Santa Rosa City Hall can implement reduced pension benefits to most future workers now that the union that blocked the change for two years has dropped its legal challenge. The decision clears the way for the city to institute a “two-tier” pension system for all employees except police and firefighters. The change would reduce benefits for new workers but would not affect existing workers’ pensions.

Tensions flared Monday evening during discussions about a long-range plan for land use as well as roads, trains and other transportation systems in Sonoma County and the Bay Area. Police were called to the meeting at the Finley Center in Santa Rosa to keep order.

One month after creating a special camping permit program at the request of Occupy Santa Rosa protesters, the city is ready to scrap it. The City Council on Tuesday will consider another ordinance that will ban camping outright on all city property. Is this the right thing to do or not?

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 closely watched process to fill Sonoma County’s open chief financial officer position has settled on three top candidates to be interviewed by the Board of Supervisors next week in a special public meeting. The candidates include Donna Dunk, a 26-year employee in the county auditor’s office who has served as the interim financial chief since the May retirement of Rod Dole. Santa Rosa City Councilman Gary Wysocky is also seeking the job, although he did not make the list of finalists.

Does Santa Rosa City Councilman Scott Bartley think its OK for sex offenders to camp at the Occupy tent city outside City Hall? That’s what Councilman Gary Wysocky suggested last week at an emergency council meeting and again in a KSRO radio interview. That prompted one of Bartley’s frequent allies, Councilman Jake Ours, to call the radio station and castigate Wysocky over the air. Listen to the exchange here. Who’s right?

Why did Scott Bartley change his position on the Occupy Santa Rosa tent camp? The councilman who cast the swing vote explained his decision Friday. Meanwhile, the mood at the Occupy encampment was buoyant Friday one day after the City Council granted protesters the right to apply for camping permits.

Occupy Santa Rosa’s encampment on the lawn of City Hall will be allowed to stay for now after the City Council agreed to grant protesters camping permits following a dramatic and emotional emergency meeting Thursday. The ordinance goes into effect immediately and makes it possible for individuals to obtain 15-day camping permits that come with a long list of conditions. Did the City Council make the right call?

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.