Tom Schwedhelm is currently the Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa.  He was first elected to the Santa Rosa City Council in November of 2014 and was re-elected in 2018.  His colleagues on the City Council unanimously elected him to be the Mayor in December of 2018. Prior to being elected to the City Council, Tom worked for 31 years with the Santa Rosa Police Department.  In 2009, Tom was selected to be the 12th Chief of Police for Santa Rosa.  He retired as its Chief in December of 2013.

During his time on the City Council, Tom has served on a number of committees.  He is currently the Chair of the Home Sonoma County Leadership Council, which is now functioning as the Continuum of Care for Sonoma County.  He is also the Vice-Chair of the Groundwater Sustainability Agency, a recently formed agency that will be developing the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Management Plan.  Since Tom has been on the City Council, he’s served as the Chair of the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership.

Tom has lived in Santa Rosa since 1980.  He’s has been married to Jackie since 1987 and they have two adult children, Nicole, who is a Research Coordinator at a Financial Firm in San Francisco and Troy, a CPA for KPMG also in San Francisco.  

Tom earned his Associate’s degree in Administration of Justice at Santa Rosa Junior College, his Bachelor’s degree in Business Management at St. Mary’s College and his Master’s degree in Psychology – Organizational Development at Sonoma State University.

When not filling his role as Mayor, you can find Tom spending time with his family, biking the back roads of Sonoma County, struggling to find that perfect golf stroke, attending Oakland Raider games all the while longing for the abalone population to increase so that he can visit a few along the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts.