From: Rob Moniz
To: City Council
Subject: Ordinance to prohibit recreational vehicles from parking on Sebastopol city streets Date: Wednesday, February 09, 2022 4:09:07 PM
Hello City Council and Chief Kilgore,
After sending this to Council member Diana Rich, I realized that Chief Kilgore is on vacation until Feb 13th and I’m ignoring the remaining council members.
It would be nice to have Chief Kilgore’s input on my comments and questions before the ordinance is discussed and approved on Feb 15, 2022. I’m not sure if there is any room for alteration at this point, but I would like to understand the inputs to the ordnance, who the ad hoc group members are and how much they are representative of the 8000 people in Sebastopol.
My original email is as follows.
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After reviewing the proposed ordinance, and emails I have some questions.
This ordinance seems to be written as a direct response to people moving to Sebastopol and occupying a public street, rather than a residence. The new ordinance applies to all people living in Sebastopol, rather than to those who are living illegally. I assume that is to show an equal application of law to all within the city limits.
The ordinance also lists a wide variety of recreational vehicles. Some of the vehicles match the description of business/commercial vehicles. It’s entirely reasonable for a mobile business to perform certain conversions to a van/vehicle, including solar cells, extended roofs, curtains and air conditioning to improve the working conditions of employees. These same vehicles rely on the advertisement of services on their street parked vehicles, both on the job and in front of the owners home. Will it be up to the officers discretion wether to cite the vehicle or not?
Where will all of these vehicles go? The some may be parked in the owners driveway, but others may have to be stored. Where can one store a recreational vehicle in Sonoma County? Businesses do exist for that purpose, though rent is expensive.
Still other tax paying citizens of Sebastopol have used legally owned, insured, registered and maintained recreational vehicles as office space, because working from home is now a constant and not a maybe.
The emails provided to me are largely from impacted business owners, who are dealing with the issues brought about by the occupation of Morris street and surrounding areas. In writing the ordinance, was an impact analysis performed to determine how many citizens of Sebastopol will be collaterally damaged by the ordinance forcing citizen/home owners/non-Barlow businesses to relocate vehicles? Do you know how many recreational vehicles are registered to addresses within the city limits? How many meet the different vehicle types included in the ordnance, and how many are strictly recreational v.s. a type commonly used for business? I would expect this type of analysis to be done by the city, as the data is publicly available, and could not be a large dataset.
In order to meet the stated goals and general plan actions, I would expect the city to notify registered vehicle owners prior to adoption discussions. Unless the city has the data already, how could it know the true impact of the ordinance?
I think the key point missing from the ordnance is related to vehicles parked in front of the address for which it is registered. These citizens have paid for their vehicle to legally occupy a place on the road. It’s been a history understanding that you can park in front of your house overnight, though you don’t own the road and someone else can take the same location. The assumption is that no one will occupy the location longer than is legally allowed. This ordnance seems to adjust the time limit to zero, making all vehicles not used for business purposes, unable to stand still on the city streets.
In addition to my questions above, I would ask that the council amend the ordnance to allow vehicles to occupy the space within a reasonable distance to the address for which it is registered to.
Kind Regards,
-Rob Moniz