Housing, revenue key goals for Petaluma City Council

The council will also consider a climate change resolution as it lays the ground work for the next two years of work.|

Petaluma spent Saturday afternoon considering where it sees itself in two years as city officials conducted a public-oriented goal-setting session that will help pave the way for future legislative action by the new city council and city manager.

Using a new goal-setting format, which leaned on community input, residents spoke up on a myriad of quality-of-life issues – highlighted by local climate change measures, Petaluma’s depleted public safety agencies, and the complex impacts of the housing crisis. City officials estimated more than 100 citizens attended the day-long session.

City Manager Peggy Flynn, who took the reins in February as the successor to retiree John Brown, said she was heartened by the huge turnout at the Petaluma Community Center, and tweaked the setup to prioritize public involvement.

Community members littered a whiteboard with sticky notes about issues they felt were most vital. Officials also did a dot exercise to see where those priorities synced up.

“We want people to see themselves in our goals and what we do, and this was the first step to making that happen,” Flynn said. City staff will be distilling the public’s input in preparation for a council-oriented workshop later this spring where the goals will be finalized into actionable objectives.

For city officials, the goals fell under several categories. The most sprawling is Petaluma’s sustainability, separated in terms of the environment, its finances and its municipal organizations.

Each council member brought up the reality of the city’s need for a new source of revenue, facing staffing shortfalls and pension costs that are forecasted to cause a deficit by 2021. Whether it’s implementing a dedicated sales tax or some other measure, officials are expected to start laying the foundation for a public campaign in the coming months.

“We haven’t been very good about engaging folks on that topic,” Flynn said. “This is a beautiful first step. Goal-setting goes into budget and that goes into fiscal sustainability in the fall. A lot of people have questions and we can do a better job of explaining that.”

Multiple Petaluma Police officers spoke about the dire reality they’re facing with the broad effects of an ongoing staffing shortage that has impacted morale, limited their effectiveness, and could make the agency an undesirable landing spot for recruits.

Policies on housing, improving its multi-faceted infrastructure, providing adequate resources to its public safety departments, and promoting a healthy and active living for residents of all ages were also marked as priorities, Flynn said.

Boosting the local economy, and identifying ways to attract and retain businesses was also a focus, as was making local government a more inclusive operation that brings more residents into the fold.

“How do we encourage participation so we can make better decisions and make government more accessible?” Flynn said.

For the council, which spent much of the day listening to its constituents, many of the issues raised synced up with items they’re pursuing, said Councilman Dave King.

Members of the public called for action that would get the Petaluma River dredged, and for cleanup efforts along the Lynch Creek Trail, the city’s crosstown pedestrian connector.

Paving more streets, leveraging a deal that protects the fairgrounds and making progress on vehicular connectors like Rainier and Caulfield were also discussed.

However, it was housing that a large number of residents emphasized, and King expects to turn those concerns into new policies.

“I do think we’re going to be tackling housing even more so this year and next as a group,” he said. “That’s something the public is more concerned about – availability and affordability.”

To improve affordability, officials this week took measures toward boosting local wages.

At a workshop on Monday, the council voiced unanimous support for accelerating the minimum wage increase to $15 per hour by 2020, two years ahead of the timeline enacted under state law.

Until a resolution comes forward, city staff will be exploring many of the hurdles for implementing it, and how it would impact local industries that could be negatively affected by early adoption. Multiple council members also called for a synchronous approach with other cities across the North Bay.

Acknowledging that it’s still far from a true living wage, which, in Sonoma County, is more than $23 an hour, the council agreed it was a crucial first step.

“People are paying way too much of a percentage of their pay to live in our community,” Councilman Kevin McDonnell said at the meeting. “This is the right thing to do to help them up.”

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter ?@YousefBaig.)

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