Candidates vying to replace retiring Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown are off to a relatively slow start in the fundraising race. Gina Cuclis topped the list of five candidates in the contest for the 1st District supervisorial seat, which takes in Sonoma Valley, the city of Sonoma and parts of eastern Santa Rosa.

Keith Rhinehart, a former United Parcel Service supervisor and local substitute teacher, has entered the race for Sonoma County’s 1st District supervisorial seat. One of his primary campaign goals: to stop the county from outsourcing services.

The Santa Rosa City Council has relieved the owner of Santa Rosa Plaza of a requirement to study ways of improving pedestrian access through the downtown mall. A divided council agreed late Tuesday night with its planning director and city attorney that it had been inappropriate for the city Design Review Board to make mall owner Simon Property Group do the study. Was it the right call?

Water and sewer rates will go up about 3 percent per year for the next two years after the Santa Rosa City Council reluctantly approved the latest in a decade-long series of rate increases. By 2013, the typical home in Santa Rosa will be paying 116 percent more for water and sewer service than a decade earlier.

The Santa Rosa City Council is losing patience with the protesters camping on its doorstep. Several council members are no longer interested in debating terms of a camping permit for the group, and instead want the tents removed from the City Hall lawn. “I believe that we have compromised enough. I believe we have bent our local laws enough. And today I really feel that enough is enough,” Vice Mayor John Sawyer said.

Occupy Santa Rosa protesters and city officials met Monday to discuss conditions under which demonstrators will be able to continue camping on City Hall property. But the two sides are coming from such dramatically different worldviews that progress was slow and agreement far from certain. “With permits or without permits, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, we are here to stay,” one demonstrator said.

State Sen. Noreen Evans officially ruled out a run for the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors on Monday, saying she is happy in her current post and has much work to do in Sacramento. The move immediately provides a clearer path for the four declared candidates, and could especially benefit Santa Rosa Councilwoman Susan Gorin, a close political ally of Evans.

It doesn’t take a degree in seismology to read the fault lines on the sharply divided Santa Rosa City Council. The latest exercise: Councilmembers John Sawyer and Gary Wysocky were both nominated to become vice mayor of Santa Rosa. Can you guess which one got the job?

Occupy Santa Rosa protesters won another reprieve from eviction Tuesday when the City Council rejected a proposed Monday deadline for the removal of the City Hall encampment, agreeing instead to start negotiations on a permit to allow the camping to continue. The decision was cheered by protesters and followed by nearly three hours of passionate public testimony that several council members praised as a stirring display of civic engagement.

Fifteen minutes in a burning building was plenty for Santa Rosa City Councilman Scott Bartley to confirm he was never destined for a career in firefighting. ‘I felt like a loaf of French bread in an oven,’ a sweat-drenched Bartley said after exiting the Santa Rosa Fire Department’s live-burn training structure.