Petaluma leaders lay out timeline for city’s work on policing, race relations

Petaluma City Council on Monday returned to its ongoing initiative on community race relations and policing, establishing a citizen-led, advisory committee and reviewing a list of community-backed policy recommendations.

Council this week voted to nail down the committee’s scope of work, meeting timeline, purpose and composition, the move coming less than a month after the city’s workshop on race relations and policing reform.

The committee is expected to conduct study sessions on racism, inequity and police reform, and present recommendations as soon as the fall. But the the exact size and makeup of the new group has not yet to be solidified.

After the Petaluma City Council approves membership in mid-March, the group is set to meet monthly during an initial six-month timeframe, but that could continue longer, officials say, reluctant to put an end-date on a process they describe as an initial step rather than a wide-reaching panacea.

“This isn’t a committee that is going to do a long term overhaul of how we do policing in our community,” Mayor Teresa Barrett said. “I believe this is the group that is going to identify the areas that need work and need to be addressed, and that we need to go forward with to set up the policies to do that work.”

The meeting follows an hours-long January discussion, attended by more than 220 residents, where city leaders agreed to develop a committee for policy recommendations, and reached consensus on a host of other initiatives, including a push to develop a new crisis policing model.

The citizen committee will be stocked with residents chosen by a range of community groups, many of which advocate for diversity and inclusion, and include health organizations, school district representatives, LGBTQ groups, the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce, Petaluma Blacks for Community Development and Indivisible Petaluma. Members of the Petaluma Police Department and city staff will also sit in on meetings.

Council members will also have the option to appoint an individual to the committee, a response to concerns that drawing from organizations alone could prevent some active and engaged residents of color from participating.

The committee is expected to have at least a dozen members, though city staff say they have not created a limit on the number of participants. Preference will be for those who are Black, Indigenous or people of color.

The planned meetings will be facilitated by the city’s contracted diversity consultant Tracey Webb, and city staff is exploring stipends and childcare assistance for participants.

Monday’s council meeting also featured a progress report from Petaluma Police Chief Ken Savano, who touched on a list of action items that came out of the January workshop, including reallocating the police department’s budget, revising use-of-force guidelines and forming an independent oversight committee for policing.

Erin Chmielewski, chair of North Bay Organizing Project and one of the leaders who oversaw last summer’s community listening sessions, said many of her organization’s members look forward to the committee’s first meeting, but conveyed an uneasiness with the police department’s progress on some policy action items.

“I believe the department believes these are things they have already taken care of and are not a true concern based on current manuals and protocols,” she said during the public comment portion of the meeting. “Yet we are still here, because there are people who feel and experience different realities.”

Savano’s presentation, which included green check marks alongside 15 of the 18 action items, raised alarm among residents who argued that the icons appeared to indicate that the items were already addressed without public input, rather than “in-progress” as the city later explained.

Vice Mayor Brian Barnacle acknowledged the critique. But Barnacle, who pushed for concrete policy actions and a firm timeline during last month’s workshop in the wake of complaints from activists, touted the city’s progress to date.

“I’d like to acknowledge that in 30 days we had this report produced, and the most common gripe about the report was the use of checkmarks,” Barnacle said. “I think that’s a good symbol that we’re moving in the right direction.”

During the two-hour discussion Monday, 16 people called in during public comment, most representing community groups and organizations that spearheaded last year’s listening sessions and submitted joint policy recommendations to council. Feedback was resoundingly encouraging of this next step, while maintaining firm pressure that the city continue this momentum.

“This is incremental,” Barrett said at one point during Monday’s meeting. “It doesn’t have just one group that meets for six months and then everything is good. It’s the beginning, for the group to come together to identify the issues that need to be addressed and suggest how we’re going to make those first steps.”

(Contact Kathryn Palmer at kathryn.palmer@arguscourier.com, on Twitter @KathrynPlmr.)