From: Duane De Witt
To: CityCouncilListPublic; City Clerk
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Public comments on Agenda Items
Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 9:54:13 AM
Dear City Council members,
As I am not able to attend today’s Tuesday 4 Nov 2025 council meeting I submit these written comments for various items listed below in the email. These comments start with the closed session items concerning the outgoing city manager and her temporary replacement.
Closed session Items "3.1 PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT (Government Code Section 54957) Titles: City Manager and Interim City Manager"
"3.3 CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATOR (Government Code Section 54957.6) Agency Designated Representative: Mayor Unrepresented Employee: City Manager" First, thanks to Ms. Smith for beginning a process of more attention to the Roseland area which no other city employee has ever done as much as her. Her helpfulness will be missed, especially if the city bureaucracy returns to the business as usual approach practiced before her arrival on scene.
Eight years have passed since the last portion of Roseland was annexed into the city. The first portions were done decades ago and a county island was formed 30 years ago. Many important improvements to Roseland have still not been made. Prior city staff may not follow up on the needs as they never did well on these matters before she arrived.
In order to save money please do NOT give an increase in pay to whoever will act as “interim city manager”. The assistant city manager may be chosen to fill this temporary position but I stress a new and different person should be hired as city manager. The logic behind this view is the current assistant city manager person is very close to a possible retirement. This will bump his increased pay grade and pension financial demands onto an already financially strapped city budget with NO guarantee he will stay very much longer.
Most of you are too new in your positions to know the truth of this type of process in Santa Rosa City Government. An example to remember is when a director of the city planning department was advanced to an assistant city manager position not long before his retirement. The rationale was he would be overseeing a Roseland Specific Plan process. He did not really do more or better work and the process for a Roseland Specific Plan was a “sham” processwhich shut out many citizens and their concerns. This disappointed many members of the appointed committee who were hamstrung by city staff actions to limit their involvement. By not allowing local citizens onto the technical advisory committee the entire process was flawed from start to finish at a higher cost to the city. But the assistant city manager was bumped up to higher pay and padded his pension before retiring
Please do NOT allow this to happen again. Save the taxpayers’ money and hire a younger current Santa Rosa employee to move up into the position. This will also avoid the waste of money a “search” will entail with “head hunting firms”, etc. Though I would not recommend Ms. Jones from the planning departments as she was part and parcel and reason of the deeply flawed Roseland Specific Plan process.
Next in open session Consent please do NOT approve item 13.6. Continue the matter and allow organizations working with Veterans in need to apply for purchase of the property instead of a "sweetheart deal" to a neighbor. The lot could hod 3 or more tiny homes if you were forward thinking. 17 structurally sound inhabited housing units were destroyed for the misguided road widening project which was way over budget an time delayed due to city staff at the time mistakes and poor planning. (I was on an elected project area committee for redevelopment which was trying to recommend saving the houses by staying in the right of way at the time.) Please do not compound the prior short sighted mistakes and save the land for housing.
"13.6 RESOLUTION - DECLARATION OF 1942 ROSE AVENUE AS EXEMPT SURPLUS RECOMMENDATION: The Transportation and Public Works Department recommends that the Council, by resolution, supersede and replace Resolution No. RES-2023-213 and declare, pursuant to Government Code Section 54221, the City-owned parcel located at 1942 Rose Avenue, APN 125-191- 001 (“Property”) as exempt surplus and authorize the City Manager or their designee to convey the Property to an adjacent property owner by bid procedure as set out in Council Policy 000-10. This item has no impact on current fiscal year budget."
"The Property is a 10,385 square foot unimproved parcel, which is a remnant portion of a larger site, originally acquired in 2010 for a capital improvement project and not all of the property included within the larger site was needed."
"Under the SLA, local agencies must first offer surplus land for affordable housing before selling or leasing it. Parcels are classified as either: Exempt Surplus Land - Typically small, landlocked, or legally restricted parcels unsuitable for housing. Non-Exempt Surplus Land - Generally 21,780 square feet or larger, with potential for housing development."
"Alternatives to this action include: Retain the Property’s non-exempt status and pursue a sale under SLA protocols; however, this may be impractical due to the Property’s development constraints" Jill Scott, Real Estate Manager
Report item: 15.1
Comment: Please change the financial split from the annual assessment on hotel lodging to be shared 50% between the city and the Metro Chamber
16.1 PUBLIC HEARING - GENERAL PLAN 2050 MUNICIPAL CODE AND ZONING MAP
IMPLEMENTATION
"This package includes a Zoning Code text amendment to create the Missing Middle Housing (MMH) Combining District, along with a rezoning action to apply the MMH Combining District to 1,991 parcels." Comment: This is a good proposal and it is especially important to resist NIMBY opposition. Sebastopol Rd is an excellent spot where this housing will do well. Please allow for expanded height allowances to give taller buildings a chance to be built right up along Sebastopol Rd. 7 and 8 story buildings could be a reality.
Thank you for your time and consideration of these proposals. Duane De Witt From: Fred Allebach
To: CityCouncilListPublic
Cc: Rogers, Natalie
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Public comment for 11/4/25 meeting on agenda item 16.1, missing middle zoning Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 10:58:36 AM
Fred Allebach, Santa Rosa resident
11/4/25
Public comment for 11/4/25 meeting on agenda item 16.1 GENERAL PLAN 2050 MUNICIPAL
CODE AND
ZONING MAP IMPLEMENTATION: missing middle housing
Less than 750 words total, three to four minutes of your time Abstract of comment: vote yes to all and see this as only the beginning of needed zoning and code changes to bust up a race and class segregated residential status quo. If the city UGB is sacrosanct then the only choice for residential inclusion and housing equity in the City is to make existing neighborhoods denser, first with gentle changes and later less gentle with higher density. Ultimately, low-density, single- family zoning should be abolished. If we can’t see clear to a path for residential inclusion under the current code regime, then the UGB must be expanded so that the necessary workforce/ working class/ BIPOC cohort can live here.
Since land use is checkmated by the UGB on one side and NIMBY character/ neighborhood compatibility dogma on the other, newcomers must be shoe-horned into less space with less amenities, in short, into the worst spots only. All the new missing middle zoning is on major thoroughfares with higher light, noise, and air pollution. Voting yes now is only a start.
Post WW2 historical context for the city council to approve missing middle zoning changes Santa Rosa and US City buildout came in stages. As space was occupied, past sprawling development was undertaken to occupy the space around city core areas and transportation arteries. Zoning addressed conflicts between industrial, commercial, residential land uses etc.
Neighborhoods were segregated through a backdrop of government sanctioned, systemic racism manifested first as overt redlining and sundown laws and secondly to a covert stage as widespread segregation was backed by city codes, zoning, scale, and neighborhood facts on the ground. This covert zoning, code and planning priorities has been backed up by powerful status quo voters reinforced systemic segregation and sought to maintain current single family-zoned area as low-density, majority white, and to keep up property values.
Instead of overt racism, the new code comes under the heading of neighborhood compatibility and neighborhood character where racism is denied even as the dominant white residents live off the interest of Jim Crow.
Then came environmentalism, CEQA, and the anti-growth and UGB movement in the evolution of city planning. Boomers who had colonized all the next nice places burned the bridge to not allow anyone else to come.
This constricted the space available upon which to
build. Local control became ascendant as electeds and their commission appointees worked to consolidate land use control, generational wealth and property values for low density, single family zoned neighborhoods or in some cases, whole cities like Sonoma, CA.
The YIMBY movement came about to counter the ascendant NIMBYism and various flavors of YIMBYs worked to create mandatory state housing laws to preempt the local control that maintained a race and class segregated status quo.
It’s against this backdrop of recent planning residential development history that the current missing middle zoning changes are being contemplated.
IMO, these changes are clearly needed but should be seen as only the beginning of what needs to change to bust up low-density, single family zoned hegemony over local residential development.
What modern planning is doing now is to try and finesse a do-as-I say-but-not-as-I-do residential situation. Since land use is checkmated by the UGB on one side and NIMBY character/ neighborhood compatibility dogma on the other, newcomers have to be shoe- horned into less space with loess amenities, in short, the worst spots only. All the new missing middle zoning is on major thoroughfares with higher light, noise, and air pollution.
I think it is too bad that the missing middle zoning changes are all on major streets and not even inside single-family, low-density neighborhoods. For this reason alone, the new changes should be approved. The changes are gentle, moderate, not close to bold enough.
People are needed to serve the local economy. For those who serve the community as workers, the city can’t allow this cohort of working class and BIPOC communities to be externalized by exclusive, elite, and segregatory neighborhood housing priorities.
The current missing middle combining zones are an effort to comply with state housing laws that address too much segregation-maintaining status quo local control and also addresses an imbalance of residential, housing haves and have nots.
I encourage you to vote yes on all and see this as only the beginning.
"We don't know where we're going but we have to stick together in case somebody gets there." Ken Kesey
From: Nicholson, Amy
To: City Council Public Comments
Subject: Fw: [EXTERNAL] Missing Middle DeTurk Commons
Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 12:07:49 PM
Attachments: DeTurk Commons vs open space and warehouse.PNG Outlook-email sign
Thank you!
Amy Nicholson (she,her) | Supervising Planner
Planning and Economic Development |100 Santa Rosa Avenue, Room 3 | Santa Rosa, CA 95404 Mobile (707) 321-0935 | Tel. (707) 543-3258 | [email protected]
From: Gwen Riddell <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, November 3, 2025 3:36 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Nicholson, Amy <[email protected]>; Banuelos, Caroline <[email protected]> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Missing Middle DeTurk Commons
Amy Nicolson-
I am writing in regards to the MMH rezoning of the DeTurk Commons. I am in full support of building more housing, but I would like the city council to take a closer look at a proposal for the Missing Middle rezoning recently sent out to the DeTurk Commons residents. This is a particularly unique housing development that Santa Rosa and Burbank Housing supported in 1999 and remains a success story today. The following information is directly from the city's housing website:
In Santa Rosa, BHDC completed a 32-unit “mutual self-help”, or sweat-equity, housing development called DeTurk Commons in 1999 on a former brownfield site. Homeowners contributed a minimum of 30 hours of work per week during the construction of the development, which substitutes for a 10% downpayment of the purchase price. The City of Santa Rosa contributed the land, formerly used as its corporation yard, and the neighborhood association engaged in the design process to ensure that the development complemented the historic district surrounding Old Railroad Square.
The majority of original owners continue to live here and every year we are asked by Burbank Housing to sign a form confirming that we, the owners, live in the house. This is literally the American Dream, so carefully brought to 32 different families and individuals who would likely not have this opportunity otherwise, including myself. I have lived here 15 years and I am not one of the original owners, but I am proud to be part of this community of people who love their
homes and neighborhood.
Block by block in the West End Neighborhood, you will not find either a more densely
populated or a higher percentage of owner occupied houses as this block. So, why target the DeTurk Commons for rezoning? It feels both careless and tone deaf to an important established community. Yet, this is the only block chosen to rezone in the West End - why? Many of these people bought houses together and raised their children together, some of those children are parents themselves and raising their children here. There are so many other places to target for rezoning - including open space and underutilized warehouses, like the Wine Barrel Creations, which is just across 9th Street. This would be a much better place to rezone and would not impact 32 well-established families, many of whom have called this home for 25 years. I have included the map, which shows the stark difference between the DeTurk Commons and the open space across 9th.
I urge you to reconsider rezoning the DeTurk Commons and look to other areas that will not impact so many families.
Thank you,
Gwen Riddell
808 Coulter Street
CC'ed
Caroline Banuelos
From: Deborah Salomon
To: CityCouncilListPublic
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Parker Drive decision
Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 12:56:34 PM
Hello,
I am writing to emphatically urge you to vote to keep Parker Drive (between Doyle Park Drive and Alderbrook) strictly residential. My understanding is that the General Plan and the Zoning Map need to be aligned. Please change the General Plan to be in alignment with the Zoning Map, listing these properties as solely residential.
As a resident who lives in the neighborhood (on Raegan Way), I can’t over-emphasize how much this neighborhood would be impacted by a decision to allow the south side of Parker Drive to become commercial property. We neighbors already have endured the impact of the hospital helipad and the sound issues created by the new 4-story hospital building on Montgomery Drive (which was built without any environmental study on sound impact).
Please don’t allow any further commercial construction, which impedes the quality of life for us residents.
I will try to attend tonight’s meeting. Please vote against commercial zoning on Parker Drive and for residential zoning.
Thank you,
Deborah