To my fellow residents of Nevada City- many of you know me, and many more of you do not. My name is Amy Cobden. I ran for city council in 2020. Gary Peterson took the win that year, for which I’ve been grateful- he continues to serve the city with true experience and care. I took a planning commissioner appointment in 2021, and have served since, spending three years as Vice Chair. I am writing this op-ed to encourage you all to support Micayla Sortland and Adam Kline as you cast your votes this month for our City Council election.
I have two pieces of advice that I try to live by, particularly in my work as a planning commissioner: stick to the facts, and remember that it is always easy to tear something down, in principle and in form. Building something is hard, and ultimately what is more worthwhile. I think about that distinction regularly when I consider what this city needs right now.
We are not living in the same past that shaped this town. The tourist economy has shifted, and with it has come a new set of dilemmas. The questions before this council are specific and hard: rising water and sewer costs, fire resilience, housing, and a downtown navigating real economic change. I find it helpful to think of these issues through the filter of an economic ecosystem: no single component is going to save the other, and all impact each other for better or worse. From where I sit, our current council is doing the hard work of resolving decisions that were deferred too long. Avoiding them further only makes them harder. This is a time that calls for creativity, data, and collaboration.
I have tremendous respect and gratitude for my colleagues who serve elected, appointed, and staff roles at the City. People are there because they want to be there, and because they care. It’s inevitable that differences in process arise, but on the whole we are incredibly fortunate to have a small, competent, caring team of leaders. I invite all the critics to run for council, work in city hall, or participate in decision making. I thought I knew my town when I ran for council, and then I got a swift introduction into just how complex and diverse it truly is. That kind of complexity requires collaborative mindsets. We are at a moment that demands “builders, not blockers,” as put so eloquently and succinctly by Teresa Berliner Mann in her recent op-ed to the paper. That is why these two candidates matter.
It’s been a rewarding experience to see Adam (someone I’ve known for decades) come into his own as a local leader. “Control is not an act of love, service is,” as he stated at the League of Women Voters panel, is a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with. He has spent his life here, he understands this town’s rhythms, and he is thinking about the whole ecosystem: not just the shops, but the structures that attract people to visit and then stick around, as well as the people who work in them who don’t make enough to afford to live in the town they contribute to.
I want to emphasize my deep respect and awe of Micayla here for those of you who are still unfamiliar. I have never met a person like Micayla. As a disability advocate, she performs many services in line with what an attorney might also do: she has to have a thorough understanding of both legal and medical processes, typically managing dozens of cases at any given point in time, all of which are the highest stakes for the people at their center. Micayla’s clients are people with medical conditions that dominate (if not threaten) their lives, who can’t afford attorneys.
Any of us who have engaged with insurance claims can appreciate the stress, anxiety, and likely the despair that comes along with having a life-altering condition and simultaneously trying to engage with the absolute brick wall that is our modern medical and insurance maze. Imagine, then, what it means for someone to take your hand, take your information, and speak on your behalf to those systems of power. Micayla is speaking to a judge multiple times a month, while still keeping track of dozens of other cases. What better qualifications could you ask for in a local leader?
Somehow she has managed to absorb information, processes, relationships, and ideas central to what makes this town unique in a mere matter of months, all while making authentic and deep friendships along the way. I feel quite certain she has a superhero cape tucked away somewhere, but I haven’t seen it yet, because that is the kind of human she is: remarkable, compassionate, down to earth, and together.
I want to be clear that in endorsing them together, I am not suggesting they are a matched set. There is as much healthy disagreement within generations as between them, and these two are no exception. What I appreciate about both Micayla and Adam is not that they always agree (they don’t) but that where they differ (on housing, revenue generation, infill, and other genuinely hard questions) they disagree respectfully, think independently, and work to align on the facts.That is exactly what you want in two council members who will be sitting at the same table.
I also want to address, because misinformation is very en vogue these days, that while Adam has undeniably lived here his whole life, Micayla (contrary to some very disappointing birther-style rumors that would make you believe living in Colfax is a different country, where teenagers, bored out of their minds in the 1990s in a rural county don’t drive to the next town over) is very much from here, in the same way that even when I lived elsewhere in the world for almost twenty years, I was from here too. Moreover, whether or not someone is from here should mean less to any of us than what they bring to the table. Both these candidates are working professionals who understand what it meant to try and carve a life out here when they were fresh out of high school, and again as adults. Both are facts-focused and both are Creatives at their cores, which I think matters more than it might seem, because the problems ahead of this city are not going to be solved by people who mistake familiarity with a process for mastery of it.
Nevada City is a small town with an outsized capacity for doing things in its own way. These two candidates understand that capacity and intend to use it thoughtfully and compassionately. I will be voting for Micayla Sortland and Adam Kline this month, and I hope you do too.
Amy Cobden, Ph.D. grew up in Nevada City, fled in 1998 and returned in 2014. She has worked as a primatologist and researcher, utility forestry supervisor, perc technician, land worker, tomato picker, grants coordinator for the County, and is currently working as a consultant