Cohen, Gallian swap council seats

If there were any thanks left unsaid by – or to – retiring Sonoma City Councilmember Stanley Cohen before he stepped off the dais Wednesday night, it wasn’t for lack of opportunity.
“Thank you for the honor and privilege of serving our wonderful city and its people as your councilmember for the last four years,” Cohen told an overflow crowd of friends and colleagues in the Community Meeting Room on First Street West, before singling out many of them by name.
Cohen, who was elected in 2004 and served as Sonoma’s mayor in 2007, announced in May that he wouldn’t seek a second term. Wednesday night’s council session signaled a shift in Sonoma’s political scene, as new Councilmember Laurie Gallian and incumbent Joanne Sanders both took the oath of office – and Ken Brown and Steve Barbose were respectively (and unanimously) elected by their colleagues to be Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem.
But the first hour of the evening’s session belonged to Cohen. By Sanders’ rough estimate, Cohen had put in 6,000 hours of volunteer time during the past four years, adding, “If one out of five people in the community did that, we’d be the richer for it.”
After presenting Cohen with a commemorative plaque listing his council service, and a certificate of congressional recognition from state Sen. Mike Thompson, Sanders turned the floor over to more than a dozen well-wishers. Wendy Peterson, director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau, recalled the day when then-Mayor Cohen stunned tourists as a bureau docent. Amy O’Gorman, local representative for the League of California Cities, choked back tears as she thanked Cohen for his support, friendship and advocacy. Vintage House Senior Center director Cindy Scarborough cited Cohen’s unflagging support of local nonprofit organizations, saying “You really made a difference.”
Council colleagues past and present offered their gratitude as well. Former Mayor Larry Barnett, who had encouraged Cohen to run for office, said the latter’s political career has “never been about Stanley – it’s been about what’s best for the community.” Councilmember Aug Sebastiani said “No better word just sums it all up than ‘dedication,’” and Barbose said Cohen had “raised the bar for councilmembers to a scary level.”
For his part, Cohen said he’d pondered his final words for the past month but qipped that “I’ll only keep it to 20 minutes.” He began by thanking the voters who had enough confidence to entrust him with governance, as well as the “thousand or so volunteers” who keep Sonoma Valley’s nonprofits running: “You are there, but no one knows you’re there.”
Saying that Sonoma’s economy depends on a healthy and successful business climate, with Sonoma Plaza as the city’s “most important marketing tool,” Cohen recounted an early councilmember conversation he had with parks foreman Dave Chavoya. Chavoya, who was in the audience and has overseen the Plaza for more than 30 years, brought Cohen to the south side of the park in 2004 and asked him, simply, to look around.
“’This is ours,’” Cohen quoted Chavoya as saying. “’When you make decisions as a councilmember, they reflect on every part of our city. Remember that.’ Thank you, Dave.”
“My pleasure,” Chavoya replied.
But Cohen’s final remarks concerned a different conversation, in which someone asked him – given the hours, pressure and responsibility – if serving on the council was “worth it.”
“If I’ve grown as a person and an individual, it was worth it,” Cohen said, his voice breaking. “If I’ve done my best, it was worth it.”