Election: City Council, hotel tax among big decisions

A new California governor, a possible repeal of the state’s gas tax increase and a red-hot Sonoma City Council race are just some of the issues Sonoma Valley residents will help decide today, Election Day.

The polls are open between the hours of 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. The location of your polling place is listed on your County Voter Information Guide, the fat packet that came in the mail, or else you can find it at https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/.

Among the local races, the liveliest in Sonoma is for City Council. Seven candidates are vying for three seats; one will be vacated by Gary Edwards, who chose not to run for re-election, and two additional seats are being defended by incumbents Rachel Hundley and current Mayor Madolyn Agrimonti.

The five challengers are James Cribb, a sitting planning commissioner; Jack Ding, a tax consultant and member of the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission; Logan Harvey, an affordable housing advocate; Chris Petlock, a longtime City Hall watchdog making his first run for the council; and Jack Wagner, a Green Party candidate and current member of the Community Services and Environment Commission.

A pair of anonymous political mailers sent to residents last month threw some unusual, and unsavory, elements into the mix; candidates recommended in the mailers promptly denounced them and both mailers were reported to the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

The top three vote-getters will fill the three City Council seats.

Two seats in the Sonoma Valley Unified School District are also up for grabs Nov. 6. Neither incumbents Sal Chavez nor Dan Gustafson chose to run for re-election to their seats, which are in the El Verano Elementary School attendance area and Flowery Elementary, respectively.

Cathy Coleman, an educational administrator consultant, and Omar Paz Jr., an immigration efforts coordinator, are competing for the El Verano seat currently occupied by Chavez. For the Flowery seat, retired teacher Melanie Blake is the only candidate.

The Sonoma Valley Health Care District has two available board seats on the ballot. Incumbent and current board chair Joshua Rymer is running for the seat he now occupies. Also on the ballot are Michael Mainardi, a retired physician, and Douglas Ghiselin, a retired engineer. The top two vote-getters will fill the two seats.

For the Valley of the Moon Fire Protection District, incumbents Brian Brady and Nicolas Greben have filed for re-election with no opposition.

Rounding out the local races is the Valley of the Moon Water District board race. Applying for a short-term seat to replace the late Ed Kenny is current director Jennifer Linfante.

Steve Rogers, Dale Ingraham and incumbents Jon Foreman and Mark Heneveld, are running for the two full-term seats that are open.

In other local election matters, Sonoma residents will vote on Measure S, a proposal to increase a tax paid by hotel guests from 10 percent to 12 percent.

If passed, the only people affected would be hotel guests in the City of Sonoma, who would pay 2 percent more on the city’s base Transient Occupancy Tax starting Jan. 1, 2019. Also, the measure would allow the council to add another 1 percent any time before Jan. 1, 2024.

Measures Y, T and X are a trio of proposed annual taxes on parcels in the Valley of the Moon, Glen Ellen and Schell-Vista fire districts, respectively, which would levy $200 per residence and 10 cents per square foot for commercial parcels – however, 14 cents in Schell-Vista’s Measure X – to raise between $350,000 and $1.2 million per district to hire additional full-time first-responders.

Another measure of local interest: County Parks Measure M, a new one-eighth of a cent sales tax to fund city and county public parks. If approved by the requisite two-thirds vote, the measure would impose a one-eighth cent tax – or, 0.125 percent – on sales countywide for a 10-year period.

Park officials estimate that the measure would raise $11.5 million a year. If this measure sounds familiar, that because a similarly worded sales tax proposal, Measure J, suffered a narrow loss at the polls in November 2016.

Rounding out the local races, the Sonoma Valley seat on the Santa Rosa Junior College board of trustees is up for grabs with incumbent Jeff Kunde facing challenger John Kelly, currently a trustee on the Sonoma Valley Unified School District board. If Kelly were to win the SRJC seat, he would resign his trusteeship with SVUSD.

On the statewide level, Gavin Newsom, currently the state’s lieutenant governor, a Democrat and a Marin County resident, is running against John Cox, a Republican who describes himself as a businessman and taxpayer advocate, for Governor.

One of the statewide initiatives that has gotten the most attention in Sonoma is Proposition 6, which would repeal the 12-cent-per-gallon increase in California’s gas tax that went into effect last year.

Proposition 6 would do away with the higher fuel tax and new vehicle registration fee that Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in 2017. The gas tax hike is expected to raise more than $5 billion annually for road repairs and mass transit system improvements statewide.

Reach Janis Mara at janis.mara@sonomanews.com.