Or, check out "Petaluma, California in the Movies," which gives detailed descriptions of places . There is so much that I can help you with, and no, I'm not a realtor! Petaluma City Council Member DLynda Fischer spearheaded the grant application with fellow members of the citys climate action commission. Rincon Valley is somewhatsuburban but near open space and parks. Living in Petaluma | Berkeley Parents Network [5] Petaluma's name comes from the Miwok village named Pta Luma, that was located on the banks of the Petaluma River. The population density was 3,953 people per square mile (1,526/km2). An ambitious food hall is replacing a beloved Point Reyes institution Warriors free agent Donte DiVincenzo may be headed to New York Knicks. She is not only very knowledgeable but she is personable and reliable! Can anyone comment ondesirable communities in this area? We're entertaining the idea of a move to Petaluma as we don't have jobs that require regular access to the city. They will track their progress in a database across several months and calculate how much they have cut their carbon footprints. I work for a company that helps families figure out where to move around the Bay Area. The nearest major airports are San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport, Sonoma County Airport Express buses connect Petaluma with the aforementioned airports. It has everything on your wish list. Thank you! The town's position on the Petaluma River in the heart of productive farmland was critical to its growth during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The schools are great, and Live Oak Charter school (http://www.liveoakcharter.org/) is Waldorf. More than one-fifth (20.6%) of Petaluma's residents were under the age of 18, while 18.7% are senior citizens aged 65 and over. Cary and Matthew Bitler are both in their mid twenties and are raising two kids, ages two and four months. People from the Bay Area often have this feeling that everything in Petaluma is idyllic and I don't know why but it is just like any other place, if worse public transit and slightly more boring. Bay Area Census -- City of Petaluma . We cant do that anymore.. The city council this month discussed the abysmal state of the streets and learned that it would take a $20 million investment every year for the next five years to get the citys streets up to a level considered good. Just maintaining the current poor pavement level would cost $5 million per year over five years and leave Petaluma with a $121 million backlog in street repairs. the split is about 80/20 to with the 80% going to the LEFT! [7] The largest municipality by population and land area is San Jose with 1,013,240 residents and 178.26 square miles (461.7km2). There were brothels downtown along Petaluma Boulevard,[13] which used to be the main thoroughfare until U.S. Highway 101 was constructed in the 1950s. The historic McNear Building is a common film location. Diversity? This plan limited the number of building permits to 500 annually for a five-year period beginning in 1972. Miller, who is Petalumas representative on the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, said that the agency is considering renewal of a countywide sales tax for transportation projects on the November ballot. Next year, the city will redo Petaluma Boulevard South from D Street to Crystal Lane as part of a road diet. David Gershon, founder of the Empowerment Institute and author of the book Low Carbon Diet, said the neighborhood-level initiative started in 2016 in Palo Alto. If your kids will be at one of the Waldorf schools, though, that may not matter as much. what type of people make up - is it professionals? Also, Sonoma State U. is there, with that fabulous new music entertainment venue. On a warm late summer Saturday night, downtown Petaluma is buzzing like a European paseo, where it seems like half the town is out and about. They pay $1900 for a two bedroom, one bath apartment on the west side a few blocks from the heart of downtown. California Jury Pay Could Soon Increase to $100 a Day [25][26] The city also streamlined the process of building EV charging stations and potential hydrogen filling stations. is it diverse? Has anyone else made this move? It is a little more conservative than most of Marin. The Latino ethnic groups are Mexicans (16.2%), Salvadorans (1.2%), Guatemalans (0.6%), Nicaraguans (0.3%), Peruvians (0.3%), and Puerto Ricans (0.3%). Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate. Most of the neighborhoods are pretty nice and some (like Ignacio) can even be rather rustic. are based in Petaluma. Thanks for any info! However, I commute to Oakland three days a week and it is torture, especially the 10 miles between Novato and Petaluma. I often see posts about how wonderful to live in a small town, etc. With its 19th-century brick buildings and industrial riverfront area under revival, it has just enough old-city grit to make it interesting without being menacing. State Route 116 also runs through town as Lakeville Highway. I am in the software industry, and my spouse is an engineer , and it's important for us that our kids be among like minded educated folks (ie, parents) so they are inspired. According to the city's 2021 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,[39] the top employers in the city are: The U.S. Coast Guard operates Training Center Petaluma just outside Petaluma, near Two Rock. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.8 males. Petaluma, long considered a homespun farm town and pit stop for travelers bound for the coast or the wineries to the north, is waking up. Some spent thousands of dollars on solar panels. The 1-mile Maria Drive reconstruction will cost $2.3 million and include bike lanes and curb ramps, Stutsman said. I just wish I could afford the changes, she said, sitting outside the Fruit in Motion Smoothie Shop on Fourth Street. U.S. Highway 101 is the main freeway through town. Pioneers moved to Petaluma from the eastern United States after James Marshall found gold in the Sierra Nevada in 1848. Our kids will be entering 2nd and 4th grades. Forbes Travel last year declared Petaluma as the wine countrys hottest new destination, giving a shout out to popular restaurants like The Shuckery in the newly glamorized Petaluma Hotel and the sophisticated yet vegan- and vegetarian-friendly Drawing Board, opened last year by twentysomething Rosie Wiggins. Since February, they have already slashed carbon dioxide emissions by 15% mostly by changing daily habits, said Natasha Juliana, an architect with a co-working business in town who is campaign director for the local effort called Cool Petaluma. The choices in part reflect the relative wealth of the participants, who have the time and money to focus on environmental causes. There were 21,737 households, out of which 7,541 (34.7%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 11,392 (52.4%) were opposite-sex married couples living together, 2,257 (10.4%) had a female householder with no husband present, 1,052 (4.8%) had a male householder with no wife present. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 4.29 inches (109mm) on December 27, 2004. Although maybe not as less expensive as you may hope!!? This court ruling still forms the foundation for most local growth management ordinances in California. The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a metropolitan region surrounding the San Francisco Bay estuaries in Northern California. I didnt realize the impact what weve handed them, Upton said. It seems like a pretty great town, but we don't know it well, and we've been city-dwellers our entire adult lives, so we're using our (perhaps too rosy) imaginations to fill in the blanks. The east side looks nice to us but we really know nothing about it except through cruising around. One man digs a hole and buries his bacon grease in the yard. It's a contest that promotes the adoption of dogs and celebrates imperfection. I am very involved in our kids' school and hope to find a community of parents who are engaged with their kids' school, but not stressed about it either. According to the 2010 United States Census, the region has over 7.1 million inhabitants and approximately 6,900 square miles (18,000km2) of land. There is some aspect of the history of California that happened in microcosm here in Petaluma. We have a lot of SF & East Bay ''refugees'' and it's great! Its very exciting, especially, to see older Americans step up to the plate, McKibben said. It operates several of its class "A" and "C" schools at TRACEN Petaluma, including the Electronics Technician (ET), Culinary Specialist (CS), Health Service Technician (HS), Information Systems Technician (IT), Operation Specialist (OS), Storekeeper (SK), and Yeoman (YN) schools. The program is. He also juggles two jobs as a garage door technician and delivery driver for Marys Pizza Shack. charged three drug users to send them to treatment. See the Western White House replica for sale in Hillsborough for $38.9 Elon Musks mother wants to cancel his proposed cage fight with Mark Biden announces plan to address student debt in wake of Supreme Court Warriors' Draymond Green agrees to $100M, four-year contract, Planning to travel for the Fourth of July? The average household size was 2.63. Harvest Christian School is a private Christian school in Petaluma, serving grades TK-8.[49]. I am just trying to get a sense of where to focus our search, largely based around the schools, through high school. If you draw a bullseye on a Bay Area map, Petaluma is right in the center, easy to get to from San Francisco and Sacramento and an ideal home base for visitors heading west to the coast, north to the redwoods or east to Sonoma Valley.. Residents in neighborhoods in Irvine and Los Angeles have received similar grants, which come from the Empowerment Institute, a consultancy organization focused on reducing energy use. In Petaluma neighborhoods, the 'extravagant life' is over as climate Wish we could live there but the commute is too far for my husband and I. Petaluma, with 60,000 residents, has a median income of $92,762, according to the U.S. census. Yoselyn Navarrete, the groups bilingual coordinator, said she has spent time talking with immigrant and Spanish-speaking families about the ways they already conserve and sharing how they can do more, like what other items can be recycled instead of thrown away. . Beyond that, the city laid out its 5-year plan for pavement repairs. The racial makeup of Petaluma was 46,566 (80.4%) White, 801 (1.4%) African American, 353 (0.6%) Native American, 2,607 (4.5%) Asian (1.3% Chinese, 0.9% Filipino, 0.8% Asian Indian, 0.4% Japanese, 0.3% Vietnamese, 0.2% Korean, 0.1% Pakistani, 0.1% Laotian, 0.1% Thai), 129 (0.2%), Pacific Islander, 5,103 (8.8%) from other races, and 2,382 (4.1%) from two or more races. [citation needed], There are extant, pre-1906 buildings and Victorian homes on the western side of the river. Petaluma ( Miwok: Pta Luma) [6] [7] is a city in Sonoma County, California, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The smallest by population is Colma with 1,507 people,[8] while the smallest by land area is Belvedere at 0.52 square miles (1.3km2).[9]. Sean Upton shows greens she picked from neighbor John Gallaghers garden. (Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.). I'd also love to hear from anyone with advice on the area. Hello BPNwe are seriously considering relocating our family from Oakland to Petaluma this summer. A longtime Petaluman who moved to the town years ago to raise her two kids, she has watched Petaluma transform in real time. 4th of July events: List of Bay Area fireworks shows, festivals The first half-million dollars of the grant will seed the nonprofit called Cool Petaluma and also support about 50 different groups organized by neighborhood blocks. Lots of people from Petaluma and Sonoma Co. in general commute to San Francisco because Golden Gate transit works so well for that. It is 32 miles (51km) north of San Francisco.[28]. In San Francisco you cant choose your school. The council did not discuss increasing revenue to pay for street maintenance, like Larkspur did, but city officials have not ruled out a tax measure on the November ballot. [17] The downtown area has suffered many river floods over the years[citation needed] and during the Depression commerce declined. The median gross rent in Petaluma was measured to be $2,144, with the labor force participation rate having leveled off at 65.7%. Schools - we want a public school that has dedicated teachers and strikes a balance between traditional and more progressive educational practices (or at least has an open mind to this: understands learning differences, less homework for elementary school, lots of enrichment, etc). The Petaluma area was part of a 66,000-acre (270km2) 1834 Mexican land grant by Governor Jose Figueroa to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo called Rancho Petaluma. The big ideal is the synergy these things together move the dial.. 14.4sqmi (37.3km2) of that is land and the remaining 0.1sqmi (0.3km2) is water. One of the largest historic chicken processing plants still stands in the central area of town; this 1930s brick building is no longer used for the chicken industry, but is being evaluated for preservation and change of use. Santa Rosa High has the ArtQuest program and draws all the artsy kids. Chris, I used to live in Petaluma. January 16, 2020. are there asian indians living in the area? John Sanderbeck prunes his Petaluma garden. Plan for Bay Area traffic, California isnt immune to bigotry, leaders warn in wake of SCOTUS ruling, Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). Joan Gallagher tends to chickens in the coop in the backyard of her Petaluma home. And judging by a rise in hotel tax dollars, more people are spending the night. The wettest month was February 1998 with 19.59 inches (498mm). Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area. Hello BPN! Good luck! You want a interesting place to call home and I really do see Petaluma being that place.. Gravel might be better, actually. I was nervous about that in the beginning. It's a town/small city emerging from a farm background (former chicken capital). Kathleen "Katie" Sorensen, 30, formerly of Sonoma, falsely claimed a Petaluma couple tried to kidnap her young children while she was shopping in an arts and crafts store. There were 22,756 households, with an average of 2.61 occupants. Another occasionally drives up from San Francisco, where he lives and works, just to have a more laid-back mini-retreat for the day while still working, she said. They don't have a parents network, but a 'mothers club' - you can check it out at: http://www.petalumamothersclub.org/ Rachella, Berkeley Parents Network, founded in 1993,isbased in Berkeley, California andis a 501(c)(3) nonprofit online network for parents in the San Francisco Bay Area. We haven't, however, spent enough time to get to know the culture or vibe of other young families our age. to the Petaluma move!we lived in Berkeley for 7 years and happily moved to Petaluma 3 1/2 years ago. Its one of what seems like a festival every week in a town that few would describe as sleepy anymore. Its also drawing new residents, becoming a locus for younger workers in search of housing that may be pricey but is still more affordable than San Francisco, the East Bay and Silicon Valley, particularly among couples looking for a family friendly town to raise kids. And I am sure that Petaluma neighborhoods vary a lot by exact location, just like here. Hi, Petaluma has a great downtown as well as shopping centers. We highly recommend Kathleen Murphy! Immediately to the southwest is Helen Putnam Regional Park, accessible from Chileno Valley Road. Amy's Kitchen, Calix Inc., CamelBak, Clover Stornetta Farms, Lagunitas Brewing Company, and Petaluma Poultry. A 20-gallon water storage unit is on display as neighbors gather at Jenny Howards home in Petaluma. Hmmmm. Unsworth said Petaluma is too quirky to lose its soul anytime in the near future. The SonomaMarin Area Rail Transit (SMART) rail line inaugurated service in August 2017 and serves PetalumaDowntown station, adjacent to the historic Northwestern Pacific Railroad depot near Washington Street. Were slowly climbing that ladder, but were only climbing to maintain what we have, he said. Winter is cool and rainy, with frost occasionally occurring on clear nights. According to the Army Museum at the Presidio, San Francisco, Petaluma was relatively unharmed during the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906, due to significant stable bedrock underlying the region. Even at Brewsters, the hot new beer garden between Petaluma Boulevard and the river, young parents can enjoy a brew and a few bites while their kids climb around in full view in a kiddie playground and bocce court right on site. We are starting to think about Petaluma as a lower cost alternative. UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: At the current $3.4 million per year funding level, the city will have a street repair backlog of $127 million within 5 years. Petaluma Historical Library & Museum. Have any thoughts about schools (we're public, whether in Berkeley or Petaluma), cultural issues/limitations/contrasts (the potential narrowness in perspectives is a concern)? We're coming from a 2 year stint in a small town with a pretty conservative feel and are more than ready for a change! I love the changes. m. I lived in San Francisco before I got married, moved north to Rohnert Park before we finally ended up in the East Bay. First of all, Sonoma County is more diverse than everyone thinks, depending on where you live anyway, Santa Rosa definitely has an African American community that a lot of people do not know about. Novato has a more suburban feel, with a very small 'old town' (which I think is kind of manufactured). The population density increased to 4,146.8 per square mile compared to 2010. But before sundown it can seem pretty family-friendly. Are there many other stay-at-home parents? https://www.bhhsdrysdale.com/real-estate-agent/2200/kathleen-murphy. Petaluma is fantastic. Etc. The total area is around 56 000 km2. My sister lives right near La Tercera Elementary and my parents live on Vista Lane. If anyone has made this move from the Bay Area to this part of the North Bay, I'd love to hear about your experience. [18], There was a substantial influx of Jewish residents to the area in the first three decades of the 20th century. August is usually the warmest month, with average daily temperatures ranging from 82F (28C) to 53F (12C). I'd go back in a heartbeat. There are lots of SF and East Bay 'refugees' up here so I'd be happy to help you out in making the dicision. The Coast Guard also operates the Chief Petty Officer Academy at the TRACEN. Petaluma is scheduled to discuss street funding on March 7 as part of the yearlong fiscal organizational stability process. The largest demographic groups remained Whites (75.9%) and Hispanics (21.6%), followed by Asians (4.2%), African Americans (1.3%), and Native Americans (0.8%). Today, the Bay Area is the home of Silicon Valley, Wine Country, and numerous companies, universities, bridges, airports, and parks. She led a campaign to get the city to put trees back into neighborhoods and people actually shut their doors in our faces, she said. They did a revenue measure, Stutsman said at a recent city council meeting. This park of 216 acres (0.9km2) has trails for hiking, cycling and horseback riding and is one of two parks named in honor of former mayor Helen Putnam who served from 1965 to 1979; the other is Putnam Plaza on Petaluma Boulevard. We have 3 kids ages 6 months to4 years. Jennifer Conner designs and sells handmade leather handbags in a shared spaced called In the Making, where bags can command $300 to $600 each, a sign of a changing market of shoppers browsing Petaluma with more money to drop on high quality and one of a kind items. We really need a school with class sizes are below 28 (like we have here in Oakland). The Petaluma Historical Library & Museum offers free tours of the historic downtown area led by costumed docents (most Saturdays, May through October). I wouldn't consider it a low income city. My windows provide a great view of the daily happenings in this town. The schools are possibly worse, definitely not better (graduate of PHS and my mom still works there). My parents and older sister and her family still live there on the east side. Exclusive: S.F. Group of teens blamed for at least 11 violent robberies in Noe Valley, Yosemite finalizes controversial rules for climbing El Capitan, Half Dome, Bay Area heat wave: These cities face major risk as temps soar, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson fall to Mahomes, Kelce in lively golf match. Taxes are expected to be part of the councils discussion as it formulates a longterm financial plan later this year. Some worry that Petalumas increasing appeal as both destination and desirable address will make the town increasingly less affordable. 'Mom-influencer' Katie Sorensen sentenced to jail for kidnapping hoax Petaluma's move this week to become the first city in the nation to ban new gas stations to combat climate change could be the beginning of a trend in the Bay Area and beyond, supporters and . Its population was 59,776 according to the 2020 census. We've spent a fair amount of time there and really like the slower pace of life, safety, charm, and restaurants. No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. The average household size was 2.70 and the average family size was 3.16. My partner mostly works remotely, but will need to travel into Sf 1-2 a week (can be off commute hours). Montgomery (where I went) has an International Baccalaureate program. In June, Petaluma residents reduced water use by 34% and in July, even . But again, I am comparing this to Oakland. I used to see a lot more hay squeezes driving down the boulevard, but now there are more Maseratis and Teslas, said Sara Sass, who owns Boulevard Barbers and Shaving Parlour. With the launching of train service, the number of people stopping by the Petaluma Visitors Center in the old train depot by the SMART stop soared from 7,1321 between 2016 and 2017 to 17,000 just a year later. What are we missing? She loves the city feel on American Alley, a graffiti-adorned walkway off Helen Putnam Plaza, where her neighbors include a tattoo parlor and The Big Easy, an underground nightclub and restaurant that is one of a growing number of cool joints that feature late night live music.