Warming Centers: Let's hear it for Supervisor Hopkins!

Sebastopol has been struggling to fund warming & cooling centers to serve our unhoused population. We are committed to meeting this essential civic obligation, and have done all we can to make it a reality. Our one remaining challenge was our City’s fiscal crisis: We face a $1.67M deficit this year (in a total $12.5M operating budget-fiscal crisis declared on November 21, 2023). Extreme weather events have created dire challenges for those sleeping rough in our community. As a community, we did as much as we could, with the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center offering indoor space at a discounted (not-even-cost) price as well as supervisory staff, West County Community Services providing volunteer training at no cost, CVNL (Ines DeLuna) working with us for volunteer scheduling, & local advocates & community members stepping up to volunteer. And despite our fiscal crisis, we had allocated $8,000 to warming and cooling centers this fiscal year.

But we needed more than the $8,000 we had in hand.

Supervisor Hopkins has stepped in to save the day. She's agreed to allocate $10,000 from her TIF (Sonoma County Tourism Impact Fund) discretionary funds. Now, these urgent community needs can be met!

Thank you Supervisor Lynda Hopkins!