanity project, areas that can house 80% AMI and below Latinos, teachers, farm workers, and fire fighters. After 10 years, more moves can be made to continue to address local structural inequity issues through inclusive boundary drawing. 

What will it take? 

This program calls simultaneously for political will by local decision makers, and movement-level agitation for annexation by Springs Latinos, Springs and valley working class cohort, Los Cien, La Luz, and all non-profits that serve the local Latino population. 

The Anglo power structure will stand against this program with multiple reasons and rationales. Everyone repeats that this can never happen. “We don’t have the money” basically means a refusal to sacrifice. But who can be against social justice in our own back yard when we see a word full of strife and injustice calling to be remedied? That well-off Americans need to sacrifice undue and outsize privilege is the number one prescription for sustainability and social justice. Here and now we have problems calling to be addressed in our own authentic sphere of influence.

I’m not speaking for Sustainable Sonoma here, however a unified Sonoma Valley view, and enlisting all to work together, is the exact type of program we need to begin solving our collective, multi-fold problems. Business as usual needs to be busted down. 

District elections for the School Board will be a start, to give equal School Board representation to under-represented local Latinos. Upcoming City General Plan and UGB (urban growth boundary) public discussions will also give a chance to voice concern for status quo unfair representational and structural discrimination issues.

 

Footnotes 

 

1. IMHO, triple bottom line, full cost accounting sustainability is an apt and adaptive framing of how to conceive of and address human system problems. Some see the very idea of sustainable tourism as “greenwashing.” It is true that sustainability has in many cases, been turned to a weasel word. However, a look at the link to the Coursera sustainability class above, shows that there is a lot valid to it, and it starts with the objective measuring of global climate/environmental, economic, and social indicators. Pragmatically, wherever we fall out in our view of the legitimacy and potential sustainability of the local economy, we have to start from where we are now and deal with the actors who are here now if we want to change anything. So far, we aren’t anywhere near gaining a locally sustainable system. Where we’re at is that each of the triple bottom line pillars and their advocates are suspicious of each other and unwilling to come to the muddy river country in the sustainability middle where all will need to be, to compromise and sacrifice.  

 

1. Donnelly reaches the same conclusion as many liberals and academics, that the social and environmental ills of the world result from western imperialism and colonialism, with an amoral global capitalist and corporate economic system at the center to justify exploitation of the poor. Economics run wild and amoral Masters of the Universe in charge, is our core human system problem. In Sonoma Valley, there is no need to look any father that the disparate distribution of wealth between Sonoma and the Springs to see we have the exact same global pattern in our own back yard. If we are going to think globally and act locally, the ground upon which to act is clear. These are not abstractions, where the troubles only apply to the border or to far-away sub-Saharan Africa. It is plain not right to be content with an exploitive status quo right here in Sonoma, while bemoaning world problems at large. 

This piece was self-edited by the author

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