photo credit: County of Sonoma
Elderberry Commons, formerly the Sebastopol Inn.

In another addition in our ongoing series of check-ins with our news partners at the Sebastopol Times, KRCB's Noah Abrams catches up with Laura Hagar Rush and Dale Dougherty to speak about their latest reporting.

Noah Abrams: "So, the most recent headline in the Sebastopol Times is about the ACLU of Northern California filing an appeal in federal court over Sebastopol's RV ban."

"So, Laura, what's happening there?"

Laura Hagar Rush: "Absolutely. Well, this is a big and unfortunate thing for the City of Sebastopol."

"The city has already spent over $500,000 fighting this suit. It was denied by an earlier court ruling and this is the appeal."

"The ACLU is charging that the ordinance is constitutionally vague, and that it targets a disfavored group, namely the homeless. The case, as you know, involves a ban on basically living in your recreational vehicle. Although how it's phrased, is it's a ban on parking a recreational vehicle on the street."

"Interestingly, many people consider this a sort of compassionate compromise because it allows the homeless to park in industrial and commercial areas in Sebastopol between, I believe it's 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. In other words, it allows them to sleep in their RVs at night, but then they have to go somewhere else during the day. So the ACLU doesn't agree with this, obviously. They are appealing."

"It's about a 7-month process according to Sebastopol's city attorney, and in the meantime, the city can continue to enforce its RV parking ban."

NA: "And so when was this first filed?"

LHR: "The original suit was from 2022."

NA: "What does it look like in terms of enforcement on the streets of Sebastopol?"

LHR: "If people are living in their cars, it's not visible the way it used to be."

"There used to be a big long line of RVs at the north end of town. Those are all gone. The city responded that basically Sebastopol has taken a very compassionate approach towards the homeless. We have a lot of homeless housing in town, and [they] also noted that no RV has ever been seized. They did like seven citations on RV's, but then those people moved along."

NA: Dale, what's the latest with Analy High and the budget matters in the West Sonoma County Union School District?"

Dale Dougherty: "As one speaker at the West County Board meeting said, 'that is March layoff season.' And because of California requires school districts to notify anyone that might be let go for next school year, both teachers and staff, [that] creates a lot of concern at the first meeting in March."

"Sections of the dance program were going to be eliminated, and by the second meeting, the board had, and the school administration had rescinded those cuts. And at this meeting, there [were] others protesting cuts of administrative assistant and a accounting clerk as well as potential cuts to the music programs."

"Analy has a about a $3.5 million deficit and its school board is trying to cut it gradually over a 3-year period, but they're looking at making about $1 million of cuts this year; and it's a little bit more complicated than that. But almost every school district is dealing with a cuts in funding that came from COVID and other learning loss programs and other things that's gone away."

"The board and everyone is concerned about what's happening at the federal level, and the Department of Education."

"While the federal government to district like Analy provides about a million dollars of funding, it's not a lot in $30 million budget, but it goes towards special education and other programs, that if those funds go away, it's it's an even deeper cut."

NA: "An understandable concern for families and folks who are running the district there. Switching over to the other side of town, the old Sebastopol Inn, now Elderberry Commons. It looks like we've got a new chapter. Laura, what's the latest?"

LHR: "So the town has kind of been watching and wondering what has been happening there for several years since the county purchased the Sebastopol Inn and began rebuilding it as permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless. It just opened up last week accepting tenants.

"All the tenants come from the county coordinated entry system, which is a system that sort of, this is going to sound odd, but sort of rates the homeless on how vulnerable they are. And the more vulnerable you are, like if you are a disabled senior, you're considered a very vulnerable person."

"So that's who is moving into Elderberry Commons. And it's an interesting situation. The property is now owned by Burbank Housing, the county basically transferred ownership to Burbank Housing and it's being managed by West County Community Services."

"A homeless population obviously has special needs. There are case managers on site every day. When I asked the manager, she said, basically, it's the same rules as any regular apartment building."

"And then she went on to say basically that this homeless housing, like all homeless housing in the county is run on a housing first philosophy; which is that you house the people and then if they have substance problems anything, you deal with that after you get them securely housed. So that's what's going on there."