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City of Santa Rosa · Statewide General Election

Santa Rosa City Council, District 6

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On the ballot

This person would represent one of Santa Rosa's seven City Council districts: city ordinances, the budget, and land use for Sonoma County's largest city and county seat, population 178,127 (2020 Census). Santa Rosa operates under a council-manager government, with a professional city manager running day-to-day operations while the elected council sets policy. There is no separately elected Mayor -- the seven-member Council elects one of its own members to preside as Mayor for a two-year term, on top of that member's own district seat. Council seats are elected by district to staggered 4-year terms; Districts 2, 4, and 6 are up this November, with Districts 1, 3, 5, and 7 not up again until 2028.

Only one candidate qualified for Santa Rosa's District 6 council seat: incumbent Jeff Okrepkie, who is unopposed for another term. This contest is settled and your vote here does not change the outcome.

This seat is one of Santa Rosa's seven district-elected City Council seats, representing Sonoma County's largest city and county seat, population 178,127 (2020 Census). Santa Rosa is a council-manager city: councilmembers set the budget, ordinances, and land-use policy, while a professional city manager runs day-to-day operations. There is no separately elected Mayor -- the seven-member Council elects one of its own to preside as Mayor for a two-year term. Council seats are elected by district to staggered 4-year terms; only Districts 2, 4, and 6 are up this November.

With no opponent, the useful question is not who to choose but what the officeholder has done and what to watch next. An unopposed return means accountability for this seat over the next four years runs through Council meetings and public records requests rather than through the ballot. The city's own Notice of Offices and Nominations confirms nomination papers were furnished to Okrepkie as District 6's sitting incumbent, and a candidate statement was filed and posted for this race -- meaning the city printed this as a live, on-ballot contest rather than cancelling it and appointing him directly, an option California law makes available for single-filer seats but which Santa Rosa didn't use here.

Jeff Okrepkie

Jeff Okrepkie is Santa Rosa's sitting District 6 councilmember and its current Vice Mayor. He was on the city's 2022 council ballot (per the Press Democrat's October 2022 endorsement of that race) and is now seeking another 4-year District 6 term. He is a survivor of the 2017 fires that destroyed Coffey Park, where he founded a nonprofit supporting the neighborhood's recovery and rebuilding, work he has continued for nearly a decade. His filed candidate statement lists priorities including fiscal sustainability, completing the Fulton Road project, a planned bicycle/pedestrian bridge over Highway 101, parks improvements, community safety, and homelessness. No independent news profile beyond the Press Democrat's 2022 endorsement mention and his own statement was found in this pass.

Strengths

Currently serves as Vice Mayor alongside his District 6 seat -- a checkable record spanning citywide and district matters, plus a decade of hands-on Coffey Park recovery work after the 2017 fires.

Trade-offs

Running unopposed means his record faces no organized counter-argument this cycle, and this pass found no independent coverage assessing the infrastructure projects his own statement cites.

Keep in mind

His public identity is closely tied to Coffey Park's fire recovery -- worth knowing as the throughline of his service, distinct from a broader voting record this pass didn't independently verify.

Source review: Strong (84/100) · 8 cited sources

Official records anchor this contest, with several source types checked for context; advocacy or endorsement sources are treated as attributed perspective.

Review note: The Press Democrat Editorial Board -- "PD Endorsement: Mark Stapp, Terry Sanders and Jeff Okrepkie for Santa Rosa City Council" (Oct. 14, 2022): independently corroborates that Stapp and Okrepkie were both on the 2022 Santa Rosa City Council ballot -- consistent with their current 4-year terms expiring this cycle -- and that Sanders also ran that year (the race he later conceded to Fleming). Cited only for this 2022 on-ballot corroboration, not for any 2026 claim. may have more bias because it is an editorial endorsement source compared to other formal government and nonprofit journalism sources.

  • sonomacounty.gov (opens in a new tab)Sonoma County Registrar of Voters -- "Local Candidates Who Have Filed," November 3, 2026 General Election: lists exactly three Santa Rosa "CITY CONTESTS" -- City Council Districts 2, 4, and 6 -- with per-contest candidate name, ballot designation, qualification date, and incumbent flag; no Santa Rosa Mayor contest appears anywhere on the page. Page last updated 8/17/26, unchanged on a live re-check 2026-09-01 after both the regular (Aug. 7) and extended (Aug. 12) nomination deadlines had passed.
  • srcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Rosa -- official "Notice of Offices and Nominations" (per Elections Code 10224.5), dated July 31, 2026: certifies three 4-year-term City Council seats -- Districts 2, 4, and 6 -- and states City Clerk Dina Manis furnished nomination papers to the incumbents for only District 2 and District 6, not District 4 -- confirming District 4 incumbent Victoria Fleming did not seek reelection.
  • srcity.org (opens in a new tab)City of Santa Rosa -- own "2026 Candidates" page: independently names the identical three-district, four-candidate field with matching ballot designations, links each candidate's filed candidate statement (Stapp, Sanders, and Okrepkie each filed one; Jones-Carter did not, per the page, because she "did not qualify for public financing") and each candidate's own campaign website.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Santa Rosa, California": used narrowly for the 2020 Census population (178,127), Sonoma County seat status, the council-manager government structure, and the current Council roster (Mayor Mark Stapp plus six district councilmembers, including Victoria Fleming and Jeff Okrepkie) -- does not cover the 2026 election.
  • en.wikipedia.org (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia -- "Mayor of Santa Rosa, California": confirms Santa Rosa's Mayor is not a separately elected office -- "the mayor is elected by the council to a single two-year term" -- from among sitting councilmembers.
  • nf4.netfile.com (opens in a new tab)Santa Rosa's NetFile-hosted public campaign-finance portal (linked from the city's own Campaign Finance Information and Campaign Disclosure Filings pages): the landing page loads without a CAPTCHA, but its candidate/filing search runs entirely through client-side ASP.NET postback controls with no URL-parameter or REST-API path reachable by this session's fetch tooling (no browser extension connected this pass); its own real-time filing RSS feed (max. 15-day/1,000-item window) returned zero Santa Rosa items as of this retrieval -- a documented access limitation, not a claim that no filings exist.
  • srcity.org (opens in a new tab)Jeff Okrepkie -- filed candidate statement for Santa Rosa City Council District 6, 2026, hosted on the city's own site: ballot designation "City Councilmember," describes his current role as "your Vice Mayor and District 6 City Councilmember," his Coffey Park recovery nonprofit work after the 2017 fires, and his infrastructure/parks/safety priorities.
  • pressdemocrat.com (opens in a new tab)The Press Democrat Editorial Board -- "PD Endorsement: Mark Stapp, Terry Sanders and Jeff Okrepkie for Santa Rosa City Council" (Oct. 14, 2022): independently corroborates that Stapp and Okrepkie were both on the 2022 Santa Rosa City Council ballot -- consistent with their current 4-year terms expiring this cycle -- and that Sanders also ran that year (the race he later conceded to Fleming). Cited only for this 2022 on-ballot corroboration, not for any 2026 claim.

Last updated September 1, 2026.