By Jennifer Sawhney

Petaluma Voice reached out to each of the Petaluma City Council candidates for a one-on-one interview. They were all asked the same set of 17 questions, which they heard for the first time during the interview. Interviews took place between Thursday, Oct. 1, and Saturday, Oct. 3. Candidates had one, two, or three minutes to answer each question, and they could choose not to use the entire allotted time. 

For each candidate, we are publishing their answers to five key questions below. Responses have been lightly edited for readability. Readers who want to take a deeper dive and see candidates’ responses to questions about other issues facing Petaluma voters can find the full interview transcripts here.

Each candidate also answered a questionnaire. Their responses have been lightly edited for readability.

Questionnaire

First and last name: Nate Martin

Age: 49 years

Occupation(s)/where do you work: Staples District Manager Designate 

How long have you lived in the district you intend to represent? 18 years

How long have you lived in Petaluma? 30 years

Past committee, commission, board experience: I have served on many projects for Staples throughout the years. Labor, financial, and project management. 

Would you care to describe your immediate family? Spouse, kids? My wife is Sara Martin. I have 2 daughters, Kinsley and Payton. Both are at Casa Grande High School. 

What is the best way for constituents to reach you? Email or Facebook. Email is nate4petaluma@gmail.com.

Links to social media pages, campaign site: None listed

Filings

Funds raised: None listed as he filed a Form 470, which is filed when candidates do not have a committee and do not anticipate to receive or spend more than $2,000 during the calendar year. (Note: The latest campaign filing period spans July 1 to Sept. 19, 2026.)

Financial filings: https://netfile.com/public/pet/campaign/filingsByCandidate/217447276-Martin,%20Nate

Treasurer: None, no committee formed

Principal officer: None, no committee formed

Why do you think you're qualified to represent the residents of Petaluma on city council? (2 minutes)

Being a lifetime resident here my entire adult life, that should be enough qualification to start with. But also, I work for a big company and I run multiple units at times. I'm experienced with financial acumen, running budgets, project management. So I've done lots of things on the financial end of it. But my qualifications are more- I want to be part of the community, and I think I'm great at bringing the community together. I like talking and meeting with people. And, I mean, that's where my qualifications are. I am not a politician. I have never held a political office. But I have done work for the Phoenix Theater, so I've worked with teens. I've helped teach people how to be sound engineers and been a counselor to kids. So for me, it's just really being part of the community and just getting out there and making sure everyone is heard. We live in a time where there's a lot of uncertainties and a lot of people don't feel like they're being heard. And that's from all walks of life, young or old, it doesn't matter. We all have the same voice and we should all be heard. And that's where my qualifications come. I'm a great listener. 

What do you believe are our biggest issues and how do you intend to address them? (3 minutes)

So my stances with Petaluma are, I think we need to be very cautious about our growth. I understand that growth is necessary and I understand we're going to need to do it. But we need to do it smart. We need to protect some of the hearts of Petaluma. I mean, I'm a big (supporter) of protecting the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds is an amazing resource that not a lot of cities have. I mean, to be honest with you, we're very blessed to have that. The speedway has a great community aspect as well. So protecting those centers of the city are very important to me as we decide to grow. I understand that recently the city has passed the new plan that would potentially put an 8 to 10 story building in the middle of Petaluma, which brings a lot of potential problems. Traffic, congestion, obviously with pollution. And they did say that this building would not require any parking. And to think that people would not use cars I think is a little bit short-sighted. People use cars. And obviously not everyone has a car, and that's great, but a lot of people do use cars. To not plan for what impacts that would have going into our downtown – which by the way, is a beautiful historic downtown, visited by millions of people a year – it's very important. So we need to keep that in mind. So when I talk about growth, I'm not against growth. I definitely think we were approved for four stories which would have met all the quotas of growth, which is fine, and we need to do that. I am also a big (supporter of) protecting downtown. Our downtown Petaluma is a magical place. We are blessed to have – some of us have grown up around this, and the changes have happened that have been, actually, very positive. And we have the theater district. It fits in the area. It's a great community center for people. It was a great addition. But we have these turn of the century buildings that are just amazing. When you walk down the boulevard, I mean, where else do you find that? That's something you don't find in a lot of places. I mean, you don't see that in Rohnert Park. You don't see that really in Santa Rosa. I mean, this is why people want to move here. They fell in love with it. So I want to protect that. And like I said, I understand growth is going to be growth and we're going to have to think about that. I do agree (that) the urban boundaries are great. I think we need to keep them where they are. We don't need to keep expanding out. But there's lots of spaces within there (that) we can grow and help build housing to help more people have to work for affordable housing here and also help grow our small businesses and our local businesses as well. So that's one of my other parts that I'm really looking forward to is protecting the integrity of our downtown. I really want to keep Petaluma with its charm and its magic that it has. 

Note: Voters approved the current urban growth boundary with the passage of Measure Y in 2024; it will be in place until Dec. 31, 2050.

What could be done to support small businesses in town? (3 minutes)

We need to, first of all, create an easier pathway when it comes to permitting for people that want to open small businesses. I see a lot of- there's a lot of blight out there. There's a lot of empty lots and things like that. From what I understand now, the general plan has been passed. This will help fast track a lot of these local businesses and give them a better chance of quickly growing. But I think the permitting process is one problem that really makes us unfriendly, I think, with people that want to build businesses here. A personal experience is – there was a place across from my house in Deer Creek. I won't say the business, but they took over a place that was already a restaurant at one point and they were going to put a restaurant in the same place as a restaurant. It took them a year to get permits. It was a new building, so the building wasn't even old. So all the stuff was up to code and everything was good, but it still took them a year where the gentleman that owns it almost gave up and he put his life savings into this business. I think we have our Petaluma tourism websites. I think Petaluma's social media outlets could do a lot to really help promote what we do in Petaluma and those businesses there. Ease of getting there too is also important. We only have a couple parking garages. On any given day, parking can be challenging for people going down there. So making sure that we're taking care of the people that want to come down there and visit, we're giving them outlets to park and be very fair with our times and things like that. So I think opening up that space for people to come down is great. But other than that, I mean, just really the community backing these businesses and the city's done a great job about transportation down there. I'll be honest with you, we have things like Luma Go and things like that. We've really reached out, which really helps for people without cars or people that don't want to take cars. And that's great. And same with the SMART train. I see people coming after that thing every day, filling up downtown, which is great. So I guess my suggestion would be obviously we need to streamline permitting so people can get their businesses open quickly and be very fair with those permit processes. So that way we can fill all the empty holes there. I mean, it's a beautiful place, so we definitely need to. And also maybe promote some days where we can do more “support your local business” days downtown or maybe – I know it's not everyone's favorite – but maybe shut down part of Kentucky Street once a month or so and just really promote those small businesses there. Obviously we need to open up and, so, maybe if you're not on Kentucky Street they have some way to advertise if they're on Washington. We want to keep it fair to the downtown, so I guess the best way for us as a city is promoting ways for people to get down there and events that will drive people down there. 

What are your main concerns about our city budget as it stands right now? (2 minutes)

Obviously, we need to balance our budget. We need to be sure that we're balancing and being safe with our money. Obviously, running businesses, I understand, really, either you're running in the red or you're running in the green. So we want to run in the green. And we also need to figure out a way to protect future budgets. So by digging in and seeing where we're spending money, number one, that's one of the biggest things to find out where we can shift or where we can save. We need to protect as many jobs in Petaluma. I don't want to see any jobs go away. So when it comes to budgeting, we need to figure out a way to protect all our city workers and make sure we're taking care of them. But at the end of the day, I mean, it's a checkbook. Either you got the money in the bank or you don't. So if you don't have the money in the bank, we need to figure out what we're going to do to save it. We can't run on negative. So the current budget should be in line, and if it's in line, then we're good. That's all I have on that.

Is there anything else you'd like to address that I haven’t asked or that you'd like your constituents to hear from you? (3 minutes)

Perfect. I mean, first of all, great interview. You've covered pretty much everything I would outreach anyway. I guess my biggest message is Petaluma is an amazing community. We come from all walks of life. We've got so much diversity here. We need to, everybody needs to be heard. And I guess my biggest takeaway is I don't feel that everyone's being heard. And I know there's only 24 hours in a day. There's only so many council meetings we can do. But we have to find a way as a community to figure out how to grow together, how to make things fair and equitable for everybody. Obviously, we need affordable housing, but we also need to protect the people that are already in their houses now. We need to make sure that we give people avenues to maybe add, I don't know, add mini houses in the back of the houses for their aging parents or maybe convert garages to help with the housing portion of it. But my biggest concern and my biggest thing for the community is we just need to figure out how to communicate better with each other. There's so much mud out there on social media. There's so (many) personal attacks. One thing I've learned with city council is, first of all, running for city council is my first time doing it. It's been an amazing adventure. I've learned a lot. A lot. And I've got to meet amazing people. This has been the most eye-opening thing. I've met people I've never known I'd ever met. But let's keep this about Petaluma. Let's keep this less about personal attacks on each other. Let's protect the integrity of our community and our community leaders. And let's just be nice to each other. And I know I can't live in a perfect world of, you know, ‘why can't we all get along?’ But I mean, we're all trying to do one thing and that's protect Petaluma. And we don't all agree on everything. But the most important part is we're listening to our communities. And the part with districts is, if elected, I would represent District 1, but I also represent the city. So District 1 is not the only voice that needs to be heard. Every voice needs to be heard in every district. So communication and transparency are two of the biggest things. I think this city council, if they could, if I'm not there, if it continues to move on, if we can do better as a town, as better as a community, let's be clear with each other and let's listen. Ask questions. Big important thing. No one should ever be faulted for asking questions like, ‘hey, well, how will this affect this?’ Well, that's a good question. We should be asking these questions. So that's kind of where I leave it. We need to communicate better. We need to ask questions. We need to figure out how to get along and build and grow together as a whole. That's it.

Find the full interview transcript here.

Jennifer Sawhney is a reporter and co-founder of Petaluma Voice. She can be reached at jsawhney@petalumavoice.org.

Tobias Young, Nate Seltenrich, and Crissy Pascual contributed to this report.