Update: July 23 at 11 a.m. City officials have confirmed there will be no meeting on July 28 as discussed during the meeting. “The council, at its July 20, 2021 council meeting, was unable to reach consensus on how to fill the council vacancy. Therefore, we will default to holding a special election on the next regularly established date of April 12, 2022. I expect to bring an item forward at the next Council meeting on August 4, 2021 to call for the special election of April 12, 2022,” said town clerk Maria De La O in an email.
The Windsor Town Council remains deadlocked 2-2 when it comes to filling the vacant seat via appointment or special election. The council is planning to try one more time, at a meeting being scheduled for July 28. The council is up against a July 31 deadline for defaulting to an election.
If no decision is reached by July 31, the default option of a special election will be enacted. The earliest a special, mail-only election could take place is 114 days after the default, with the winner not being seated until 30 days post-election in order for the results to be certified. If the town decides to hold a full election (mail-in and in-person) the earliest possible date to hold the election is April 12, 2022, according to Deva Marie Proto the Sonoma County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor-Registrar of Voters.
According to Proto, the cost of a special vacancy election in Windsor is estimated to be between $50,000 to $85,000 which is only the fees that the registrar charges for the elections, it does not include the additional work and hours required of town staff.
Mayor Sam Salmon and Vice Mayor Rosa Reynoza are both firmly in the camp of a special election, with council members Debora Fudge and Esther Lemus in favor of appointment. The pro-election view is concerned with issues of transparency and the voice of the public being heard. The pro-appointment view is that appointment is considered the norm for filling vacancies on elected bodies, and is concerned with costs, filling the seat as soon as possible to avoid deadlocks and the fact that the seat will be up for election in November 2022.
While familiar names and complaints popped up in favor of holding an election, there appeared to be new voices in favor of appointment, primarily with the goal of stopping the strife and division in the town and on the council.
“(It’s) time move forward, to demonstrate leadership over this issue. This polarization is exacerbating on your watch, and I’d ask you to consider that,” said Bill Adams, who sits on the school board. “It (breaks) my heart, civility and discourse are eroding on your watch. Elected bodies appoint to fill vacancies … you have a qualified individual to appoint, a person Ms. Reynoza recommended in Tanya Potter. I ask you to support and appoint that person. Rosa do not fall prey to those who clamor in one-sentence emails to elect a one-term person … We don’t need special meeting on the 28th, it kicks the can down the road.”
“We’ve got 28,000 people in the town you can pick from. Pick somebody to tonight. I don’t’ care who you pick. I know you folks can do it, I believe you can, work together and figure it out, I implore you,” said Rich Carnation, who also sits on the school board. “When we drive in its our home and we want people to get along and do well. The nasty stuff needs to stop. It’s hurting our spirits in our town.”
Former councilmember Bruce Okrepkie also spoke in favor of appointment, as did Ben Lehr and Lisa Landers, while Lance Sloan stated that he just wanted some decision made and Gina Fortino Dickson stated it didn’t make sense to hold an election until campaign finance reforms had been passed.
Familiar proponents of holding a special election spoke during the meeting, including Betsy Mallace, former council candidates Julia Donoho and Jeff Leasure, Mark Homchik, Ahna Pintane and Mary Anne Bainbridge Krause.
“I do care who fills the council seat, that fifth seat is important,” said Mallace. “I want to exercise my right to vote. Nothing of the town’s business has been stopped or delayed, and an election will take angst off table, an appointment will only delay healing. We aren’t any other town, we are Windsor. At this point there isn’t the trust level in council, an appointment is not acceptable to most people.”
The Town Green Civic Center Project
The elephant in the room is the looming Town Green Civic Center project due to come back for discussion in August. Many of those who are anti-appointment believe that Lemus and Fudge want to “stack the deck” in favor of approval, even though several of the offered potential appointees have either been against or neutral on the project.
In a prior meeting, the appointment of Okrepkie and an agreement to push off the discussion of the civic center until after the election in 2022 was also dismissed. However, if a special election happens, if the project comes back for discussion in August, no one will have been elected in time to be a part of those conversations.
Coming back to the council
When it came time to vote, Fudge and Lemus tried one more time to appoint someone to the position, suggesting the appointment of former mayoral candidate Tanya Potter, whose name had been put forward by Reynoza in early discussions before things ground to a halt.
But Reynoza and Salmon would not be budged, and the deadlock continued.
As these arguments have spawned throughout the town, the vitriol levied on social media platforms like Facebook and NextDoor have taken a toll. Councilmembers Lemus and Fudge have borne the brunt of the social media comments, being accused of everything from being “all about special interests” to being “the town drunk.”
But the ongoing division throughout the town — echoed within the council itself — is growing deeper.
After Fudge expressed her pain and dismay at the cyberbullying taking place on social media, Salmon, who by his own admission is neither tech savvy nor on social media, stated that she was out of line for classifying emails calling for a special election as cyberbullying.
“I never said it was emails, it’s on social media,” Fudge responded. “I don’t want you to undermine me when you are not seeing what they are saying. I’d be happy to print out the screenshots for you.”
Lemus brought up financial concerns with the cost of special elections, and pointed out that she had supported the most recent one even knowing it was likely Reynoza would win, but that in this case felt the town needed to move forward. She also appointed out that voter turnout in the previous special election was very low.
Reynoza said that finances and elections should not be brought up in the same sentence, and that the reason the prior special election had been approved was because the public wanted her appointed, something she believed the sitting council wouldn’t allow to happen. She also called the comments about voter turnout “disrespectful.”
Salmon had the last word, stating he believes that the town’s politics have changed with Reynoza’s election and while he doesn’t believe this election would be about the Town Green project, but rather about “business as we’ve done before, with subcommittees and ad hoc committees and a lack of transparency … We’re going to have an election because I have to go down and walk around the Green and face people. You can’t change my mind, there is no compromise.”
