Moving the SMART Train Station NOW when Healdsburg’s elected-officials & citizens made it CLEAR for the past two years where we want it located, is just plain tone-deaf, dumb & arrogant.

Steve Villano

37 minutes ago

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SMART TRAIN BOARD:

I don’t know how many times we Healdsburg residents have to say this until you hear us: We want the SMART Train Station in our town at the Hudson Street Station Hub, NOT on Vine Street.

Two years ago, in 2024, our Healdsburg City Council voted 4-1 to support the citing of the SMART Train Station at the old Rail Station Hub. At that time, SMART didn’t have all the funding it needed to continue the commuter rail line from Windsor to Healdsburg and up to Cloverdale.

To make certain that would happen, our small but mighty City of 11,137 citizens has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly for environmental and mass transit issues, for the fractional sales tax to fund SMART’s work, and to increase the funding necessary to do the job, resulting in the $270 million now available to bring the Healdsburg station home.

Then, just this Spring, because we were enthusiastic that “The SMART Train was coming to town,” as Mike McGuire cheered—with every single public and SMART official present—1,000 of us packed our new Foley Family Pavilion to show our support, that this part of the North Bay was finally receiving commuter rail-service. WE voted by our very presence—with nearly 10% of the entire town showing up—for the SMART Train. We gladly accepted all the “swag” SMART handed out, to boost this project, because Healdburg residents were delighted that “a new train was coming to town,” and that the location of the Station had long-been decided.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the message the SMART Board appears to be getting from the one Healdsburg resident on the Board, our former Mayor Ariele Kelley—who is still insisting now, as she did even before her unsuccessful Assembly run against Chris Rogers—that she preferred the Vine Street station for the SMART train.

Many of us in Healdsburg have supported Kelley for every public office she has sought, and are proud of her leadership for affordable housing, diversity, and on the California Coastal Commission. However, on this specific issue of locating the SMART Train Station, Kelley is utterly out of touch with the people of Healdsburg, who by electing her Mayor, made it possible for her to serve on the SMART Board in the first place. Sadly, our former Mayor seems to have forgotten the voice of the very community she represents, unless she perceives her audience to be elsewhere.

By contrast, our current Healdsburg Mayor Chris Herrod perfectly expressed the astonishment of most Healdsburg residents when he told the San Francisco Chronicle last week:

“To have SMART come up now and re-think this at this fairly late time—is flabbergasting!”

And, to further compound the dumb decision of the SMART Train staff to do a fast bait & switch with the Station location, former Healdsburg Mayor Evelyn Mitchell—who served as Mayor when the original SMART Station commitment was made to the City—told the standing-room-only City Council meeting crowd:

“I felt like I was blindsided.”

In that one, single, ill-advised and highly biased presentation delivered by SMART’s General Manager Eddy Cumins and his assistant ZoeUnruh at the September 21, 2016, Healdsburg City Council meeting, SMART jettisoned years of good faith, trust and public support it carefully developed, since the passage of it’s original enabling State legislation in 2002.

As I pointedly asked SMART’s General Manager Cumins, “What the hell were you guys thinking?”

My question came from a deep well-spring of support for SMART’s work, and a lifetime of support for environmental protection, mass transit, and public service. As a former State Official in New York, responsible for the integrity of the Governor’s office as well as for the that of numerous State agencies, I am acutely aware of the critical need for government, public agencies and public officials—who believe in the importance of public service and good government—to protect and nurture the public’s trust in our work.

Such an extraordinary sensitivity to treating public trust as a precious natural resource is essential to rebuild the public’s confidence that government can work effectively, honestly, well, and responsibly on behalf of the people it serves—especially in the face of anti-government forces, with the malevolent mission of destroying government, and denying urgent public services to those most in need.

The collection of stale, 3-year old data, blatantly biased conclusions, and the use of such disconnected, bureaucratic jargon like “Euclidian Walksheds,” which SMART’s executive team delivered to the citizens of Healdsburg, and the entire City Council at the packed-public meeting, was an insult and a violation of trust to a well-educated population that has formed the backbone of the North Bay’s public support for “bringing the train to town.”

That egregiously bad effort could only be described as a colossal public relations and administrative agency failure, which smacked many of us involved local citizens as an arrogant, not-so-SMART move. Healdsburg residents, and the majority of our public officials who are among SMART’s most loyal and ardent mass transit and green environmental supporters, felt stabbed in the back by SMART staff trying to pull a last-minute, bad-faith switcheroo on the long-settled location of the Healdsburg Station.

Yet, as someone who has devoted my entire career to making governments and humane non-profit organizations succeed on behalf of the people we serve, I still have faith in many of the public officials who lead the SMART Board, particularly it’s Chair, Chris Coursey, who worked for years as a first-rate journalist, before being elected as Santa Rosa’s Mayor, and as a Sonoma County Supervisor. I believe Coursey has the courage, strength & intelligence to put the SMART staff back on track, reminding them that it is our tax dollars and citizen support that is critical to the short and long-term success of the SMART Train to improve all our lives in the North Bay.

Perhaps the two most telling messages delivered by the people of Healdsburg to SMART’s staff came from City Manager Jeff Kay, and from Healdsburg resident Oded Shakked, a local businessman.

The Healdsburg Patch reported that “the city manager (Kay) said Healdsburg received between $1.1 million and $1.2 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission after the 2024 vote to prepare a plan centered on the (Hudson Street) depot. The planning area includes land south of the river”.

In fact, the City Council, acting on those commitments, created a seven-page, “SMART Station Area Specific Plan,” predicated upon the SMART Station being sited at the Hudson Street Hub, and including Veterans Memorial Beach in the important tourist area that SMART Train passengers would be able to walk to upon their arrival in Healdsburg by train. It will be the only Russian River beach reachable within walking distance by SMART train from Larkspur to Cloverdale, the full length of the route when completed, IF the Healdsburg Station is at the Hudson Street Hub.

But it was a Healdsburg resident and taxpayer, Oded Shakked, who, in a straight-forward common-sense way, was among the final speakers at the City Council hearing and, in less than 30 seconds, demolished the detached-from-reality “Euclidian Walksheds” being relied upon by the SMART staff to justify it’s conclusion to unilaterally move the Station from the already-committed Hudson Street Hub to Vine Street:

“I walked both distances from each of the proposed SMART Station sites to the Healdsburg Town Square. From the Hudson Street Hub, it is 376 steps; from the Vine Street spot, it is 232 steps.”

Shakked then succinctly summed up the sentiments of many of his follow Healdsburg citizens and taxpayers:

“The SMART Board owes this Council, and the whole town, an apology.”

To that quietly eloquent request, I would add that we want the SMART Board to rebuild our trust; respect the democratically arrived at decision by a Healdsburg public that wants a vibrant SMART Train station in our town; and, to continue to involve this community in this great public achievement that will improve all of our lives.

Yours for a community built on trust & a world worthy of our grandchildren,

Steve Villano,

Healdsburg resident, taxpayer, grandfather.

Before the GOP (Gang of Pedophiles) gets too excited over the photos of a Democratic Congressional Candidate modeling a harness at age 21, they might want to look at Melania Trump’s portfolio.

Steve Villano

Sep 19, 2026

(Photos, top to bottom and left to right: Top left, Melania Knauss Trump posed in a unique metal harness for a GQ Britain photo shoot in 2000, the same year Melania met Jeffrey Epstein at party with Trump, when Melania was a 26-year old supermodel. The photos were taken aboard Donald Trump’s private jet, five years before Melania married Trump.

Top right, Democratic Congressional Candidate (NY-1) Chris Gallant posed in a leather harness, as a 21-year old college student, six-years after he began serving in the Air National Guard, while still in high school.

Bottom left, Gallant posed in front of a Black Hawk Helicopter like the one he piloted in 2022 to 2024 on missions he flew in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.

Bottom right, Melania Knauss Trump, posed in front of Donald Trump’s private jet with a gun, in ths same British GQ photo shoot, in January, 2000, for a special edition of the magazine entitled “NAKED SUPERMODEL SPECIAL.” A front page subhead specifically pertaining to Melania read: “SEX AT 30,000 FT: Melania Knauss Earns Her Air Miles.” Photos of Melania, including the British GQ cover story, were taken by the photographer Antoine Verglas.)

The photos speak volumes for themselves.

They might not be so loud and clear if they didn’t underscore the utter hypocrisy oozing out from the National GOP, which has produced more convicted pedophiles, sexual harassers, and individual references (Donald Trump leads all) in the Epstein files than any other affinity group in America.

That’s what made the 2010 college-student leather-harness modeling photos of gay Democratic Congressional Candidate (NY-1) Chris Gallant all the more laughable. It’s what made the matter-of-fact response by the former Air traffic controller, Volunteer Firefighter and Blackhawk Helicopter pilot all so refreshing:

“I’m not embarrassed or ashamed; I’ve always been unapologetically me.”

Gallant, some 40 days before arguably the most important Congressional election in the country’s history, is locked in a neck-and-neck battle for Long Island’s 1st Congressional District, a recently red-district which both Trump and the incumbent GOP Congressman Nick LaLotta won handily in 2024.

The District that represents Eastern Long Island and, now, whole swaths of western Suffolk County was, for years, represented by Democratic Congressmen Otis Pike and Tim Bishop, and—just this week— was described as a “toss-up” by pollster Nate Silver. It’s a big reason by the Republicans are freaking out.

GOP political operatives—fresh off of crashing GRINDR at the GOP revivalist meeting in Dallas and ogling a near-naked photo of Social Media “influencer” Hasan Piker on their “Jumbotron”— leaked the 16-year old photos to conservative news outlets, the New York Post and the Messenger News Group, and the Suffolk County Conservative Party posted the “harness” photo on its Facebook page, with the tagline:

“Is this who you want to represent you in Congress?”

The New York Post, known for its posting of nude photos of supermodel Melania Knauss (Trump) nearly 10 years ago, handled the revelation a bit more tongue in harness, with much more perspective, compared to the photos of Melania they revealed to the world, when Trump was running for President in 2016:

“There is now documented proof that Chris Gallant has a 6-pack.”

It was a far different approach than the ultra-Right Wing Post took in 2016, when they did a 2-day photo spread of nude photos published of Melania in the French Men’s Magazine MAX, back in 1997. Melania Knauss was 23-years old then, two years older than Chris Gallant was when he harnessed his modeling skills.

(The New York Post’s back-to-back front pages on July 31, 2016, and August 1, 2016, revealing nude photos of the supermodel Melania Trump,) taken for the French Men’s Magazine MAX, in 1997.)

The Post’s photo montage-a-trois, appeared to raise the question:

“IS THIS THE KIND OF FIRST LADY YOU WANT TO REPRESENT YOU?”

The British GQ cover and photos published in 2000, when Trump flirted with a “Reform Party” candidacy for President, read like a puff piece for Trump, decorated throughout with fleshy photos of Melania sprawled all over Trump’s private jet.

GQ referred to Trump as “ an expert in in-flight entertainment.” Yes, they really did, decades before he orgasmed over the ultimate airborne play-toy he was gifted from the Qataris.

Better, the international magazine described Melania as:

“And, his personal hostess, is 26-year old Slovenian supermodel Melania Knauss, just might end up as the next First Lady. Flight of fancy? Not if THE DONALD has his way.”

So, there you have it. Harmless harness on a college kid, or “in-flight hostess” for high fliers?

You pick your pictures and make your choice.

On the 25th Anniversary of 9/11.

Steve Villano

Sep 11, 2026

(Image of my own reflection, taken at the World Trade Center site, 9/11/2021, on the 20th anniversary of the unending, unimaginable trauma. It was the first and only time I was emotionally able to visit the sacred site, since the early hours of the destruction of the Towers, and of the lives of nearly 3,000 of our brothers and sisters.)

I am a ghost.

My memories are quaint, dead.

I want people to mourn quietly,

Cellphones banned in sacred places.

Selfies, taken with luminescent gravestone towers of light, illegal.

I want Frank Sinatra impersonators,

And souvenir hawkers,

And religious zealots

And boom boxes

And Chick-Fillet eating millennials

Not alive when the Towers toppled,

To be kept away from the WTC site

Where my soul was scattered asunder.

I am a ghost.

I want the two symbolic towers of light

To come from the Tower footprints —

Now the eternal waterfalls of memory-

Not from a parking lot blocks away.

I am a ghost.

I want the truth.

I want others to feel our pain,

And not use 9/11 as a reason to party,

Or to mistake the two spotlights

For a movie premiere,

Or a greenlight to commit more terror.

The Trump Tower Prostitute is still dancing on the graves of the 3,000 human beings massacred on 9/11, sucking up attention from that tragedy, and money from their families, and all of us.

Steve Villano

Sep 09, 2026

(“The Falling Man,” a photo taken by the AP photographer Richard Drew on September 11, 2001, at 9:41 am. It captures an unidentified man falling from the World Trade Center’s North Tower, after the tower was attacked. The photo is on display at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, on the site of where the World Trade Center once stood.)

I don’t know if I have ever despised any living creature as much as I utterly detest the scum-filled dirtbag, Donald Trump. I know it’s wrong; but Trump is far worse.

Hundreds of times per day–on 9/11 I’ll wish it 3,000 times–I pray hard that he drops dead from some terrible, horrible disease or accident where he experiences the most extreme torture ever visited upon any human being. It’s the only thing in life Trump has ever earned.

Trump has always been a puss-filled boil on the ass of life, but I never felt this viscerally about him until 9/11/2001, when the Twin Towers went down, and flesh-and-blood human beings were leaping out of windows from 90 stories up to avoid intense heat that would melt their skin.

The grotesque ghoul publicly gloated–GLOATED—in his flatulent fucked-upped, Roy Cohn-uglified face–that now that the World Trade Center Towers were destroyed–HE, the horrendously horrid whore-of-life Donald Trump, owned the tallest skyscraper in NYC at 40 Wall Street.

YES, TRUMP REALLY DID SAY THAT. I know. I was there. I worked in Tower 2 of the World Trade Center for years along with Willie Rodriquez and Matt Monahan and Steve Schlesinger and Peter Quinn and Maria Taddei and Mary Tragale & Mario Cuomo, and we considered the Trade Center sacred ground, having survived the 1993 bombing of the Tower in which we worked. Only the indomitable, life-loving and heroic Willie Rodriquez still worked there in 2001, and he risked his life—again and again— to save others from the carnage.

We all heard the moronic monster Trump utter those callous, self-aggrandizing words while the ruins of the Towers were still smoldering in 2001. The bulbous bloviator bleated that blasphemous brag again, and again, while so many innocent humans—and those who attempted to rescue them—perished.

The puffy, hot-aired, deranged, dirigible of inhumanity was nowhere near the site of the WTC disaster–not as a citizen, not as victim, not as a helper, not as a person trying to assist the exhausted police, fire and EMS personnel; not as nothing.

Compounding his mortal sin, the criminal cipher White Supremacist sexual abuser fraud felon’s multi-million dollar organization collected some $150,000 of funds intended for small business relief in lower Manhattan. Whining like the stuffed pig he is, Trump said he was entitled to the money because of the life-shattering event’s effect on HIS business’ bottom line—despite Trump’s immediate denials that his businesses suffered ANY financial loss from the 9/11 attacks.

Worse, despite repeatedly lying that he donated $10,000 to the 9/11 Victims Fund up until he ran for President in 2016—a lie easily proven through an examination of the Victim Funds’ financial records by NYC’s Comptroller— the Trump Tower Prostitute profited in every way he could off of the mass murder of 3,000 human beings. Not only did he lust after bragging rights over the size of HIS phallus-like building with the World Trade Center wiped out of the Manhattan skyline, he pilfered money intended for small Mom and Pop business struggling to survive, and promised, but never delivered on his public pledges to help 9/11 victims and their families. Then, like now, he lied about his lies, or just made up brand new totally false stories.

Now, as a senile, syphilis-seeking, shit-smelling babbling imbecile, this lower-than-rodent ball of garbage lies even more, hallucinating that he was rescued from the rubble of the WTC disaster by 2 firefighters–never named nor thanked–whose families he cheated out of money, along with 8 million of us other New Yorkers.

For years, I cursed God, for allowing the attack on the World Trade Center to happen, and for permitting 3,000 innocent humans to be crushed or incinerated to death. The photo of “Falling Man” on display at the 9/11 Memorial/World Trade Center Museum haunts me, as did the 8 x11 mimeographed “Missing” fliers plastered all over the outer walls of St. Vincent’s hospital, each with young eyes and smiling faces that would never see life again.

Like Job, I still curse God for taking so many good people, then and now, for causing unimaginable pain to thousands of families, and yet still permitting this terrible two-legged plague of pure evil to continue to walk among us. The next time you see the “Falling Man” photo, think of the smug, disgusting , spittle-spewing mouth of Donald Trump laughing and smirking all the way down, glad that the “Falling Man,” wasn’t him.

What’s the difference between having Trump’s illegal Ballroom shoved down our throats, or an illegal senior medical care project for the rich, when we need more affordable housing for families?

Steve Villano

Sep 04, 2026

(Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech”, from the National Archives, painted in 1943, and published in the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech,” was inspired by FDR’s January 6, 1941, State of the Union Address, where he outlined the “Four Freedoms” which went on to be included in the United Nations Charter. Those freedoms, as spelled out by President Roosevelt were: “Freedom of Speech, Expression;’“ Freedom of Worship;” “Freedom from Want;” and “Freedom from Fear.”)

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was correct last week, when he wrote in a blistering dissent to the Supreme Court’s tone deaf 5-4 decision to greenlight the developer Trump’s illegal ballroom, that the construction was “likely unlawful.”

The same is true about the senior medical care project in Healdsburg, in the shadow of the SMART Train Station, when local laws specifically prohibit the use of that site for medical care, and favor the building of affordable housing for working families.

The people of our town—educated, engaged and enthusiastic for greater inclusion—with 1/3 of our population being of Latino Heritage—are ready to fight for what’s right. That courage frightens our timid town officials, terrified of incurring the wrath of rich, powerful real estate interests. Freedom from Fear, anyone?

All along, and under local ordinances and State laws encouraging affordable housing and more inclusionary housing—for seniors and everyone of Healdsburg’s non-wealthy citizens—that Hudson street site—located smack in the immediate zone of the SMART Train Station Local Plan—was supposed to be shaped by a high level of community input, not by high rollers rushing to game the system, and sneak “medical care” into an area where it IS strictly prohibited by Healdsburg’s land use code.

The proposed construction of a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly (RCFE) which includes both “personal care,” and “medical care,” in an exclusive community requiring a nearly million-dollar equity buy in, is not just, as Justice Roberts wrote of The Bully’s Ballroom “likely unlawful,” it is clearly unlawful, under our local zoning laws. Those of us with experience in public health know how “luxury” RCFEs or Continuing Care Communities for the wealthy have become golden cash cows for developers who reap vast profits from multiple millions in high buy-in costs from rich customers.

Worse, Healdsburg’s local Planning Commission gave conditional approval of the Hudson Street proposal on the basis of false information. At last month’s meeting the developer’s representatives —when asked if the proposed RCFE facility would include “medical” as well as “personal” care— misinformed the Commission, saying it would not, despite the fact that medical care is authorized—and in some instances state law requires—RCFE’s to provide medical or clinical care.

And, at virtually the same time the developer was misinforming Healdsburg’s planning officials that there would be no medical care at The Hudson, the company ran a recruitment ad seeking a “Regional Clinical Nursing Leader,” whose responsibilities include overseeing “clinical operations.” Under Nursing guidelines “clinical means involving or relating to direct medical treatment or testing of patients.”

So, surprise: in the same breath that the wealthy developer’s team was telling one crucial falsehood to the Planning Commission, it was confirming that, in fact, medical care IS central to his RCFE operations, by actively head-hunting to hire an expert in medical & clinical care to oversee all of their operations, including in Healdsburg.

A number of Healdsburg citizens, led by long-time residents Jon Eisenberg and Lewis Bangham, filed an appeal to the City Council of the The Hudson’s flawed plan, and demanded that the Planning Commission rescind its’ conditional approval of the proposal on the clear grounds that material facts were misrepresented to them by the developer. In a court of law, such a material misrepresentation is perjury; but, in the court of public opinion, it was simply the way the wealthy were accustomed to editing the facts to fit their own self-interests. But that misrepresentation should be enough to enable the Planning Commission to overturn their own conditional approval, since it was a decision based upon false information. The timely and concise Healdsburg citizens’ appeal insists that the City stick to the letter, the intent and the spirit of local and state zoning and affordable housing laws in the best interests of the people of the City.

That misrepresentation of the truth was only the first head fake by the developer to see if Healdsburg’s public officials could be tricked into killing community involvement. The other powerful threat to our prized local democratic process, was for them to simply bulldoze—the way Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House— over the existence of the SMART Train Station Area Plan—the specific, City-created planning framework for the area to ensure citizen involvement in this crucial plan for our future involving mass transit.

Similar “overlay” plans were created in Saggio Hills, the Mill District, and in North Healdsburg (Enso Village), to create and accommodate a diversity of needs for affordable housing, and an RCFE that would qualify for providing medical care.

That inclusive planning process worked, producing an abundance of affordable units, and a legitimate, state-of-the art RCFE rendering medical & clinical care (Enso Village), providing proof that community-based democracy can do what it’s supposed to do, when the only price attached to it is public participation, and the time taken to do the right thing.

That’s how democracy is supposed to work.