PD article on Sebastopol City Council Elections

Following is a link to an article in the PD about the Sebastopol City Council elections, which will appear in tomorrow's print editions. You can comment at that link.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/6182617-181/four-seek-election-to-two?artslide=0

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Four seek election to two Sebastopol City Council seats
MARY CALLAHAN, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | October 13, 2016, 4:01PM

Four candidates are seeking election to two Sebastopol City Council seats being vacated by council member John Eder and Robert Jacob. They are:

Michael Anthony Carnacchi, 54, Profession: artisan bootmaker, owner of Apple Cobbler, Community Service: director, Sebastopol Downtown Association; Sebastopol Police Citizens Academy
Key Issues: traffic, affordable housing, creative revenue generation.

Jonathan Greenberg, 58, Profession: writer/advocate/communications consultant; CEO, Progressive Communications, Community Service: editor, The Sonoma Independent; library funding advocate; Sonoma West Medical Center advocacy Key Issues: transparency, participatory budgeting

Neysa Hinton, 52, Profession: executive director, Bello Gardens Assisted Living; formerly, broadcast/media advertising and marketing manager. Community Service: past president, Sebastopol Downtown Association; first chairperson of the Sebastopol Farmers Market; Sebastopol Rotary Club and co-chairwoman of the Learn to Swim program. Key Issues: affordable housing, smart growth.

Craig Litwin, 40, Profession: principal, Litwin Consulting, specializing in permaculture, politics and cannabis policy. Community Service: two-term Sebastopol council member, 2000-2008, and two-time mayor; past-president, Permaculture Skills Center. Key Issues: affordable housing, sustainability.

Four people seeking election to two open seats on the Sebastopol City Council largely agree on what the city’s priority issues should be: affordable housing, traffic and walkability, strong, sustainable local businesses and responsible spending.

But they are engaged in campaigns of distinct style and scale.

On the one hand is custom bootmaker Michael Carnacchi, a fixture at City Hall in recent years and an ultraminimalist candidate who is foregoing donations, endorsements, fliers and printed literature of any kind.

Carnacchi, 54, is engaged in city government and has met so many locals over 23 years in his downtown shop that if he can’t win election without lawn signs and knocking on doors, he says, then he hasn’t earned the right to represent the citizenry. Besides, no printed materials means, “I have zero waste,” he said.

On the other hand, political and cannabis-policy consultant Craig Litwin, a well-connected, former two-term council member who threw his hat in the ring this fall as a write-in candidate after the official deadline had passed, still has managed to collect high-profile endorsements and raise enough money to mount a robust campaign.

No one else had raised $1,000 when the first financial disclosures were filed last month, but Litwin reported more than $11,000 in cash contributions and more than $14,000 overall by Sept. 24, less than a month after entering the race.

Litwin, 40, said he can use all the help he can get: His write-in campaign needs to get his name in front of voters so they know what to do once they’re at the polls.

“I feel pretty hopeful about my chances,” he said, “but I’m also — what’s that called? — cautiously optimistic.”
Positioned somewhere between him and Carnacchi on the campaign spectrum, political newcomer Neysa Hinton is running a scaled-down campaign, while Jonathan Greenberg, who also sought election to the council two years ago, has cited only donations from himself and a nephew for $250 each.

Hinton has deep roots in Sebastopol and recent experience as manager for the unsuccessful June primary campaign of fifth district supervisorial candidate Tim Sergent. A former sales and marketing manager who now directs an elder care facility in Novato, Hinton said discussion of local political and community issues during the supervisor race inspired her to contribute more of her time to the city she loves. She has loaned her campaign $1,750 for the chance to do it.

“I’m new to politics, but I’m not new to Sebastopol,” said Hinton, 52, who grew up and raised two children in Sebastopol. “I‘m going forward. I’m not going backward.”

Greenberg, an advocate, writer and consultant originally from New York, found his political footing locally by immersing himself in grass-roots efforts to restore public library hours that were cut countywide five years ago, and in the bid to revamp and resurrect Palm Drive Hospital as Sonoma Medical Center West.

He values his independence from the political mainstream and views himself as a “change agent” inspired by the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. He wants to help the city embrace more transparent, responsive, engaging government, he said.

It’s unclear how much traction Greenberg will have with voters after a last-place showing in the four-way race of 2014.

At the time, he was derided as “confused” and “unqualified” in a mailer initiated by Litwin and signed by a variety of local political leaders.

Greenberg said he raises the subject now to point out Litwin’s willingness to make “local politics dirty,” and thus potentially deter others from seeking public office.

“Some people find me abrasive,” Greenberg conceded during a recent campaign forum. “Some people find me confrontational and critical, because it comes from this sense of we could do better, can’t we? And here is some vision for it.”

The candidates’ tone has been amicable during recent campaign events, where they generally have found common ground on a desire to boost city revenue through transit occupancy and other taxes without compromising livability and affordability. They also agree about the challenge of paying for sidewalks and traffic improvements with limited resources, and the need for local governments to ease cost and permitting restrictions to promote creative solutions for housing relief.

But each has pet projects and ideas.

Greenberg contributes to a variety of small, independent initiatives that promote his interest in progressive politics and civic engagement, and has often spoken of the city’s need to embrace participatory budgeting, in which voters would be invited to help decide how the city spends, for example, the $73,000 in community support grants budgeted this year.

He also has frequently challenged, and sometimes chafed, city officials by arguing they should seek to influence areas like regional library hours and the hospital’s future — topics outside its traditional jurisdiction.
The soft-spoken Carnacchi says an opportunity in 2009 to examine the boots Abraham Lincoln wore when he was shot and killed, to read up on their history and feel the impressions of the president’s feet, inspired an interest in politics that has led him since to attend hundreds of city government meetings and closely follow updating of the city’s general plan last year.

He said he wants especially to reduce downtown traffic and make the city’s central district a more pleasant place to work and gather. He has unearthed Caltrans documents that suggest there might be benefits to routing Highway 116 around town.

Inspired by coffee shops that discount pours for customers with reusable cups, he’s floated an idea for a 10-cent tax on disposable coffee cups that, after surveying independent local stores, he says could generate about $200,000 for the city in the first year while reducing waste.

Hinton, mother to an adult daughter and a son in his last year of high school, said she’d like to see the city embrace the principles of a Marin County nonprofit that promotes policies allowing homeowners more easily to modify their houses to accommodate accessory units, providing for more flexible, sustainable and affordable housing for owners and renters.

Litwin, who joined the campaign a day after he and his wife decided not to pursue a larger home outside city limits for their family of five, said housing affordability is his top priority, as well.

But he said he’s also driven to bolster the city’s local economy and food production, and to help make the community more resilient, given what he called an “unprecedented time of human history,” when climate change and the interconnectedness of a global economy could cause ripple effects at home.