The Novato City Council has appointed longtime community member and public works leader Sandeep Karkal to fill the District 5 council seat following the recent passing of Councilmember Mark Milberg. 

Karkal will serve until the next general municipal election on Nov. 3, 2026, the city announced Thursday. He will participate in his first regular council meeting on Dec. 9. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.