Despite going late into the night after a long agenda and a raucous start to the meeting, in the annual reshuffling of the council seats, the Healdsburg City Council selected Vice Mayor Ozzy Jimenez as the new mayor of Healdsburg following a unanimous vote and a nomination by Mayor Evelyn Mitchell. Councilmember Ariel Kelley will serve as the city’s vice mayor.
Jimenez will be the second Latinx individual in Healdsburg’s history to serve as Healdsburg mayor.
While the Dec. 6 meeting was set to take place in a hybrid format in person at city hall — for those with proof of vaccination — and via Zoom, the meeting was abruptly delayed and forced to be held online only after a group of about 40 anti-vaccine mandate protesters made their way into city hall in an attempt to enter the council chambers.
City staff were forced to lock the council chamber doors as demonstrators jostled around the corridor, with city clerk Raina Allan announcing that the meeting would be held on Zoom.
Local Deb Kravitz was the only community member to public comment on the council’s reorganization and said she’d be delighted to see Jimenez as mayor.
Prior to the nominations, Mitchell made a statement about her time as mayor.
“I’ve been really proud to have the opportunity to serve this wonderful city as our mayor since June of 2020. After my initial term, I was really pleased when the council appointed me for another year for 2021. At the end of 2020, I thought we would be able to put COVID behind us but unfortunately this didn’t happen, but as the situation changed, so did we. We focused on recovery of our businesses, families and schools and we worked really hard with our nonprofit sector to help get vaccines out and remind everybody how important it was and is to get vaccinated,” Mitchell said. “Our new city manager Jeff Kay started in January and has worked seamlessly with the council and the staff, and he has provided valuable leadership and I feel really fortunate to have him at the helm and to be able to work with him. We have accomplished a lot … just in this year alone. We worked diligently on housing and homelessness. We’re in the process of the development of affordable housing at Saggio Hills, we awarded the development of the affordable housing site behind Big John’s to Burbank Housing and they are currently working on their plan. The construction of affordable housing at the Mill District is in process, we opened the homeless navigation center at Victory Studios, we applied for Project Homekey funds to help provide transitional housing for our homeless population and should be hearing very soon if this request is approved.”
She continued, “We were hit with unprecedented drought and were forced to restrict water usage throughout the city. In response, the city developed the recycle water delivery program during the worst months of the drought. The program was a huge success. Our community really stepped up to save water and Healdsburg had the highest percentage of water savings in the entire state at 50 percent. Other notable accomplishments, right at the beginning of the year we brought online the largest floating solar array in the country. It supplies roughly eight percent of our electricity needs. We developed the parklet program in response to COVID and now we just decided to continue that program into the future. We opened the extension of the Foss Creek Trail, we approved plans for the new park at Saggio Hills and the redesign of Badger Park. We’ve been able to bring back many community service programs with the return of our revenues and just Friday night we enjoyed a magnificent tree lighting ceremony. There were smiling faces everywhere and I overheard a number of people say that night that it was like we were in the middle of a Hallmark movie.”
Mitchell said all of this makes her proud of the community and she feels honored to have been able to serve as the mayor and to continue to serve on the city council.
With that said, Mitchell nominated Jimenez as mayor and Kelley as vice mayor and with no objections from the other council members, Kelley and Jimenez accepted the nominations.
Kelley said she is grateful for Mitchell’s leadership over the years and for keeping the council steady and on track.
“I am proud to serve as the second Latinx individual in about 153 years. I just want to say that every single day my focus will be ensuring that we continue moving the business of the city forward and do what matters most to our residents,” said Mayor-elect Jimenez. “I feel like we need a vision forward on the issues that matter most like our housing element, general plan, system change in how we address our climate, water conservation and how we can continue to enhance our city services for our residents and everyone in our community. I look forward to working with you all on these very important issues in the next year.”
Jimenez commended Mitchell for her “strong and steadfast” leadership.
“She served her term under challenging circumstances and stepped in during a period of difficult reckoning around race, equity, policing and the pandemic that still continues today,” Jimenez said.
He added that he’s cherished his time getting to know Mitchell over the last year and thanked her for her service to the city council and to the city of Healdsburg.
“We are in gratitude for your voice, your experience, your wisdom,” Jimenez said.
With the help of Jimenez, Kay presented Mitchell with a commemorative gavel plaque. The council then voted unanimously to approve Mitchell’s nominations.
In closing, Councilmember David Hagele shared a few thoughts on Mitchell and her time as mayor. Hagele said, “As mayor, you did a lot under a lot of extreme circumstances.”
