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Here's one of the most interesting facts to be found in this week’s newsletter: Overall, local residents and businesses reduced water use by 17 percent in 2021 and 2022. In total, that’s equal to 9.2 billion gallons of water that was saved over that two-year period. Those conservation efforts are being recognized as the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors this week lifted the local drought emergency it declared in 2021 thanks to this winter’s heavy rainfall, which has replenished local reservoirs. Find out more below.
Also, we encourage you to continue reading for information on the budget workshops planned for new week, the latest efforts by the county to address unsanctioned homeless encampments and steps the county is taking to improve the health of local waterways. We also have updates on the county budget and a new partnership to increase mental health services in our schools, along with a farewell message from Public Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase.
As always, we encourage you to share this newsletter with friends, colleagues and family members so they can sign up for the SoCo Correspondent and receive it directly each month.
¿Está interesado en leer sobre lo que hace el Condado de Sonoma cada mes? Regístrese aquí para suscribirse a nuestro boletín, el SoCo Correspondent.
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County budget workshops to start Tuesday, April 25 | |
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The public will have several opportunities to give feedback about the financial outlook for the county next week when the Board of Supervisors holds its annual budget workshops.
The three-day hearing, which starts Tuesday, will include presentations on the budget proposals for each county department and a new five-year forecast for the county’s $591 million General Fund.
The public will have an opportunity at 9:15 a.m. on Tuesday and at 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday and Thursday to provide input – either in person or via Zoom - on the county’s $2.1 billion budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year. However, the Board of Supervisors won’t make final decisions about the county’s spending plan until budget hearings, which begin on June 14.
“The budget workshops are designed to provide the board and public the information required to make final budget determinations in June,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Board of Supervisors. “Public participation in the process is critical to shaping how local government spends public funds.”
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Board of Supervisors ends drought emergency | |
Lake Sonoma is almost 70 feet higher than at the start of the year. | |
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors this week voted unanimously to end the local drought emergency it declared two years ago. However, county leaders strongly encouraged the public to continue conserving water, with the region’s weather patterns becoming increasingly volatile as a result of climate change.
Following a series of wet winter storms that dropped nearly 3 feet of rain on Santa Rosa in three months, the two main reservoirs that supply Sonoma County exceeded their normal storage capacity this year for the first time since 2019. Combined, Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino held 372,000 acre-feet of water when winter ended March 20, the most ever going into the dry season. An acre-foot is equal to approximately 326,000 gallons, or enough to meet the annual indoor and outdoor needs of three average households in Sonoma County.
“We’ve made it through the driest three-year period ever recorded in California,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Board of Supervisors. “But this is no time to go back to old habits. We don’t know when the next drought will arrive. If everyone does their part to conserve now, we will have more water available in the future for the entire community to share.”
The Board of Supervisors declared a local drought emergency on April 27, 2021. The proclamation enabled the county to apply for emergency grants and accelerate work on an array of initiatives to protect public health, property and the environment by increasing conservation and securing new supplies of water.
Regional conservation efforts cut water use by 17 percent in Sonoma and Marin counties in 2021 and 2022, compared to 2020 levels, saving 9.2 billion gallons of water over the two-year period and exceeding the statewide 15 percent reduction target set by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. Every drop adds up: the amount of water saved is equivalent to more than 10 percent of the water currently in Lake Sonoma – or more than a quarter of the water now stored in Lake Mendocino.
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Supervisors restrict camping on public property | |
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In a move toward limiting homeless encampments in the community, the Board of Supervisors this week gave final approval to new rules that limit camping in public spaces, including a prohibition on camping during daytime hours.
The amendments will help county staff discourage permanent homeless encampments on county-owned property and other public property in unincorporated areas. The changes bring the county’s existing camping ordinance into compliance with recent legal decisions while providing the county with options to address garbage and public health issues associated with homeless encampments.
In addition to a ban on camping between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., the amended ordinance also prohibits camping near certain types of properties, including:
- Inside public buildings, fenced areas attached to public buildings, or within 25 feet of an entrance to a public building
- Within 50 feet of a residence
- Within 100 feet of a playground, school, daycare, or other licensed childcare facility
- Within any county park
- Within any public highway, road, or street
- Within any public right-of-way, where the camping obstructs the free passage of persons, bicycles, or vehicles
- Within a “Very High Fire Severity Zone”
“This ordinance is just one of the many things we are doing to address homelessness in Sonoma County,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Board of Supervisors. “We recognize the fundamental right to have a place to sleep if you have nowhere else to go. At the same time, we need to balance the needs of the unhoused with the health and safety concerns that these prolonged, unsanctioned encampments create for unhoused individuals and their impacts on the wider community.”
The amended ordinance goes into effect on May 18.
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New rules on well permits seek to protect waterways | |
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The Board of Supervisors has approved new rules for permits required to dig a well, adopting a series of revisions to protect the health of navigable waterways like the Russian River and its tributaries, along with the habitat and wildlife they support.
The new standards, which bring the county into compliance with a 2018 decision by the state Court of Appeal, will be used to review applications for well permits in unincorporated areas where groundwater pumping has moderate or high potential of adversely impacting public trust resources in navigable waterways. View a map of these areas here.
Applicants seeking to dig new wells in these areas would be required to mitigate their impacts, where feasible. Existing wells and new residential wells would be exempted from a requirement to install meters and report water levels.
The amended ordinance goes into effect on May 18.
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Dr. Mase delivers final update on COVID-19 | |
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Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase provided her final COVID-19 community update this month before stepping down to rejoin the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Mase joined the county in March 2020 shortly after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under her guidance, Sonoma County achieved the 9th highest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the state while experiencing 20 percent fewer cases and 57 percent fewer deaths per 100,000 residents than California overall.
“We have done really well in terms of vaccination, thanks to the community,” Dr. Mase said. “As a result of that and other interventions, Sonoma County has experienced fewer cases and deaths than California overall. That really is a testament to our county and the residents and shows how well we have been able to do during the pandemic.”
Her final update, which includes lessons learned during the past three years of the pandemic, can be seen on the county’s YouTube and Facebook pages, as well as on SoCoEmergency.org.
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Board to consider new rules on vacation rentals Monday | |
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The Board of Supervisors will consider two important changes to vacation rental regulations next week. One proposal going before the board at a special meeting on Monday would create a business license program, with standardized operating requirements for vacation rentals to protect neighbors from nuisances. The second would place caps and exclusion zones on certain neighborhoods to prevent over-saturation of vacation rentals in heavily impacted areas.
If approved, the licensing program would limit vacation rentals to a maximum of 12 guests, establish stricter parking requirements, and require property owners or managers to respond to complaints within 30 minutes at night and one hour during the day.
The proposal would allow for progressive and proportional enforcement through fines, temporary suspension of the license, or revocation. Currently, a zoning permit for a vacation rental could only be revoked through a public hearing.
The Monday board meeting hearing comes two weeks before a moratorium on new vacation rentals is set to expire on May 9. An interactive map displaying the location of current vacation rentals and the proposed zoning changes is available online.
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Health Services
Dr. Kismet Baldwin-Santana, who helped lead Sonoma County’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been named interim health officer by the Board of Supervisors. A pediatrics specialist with a master’s degree in public health, Dr. Baldwin-Santana has served as Sonoma County’s deputy public health officer since July 2020. In her new role, she will serve as the county’s chief medical officer and top health policy official. She fills the vacancy left by the departure of Dr. Sundari Mase while the county conducts a nationwide search for a permanent replacement.
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Community Development Commission
Michelle Whitman has been named executive director of the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, the county’s public housing authority. The agency administers a range of programs to assist low- to moderate-income homeowners and tenants and to encourage community and commercial revitalization. For the last four years she has led the Renewal Enterprise District, a joint powers authority founded by the County of Sonoma and City of Santa Rosa. Previously, she served for eight years as district director for the county’s Third Supervisorial District.
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Supervisors approve funding for student
mental health services
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The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved key elements of a plan to invest $6 million over three years in expanding behavioral health services in schools.
The funding is from Measure O, the quarter-cent sales tax measure voters approved in 2020 to fund mental health and homelessness services. The board received an annual report Tuesday on projects funded through the tax, which generates $25 million annually, and approved $250,000 to fund the partnership with the Sonoma County Office of Education. Key projects include the opening of the Sonoma County Healing Center psychiatric health facility; funding for mobile crisis response programs across the county; and supportive housing units with case workers, mental health specialists and navigators who provide expertise in supportive and transitional housing.
“After years of school disruptions for wildfires and the isolation of the pandemic, students in Sonoma County report feeling stress and anxiety with nowhere to go for mental health help,” said Supervisor Chris Coursey, chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. “Thanks to Measure O, we are able to provide mental health services directly to the students who have the most need.”
The new partnership will create four mental health teams to serve local schools, which will also have direct access to county behavioral health staff in order to expedite referrals. School staff will be offered training to identify students who may be experiencing behavioral health symptoms.
Ultimately, the county will spend $4.2 million over three years on behavioral health school partnership, and the Department of Health Services will ask the Board of Supervisors to approve the additional funding during the supplemental budgetary process. A program to address youth substance use disorder is also being developed with assistance from $2.4 million in Measure O funds.
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Using dogs to sniff out COVID-19 | |
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Can a dog be trained to detect COVID-19 using their highly acute sense of smell? The short answer is yes. That’s the purpose of a pilot program launched by the state Department of Public Health and Early Alert Canines, a Concord-based nonprofit that teaches dogs how to warn people with diabetes about critical changes in their blood sugar levels.
The Sonoma County Public Health Division coordinated a demonstration of the dogs’ skills last month in Santa Rosa. A pair of retrievers, Rizzo and Scarlett, walked through the skilled nursing facility at Spring Lake Village to detect COVID-19 among staff and residents. A team of county health workers and facility staff followed the dogs, administering rapid COVID-19 tests to confirm a half-dozen potential cases identified by the dogs.
The dogs are trained to detect the odors of volatile organic compounds emitted by humans infected with COVID-19. The goal of the program is to create a new tool for COVID-19 screening in schools and other settings.
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Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review
and Outreach releases audit
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The county’s Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach this month released an audit of a Sheriff’s Office complaint, the first such report to be made public under a new state law for cases involving the use of force by a law enforcement officer that result in death or great bodily injury.
The complaint stemmed from an April 2020 incident in which two sheriff’s deputies stunned a Graton man with a Taser, and then released a police dog on him after he fell to the ground. The man, Jason Anglero-Wyrick, reached a $1.35 million settlement with the county in January.
IOLERO, which audited a Sheriff’s Office report on the incident, found the deputies properly used a Taser in compliance with department policy, however it disputed that the use of the police dog was appropriate. The audit called on the Sheriff’s Office to consider recommendations made by the IOLERO Community Advisory Committee to change the way the Sheriff’s Office uses police dogs.
“Historically, state law made reports like these confidential, and entirely prohibited release of these reports to the public,” said John Alden, IOLERO director. “Recently, through Senate Bill 1421, the state Legislature created an exception for an incident like this involving great bodily injury. At IOLERO, we are grateful that the state has finally allowed us to make reports like these public, and we will be releasing more reports like these in future.”
The Sheriff’s Office previously released its report of the incident under the same new state law. Its report, including body-worn camera footage, can be seen here.
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Public invited to three upcoming town hall meetings | |
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The County of Sonoma will be hosting a series of Town Hall webinars in the coming weeks, and the public is encouraged to attend, pose questions and leave comments. The webinars are on the following topics:
Emergency shelter site at the County Government Center
District 4 Supervisor James Gore and District 3 Supervisor Chris Coursey will host a virtual neighborhood meeting April 24 at 5 p.m. about the emergency shelter site that opened last month in a parking lot at the County Administration Center in north Santa Rosa.
The site, which is equipped with 87 tents, provides temporary housing and an array of support services to help unsheltered people transition into permanent housing.
Dave Kiff, director of the Homelessness Services Division in the county’s Department of Health Services, will join Supervisors Coursey and Gore to update the public on the site and answer questions. Questions may be posed live on Zoom or submitted in advance to temporaryshelters@sonoma-county.org.
Click here to register for the April 24 Zoom webinar
Transition plans for Elderberry Commons
District 5 Supervisor Lynda Hopkins will host a virtual town hall meeting May 1 at 6 p.m. to respond to community questions about the transition plan for the Elderberry Commons shelter, formerly known as the Sebastopol Inn.
All 28 shelter units at Elderberry Commons need to be vacated while the rooms are converted to permanent supportive housing. They will reopen when construction is complete. The conversion is required as a condition of grant funding from Project Homekey, a state program that provides funds to purchase and rehabilitate housing.
Dave Kiff, director of the Homelessness Services Division in the county’s Department of Health Services, will join representatives of the City of Sebastopol on Zoom to provide an update on the transition plan and answer questions from the public. Questions may be posed live on Zoom or emailed in advance to publicaffairs@sonoma-county.org.
Click here to register for the May 1 Zoom webinar
Penngrove traffic study
District 2 Supervisor David Rabbitt is inviting the public to share their thoughts and concerns about traffic in Penngrove at a town hall meeting on May 4 at 5:30 p.m. The event, which will be held in person at Penngrove Community Hall, 385 Woodward Ave., will also be streamed live on Zoom.
Panelists include county transportation officials from the Public Infrastructure Department and staff from GHD Consulting, which is conducting a Penngrove area traffic study. The county initiated the traffic study to identify potential improvements that address congestion, mobility, safety and regional growth.
Click here to view the May 4 town hall on Zoom
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Find room to move and room to grow with a county job | |
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Are you looking for a new job? Thinking about career options for the future? Help us add to our mosaic of diversity and learn how you can take the next step in your professional life and join the County of Sonoma family!
Start Here! is a virtual class that provides an overview of the county’s job application, examination and selection processes. The two-hour session provides information on how to submit a thorough application, best practices for the interview and examination, and much more. Send an email to careers@sonoma-county.org and we will invite you to future class opportunities. Let us help guide you through the county’s selection process.
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Are you ready for the next big earthquake? | |
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It happened 118 years ago this week: the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In Sonoma County, large parts of Santa Rosa were reduced to rubble by the magnitude 7.9 shaker and more than 100 people in the city of 8,700 were killed.
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors observed Spring Shakeout Day, pausing its regular meeting to practice a simple drill – Duck, Cover and Hold – that can save your life during an earthquake.
There is more than a 99 percent probability that California will experience one or more earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or greater in the next 30 years, one capable of causing extensive damage and loss of life. The time to prepare is now.
Visit SoCoEmergency.org to learn how to protect yourself and your family from earthquakes and view a map of major fault zones in Sonoma County.
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Support your community by getting involved | |
Get involved with local government
Government is only as good as the people who step forward to serve. There are many opportunities available now to support the community by serving on local boards, commissions and committees.
Current vacancies include:
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Sonoma County Local Task Force on Integrated Waste Management: To develop goals, policies and procedures around waste management, waste reduction and recycling.
Check out the list of current vacancies and discover how you can help shape the future of Sonoma County.
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Adopt the pet of the month | |
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My name is Zeus. I’m a Siberian husky who’s been at the county animal shelter since June. I’m about 3 years old and weigh 62 pounds. My caretakers say I’m energetic, friendly and very smart – the perfect companion for someone who likes to hike or run with their dog.
Zeus is one of dozens of cats, dogs, rabbits and other animals at Sonoma County Animal Services in need of adoption.
Watch me having some fun on TikTok!
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Volunteer and employment opportunities | |
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