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INTRODUCTION TO THE 5 CANDIDATES FOR CITY COUNCIL’S 3 SEATS
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
August 15, 2024 Date, Date, 20202020
INCUMBENTS, CHALLENGERS FILE TO FILL 4-YEAR TERMS By Christian Kallen
➝ 5 Candidates, 2
Photo by Christian Kallen
The application period for candidates to file for public office in Sonoma County ended on Friday, Aug. 9. While several offices were held open for additional candidates to file because only the incumbent was running or no one had applied, locally multiple candidates applied for the available seats. In Healdsburg, five candidates filed for three fouryear terms that will be on the ballot. They included the incumbents in those seats—Dave Hagele, to run for a third consecutive term; Ariel Kelley, to run to fill a second term; and Ron Edwards, who won a two-year term in 2022 and is running for a full fouryear term this year. Two additional candidates also filed: Linda Cade, who also ran in 2022 but failed to reach a winning threshold; and Heather Hannon-Kramer, a newcomer to Healdsburg politics. While most candidates were issued nomination papers in the first two weeks of the application period, Hannon-Kramer only “pulled papers” on Aug. 8, the day before the application deadline of Aug. 9. Ariel Kelley: Kelley was first out of the gate with a statement about her candidacy, issued Aug. 11. Elected to the council in 2020, she served as mayor in 2023 and stated she “dedicated her tenure to advancing public infrastructure projects such as the new fire
LANDMARK Debora Fudge, who has served the Town of Windsor for 30 years, at the Town Green. It’s one of many attributes of the town that Fudge, 68, helped move forward.
Fudge Ends 30-year Career in Windsor LONGTIME TOWN COUNCILMEMBER, ENVIRONMENTAL FORCE NOT SEEKING RE-ELECTION
and heading out for a vacation in Europe this week, it seemed a good time to learn more about how she became so involved in Windsor and what she thinks of the town now.
By Christian Kallen
When did you first arrive in Windsor, and what brought you here?
For the first time in 28 years, one name will be missing from the Windsor ballot for Town Council. Councilmembers in most towns and cities, including Healdsburg, generally serve one or two terms, rarely three or four. Debora Fudge has been elected to fouryear terms on the council seven times, served as mayor six times, and is a longtime member of several key regional agencies—the SMART board, Sonoma Clean Power and Sonoma County Zero Waste among others. Along with Sam Salmon, who has served on the Town Council since 1994, Fudge has played a key role in shaping Windsor. (Salmon will be running for another term this fall.) With Fudge planning to step back from civic life,
didn’t really know anybody in 1990. So in 1994 when Sam [Salmon] was elected, he put an ad in the water bill that said he was looking for a planning commissioner. And I applied, went through some interviews with him and a couple of others, and he chose me. And I was happy to be able to contribute.
The story is I moved to Windsor in 1990, and we weren’t a town yet. And the county was approving a thousand homes a year up here with no real planning. Just, you know, suburban sprawl homes. And it was to the point where if you wanted to go grocery shopping at Raley’s, which was our only big shopping store, you had to go at 10:00 at night so you didn’t have to stand in lines. There was no city-centered growth pattern to the development. It was just subdivisions. So I have a planning background—I worked as a state planner in the early 1980s, and my master’s degree is in planning [UC Davis]. And so I moved here and thought I could contribute, but I
I know Windsor was incorporated as a Town in 1992—why is it a “Town” and not “the City of Windsor”? The original people on Town Council in 1992, and others as well, decided that we always wanted to remain a small town, have a small-town atmosphere. And so if we called ourselves a town and reined in growth as compared to what was happening up here, then we would maintain that small-town quality of life. We didn’t want to be Modesto. We didn’t want to be what Rohnert Park was at the time. We specifically wanted to be different.
NO ON MEASURE J DRAWS A ‘NO’ VOTE VICE MAYOR OBJECTS TO WIDER POLITICAL ROLE FOR CITY COUNCIL By Christian Kallen
Photo courtesy of Evelyn Mitchell
Measure J, the initiative on the November ballot to shut down a number of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or “factory farms” in Sonoma County, has encountered widespread opposition among public governing bodies, most DISSENT Vice Mayor Evelyn Mitchell, seen here outside the Council Chambers at City Hall, cast a lone ‘no’ vote on a proposal recently including the
to oppose Measure J, the so-called factory farms initiative.
Do you feel that you, and the others who have worked with you along the way, have been successful in your goals? We’ve won a lot of awards for what we’ve done. It’s been purposeful development. The City Council and planning commissioners have for over 20 years gone to smart growth conferences so that we could create visions for our town ahead of time. And then when developers would come speak to us, we would say, “Here’s our written plan, here’s our written vision for what we want to become.” And they would need to go along with the program in order to build here. We p l a n n e d a h e a d what we wanted to be. We laid out streets for them in some cases, and we laid out the Town Green ourselves ahead of time, and now we want development around it. We did that ourselves as citizens. When we go to these conferences, I don’t see city council people and planning commissioners from other Sonoma County cities.
Healdsburg City Council. At its Aug. 5 meeting, the council voted 4-1 to oppose Measure J, joining the City of Petaluma and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors in opposition. A similar vote by the Sebastopol City Council is expected in September, and on Aug. 21, the Windsor Town Council will hear a presentation from Supervisor David Rabbit encouraging them to oppose the measure as well. Whatever the merits or problems with Measure J, Vice Mayor Evelyn Mitchell cast the solitary vote against the council’s opposition resolution. But not for the reasons one might think: While Mitchell’s credentials in animal welfare are strong, the very fact that the City Council took a position on the issue is what rubbed her the wrong way. Measure J is usually
It sounds too good to be true, which means it probably is. Haven’t there been some rough patches? Lynn Morehouse, Sam and I became the environmental majority in November of 1996. And that’s when we created larger change. That’s when we specifically started working on these smart growth initiatives and creating the Town Green. So Lynn was a big part of those days, too. Then Lynn, Sam and I went through a recall election in part over whether to build the downtown Town Green and change the development pattern here. The ’90s in Windsor; it was a Wild West town. I mean, the old-timers that lived here in the ’90s were threatened by change. They didn’t understand what the impact would be. They’re happy now for the most part, but I understand how they felt at the time … Our exclusive interview with Debora Fudge is continued online at healdsburgtribune.com …
cast as an effort to ban factory feedlots in the county, although the county’s coastal zone is excluded (it has specific zoning and development regulations under the California Coastal Act). The initiative gathered enough signatures to be eligible for the ballot in the general election. However, while the Board of Supervisors was obligated to approve it for the ballot in May, it voted 4-0 to submit a letter of opposition to the measure. (North County Supervisor James Gore was unable to attend the meeting.) So opposed was the board, in fact, that in July it revised the wording of the measure as it will appear on the ballot, excising the phrase, “To promote animal welfare, water quality and other goals,” holding that the phrase was not impartial. The objection of the ➝ Measure J, 6