Cotati is considering easing its cap on fast food-type businesses. The potential change is sparked by a high vacancy rate in the city’s commercial spaces, said Assistant City Manager Micah Hinkle, who oversees City Hall economic development efforts.

Cotati officials who in 2011 happily settled on a controversial $3.5 million redesign of the downtown have altered their course following a ballot initiative that banned roundabouts from the city.

Cotati officials announced Wednesday the hiring of a new assistant city manager, filling a spot vacant since early 2007. Micah Hinkle will be paid $100,000 and focus on economic development, said City Manager Dianne Thompson, who was the last Cotati assistant city manager before she became its top manager.

Several cities in Sonoma County are quietly cutting their taxes on most real estate transactions, a tacit acknowledgment that for years they may have been charging too much. Cloverdale, Cotati and Sebastopol have reduced or are proposing to decrease their so-called documentary transfer tax rate, which tacks hundreds of dollars on the sale of an average home.

A little-known perk termed ‘administrative leave’ amounts to a guaranteed cash bonus or extra vacation for some upper-level government administrators and elected officials in Sonoma County.

When former Healdsburg Police Chief Susan Jones was hired in July to run Cotati’s police department on a 6-month interim basis, city officials said she would play a key role in the search for a permanent police chief for the city of 7,500. But Jones departed feeling that the city’s top administrator froze her out of major parts of the recruitment and hiring process and at one point misled her in a way that she said briefly tarnished her credibility among her professional peers.