Ken Brown has earned another term

Editor, Index-Tribune

Ken Brown has served the community of Sonoma with distinction in his career as a city council member. He has been the critical third vote on many key decisions regarding living wage, affordable housing and quality of life issues for Sonoma.

One of the reasons that Ken has gained the trust of so many Sonoma residents, across the ideological spectrum, is his independence of judgment and his dedication to public process. He has worked tirelessly to represent the interests of the whole community, not just a narrow faction, right or left. It is patently unfair to cherry-pick a few votes out of the hundreds made over the years to define his record.

Local politics is not a zero sum game, in which the interests of “business” are pitted against “environmentalists,” and a gain for one is a loss for the other. The reason that Ken Brown is endorsed by the Sierra Club and Sonoma County Conservation Action and by Chamber of Commerce supporters like Aug Sebastiani is that he has been seasoned by his experience to understand that we are all in this together.

Ken gets that we need a healthy business environment to have the tax base to fund city services. Ken also operates with a moral imperative to ensure that this prosperity is shared by all citizens of Sonoma, whether they live in a mansion or a mobile home park.

That has been Ken Brown’s track record as a city council member.

Ben Boyce

Sonoma