City explores cemetery options
Faced with an annual cemetery operating deficit of $590,694, the Sonoma City Council is appointing a subcommittee to report back in January on the possibility of selling three city-owned burial grounds.
The council has pondered the idea before. At its Sept. 3 meeting, after some debate over how much money would be saved – and how much of the related $843,665 debt, including $700,000 for the new veterans’ cemetery, would be absorbed by the city – the council voted 4-1 (Councilmember Stanley Cohen dissenting) to look specifically at the issue of selling to a private contractor. The move could also lead to a staff reduction in the city Public Works department.
The subcommittee includes Councilmember Ken Brown, Councilmember August Sebastiani, Public Works Director Milenka Bates and representatives from a local mortuary and the Sonoma Valley Veterans Association. Publicly accessible meetings are scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month at the City Hall conference room.
Also on Sept. 17, the Council:
• Filled the Community Meeting Room with multicolored balloons and presented a musical greeting card to Councilmember Steve Barbose in honor of his 60th birthday. The card played “The Chicken Dance” when opened.
• Appointed Sonoma Valley High School senior Melissa Carlson to a two-year term as youth representative to the city’s Community Services and Environment Commission. The nine-member city panel oversees Sonoma’s parks and public spaces.
• Voted 3-2, with Sanders and Sebastiani dissenting, to reconsider on Oct. 1 the reappointment of Michael George to the Sonoma Planning Commission.
• Granted Sonoma Cub Scout Pack 16 one of the city’s 20 “free” days at the county-owned Sonoma Valley Veterans Memorial Building for the youth organization’s annual awards dinner in February, 2009.
• Adopted a revised design-review ordinance suggested by Councilmember Barbose that gives neighbors more notice before public hearings are conducted on residential projects in Sonoma’s Historic Overlay Zone.
• With a last round of public comment, and thanks for their “time, diligence and patience during the past 18 months” from Rancho de Sonoma Mobile Home Park owner Preston Cook, unanimously adopted a new ordinance regulating the conversion of mobile home parks to resident ownership.
• Adopted a revised version of the city’s Conflict of Interest Code that incorporates the new department-head titles the council approved in March. The code was adopted in 2004 and is subject to biennial review.
• Allocated $100,000 in state Citizens Options for Public Safety (COPS) funds to continue providing the Sonoma Police Department with two community service officers. The officers’ duties include administrative support as well as parking and animal control.
• Approved without comment the first reading of an ordinance introduced by Councilmember August Sebastiani that would prevent absence-caused tie votes by city commissions through rescheduling the disputed item to a future meeting attended by all, or an odd number of, commissioners.
