LocalLocal newsnews at your at your ngertips everyevery weekweek fingertips $1.00 JustJust $1!.00!
Greyounds sports Greyounds sports section teaser section teaser Sports,Sports, Page XPage X
at the newsstand at the newsstand
$1 at$1the at newsstand the newsstand
TheHealdsburg HealdsburgTribune Tribune The Enterprise & Scimitar Enterprise & Scimitar
Visit for daily updates on local news views www.healdsburgtribune.com for daily updates on local news andand views Our 157th year, Visit Number 36 www.healdsburgtribune.com Healdsburg, California 1865 –September 8, 2022
Our 155th year, Number 00© ur 155th year, Number 00©
CANDIDATES FOR COUNCIL WILL FACE THE PUBLIC ON SEPT. 14
Healdsburg, California Healdsburg, California
Date, Date, 20202020
LIVE FORUM IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC By Christian Kallen
➝ Candidates, 4
Photo by Christian Kallen
A live, in-person city council candidates’ forum will take place Wednesday, Sept. 14, that will place all seven candidates on the same stage at Coyote Sonoma. Candidates for the two open four-year city council seats are: Linda Cade, Susan Graf, Chris Herrod and Evelyn Mitchell (incumbent). Candidates for the single two-year seat on the ballot are Ronald Edwards, Matias Lopez and Brigette Mansell. All candidates have agreed to participate. The event is sponsored by the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce and Healdsburg 2040, a work group inspired by the Sustainable Design Assessment Team’s (SDAT) visit to Healdsburg in 2018. Representatives from both groups will serve as moderators, said chamber CEO Tallia Hart. Live streaming is being discussed, but it has not yet been confirmed. “Once everything is finalized, the chamber and 2040 will be updating event info on the calendar and sending out information through our digital newsletter and email lists,” said Hart. The chamber’s calendar can be found at cm.healdsburg.com/ events. This forum is open to the public and free with registration, at https:// tinyurl.com/4ayfnz3u. Due to the venue’s limited capacity, this event will be first come, first served to those who register in advance. At-the-door registrations will only take place if space allows. Check in begins at 5pm, and the forum will promptly start at 5:30pm. The questions will be prepared in advance, though the organizers said there will be an open Q&A
BUILD Reach for Home's development director, Angie Escudero, envisions a time when the K&L Motel's firepit circle can be transformed into a community
meeting space for residents of Healdsburg's first homeless shelter, K&L Village, set to open in November.
Work Begins at L&M Village for the Unsheltered REPAIRING WALLS, FIRE SECURITY FIRST STEPS By Christian Kallen
On Sept. 1, the workers’ trucks finally started rolling into the parking lot at the former L&M Motel at 70 Healdsburg Ave., as crews started replacing walls, installing appliances and converting what were once the most affordable motel rooms in town into something else—a place of rescue, a reprieve from the streets and the elements for people without a home: L&M Village. Reach for Home, the local nonprofit whose stated mission is to end homelessness in the north county, will operate the 22-room lodging, converted by Burbank Housing from the mid-20th century roadside motel just off the Central Healdsburg exit. But don’t expect a dropin facility for every hitchhiker who comes through
town, or permanent housing even for those most in need. Instead, the L&M Village—set to be fully open by Nov. 21 of this year, just in time for Thanksgiving—will be a place for the chronically homeless. “When we use the term chronic homelessness, there is a definition by HUD, but I will just let you know that most people that experience homelessness for a long period of time, or multiple periods of time, or have a disability or other condition would fall into that category,” said Stephen Sotomayor, the city’s housing director, at an Aug. 10 community meeting about the L&M. The number of homeless in the Healdsburg area is not known for certain—a point-in-time census of homeless was held in Sonoma County in February of this year, but final results have not yet been released with their breakdown of where the county’s unsheltered (and temporarily sheltered) are found.
For quite some time, the city of Healdsburg and northern Sonoma County have not had a shelter within our jurisdictional boundaries.” That means getting people off the street and into a shelter has been virtually impossible. The latest homeless census results available are from 2020; they showed 69 unsheltered in Healdsburg, 209 in north county. At last month’s meeting, Sotomayor estimated there were about 50 people without a home in the immediate Healdsburg area, perhaps 70 in the north county, including Windsor, Geyserville and Cloverdale. The problem is becoming more visible in Healdsburg, not least with the recent appearance of at least one homeless person
camping out in the Plaza. Said City Manager Jeff Kay, “Rarely does a day go by when I don't hear something from a member of the community reflecting some sort of concern around this problem … we hear from people who most fundamentally are concerned about the welfare of the unsheltered.” The logistical hurdle the city faces, that most cities face, is a 2018 federal court ruling that said a jurisdiction can’t penalize someone for “illegal camping” without first
being able to offer that individual a place to stay. “It’s a pervasive challenge, and as I said many times, it's one of the most vexing challenges that we face right now in local government,” said Kay. It is the virtual absence of overnight support services for the homeless in the Healdsburg area that makes L&M Village so necessary, said Margaret Sluyk, CEO of Reach for Home. Their ambitious goal of ending ➝ L&M, 2
DON’T LET THE MUSIC STOP LOCAL PUBS TAKE UP THE TUNE AS PLAZA GOES DARK By Christian Kallen
Photo courtesy of Mesa Yakushev Du
CLASSICAL The duo of cellist Thomas Mesa and pianist Ilya Yakushev will perform this month at The 222.
The Tuesday Night on the Plaza music series is over for the year, but that doesn’t mean all the guitars and drums have been put away until next May. In fact, September is shaping up to be a pretty busy month for musical diversion—if the heat doesn’t melt it all away. Coyote Sonoma is forging ahead with danceable tunes, highlighted ➝ Music, 5