Ken Foley has questions

Ken Foley served as mayor of Sebastopol in the 90's. He emailed the five candidates running for City Council with a series of questions. He wanted to know more about them before he cast his votes. Sadly, only one of the five responded. Mayor Slayter and I independently submitted our answers. Dale Dougherty of our local Sebastopol Times did a series of articles that capture all of this. Informative and interesting, if I do say so myself.

Questions Posed by Ken Foley:

The current City Manager is also the City Attorney. When he retires should the city return to a separation of the two positions?
Should the city return to in person meetings for the city council, planning commission and all other city boards and committees?
The city intends to replace approximately 1600 water meters with so called "smart meters". Should this decision be reversed or modified? Please explain.
Which city committees do you want to serve on? Are there any committees that should be eliminated? Any there any NEW committees that should be implemented?
The city has hired a consultant to explore a possible merger with another fire department. What is your position on this potential change?
Should the city also explore contracting with the Sonoma County Sheriff for police services?
How will you keep Sebastopol citizens informed of what the city council is doing?
Should the city relax parking requirements, setbacks and other impediments to promote more housing? Do you support more dense housing such as duplexes, accessory dwelling units in ALL zoning districts?
Do you support converting unused or underutilized commercial buildings to housing?
Should Sebastopol promote housing for all income levels?

October 26 Article: Dale interviews Ken Foley, who explains his effort to get responses from the candidates.

October 27 Article: Current Mayor Patrick Slayter's decides to answer the questions!

October 28 Article: I (Diana Rich) join the effort with my own answers. Compare and contrast. And no, I didn't read Mayor Slayter's answers before I wrote mine. I wanted to do that, believe me, but I exercised enormous restraint, drafted up my answers, and clicked "send" before immediately reading what Patrick had written.

What does the future hold? Well, I'm hopeful that others will submit their own answers. Maybe even members of the public? Why not??!!