A little fact checking on your claim about “out of city” seats is in order (Sun editorial). Do your job. There is no requirement to have an out-of-city member of the Planning Commission. That is why our experience and very competent City Attorney Jeff Walter said he had no problem with it. What makes you think there would be a requirement for an out of town resident to serve on the Planning Commission?
This is simply incompetence on part of the Editorial Board. You failed to get the facts right and misrepresented to your readers. Yet you make the effort to determine Ms. Jansen is registered to vote in Vermont? That stoops to the level of our national political parties which are determined to embarrass themselves.
Now there is a limit on the number of “out of city” seats allowed. One. You are correct about that. The Editorial Board should direct their outrage at the City Clerk who incorrectly declared Ms. Jansen to be an out-of-city candidate.
The Sun continues to show it is more interested in creating dissent, than in the future of Sonoma. I don’t know the woman but on her LinkedIn profile, it says Ms. Jansen served as the Planning Director of Palo Alto. Splendid! She has an MBA from the Kennedy School of Harvard. Not as good as our City Manager who went to Yale but it will do. This woman knows a General Plan update when she sees one. No one will be able to sneak one by her.
The City Council and the Planning Commission need qualified people like this to fix a General Plan that is obviously outdated. This is the stated goal of the entire City Council. Ms. Jansen is a gift to Sonoma if you ask me. Our entire town should thank Mayor Agrimonti, and Council Members Cook and Edwards, for putting qualifications above politics in her selection. I am impressed.
Does anyone see the irony here. Would the Sun be objecting if it was Mr. Jansen instead of Ms. Jansen? Your inability to grasp the obvious prompts me to offer this gentle suggestion. This is not the year to hang mistletoe in the Sun’s office.
And I can’t let this pass. So Ms. Jansen rents from a builder? I don’t have a 13-year-old but I recognize pettiness and immaturity when I see it.
If the Editorial Board is insisting on recusal by Ms. Jansen for renting from Mr. Routhier, where is their indignancy over James Bohar taking a public stance against that hotel project you mentioned before he was seated. The man either lied to Mayor Hundley and Council Member Herrington when they asked him if he had taken public positions against a project before the PC or Mayor Hundley and Herrington lied to the citizens of Sonoma when they told the Sun and the Index-Tribune that that was their number one qualification of serving.
— Joseph M. Aaron
This dyspeptic rant against the Sun editorial (Incompetence? Misrepresentation? Misogyny?) may be the product of nothing more than a momentary struggle with reading comprehension. It happens with older people.
seems like Joseph Aaron has an agenda here of some sort but if the editorial board of sonoma sun got something wrong I am sure they will try and correct it…..
This rant does seem to have some hidden agenda behind it. it seems fueled by something other than pure observation…. It seems fueled by trying to put walls up between council members.
Yes, our council is already divided most of the time…and sometimes is not able to accomplish things due to poor communications.
But this sort of rant probably won’t help to heal that situation. It serves to make it worse…