City Council
Mayor Patrick Slayter
Vice Mayor Neysa Hinton
Una Glass
Sarah Glade Gurney
Diana Rich
City Manager
Larry McLaughlin
[email protected]
Assistant City Manager/City Clerk, MMC
Mary Gourley
[email protected]
CITY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES
`MINUTES FOR Special Meeting of February 23, 2022
As Approved by the City Council at their regular meeting of March 15, 2022 The City Council Regular meeting was held via teleconference pursuant to AB 361. Pursuant to AB 361 (2021), Teleconference Restrictions of the Brown Act Have Been Suspended, as Well as the Requirement to Provide a Physical Location for Members of the Public to Participate in the Meeting. The City of Sebastopol City Council meeting was not physically open to the public and all City Council Members teleconferenced into the meeting via Zoom.
Please note that minutes are not meant to be verbatim minutes and are meant to be the City’s record of Actions Taken (Approved Motion of Agenda Item).
6:00 pm Convene City Council Special Meeting - Meeting Start Time (ZOOM VIRTUAL FORMAT) CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Slayter called the regular meeting to order at 6:02 pm.
ROLL CALL:
Present: Mayor Patrick Slayter – By video teleconference Vice Mayor Neysa Hinton – By video teleconference
Councilmember Una Glass – By video teleconference
Councilmember Sarah Gurney - By video teleconference
Councilmember Diana Gardner Rich - By video teleconference
Absent: None
Staff: City Manager/City Attorney Larry McLaughlin
Assistant City Manager/City Clerk Mary Gourley
Police Chief Kevin Kilgore
COUNCIL PROTOCOLS FOR MEETING:
City staff read the protocols for the meeting.
• This meeting is being conducted utilizing virtual settings for teleconferencing and electronic means consistent with State of California Executive Orders regarding the COVID 19 pandemic and AB 361. • Live stream and zoom is being utilized for this meeting. In case of technical issues, meetings will be uploaded to the City web site as soon as possible after this meeting. • Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting by use of Zoom and Live Stream as noted on the City’s website and as noted on the agenda.
• Members of the public wishing to speak to the City Council may do so during public comment or may comment on agenda items during the discussion of each item and must be logged into Zoom. Live Stream is a viewing only format.
• Anyone using abusive, vulgar, offensive, threatening, or harassing language, personal attacks of any kind or offensive terms that target specific individuals or groups will be muted and removed from the meeting.
SALUTE TO THE FLAG
PLEASE NOTE:
Public Comment on all items listed on the agenda will be limited to two minutes, per person, per item. The Public Comment Portion of the Agenda will allow for 20 minutes at the beginning of the meeting and public comment not heard during those 20 minutes will continue at the end of the agenda, following the last calendared item and before Reports.
Council welcomes and encourages additional comments via email. Public Comment Emails can be sent to:
[email protected]
STATEMENTS OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Conflicts of interest may arise in situations where a public official deliberating towards a decision, has an actual or potential financial interest in the matter before the Council. In accordance with state law, an actual conflict of interest is one that would be to the private financial benefit of a public official, a relative or a business with which the Councilmember is associated. A potential conflict of interest is one that could be to the private financial benefit of a Councilmember, a relative or a business with which the Councilmember is associated. A Councilmember must publicly announce potential and actual conflicts of interest, and, in the case of actual conflict of interest, must refrain from participating in debate on the issue or from voting on the issue and must remove themselves from the dais.
DISCUSSION AND ACTION:
1. Approval of Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance 1136, An Ordinance of the City of Sebastopol Adding Chapter 10.76 Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance and Amending Chapter 10.36 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code. (Responsible Department: Police) Police Chief Kilgore presented the agenda item recommending the City Council approve the Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance 1136, An Ordinance of the City of Sebastopol Adding Chapter 10.76 Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance and Amending Chapter 10.36 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code.
Mayor Slayter opened for questions of Staff and/or presenter.
Mayor Slayter commented this is an item that was on our consent calendar and was removed and there were additional questions that were brought up or interested in discussing, and then we just at 11:30 we were not going to start another new item last Tuesday, so this is a continuation, essentially of that meeting with the item that was removed from the consent calendar, which is this item, and we've had lots of time to talk about it and to look at it and to consider it, and I am very interested in finding out the new questions or new issues that have come up, and so before we get into any discussion or action, we will first take questions, factual type questions for staff from the Council
Councilmember Gurney commented I'm just wondering since Councilmember Glass removed this item from the consent calendar if we can check in with her and give her a chance to let us know again why she wanted it removed from consent.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• I'd be happy to explain that, and that is because we have heard from a lot of people that are concerned about parking and its relationship to homeless people living on our streets, et cetera, et cetera, and a lot of people concerned with Morris Street, but after the ordinance was introduced, I had quite a number of people call me or contact me who actually own RVs or they have visitors that park their RVs, for example, someone who's in-laws come and say in their relatively small van In front of their home on a fairly regular basis to visit their grandchild, and they were distressed and upset to hear about this. • So having had these people contact me, I felt that they should be heard because they haven't heard about the ordinance and after all, I mean, we saw the kind of upset and consternation that we've had over a couple of other issues recently, and it seemed to me that we definitely want to have the public tell us their concerns and to hear about what problems they have with this ordinance, so that is why I pulled it off.
• It was so late that many of these people that had not spoken before at to leave that's why I did that.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• I'd like to follow up on that question raised by Councilmember Glass • I have had a number of people inquire about the importance of the residential portion of this ordinance, and I'd appreciate and I think the public would probably appreciate our Police Chief reminding us why it was important to include in this ordinance the prohibition against RV and similar vehicles parking in residential zones so if we could have him do that quickly for us as a refresher, which might be helpful for us and the public.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• In response to that, there's twofold as to the reason as to why we have a restriction on the residential area as well.
• We specifically put a restriction on the commercial, industrial, and facility areas during the daytime, and what we did not want to happen was that RVs would leave those commercial, industrial, and community facility areas where they're going to be allowed to park overnight from 10:00 P.M. to 7:30 in the morning and move into our residential zones, for a couple reasons. • Number one, it creates an issue for the people who live in the residential areas. • Number two it also could create safety matters and issues for public safety, for fire trucks getting down specific streets, police vehicles getting down specific streets as well. • Also, in the residential zones, there was the first thought of possibly doing a permitting process for those who have RVs and live in the city of Sebastopol and would like to park their RVs on the street in front of their residence.
• However, that creates a whole new area and division for any department in the city where more employees will have to be hired in order to make sure that that is efficiently tended to for the various aspects of a permitting process as well.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• My additional question that's come up in a number of e-mails I received was the question about where visitors to our town will be able to park if they happen to be coming through town in RVs or similar vehicles that would be covered by the ordinance.
• Can you help us and the public understand what the options might be for those visitors coming through town?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• Recreational vehicles can be parked in any private lot that is open to the public, and so when we're specifically looking at various folks who are coming through the city, most RV owners, a lot of them, if their RV is so large, they'll have a tow vehicle that they drive to certain areas like our areas of Sebastopol. • But they can also park in those businesses as well, places like grocery stores, drugstores, places like that that can accommodate those types of vehicles, and so they can still get to our restaurants and businesses through the use of those parking lots.
• Then we also have city parking lots that are also open to our recreational vehicles. • If a person is utilizing the city designated lot that goes with the specific city building during business hours as it relates to city business.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• The spelling of the world city and city-related, that's as we've discussed in I believe our first reading of this, it's a small C, it's not a capital C, so it is customers of businesses. • It is patrons of restaurants.
• It is people coming to Sebastopol to do commerce, to visit the library, to do anything. • It's not about visiting city hall with a capital C rather than a lower case C to pay a water Bill or something like that?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• The intent behind that was for people who are visiting city buildings, meaning City Hall, the Police Department, etc.those during business hours to take care of city business as it relates to that specific building.
• We don't have very many city-owned parking lots related to the city business -- or the city buildings specifically, and those lots are not very large and so to allow recreational vehicles to park there for a lengthy period of time to go to businesses may create a parking issue in some of our lots.
City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented as follows:
• Not to disagree with the Police Chief, but I do think that definition is a bit broader as the Mayor pointed out, that is a small C city.
• I think City business is a broadly interpreted term meaning the business for which the people typically park in that particular parking lot to engage in an activity related to City businesses or City facilities. • So, for example, there are commercial parking lots that are not owned by the City, I might add that have no restrictions whatsoever.
• You can park there indefinitely.
• City-owned lots are usually used not for specific businesses, most of them are for general commercial businesses, and I would interpret this to allow the RV parking for people who wish to shop or otherwise go to City businesses and facilities.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• There are some nuances to that.
• For instance, I'll use the Police Department parking lot for instance, if you're parking an RV in our Police Department parking lot, the intent is that you're coming into the Police Department to do business. • There is a parking lot that Is a public City-owned lot across from the Police Department that could be utilized for businesses as well related to the City, not specifically to the Police Department. • There is a difference between the two.
Vice Mayor Hinton commented as follows:
• I also have received a lot of e-mails about people that have oversized vehicles that are interested in I guess it would be allowed to park their vehicles in front of their house, and we did talk about that. • I remember asking about why couldn't we do a permit system through City Hall where we have generally a front desk person once City Hall reopens or an online system so that people that are either permanent tenants in Sebastopol or homeowners could get a limited -- apply for like a temporary pass when they have a visitor or a child visit with an RV from out of town. • I still wonder why we can't have that happen.
• I understand that the response was, well, we'd have to visually inspect everything, but we know that the 72-hour law, we're not visually inspecting people now on that, so I'm just wondering if that is an option for us.
• I want to re-ask that since we've had a lot of response from Sebastopol residents to come up with something like that.
City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented as follows:
• That could be an option
• In fact, any one of several permit systems could be an option, primarily the issues were the cost of that, and we didn't explore it in detail enough to see exactly how many different kinds of permit systems there are, which ones may be easier to facilitate than others. • That definitely could be looked into in the future.
• If the ordinance is given a second reading tonight as anticipated, that does not preclude us from continuing to look into a permit system and find one hopefully that is less expensive and easier to facilitate.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I have to go back to the parking lot issue because I still don't think it's clear, at least it's not clear with me. • I interpret it the way the Mayor did and the way our City Manager did that we were looking at small C city business, meaning business of our community at large in our central area at large, in our different business districts.
• I was surprised to hear that the Police Department parking lot is available for Police Department clientele only.
• I'm wondering is that the same with Public Works lot? • Is that the same with the lot behind the youth annex? • I thought our City-owned parking lots were for any municipal use of citizen or visitor. • I didn't realize now without an ordinance that you had to qualify as somebody doing business at the Police Department or with the Public Works department, et cetera. • Could we have a little clarification on the various lots. • If you're at the library, City Hall lot, do you have to go in City Hall? • Can you go to the senior center instead? Or can you just go downtown? • I think it's so odd that they are municipal lots that are restricted differently. • I need help understanding that to the City Manager and the Police Chief.
City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented as follows:
• The Police Chief will have to help me here because he's infinitely up on more code than I am. • I believe it depends on the signage of the lot in question. • For example, using examples of the library, I'll call it the library lot that's between City hall, the library and the senior center, other than our timed parking, how many hours you can park there, there aren't any restrictions on most of those spaces.
• You could utilize them to go to the bookstore, the senior center, the library, City Hall, walk up and down the streets, whatever you'd like to do.
• I consider those to all be City business.
• Now, if you have a small parking lot and it's related to a particular department of the City, it is possible to create signage that restricts the use of that particular small lot to the facility for which it's adjacent. • I do not know, I do not recall whether the Public Works lot or the Police Department lot has such signage, but it would be possible and obviously legal to do that. • But most of our lots do not have such restrictions.
• I saw an e-mail earlier today asking about the PED line, which I was part of the process to create. • I feel very definitely that the PED line is a part of small C, city business, and utilizing an otherwise not restricted parking lot to park and go utilize the PED line is not a violation of the ordinance in my opinion, and you will not be cited for that.
• The Chief may be able to help me more on issues of signage and whether certain lots in the City are restricted to certain facilities, but I will tell you that most of them are not.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• I will just follow that up with when we're dealing with public safety buildings such as the Police Department, fire department, and likely Public Works, too, I would not expect that we would be allowing folks who are not doing business at those specific buildings to be parked in those lots for public safety purposes, especially given the fact that anything could happen, and we may need to be utilizing those specific lots for other emergency matters in those locations. • We may have some City lots that are large enough to accommodate other vehicles and allow for more than City-related businesses, which may be fine.
• But the smaller lots that I've mentioned are something that are with the intent of utilizing them for the buildings that they are specifically for.
• Now looking at it, from perhaps not currently signed this way but just sort of from a logical standpoint and use let’s say Public Works as an example, there are not very many parking places in front of Public Works, and that's sort of a different category than the lot between the library, the senior center and City Hall that is a general municipal lot or the Burnett Street lot. • Those are different, and it may come down to capacity, and I'm not sure how many stalls are at the Police Department.
• Probably ten or less clearly that's not a general municipal lot, just by virtue of its location and its size. • So that may be something that needs to be better defined with signage and intent and would be to make it clear to everybody.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• My question goes back to the residential neighborhoods. • I have received a number of e-mails from people who actually are opposed to allowing RVs and similar vehicles to be parked in their neighborhoods.
• I'm wondering if those complaints, if the Police Department has received any complaints of that nature, Chief Kilgore, are you aware of those concerns?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• We have received those types of complaints in the past. • I don't know how recent the last complaint was that we've received. • I have also received several e-mails supporting the parking ordinance, many of them have come from residents of Sebastopol who are supportive of the parking ordinance as it has been written. • Again, I'd like to remind the Council and the community that this does not preclude people from parking their recreational vehicles in their driveways of their vehicles. • It just precludes people from parking RVs on the street where they sometimes sit for very, very lengthy periods of time.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• I actually, FYI, regularly park in the police parking lot when I go to the farmers market, so I guess I'm not supposed to do that, but how would that I didn't go in the Police Department and I went to the farmers market?
• A, it's not signed, and B, how do that somebody is going somewhere other than what something might be signed for if we started to sign it?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• I think the good thing is that we're a small Police Department, so we pretty much know who comes into our Police Department and who doesn't.
• I think that's the easy answer on that one for the Police Department. • Obviously, it's also helpful for buildings that are open and manned with staffing for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and so that would be the Police Department specifically, and the fire department as well. • So, the point is that there is more signage that needs to be put up in our parking lots because what we can't have is we can't have vehicles who are coming into the parking lot, staying there for lengthy periods of time.
• Or even going beyond that and staying overnight in the parking lot, which is not appropriate either. • There will be more signs to come, and the City Manager and I will discuss as to where we want to put those signs and the specific wording related to that.
• When we're talking about a general parking lot near the Library, the Senior Center, and some other buildings, I think that that, again, I would like to think that people will utilize common sense when it comes to things like these.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• One of my colleagues referred to oversized vehicles, and my reading of this is that these RVs aren't necessarily oversized.
• It could be a Volkswagen van again with a sink and a bed in it. • Is that accurate?
• That these aren't necessarily oversized?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• They don't have to be oversized, that's correct.
• The definition for the recreational vehicle is there in the ordinance, and the specific reason for that is because not everything is considered oversized.
• The tiny house movement was started right here in Sebastopol, and I think that it's important for people to realize that not everything comes in what we always imagine it may be. • We tend to have a bias or a stereotype of what a recreational vehicle is. • We think it's this large, oversized vehicle that's taking up more than one space. • That's not always the situation.
• There are other recreational vehicles that are out there. • In fact, we've got one that parks across from the Police Department quite frequently that has a little camper on the back of it, and it's probably not more -- not bigger than a large pickup truck, and that's just not -- when we're looking at these things, we have to look at them in a very broad view, and to restrict things by a statement of oversized vehicles, well, that means that the police personnel or any enforcement personnel who are dealing with this are now standing outside taking a tape measure to everything to make sure that it fits a criteria for an oversized vehicle, whereas the criteria that is listed in the definition for a recreational vehicle is something that's much more easily recognizable. • Now, when it comes to vans like a VW bus van or something of that nature again, the personnel of the Police Department are going to be utilizing common sense. • We're not going to be looking in people's vehicles to try and figure out whether there's a bathroom in there and a shower in there and everything else that fits this criteria. • Somebody who drives a vehicle such as a VW van that's been modified for that purpose into downtown to eat dinner is probably not going to see a whole lot of us. • But if we see that vehicle that is staying in the same spot over and over and over again or for a long period of time, then common sense kicks in that somebody's probably utilizing that vehicle to live in and that would be a violation of the ordinance at that point.
Councilmember glass commented as follows:
• So technically, if somebody comes to my house for a business meeting and they're driving, for example, a Mercedes sprinter van that is -- that they also happen to use to go camping in, that's technically not okay, right?
• But you're saying that maybe people won't do anything about it? Chief Kilgore commented I would think that people are probably not going to do that very often, but I think that the 72-hour exception that City Council requested be put into the ordinance also covers that for those folks who might be coming to your house for dinner or who might be staying overnight for dinner.
Councilmember Glass commented to the 72-hour exception for loading and unloading, is that what you are saying.
Chief Kilgore stated that is correct.
Councilmember Glass stated so they are loading themselves into my house to have dinner and then they're loading themselves back. Councilmember Glass stated that's not how I would have read it.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• For purposes of the public here some of whom may not have been at the prior meetings you've talked a little bit about the residential rule that's being proposed, which is no RV or similar vehicles as you've defined them in residential zones.
• Can you help us, remind us of the rationale for the commercial industrial rule, which is prohibiting RVs and similar vehicles during the day but allowing them at night? • What was the rationale for proposing that permission, that part? Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• In order for us to be in compliance with all Constitutional laws that have been set and reaffirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, it is necessary for us to allow people to stay in their vehicles overnight and so we've made that accommodation within reasonable hours. • The initial time frame was from 10:00 P.M. until 6:00 A.M. • Council requested that that be extended until 7:30 A.M., in which the edits were made to the parking ordinance and allowed for that time frame to be from 10:00 P.M. to 7:30 A.M.
Councilmember Rich commented my understanding is that with direction from the City Council to try to address the issue of not having additional encampments develop within town, which was part of the rationale also.
Chief Kilgore commented that is correct. There are other issues that were involved with specifically Morris Street where we had vehicles that were long stand, encampments were being created. Sidewalks were being blocked.
People were not able to utilize the sidewalks. Instead they were having to Utilize the bicycle lanes to either walk in those on either said of the roadway that put them in danger of traffic. Additionally, there have been multiple complaints from businesses along the area of the Barlow who have stated that their patrons have not been able to park or did not feel safe walking through that area because of a variety of reasons, and so those vehicles on Morris Street were creating such an issue both that had quality of life impacts and also environmental impacts as well.
Mayor Slayter opened for public comment.
Cynthia commented as follows:
• Sonoma County's unhoused population is currently estimated between 2,703,000 people. • Most are camping in their vehicles on municipal streets throughout the county. • I think Park Village and Elderberry Commons and the Safe Park site on Gravenstein exemplify Sebastopol's commitment to this population, and I think your initiatives are a model for other cities. • However, I think that the proposed parking ordinance will have the effect of shifting people living in vehicles into unincorporated areas of the county, and there are three reasons why I think it may create unintended problems.
• One is that the people still living in Sebastopol's streets will continue to suffer the physical and emotional consequences of ongoing instability, and those consequences can spill over into the larger community. • The second reason is that there is no county wide plan for addressing the homeless emergency, and until there is one, the municipalities are either going to continue to sweep or ticket residential vehicles or alleviate the suffering of some while others remain desperate. • The third reason is that it appears that Carla, the California rural legal assistance association and possibly another legal service organization are considering a lawsuit that claims that the proposed ordinance violates citizens civil rights.
• Given that along with the current lawsuit from the neighbors of North Sebastopol, I think it's prudent to delay action on this ordinance.
Rachel commented as follows:
• I'd like to urge our City Council to please pass this parking ordinance. • Our current limits are weak and they invite outsiders to take advantage of Sebastopol. • This new law will help correct this.
• A lax approach may have been appropriate several years ago as the city was struggling to handle COVID, but this approach is now failing and it invites RVs to park here indefinitely. • Although some RVs have left Morris Street recently, Morris Street will quickly refill without this ordinance being passed.
• We've seen other cities in California, like Venice Beach already learn this lesson. • They waited and waited to pass common sense parking restrictions until their communities reached a breaking point.
• To end their crisis, they had to return and enact enforcements and laws and so should we. • I've been disappointed recently with the past move to delay this ordinance, which is overdue. • I'd like the Council to know that an agenda of about which favors the unhoused advocacy groups does not represent greater Sebastopol.
• One group such advocacy group raised a specter of lawsuits in an effort to intimidate our community. • They're trying to stop our Council from adopting ordinances that it has every right to enact. • Let's be clear, they're aggressive, this aggressiveness is special interest lobbying, and I urge the Council to reject this ploy.
• I just want to say that our streets are a visual score card, a score card of how our city is doing, and we all know that crime and squalor are a failure with an F grade. • It is time to correct this with these new parking rules, and I hope that the Council will pass it this evening.
Jim commented as follows:
• The first I feel the definition of RV is too broad and too vague. • Is my VW van with no sink or toilet included?
• I know of two people in town currently sleeping in their pickup trucks with camper shells on the back. • Are all pickups with camper shells illegal?
• If not, will they be able to keep living in their cars? • What about my friend with a 20 foot sprinter van?
• Is he welcome to come visit me?
• How does he avoid getting a ticket?
• What about panel vans you can't see inside of.
• People coming from occidental to evacuate a fire, can they stay on my street for as long as it takes? • My second objection is based on the cost.
• What exactly is the estimated cost of enforcing this including staff time to install hundreds of street signs and police enforcement.
• Police budget is already about half our total budget and we're running a deficit. • If we approve more police time it will never go away. • To the Police Chief my main question is what is the expected enforcement mechanism. • Do you have one officer spending one day a week, 20% time driving around time looking to write tickets and tow vehicles?
• Is it up to police discretion?
• Does it require a complaint to initiate a call?
• My suggestions are do not pass the parts of the ordinance -- prohibiting RVs from parking in residential areas.
• If we have problems from car dwellers coming into neighborhoods during the day, let's keep track of that and use the 72 hour rule with residential complaints to be used as a deterrent. • If you must pass this entire ordinance, my change requests are add an exception for small RVs, perhaps 22 feet, or if that's too long, the length of a typical parking space. • Two, allow RVs to park in public spaces downtown for up to two hours, enough for visitors to travel through town and stop for lunch and dinner.
• Don't put signs up around town.
• We already have a 72 hour limit parking on residential areas which is not up on signs. • Why do we have to have signs for these changes.
Carrie commented as follows:
• I am a former social worker and voting rights activist. • This ordinance is draconian and needs to be reconsidered and rewritten. • We should not be criminalizing homelessness, a symptom of huge systemic problems such as climate, income inequality, lack of affordable housing and cruel cuts to mental health funding and neither should we be criminalizing, one, visiting tourists in campers who want to eat and shop downtown on their way back up and down the coast.
• Two, traveling friends from afar who come to visit and park in front of our homes if there's no room in the driveway or no driveway.
• Some people don't have driveways guys, and who are social distancing due to COVID. • Three, neighborhood residents who own campers or trailers but don't always have driveways to tuck them away in.
• I know renters and homeowners in this situation, especially old houses around here. • You never know whether they have a driveway or not.
• Four, residents who have bought campers or trailers to evacuate in during fires, especially when we can't stay with friends due to COVID.
• The challenging combination of evacuation and social distancing has been a real conundrum, and it's no surprise to see multiplication of resident-owned RVs, et cetera, in neighborhoods in this era. • Five, evacuees fleeing from fires and seeking refuge with us, their friends. • Where are they supposed to go when legal camp sites book up months in advance. • Surely we can forge a compromise measure that would limit anything illegal, egregious or threatening or noise after hours, but would maintain the warm, caring, creative, and compassionate values Sebastopol has been known for, at least until now.
• Can we have a little mercy toward those who are worse off than we are and even toward each other? Courtney commented as follows:
• Dear Sebastopol City Councilmembers and the community of Sebastopol. • I hope you are well today.
• I work in Sebastopol serving the public, which means I interact with unsheltered people daily. • I am saying something tonight to express my opinion on tonight's agenda item concerning the parking ordinance.
• I am against the parking ordinance.
• I find it problematic because, a, it further dehumanizes and criminalizes unhoused human beings in Sonoma County, which has a fragile, complex, and self-defeating social infrastructure, and I also just attended a continuum of care board meeting, and home base did a presentation outlining the data concerning homelessness in Sonoma County, and the data was pretty startling about 80% of people who are homeless in Sonoma County were long-time residents of Sonoma County, just to get that out there. • B, it will contribute to climate warming and negatively affect our local Climate Action Committee's work since people experiencing vehicular homelessness will be forced To move their vehicles more often, thus burning more fossil fuels.
• C, it will scatter unsheltered individuals making social workers jobs exponentially more challenging as they struggle to locate homeless folks, evaluate their needs, earn their trust and connect them with social services.
• I don't like homelessness either.
• I don't like it either, and I want it to end.
• D, it subjects homeless vinyl individuals to sleep deprivation because not everyone sleeps at the ordained time of 8:00 P.M. to 7:30 A.M.
• E, it will have a negative impact on housed individuals with RVs, especially residents who purchased an RV in preparation for wildfire season and evacuation.
Annie commented as follows:
• I was born in Sebastopol.
• I am now raising my own children in Sebastopol.
• I am here this evening because I'm against this ordinance mostly because it just feels like it's full of unintended consequences.
• It feels like Council's a little unclear about all the details. • It feels like perhaps even the police are a little unclear on the details, and that, to me, smacks of like a capacity to have things happen that we do not want to have to happen in our communities. • , one of the things the Police Chief says was he mentioned around bias and stereotype and looking at the broad view.
• I just think there's space for that in this, right?
• If we have our relatives coming and staying who decides whether a vehicle is a problem or not, right? • There's just an undue burden on the Police Department here. • I am, I think Carey mentioned people who don't have driveways. • I'm someone who doesn't have a driveway.
• I'm a renter here, and I have folks come and visit me who stay in RVs on the street because I don't have a driveway, and so I'm concerned about that.
• For those of us who are lower income, it feels a little unfair that our folks maybe couldn't stay and visit us because they're in RVs because they can't maybe afford a hotel room. • So it feels like there's an economic disparity there. • I really appreciate everything you all are doing.
• I just think that this is a very fraught agenda item a fraught ordinance, and I think will really harm us. • Also, part of my work has been to work with unhoused populations in the past, I have concerns around that as well.
• Mostly just really it's the unintended consequences.
Rob commented as follows:
• I think what I'm hearing is let me just start by saying that I have read the ordinance as written quite a bit, and I've done a lot of correspondence with the Council and with Chief Kilgore. • I think what I'm seeing is the people in the Council are trying to make a good faith effort to say we've had it with people occupying areas and we want to try and prevent that from happening again, but we want to prevent it from happening everywhere, and there's a lot of nuance that was discussed between the Councilmembers and Chief Kilgore, and it's not in the ordinance, and it needs to be in the ordinance. • As other speakers have said that vagueness allows For disparity. • A dirty van, does that get tagged versus a clean one? • It's extra effort, and extra burden on our already strapped economy and strapped government. • My recommendation and my hope is that you'll go back and add detail to this ordinance to nail exactly what you want.
• You don't want people who aren't from around here basically sleeping on the streets or sleeping in vans. • If that's what your goal is, put it in the ordinance. • If your goal is to eliminate all kinds of vans, get rid of that too. • Be specific because right now there's something hiding in the vagueness, and that's going to cause a lot of trouble.
Kate commented as follows:
• I would like to express my support for the parking ordinance. • Council promised to pass a city wide parking ordinance prior to opening the save safe parking site. • The save safe parking site is now opened, yet, we don't have a parking ordinance. • Council needs to uphold its commitments and promise to residents and business owners. • Sebastopol currently has the highest rate of transient -- highest ratio of transient beds in Sonoma County. • We have 45 transient beds at the Sebastopol end.
• 85 people housed at park village.
• We recently constructed two new apartments and ten RV spots. • There are five safe parking spots at the community church, and 18 spots at the RV village. • Sebastopol simply cannot solve the homeless crisis in California. • It's too big of a problem for a city of 7,500 with a budget that's less than $10 million. • The state is currently spending $12 billion on the homeless crisis. • The county spent $92 million.
• It's time for the county to step up and work with Sebastopol. • There's no reason why the county couldn't have opened up several RV camping sites in the last two years with the $92 million that they have.
• Council promised to pass a citywide parking ordinance in conjunction with the RV village. • The RV village is now open, and we need a parking ordinance. • Carol commented as follows:
• I just found out about this an hour ago and I read the paper I have in front of me, and this whole discussion makes it about as clear as mud to me.
• It seems like what I'm reading here is that RVs, vans cannot park in front of homes at any time of the day, and the next line -- and maybe I'm not reading the correct things -- it will ban visitors from parking in front of their friends and family's homes at any time of the day including overnight. • Yet you were talking about it being against the law to keep people from sleeping in the van overnight. • So you're saying different things, and I don't know which you mean or what you want to say. • I understand it was unsightly seeing all of the vans on Morris Street and we've got a big problem. • I just find the parking ordinance unnecessarily difficult for the Sebastopol residents, particularly those who don't have driveways who have visitors whose main mode of transportation might be something like a vanegan bus.
• I think there's a lot of contradictions, and I think it would do Sebastopol well to take more time for a more thoughtful ordinance.
Mark commented as follows:
• My family and I, we moved here four years ago during that period we've evacuated twice, and we've been at the ready for evacuation each year, and at this point now, it's basically all year round that we have that risk.
• So Carrie Wheaton brought up this item, it was mentioned by a couple of others, but we really depend upon having our camper.
• We have a pull behind camper that we park next to our house, and we really depend upon that as part of our evacuation plan.
• We lived in that unit for a couple of days at one point over at the fairgrounds when we were under the evacuation.
• In addition to that, we also have an adult daughter. She and her fiancée live separately. They live close to Occidental.
• They also have been with us when we were under the evacuation, so it's not just one household. • It's actually more than one household that depends upon ready access to that camper. • It would make no sense at all for us to have that parked somewhere else. • I know that you can park it in other places.
• We actually have another place out near Jenner where we could park it year round, but that makes absolutely no sense to do that if we need to evacuate to some other place. • So we would really think that to have something like a parking permit, kind of like what they have in San Francisco, there are certain areas in San Francisco -- and I do see the time here -- where you get an area permit when you're a resident, and that allows you to park your car. • Here we could use it for campers to have access continuously.
Suzanne commented as follows:
• I'm a long-time resident of Sebastopol.
• My comment is basically the same e-mail that I sent in to the City Council that they've seen. • I do want to say, though, that I did drive on Morris Street today and the surrounding streets, and it looks way, way, way better. That's important.
• I am a walker. As I walk through town, there many, many RV vehicles and other vehicles that people have slept in for a long time, and I believe that what we need both for the visitors and for people who are Sebastopol residents who sleep in their vehicles on our streets, we just need the 72-hour rule that we've had in place, and we need like in neighborhoods like if somebody parked in my neighborhood, I should be able to call the police and -- department and say, well, can you tell them in 72 hours to move, and it could be done the very first day they moved there, not just somebody saying, oh, they've been there for three months.
• That shouldn't be happening, but they we as a community, the current 72-hour rule should apply both to people who are parking there who are not who are living there and to people who have visitors • I think it needs to be for both, and I think it could be done if we did what we were supposed to and kept in touch with the police about it.
Loretta commented as follows:
• Would like to thank Chief Kilgore and his department for doing an excellent job in the last couple of months of clearing up Morris Street.
• I was part of the stakeholders meeting and every single stake holder in that group said that we need to have the parking ordinance in conjunction with opening the saves campground, and Chief Kilgore and his department has done a wonderful job.
• Let me tell you that we have fought this for five years. • We have had things stolen. We have had our irrigation broken. We have had people arrested. • You don't want to know the things we've seen out our windows, and for the first time in five years, I saw a man and woman walk down the sidewalk hand in hand the other day. I was thrilled. • Now, if we can let our kids walk to the ballpark, ride their bikes in the bicycle lane, the Council last time spent all this time talking about the park lets and what do we want people coming into our town to see. • Morris Street as of today is what we want them to see not a month ago • I do want to point out that we have lost businesses on Morris Street, Keys Auto Body, Rhine Design, long time Sebastopol businesses, the construction company next to us moved out of the area because they had so many things stolen, and that Is taxpayer money going into our city coffers. • We are losing our businesses.
• We want to do whatever we can to support our businesses and support our citizens. • The JV girls’ softball team is not allowed to practice on their field now because they feel threatened by the trailers that are parked there, and so now they moved them to El Molino to practice, they can't even use the field at the high school.
• So when you think about the City, you need to think about all the components of the city, the kids, the people who are Walkers, the businesses, and if the residential part is broken, let's work on that language, but let's not just junk the whole parking thing.
• We really need to keep our promise that the saves opened up the parking would be passed thank you.
Margaret commented as follows:
• Housing policy attorney at legal aid of Sonoma County and a resident of Sebastopol. • We strongly urge that you refrain from adopting this proposed RV vehicle parking ordinance. • This ordinance in its form and timing violates the prevailing precedent of Martin V. Boise and the eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
• Citing and towing RVs that unhouse people that are residents of Sebastopol is criminalization of homelessness.
• When unhoused individuals are not offered a placement and there's nowhere else for them To go, they cannot be removed from public spaces, and I would note that the RV parking village Is at capacity. • It is commendable that they were able to take in 18 RVs, but that does not house everyone in the city. • Further the allowance for the towing of RVs that serve as homes would be a forfeiture and an excessive fine under the eighth amendment.
• There will be a disparate impact on protected classes such as but not limited to persons of color, immigrants, families or persons with disabilities.
• There will, in fact, be this impact as some of the remaining folks who have not been placed at horizon shine village are members of a protected class And residents of Sebastopol, some of them long-term. • The allowance for RV parking at night in nonresidential areas Does not negate these concerns. • Since many unhoused individuals live in inoperable vehicles, with this ordinance you're prohibiting unhoused individuals from existing in the city of Sebastopol during the day with the hope they do not -- • The timing of the ordinance is problematic, the need for safe housing or a place to park safely is still present as a village is at capacity, for these compelling reasons we ask that you not adopt this ordinance at this time as many commenters have stated, it needs to be flushed out further. • There's a lot of ambiguity.
Jennie commented as follows:
• I mailed the entire City Council along with the fifth district supervisor, Chief Kilgore and several other staff members on Thursday January 27th and was saddened that I only heard back from Chief Kilgore, thank you again for your response and not one City Councilmember responded to our concerns regarding our most precious commodity, our children.
• I'm here tonight to strongly encourage you to adopt the ordinance tonight, the RV trailers have crept along Morris Street to Johnson Street and directly adjacent to the JV softball field creating an unsafe environment for students and softball players.
• Although many RVs have moved I still feel as though this area in its current state is not safe for our staff, students and greater community.
• At best, it's a health hazard and safety issue for our students as the path of travel is obstructed pushing them into the street.
• If the city does not adopt this ordinance, I urge you to adopt something that prohibits this type of parking within 500 feet ensuring safe access to our campus.
• This comment is fully supported by our district and site administration Terry commented as follows:
• I run Beehive Electronics.
• We have an office on Morris Street, and the problems caused by the RV encampment have been bad and they just keep getting worse.
• We have problems with trash. We have crime problems. Lately we've had a number of vehicle break-ins. • Generators running all day long.
• I know of four fires that were started by homeless in Sebastopol or in the area just in the past year and my neighbor has already moved his office out of town.
• He moved to Santa Rosa because he didn't want to deal with it anymore having his trailers broken into. • I really hope you guys will enact this ordinance.
• It will really make life a lot better for the people who work on Morris Street.
Claudia commented as follows:
• I would like to think Chief Kilgore and Diana Rich for staying on this problem. • It's a complicated issue and you're bringing in an ordinance to rules that are already there and so I think that's why it seems to some like there are some ambiguities but there really aren't. • I think you've done a wonderful job, Chief, in making this ordinance up and presenting it, and it can always be shaken out a little bit where needed.
• My main thing tonight is to ask you to extend as the high school superintendent would have reiterated to extend the three-hour parking to Johnson Street as well because it goes like in a horseshoe shape there, and it would include then that area below the high school that the kids have such difficulty with and don't feel safe there and they're not.
• All the grandparents come to park when they watch the games and different things like that, and they need to be able to have access to the field, but please extend that parking to Johnson Street. • It is much safer now.
• I would also agree with coaches’ corner, it's much safer for the kids, for the adults, for walking with the three-hour parking there, it has really resolved so many issues. • The filth, the up around Johnson Street, we don't have rest rooms there. • We don't have any facilities, no rest rooms, no hand cleaning stations or anything. • So where they're going to the restroom.
• Thank you for your addressing the issue.
• I am so thankful that we have members that are trying to advocate for the homeless. • It was very kind the way, please now that saves has their place that they wanted, please don't renege on the parking issue that they agreed to, .
• That is no way to develop community trust is to say, yeah, go ahead with the parking and now we've got 18 homeless housed, which is wonderful, but now we're going to take the parking issue that was really a safety issue for us to help us out, the business owners out.
Mia commented as follows:
• I just want to speak tonight to let you all know that I strongly support the parking ordinance. • I'd also like to thank Chief Kilgore for his work on this ordinance. • It is greatly appreciated.
• I live in a residential area in Sebastopol and over the last two weeks, we have had a motor home that has come in late at night and has been here overnight and into the late day. • I'm afraid that if you don't pass this parking ordinance, we are going to see another Morris Street, and it's going to spread into our residential areas.
• The agreement was if we opened up the RV park that there would be a parking ordinance passed. • I urge you to please pass this parking ordinance tonight.
Oliver commented as follows:
• I'd like to thank Chief Kilgore for all the hard work on this. • Obviously you can see from my graphic that I strongly want to see the parking permits put in place as soon as possible.
• We've been discussing this for quite a long time, and , this is a crazy situation we're having to have a meeting on a Wednesday outside of the usual Council meetings. • This has been very, very disruptive for everybody to have these endless meetings and debates about this, so the sooner that we can get this organized and underway the better, I think.
Eliza commented as follows:
• I'm currently a member at the Horizon Shine village.
• I just want to kind of speak for someone who has been part of this community and seen as what seems like almost a pest to this community as like just bringing a face and a voice and a reminder that like we're all humans.
• Everyone's situation is entirely different, and I've got to experience it on hand all the different stories that come.
• I do not agree, obviously, with this ordinance because though I am lucky enough to be part of this village, there's a lot of people who did not get in, and a lot of people who feel safe in Sebastopol. • A lot of them are from here and have been here a long time, and just like my own story, they have their own, and with certain circumstances that didn't always turn out for them we tend to just consider us this community a bunch of addicts and mental health and whatever else we can categorize them as but unfortunately, like, that's not always the case.
• There's a lot of good people.
• This ordinance would make it really hard.
Ludmilla commented as follows:
• One of the direct routes to organizational is by excessively solving problems that might happen and fearbased issues. • Dear citizens and Councilmembers, I understand fully that some citizens are concerned that some RVs have been parked at street locations for more than 72 hours. • I agree with you that a few RV owners have parked their vehicles in a way location or for a length of time that's not consistent with residents or business owners’ vision for a particular street or vista. • I also noticed that some individuals are conflating their fears, stereotypes, internal stories and prejudices with the actual in real life and sometimes death situations of people living with disabilities, ages and without the means to afford a brick and mortar home.
• I do not in any way agree with anyone taking stuff, messing with other people's stuff, stealing things, those actions can and should be, cited, investigated and followed up on with anyone involved. • I also do not agree with individuals or specific groups misusing public spaces by disproportionately utilizing them in a way that excludes use by other members of the public, and that applies to campers and RV dwellers and members of the public.
• They cannot command total use of public spaces at the expense of others who also want to share those spaces.
• I think everyone agrees that we do not want people in RVs to be permanently parked on streets. • The current proposed RV ordinance is intended to target unhoused people in a completely misguided attempt to motivate them to magically levitate into some invisible space. • Those of us who have found a brief landing spot on the streets of Sebastopol as I did and my son before me when he started working in Sonoma County after graduating from college are already motivated. • I don't know of any RV dwellers who grew up with their life goal to live on the streets of Sebastopol. • I support a 72-hour ordinance and putting some teeth into that, putting a sign on people's vehicles when they're first seen and then enforcing the 72-hour rule after that.
Steve commented as follows:
• I want to point out a few different things.
• One, if seems like we're most likely going to have unintended consequences from this ordinance. • We have a lot of people that have issues with their existing vehicles, they want to use the streets to park their own RVs or visitors who are coming, their RVs.
• We need a consistent definition of what an RV is, and I think Jim's idea about some sort of size criteria might be appropriate.
• I think one of the real questions is what was enforcement prior to COVID, prior to the court ruling that affected the houseless population.
• How did we deal with RVs then?
• I believe it was the 72-hour rule and it was complaint driven. • If we end up with a situation where the police are going around into neighborhoods and trying to determine who's parked for more than 72 hours, it's going to be a very difficult job for them. • I think we need to have it driven by complaints, if there's issues in the neighborhoods, let neighbors bring it up, and then the police will deal with it.
• My other concern is around the parking signs.
• Are they planning to put parking signs in the residential neighborhoods dealing with RVs, thank you.
Eliza continued her comments as follows:
• I'm a member of Horizon Shine Village, and , everyone's story is just so different, and for a lot of people like including myself Sebastopol has been a safe zone, and even though we get categorized as just coming to this town and terrorizing it, I've definitely tried to do my part as well in participating in it. • I love a lot of the things that go on here, I love a lot of the people I've met and interactions here. • It wouldn't seem fair for a lot of people to lose that opportunity because not everybody is on the streets just for drug reasons or mental health reasons or whatever or just being poor. • Some people just have different lifestyles in which they choose to find a journey towards. • I do agree with maybe some things being done as far as maybe around schools, if that makes more people comfortable.
• I know that Morris did not have anybody on it that was on any type of Megan's Law list by any means, but I could understand from a community view where it- , it wouldn't feel as safe. • Rules and regulations as far as conjuring of encampments could be a thing, but individuals who are just looking for a place safer than even Santa Rosa where a lot more violence, especially with people of the homeless community occurs would just go a long ways
• I would like to also thank a lot of like the Chief and the police here because they were very patient with us, and I know that we definitely got away with a lot more as far as what the ordinance was even for the 72 hour, but unfortunately it just comes down to a lot of people don't have the resources to be able to move, up and move every single day, and even sometimes 72 hours. • It's kind of hard, so but I just wanted to say thanks for the patience, and I'm really glad this village started and hopefully it can be an example for what could be helpful for a lot more people.
Yolanda commented as follows:
• I work at the Barlow. I'm expressing our strong support for the parking ordinance as written. • We've been directly impacted by the illegal RV parking on Morris Street for years now and it's grown worse with time.
• I've written in numerous times about problems we've encountered from harassment, dumping, drug use, theft, and hazardous waste.
• We've begged and pleaded for help and support and I'm so grateful this is finally being voted on. • It's very long overdue.
• Allowing RV parking on public streets is not necessarily helping. • We don't have the infrastructure in place on public streets to provide a safe and healthy living environment for the unhoused.
• This parking ordinance not only helps business owners in our commercial direct, but it also helps all citizens with providing safe walkways, parking and supporting small businesses. • Aside from the business perspective, as a mother, I can't help but wonder why anyone would support these encampments that are surrounding our schools, parks, and play areas. • We have an obligation to protect our children first and foremost. • We don't intend to criminalize the unhoused as some people have mentioned, but we do feel like order and structure is required and think this parking ordinance provides just that. • I urge you to please pass this RV parking ordinance as written.
Arthur commented as follows:
• On behalf of West County homeless advocates, supplementing the written comments. • I urge the Council to refrain from passing the ordinance at this time and pause to retool some of its key components and cure the vagueness and overbreadth as has been stated here tonight. • Banning all RVs would harm business uses downtown and even in the Barlow requiring RV visitors to find their limited parking lots or ludicrously to suggest they park out of town and return by Uber is an unfriendly burden on commerce and Sebastopol is a gateway for tourism and recreation. • It's been clearly stated that the purpose here is to clear the unhoused by pushing them out during the day onto county or state roadways and adjoining lands.
• We must support our Police Chief in making Sebastopol safe, but this daytime restriction does not seem to arise as a safety issue.
• In a word, this is dumping onto a county which perpetually fails to comprehensively plan for the unhoused.
• There appear to be few provisions for sanitation or safety in these outlying areas, particularly as to women or the disabled or mentally ill or to the are environment. • It's an illusion to say they are not Sebastopol's problem when out of town, particularly as they may return to the safety of city streets at night.
• The city must continue to provide toilets and trash facilities as nighttime parking has compassionately allowed.
• That supports safety and sanitation here.
• Sebastopol should initiate and demand a comprehensive plan with the county, leverage this moment to reset the continuum of care now with Councilmember Una Glass to represent our city and West County interests.
• Now third parties outside legal activists assert the ordinance unconstitutionally discriminated against the unhoused particularly those with the unchangeable characteristics of gender and disability with disparate account impacts from an ordinance seemingly neutral and equitable on its face. • Sebastopol should avoid such expensive litigation if possible.
Jill commented as follows:
• First of all I just want to thank Chief Kilgore and his department for what you've done with Morris Street thus far.
• As a resident, a business owner near Morris Street and having represented the community center on the board for nearly five years, I've dealt with the many issues that have been outlined from other business owners on Morris Street, the vandalism, the crime, the employees being harassed. • The community center being broken into, the thousands of dollars spent to put in alarm systems, the number of nights that my husband and I got up as volunteers in the middle of the night receiving calls from the alarm company saying that someone was breaking into the community center and showing up there.
• The list could go on and on.
• I just wanted to thank you for what I see so far, thus far on Morris Street. • Secondly, I would just like to remind the Council that a number of us attended those stakeholder meetings, at those meetings it was committed, everyone committed to providing this parking ordinance, and it was going to go hand in hand with this RV safe parking, and so I'd just like to ask the Council to honor that commitment.
• You said that the RVs would not move into the site until there was a parking ordinance, and here they are. • It's already open.
• Furthermore, I'd also like to mention that I literally drive the streets every weekend and have been doing this for a couple of months filming every street and every RV that is on our streets simply to develop a yardstick for what is going on here.
• I have it all dated and timed, and I can tell you after my drive yesterday that there are more and new RVs on our residential streets.
• I live near Palm avenue.
• No one is there right now, but I can tell you the number of people that have been in and out of there, and I hear what people are saying they want to be able to park their RVs on the streets, residents do. • I get that. I see where they're at. I pretty much know them by heart. • At the same time, if people could understand what we have dealt with around the schools, the community center, the businesses in this town, we deserve to have what the City Council committed to, and that was a parking ordinance.
Barbara commented as follows:
• I first initially want to say thanks to all of the City Council for the time and support that you gave for the creation of the now in place RV village horizon shine and Sebastopol. • I have watched it come about through your dedicated collaboration with other entities, saves and the Police Department and that was very heartening to see that kind of collaboration and to watch you work through toward a realization of the village with all those others involved. • It is vitally needed at this time of so many people without the resources and safety that they need. • The parking ordinance under consideration tonight is related to the needs that brought about the village. • The no parking ordinance that's been gone over quite a bit, we know what that's been called for, and I would say do look at who will be hurt by this ordinance of no parking. • Where should those who live in their RVs go when there's no more room at the village. • Wherever they go, they are not welcome.
• Not provided with basic needs and not saved.
• There's just a great need and we all kind of know that with the homeless situation across the country. • What to do that doesn't just shuttle people around needs to be seriously undertaken. • There needs to be a deep reimagining of solutions requiring collaboration and transparency and that's more than maybe can be done at this moment with what's proposed. • I will just let me say anyway, there needs to be a step in the right direction towards showing that everyone is deserving, not a step that further discounts those with the least. • There's money involved, but there's much more than that. • It's not easy but possible, I would encourage questioning more, looking more, And reimagining what is possible because it is possible to help everyone.
Andrew commented as follows:
• Mayor and Councilmembers and staff, I want to thank you first for your time this evening. • I know that this is a contentious issue and one you've been addressing or attempting to address for quite some time.
• I appreciate the special meeting and the continued discussion of this with the public so that everybody can have their say.
• I'm calling in tonight to voice my concern.
• I think this proposed parking ordinance is an overly broad answer for a relatively narrow perceived problem.
• Prohibiting the street parking of RVs and campers throughout town to address a perceived parking shortage and pick safety issues that some have voiced around the Barlow and on Morris Street is not the right answer, especially not with the safe parking site established. • Please allow some time for that site to be open and assess whether this ordinance is truly needed and also take some time to consider the other unintended consequences of ordinance. • How will it affect those who have campers, RVs, any other number of vehicles for fire evacuations, how will it affect those of us who might drive a sprinter Van For work. • Will we be classed as parking too long?
• Will we be ticketed for our vehicle being in front of our home multiple days in a row over 72 hours? • What about those who have converted conversion vans.
• These are basically standard vans they drive as their everyday vehicle. • This is really broad for a narrow problem.
• I just want to say I've got relatives who visit from out of town. • They come, they spend time in their RV, and then they spend money at the Barlow and downtown and they spend money at our shops.
• They spend time in Sebastopol.
• They attend peace town.
• Having this type of ordinance that's so broad to address a very narrow perceived problem is overkill, and I think as we've heard tonight every Councilmember and every member of staff has a differing read of this and differing questions which kind of proves this is too soon, too fast for this and more discussion is needed.
Annalisa commented as follows:
• Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight.
• I just have to say that I feel that I find this ordinance placating the wealthy residents and business owners of the area while also criminalizing homelessness.
• This ordinance affects those of us that have RVs and campers for the sake of evacuation and is a hindrance for people like myself that have family members come to visit me now that I've just had a baby and it's just very uncharacteristic of Sebastopol.
• I have just always thought of this community as being empathetic and kind, a lot of people are coming here as tourists and spend money here.
• People from my own family come here every summer, and we didn't see each other for a whole year during the pandemic, and now this would make it really hard for people like me that have folks coming from out of town that come stay here and visit.
Michael commented as follows:
• I just wanted to remind City Council about the staff time here. • When I was on Council this came to us three times under three different Chiefs, Chief Weaver, Chief Conner, and acting Chief DeVore, and we failed to do anything about it, and in the last meeting I said I don't want to ever see this thing again if we don't take action and do something about it because we might as well just forget about wasting staff's time.
• I can say for here we are again now under a new Chief and it's back before City Council again. • I can say from my experience that James Conner after he spent all that time for City Council telling him to do it and then City Council didn't act, he was pissed, and he lost respect for City Council. • If you want to maintain the respect of your staff and the public, you should either take action on this tonight and adopt it or throw it out forever because you're wasting people's time and you're losing respect of both the citizenry and staff.
Robert commented as follows:
• There isn't enough time to answer some of the people who are relatively new to this conversation about just how much suffering has gone on in the Morris Street east side of town. • The list is enormously long and very dangerous.
• When we talk about money to hire somebody to oversee a permit process that you'll figure out in the next few months, I think the Chief of Police has done a great job in writing this. • I'm very much in favor of passing it as is, letting him work with it and then if he kneads needs extra help, we can figure out what he needs.
• Those of micromanaging a person without a driveway, a person who has a friend coming, a person who doesn't want to pay to store his RV for when he needs it once a year and wants to leave it on the public street.
• The streets belong to everybody in the whole town.
• They belong to the kids who go to play ball, they go to the community center, the Laguna. • I've been on the board of the Laguna Foundation, I'm going to just throw one thing out here. • I have seen in one building on Morris Street, only one small part of that building over a million dollars’ worth of salaries has left the town. The place is empty. • That is million dollars of payment that used to go to people who would have lived and worked in this town and spent their money here and their tax money that would have gone into paying for the services we need, and , we could easily afford to have somebody handle the permit process should it become necessary in the future.
• Pass this ordinance now.
• We can work it out later, but if you start throwing away million dollars a year on these other issues that have to do with an unusable city, you cannot have a city without people who live and work here, and it's just been dangerous.
• You made the deal, you got the saves people, we can't be the one town in Sonoma County that has a larger percentage of its money and its people housing other people. • Let those people live in some other towns, but they can't all live here. • We can't just put the open door mat out so everyone moves here.
A member of the audience commented as follows:
• I would like to say that so far it looks a lot better in Sebastopol, and that is a good thing for everybody, and I do want to comment about everybody like there's one thing somebody living in their vehicle and another thing is having stuff blocking a sidewalk, I'm not sure why the Police Department goes around letting that happen, but blaming that on everybody that lives in their RV is kind of like there's a bad apple in every bunch, and you're going to say everybody's bad, that doesn't really work in reality, so trying to say a few people blocking the sidewalk And everybody should never be allowed to park an RV there is kind of not okay.
• The other thing with people not feeling safe, I see that most of that has to do with the sidewalk not being safe for various reasons, not sure why the Police Department allows that to happen. • Also, the 72-hour law, it seems like it wasn't in effect there for a good long time during this pandemic, and then now it seems like the Police Department's stepped up their game along with a lot of threats to tow everything away if people move their RVs to other places and of course the saves place is bound places for these people, some of them, but the other ones do not have a place, and there's a waiting list and to try to tow their only place to live away from them and make them try to live in a bush is kind of not very nice.
• I would say that you should postpone this law or affecting the law because it's really not very well written, a lot of people have commented about that, defining the RV, et cetera, et cetera, and I would go along with enforcing the 72-hour law which seems to be working to me. • I don't know why I wouldn't just keep going with what's working instead of whatever you guys are trying to do here.
• Tow away every RV in town.
Clark commented as follows:
• First a big thank you to Chief Kilgore and your department, appreciate all the time and effort you've put into this.
• I believe this is a compassionate town and I appreciate the thought that has gone into the efforts and I just want to acknowledge the complexity of this problem, and it's not easy, and it's a very tough problem to tackle.
• I urge the Council as promised at a previous meeting to pass this ordinance. • There's time to tweak it later.
• I trust that the spirit of its intent will be implemented wisely and compassionately. • I also ask the Council to look at the consequences of not passing it now or passing something now. • In short, don't let perfection be the enemy of the good.
Mayor Slayter responded to public comments:
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• When we have folks who are jumping in like we did and interrupt our public, that's just unacceptable • Thankfully we've been pretty free of that problem in our meetings, and a lot of other agencies have gone to a different format where it's a webinar and public participation is not as generous as we have here, and we've not gone that direction with that type of a zoom meeting or other format meeting because of that lack of openness that we're able to have with this format. We prefer this format. • I don't want to say it's who we are. We're not little boxes on a screen. • We're human beings and that means that sometimes some of us act inappropriately. • Our apologies. It's not our fault, but our apologies for those extremely rude interruptions and we do our best on that, and tech support behind the curtain does a really great job helping us with that. • There were a couple of questions about what is the county doing, what is the continuum of care doing in its newly constituted state and I have said time and again that this is a regional problem. • It needs to have a regional approach, and I am incredibly hopeful that the newly constituted continuum of care where we have a current, seated voting member in the person of Councilmember Glass, and so I'm going to turn to her and ask her if she can speak to the questions and comments regarding leveraging county forces and funds in a regional approach.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows;
• Actually, I'm not seated yet. This was the last meeting of the old constituted COC, and the new one is about to start up in another month or so, which I am very, very happy to say that there will be seats in the newly constituted COC for small cities.
• That's been part of the problem. Small cities have been out of the loop and have not been at the table as far as figuring out how to solve these problems.
• I think it is very, very high on my list when I get to sit in my seat to look at spending and leveraging as much money as we can to create more places that are like horizon shine. • As I listen to everybody, I'm sure a lot of people think I just don't get it, but actually, I do. • It's I do understand that people don't want big encampments in front of their business or in their backyard or anywhere else.
• That's of course people don't want that.
• As a policymaker and as decision-makers as a City Council, we have to work regionally to make sure that the resources are spent and so that we can create these what are the most affordable solutions to the homelessness and housing crisis in this county.
• So Councilmember Rich and I have been working on our unhoused committee, working to locate resources, working to find places that are going to be good places for people who are unhoused to live. • As it is, the COC actually doesn't have that much money but they have millions. • We're talking millions and millions that are really needed to solve this problem, but I think with us having a seat at the table, plus Sonoma, plus Petaluma, plus Santa Rosa, plus I think it's Healdsburg, with US All having a seat at the table, we're going to really pushing the county to do something that's affordable and not just create homeless shelters, which homeless -- nobody wants to be in a homeless shelter, and the most affordable thing we can do is to make sure there's safe parking with the kinds of utilities and services that are needed so that not only is the community safe but also the unhoused are safe too. • There's a lot of good people, like we had a speaker tonight that are unhoused and they want to feel safe too.
• We got to really work on this and make this supersonic speed and get this done over the next year. • There is a lot of money at the state level, and that's what I want to work on. • I want to work on making sure that our COC is getting its fair share and getting a lot of money out of the state because it is true.
• The state has done a Bill for $12 billion to solve this problem. • Let's figure out how to use it wisely and to solve the problem so everybody will be happier. • In an equitable way across incorporated cities, across unincorporated county areas Fire Evacuees:
• The City of Sebastopol can suspend an ordinance if it's one of our own and this proposed ordinance would fit in that category, and it's possible for the city to suspend enforcement either unofficially or by an official action.
• We did that for fire evacuees, for at least a year and allowed people to use RVs as permanent dwellings where normally they would not have been allowed because of that very thing. • We can address an emergency, an evacuation, a fire, a flood, an earthquake, any kind of a natural disaster where people need to use RVs, we can manage that.
Signage:
There was a couple of questions about the cost of new signage and other enforcement, and this staff report for this meeting, which has been revised and updated with a cost estimate, and let's see if I go to that, so at our previous Council meeting with some staffing changes that have been proposed and that the Police Department is working on, there are some related costs with staffing increasing of a position from 3/4 time to full-time City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented as follows:
• My only answer would be the staff is aware that if this ordinance passes and is adopted, we need to provide significant signage and we have plans underway to do that. • However, we have been waiting for the ordinance to be adopted.
Mayor Slayter commented I have a note from a previous meeting that it was in the neighborhood of $30,000 was kind of a ballpark figure for the number of signs multiplied by how much they were going to cost? City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented I'm not sure if that's the police technician cost or the signage cost, but since that meeting we've identified other options which would still constitute legal signage and might not be so costly.
Mayor Slayter commented the Council is acknowledging that if this passes there would be costs involved that would need to be tuned in and figure out exactly what they would be, and it would come back to the Council for approval.
Allowance of visitors to town
Mayor Slayter discussed the allowance for visitors to come to town looking at it from the perspective of the ordinance.
• The proposed ordinance, which is commercial industrial non-residential zones in one category and then residential zones in the other category.
• For the residential zones, which I think was the main number of folks who were questioning, and I'll speak to the commercial and the industrial zones also, but first we'll go with the residential zones, and in section 10.76.050, exceptions to the ordinance, and B is the verbiage is recreational vehicles parked or left standing on any public street in the city that is zoned residential so as to allow the use of a homeowner, a tenant, or an out of town visitor to load or unload the vehicle for a period not to exceed 72 hours.
• That is to allow the use of those people for 72 hours and the 72-hour rule, which is the -- as we have interpreted it, is that that's substantial movage. That's not necessarily an inch, but maybe it's an inch. • We don't have a clear definition of that.
• If the vehicle is parked utterly stationary for 72 hours, then if it moves, that restarts the clock, and it's also going to be complaint driven.
• If an unknown vehicle shows up in one's neighborhood and there is concern from a neighbor who does not know who which house that vehicle is belonging to or related or associated with rather, then that individual can call the Police Department and the Police Department will mark the tires and that's when the clock starts.
• I think that there's some misunderstanding about that. • The idea here is that an out of town visitor related or associated with a residence, there's a 72-hour exemption there.
• It's not a blanket prohibition and we had a couple of commenters talk about maybe we need to dial this in a little bit tighter with our definition of an RV.
• This ordinance, the definitions that are come straight out of the state code and the sections are cited. • There's really not a lot of latitude that we have in those definitions because of that state law or laws. • I don't think any reasonable person could say that two vehicles that look absolutely identical on the outside and one of them happens to be a work Van and the other one happens to have a constructive platform where someone might be able to sleep when they drive out to the desert, I'm not hearing our Police Department or Police Chief say that those will be treated any differently if one is clean and one is dirty, that doesn't matter to anybody.
• That's kind of the way that the residential zone breaks down. • In the commercial zones, RVs are welcome in our downtown. • We have municipal parking lots. We have the Burnett Street lot. • We have the virtual municipal lot at the CVS store and property that is unrestricted. • Anybody can park there, and please park there. It's like a city lot that we don't have to maintain. • So it's for all of us to use, to share and to enjoy as much as parking lots can be enjoyed. • So RVs are welcome there, if it's a legal size to park in a parking stall, park your RV there, that's perfectly fine.
• Behind the library, that municipal lot, same thing.
• It's on the roadways that this ordinance is addressing. • There are places for visitors to our community to park their RVs, to go have dinner, to go see a movie, wander the Barlow, go to the library, do any of those things. • There are provisions for RVs to park in the commercial industrial downtown zones. • It's not just downtown.
• It's the North end.
• It's the South end, it's anything other than the residential zones. • Why isn't the county fixing the problem? City is working with the County. • Lots and lots of thanks to the Chief and the Sebastopol Police Department. We're on board with that. • Johnson and around the loop, there was a question or suggestion about creating a timed parking zone. • I don't remember what the current conditions are down there and whether or not that would be something that's kind of an interface between residential and nonresidential. • Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• We specifically looked at that, and it is kind of divided up between community facility and also residential. • The reason that we specifically did not end onto Johnson is because that we have been advised by several people that many high school students park on Johnson, and they would not be able to comply with a three-hour parking statute while they're in class and make sure that we're not disrupting their education.
Mayor Slayter discussed a question about what was the policy before COVID, which also is roughly when the homeless crisis began to escalate. I know Chief, you weren't here before COVID, so I'm not sure that you're able to address what your predecessors did. The 72-hour rule has been one we've had for a while, and that was largely the enforcement that we had.
City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented as follows:
• We did relax the rules during the several wildfire evacuations, so there was not aggressive 72-hour ticketing at that time.
• Then the same thing happened during COVID.
• We for humanitarian reasons did not aggressively pursue 72-hour violations during the height of the pandemic.
Comments from business owners:
There were a couple of comments from business owners. Mostly from business owners along Morris about unlawful behavior, and it has been stated several times at public meetings that the Council's perspective on that is that unlawful behavior is unlawful behavior, and regardless of who the perpetrator is.
Doing stuff that's illegal is illegal stuff that's been done, and it doesn't matter who's doing it, and so if those business owners are experience lawless behavior, call the Police Department and make a report, and they will follow up with you and look into that.
Councilmember Rich commented two questions I heard were why is the 72-hour rule insufficient, and the other one was a general question about how enforcement would be handled.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• Right now the 72-hour ordinance is insufficient because it does not have a whole lot of teeth to it. • Vehicles can move basically an inch or two and be in compliance, and so, therefore, there's not a whole lot of availability for enforcement action that has any type of effectiveness for that. • As far as enforcement goes, much of the stuff that we've talked about specifically in residential zones will be complaint driven as the Mayor spoke about just a short time ago, but the things that are going to be obvious to our officers and our SPD personnel who are doing the enforcement and looking at these things will be those that are parked in industrial and community facility areas during restricted times that they are not supposed to be parked there.
• Our personnel exercise discretion and common sense when it comes to these things. • We empower them to do so.
• We have actively engaged with our advocacy groups as well, and we have frequent and effective communication that is helpful to all of us and so that will continue, and we will continue to approach this with reasonableness and common sense.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• I didn't actually hear this, but I've heard this question a number of times before and it wasn't mentioned this evening, but what's the intersection between our ordinances and the fact that two of our roads are state highways?
• Highway 12 and 116. Are our ordinances enforced on those Caltrans streets? Chief Kilgore commented yes they are. All ordinances within the city limits even when there is a state highway that comes through the city are applicable.
City Council Discussion and/or Deliberations:
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• I'd like to thank everyone who spent their time tonight and on other evenings as we push this forward just being here and sharing their thoughts both by e-mail and verbally tonight. • The dedication from our community, I think, is incredibly impressive. • I'd like to reinforce what Councilmember Glass has mentioned. • She and I are committed To moving forward to put our full energies behind arranging the, facilitating other RV villages that meet the goals and the level of service that we see at horizon Shane. • So this is not the last chapter for us here in Sebastopol. • We don't intend to abandon the vehicular unhoused that were not able to get into the RV village. • I really want to make that clear. We're on board. We're meeting tomorrow. • We are moving forward to do as much as we can in a concrete fashion. • We're doers, we're not just people who go through process. • So that's the first point.
• I want to remind everyone that we have a Police Chief that has communicated in every way possible his commitment and his Police Department's commitment, and I've heard this from his officers directly to a compassionate enforcement of laws, they exercise discretion all the time, and I personally and others have been very impressed by their ability to be patient and humane and understanding, and we've heard a bit of that from the unhoused and also from the advocates here tonight. • We can trust him, I think, to exercise discretion appropriately, and we need to understand that there may be modifications needed to this ordinance, but we won't know what they are until it's been implemented and we experience it.
• Then this City Council is nimble.
• We're ready respond if we need to.
• I think everyone in town has seen that.
• We are a compassionate town, and let's remember that we are doing a lot. • Park village, our full-time outreach worker through West County community services who every day is finding alternate placements for the people who remain on Morris and elsewhere in town. • Last night people may not know this, but last night the advocates partnered with community church to hold a warming center in order to bring people out of the cold and give them a warm place to be. • This town is doing everything they can.
• We can't house all of them, but Councilmember Glass and I can partner and put our full force behind efforts to move forward to provide even more resources for our Sebastopol unhouse. • In light of all of that, we need to move forward with this ordinance as proposed by our Police Chief from my perspective.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• It was brought up a few times by members of the public about the personally owned RVs that are for evacuation purposes or heaven forbid we actually go have some fun now and again and take a trip somewhere.
• Doesn't that sound pretty great, and the idea that the city and this comment is informed by several phone calls and e-mails that I've had with residents around the city who they’re tired of looking at their neighbor’s recreational vehicle across the street parked permanently at the curb. • I can sympathize with those folks.
• I'm not sure that it is the general population's duty to provide recreational vehicle storage along public roadways.
• I can see the need during a fire pr something's happening out in the County or wherever, and we're worried about it you want to be ready, and we're able to allow for that. • The idea that permanent recreational vehicle storage along a curb on a public Right-of-Way, to me that feels like a subsidy that the general population is making for those few who have that type of vehicle. • I honestly think that the 72-hour exemption that is in the ordinance as proposed is reasonable and I think that it suits the great majority of folks who have either they live here in town and they have an RV that they want to load or unload or use for whatever purpose for up to 72 hours, or if they have an out of town visitor, same thing, that feels like a reasonable period of time to allow that type of a use. • The overnight parking and the need to move vehicles, that's -- to me that's a really difficult question because of the humanity of it, and it's been stated about our climate goals, and if that's really heading in the wrong direction as far as that goes.
• I haven't been able to square that one up.
• Encampments, unlawful encampments or lawless encampments like Morris Street had become where residents of Sebastopol were not able to use what they rightfully should be able to, that's difficult, and I'm not in favor of having a place that becomes that type of unlawful encampment. • It's not safe for anybody. It's not safe for residents. • It is not safe for folks who are living in the encampment, sanitation issues, public health issues in our case the Laguna Is an incredibly valuable and sensitive location, and we need to respect that, so I can't square that up.
• I think that what we have is something that is to quote one of our public speakers and something that I hear time and again and I think of as sort of a rule of thumb is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and , I think that that's probably where we are.
• What Councilmember Rich said about us being able to dial this in, if it's not working, we can do that. • It's our ordinance.
Vice Mayor Hinton commented as follows:
• I've been jotting down as the public spoke throughout the night, and I went back and looked at some research.
• I was elected in November of '16, and one of the first things I did dated February 2nd of 2017 was a point and count here in Sebastopol.
• We counted 44 homeless residents.
• I did another point and count or time, I forget what they're called, but basically a point in time count, and I think we got up to 60 something residents.
• I don't know what the count is today, but I do know that we have housing for at least maybe a few more 70 homeless residents between park village, elderberry commons, the new saves lot, I'm not coming up with the name.
• We have done more for the homeless and I heard a speaker say it's a regional problem. • It certainly is a regional problem and Sebastopol currently is housing 70 plus people. • The 72-hour has not worked for us
• I think it was the right thing to do to ease enforcement during COVID, I think we all agree with that. • But so many people we've heard and read letters that just move their vehicles six inches and then they move them back, and so that hasn't work.
• We've had a death with a person parked by one of our parks where children played right outside. • I just think that we do have to do something, and it may not be perfect. • I am in favor, as I've stated many times in maybe coming up with some sort of permit for residents that would allow not permanent parking but some sort of permit system for visitors, longer term visitors. • I feel like I'm willing To move forward tonight and then work out the details of our ordinance. • We've got to do something.
• I was down on Morris last week when the garbage trucks were there to remove trash and the guy that got out of the garbage truck shook his head.
• There was so much overflowing trash, it was awful.
• It's time to clean it up.
• It's been five years.
• It's too long.
• We've got to do something.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• On the issue of the debris bins that have been down there, I was at the chamber of commerce board of directors meeting last week, and our local ambrosia is on the board of the chamber, and she spoke to what she sees and what the reports are of that debris bin, and it's largely not people who were residents along Morris using it for dumping.
• It has construction debris in it, almost at every single emptying, things like sheets and sheets of demolished dry wall out of people's houses, plumbing fixtures, doors, concrete, I mean, clearly things that the residents along Morris Street did not have as debris. • So that was a problem time and time again.
• I feel like the folks along Morris Street suffered because of other people's poor actions.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I want to start with an appreciation for our committee for the unhoused. • Councilmembers Rich and Glass for their dedication to the tasks that were under a pretty difficult time line.
• The SAVS RV village, horizon shine has opened very successfully. • My appreciation for staff who were under the same pressure and worked with great speed to accomplish the opening.
• It's taken quite a lot of work.
• I also want to appreciate Councilmember Glass for providing this opportunity tonight for so many more people to speak with more detail on this subject.
• We've had something like 30 speakers, I think, and a lot of comments that we haven't heard before, and we wouldn't have the chance -- people wouldn't have that opportunity to speak, nor would we have the opportunity to hear those comments but for Councilmember Glass taking this off consent calendar at our last meeting.
• I would like us to move forward with the ordinance and to honor our promise to the business community particularly but also to our community at large that we would make an effort not only to clean up Morris Street, but importantly to provide a better accommodation, and as I've said, just said, the RV village has opened.
• I think what we need to do is look at our 72-hour rule, and perhaps separate from tonight's meeting see if there's a way we can put some teeth in that.
• We know from several comments that family members, overnight visitors, business visitors, people will be able to park and stay, and there is no threat of a ticket or a tow away. • That's good, but our difficulty comes from that sort of one inch movement. • That's not working for us, and it hasn't been working for us with our relaxed, nonenforcement through the COVID pandemic period.
• I think we need to look at that rule and see what would Be the solution. • I'm sure the Chief will think of one, he's already raised his hand in response to my comments and I nonetheless will stay with that notion.
• I think we have a difficulty, too, that's been expressed with RVs being on residential streets for that 72- hour period of time.
• In the situation where they might restrict the movement of public safety vehicles, and so I'm thinking as we look at that residential street, 72-hour rule, separate from the ordinance decision tonight, we could think of some solutions there.
• Maybe we define a size of the RV that wouldn't be problematic on our narrower streets, or maybe we prohibit overnight parking on those narrower streets for that public safety purpose. • I'm not really sure which would work better, and I don't intend for us to have a long solution to that tonight.
• It seems like that's a workable problem.
• I would like us also separate from tonight to consider a permit program of some sort as the Mayor has said, it's a problem for us to subsidize private parking on a public street. • That's just I think problematic to store people's oversized RVs on our public street. • On the other hand, we have some, I think, justifications for that sort of parking. • Tonight we've heard of people who have their getaway vehicle in the instance of an evacuation, an earthquake, some family emergency, whatever it might be. • Maybe that vehicle is available for them to bring in their family member from their particular emergency. • In any event, I know our residents have a need for their RVs, and as I said last time on my street of 20 houses, there are 13 that share driveways or don't have a driveway. • It's just a circumstance that exists because we have a lot of old housing. • Some driveways are tandem driveways and they're really narrow. • We have just funky driveways here because we're an old town, so I'm sure a permit process might be able to provide some suggested justifications for that permit application, and it could be, again, a discretionary decision, staff at City Hall, staff through the Police Department, not mine to decide tonight, but I think that's very doable.
• It doesn't need to be an obstacle to getting this pass, and it doesn't need to be forgotten either because It's a real problem that our residents have.
• would actually like to include Johnson Street on the prohibition, yes, perhaps high schoolers park there, but, oh, well.
• What we see of Johnson Street is it makes that circle around from Morris Street, and it just doesn't work to have RVs parked there or Morris Street just move a little half a block away when it's all connected. • Johnson Street, the Laguna Parkway and Morris Street. • I would also like to make sure that we have protections for our school zones. • Chief, you've heard tonight from a high school district that they're concerned for the safe of their students just getting to and from cars at the beginning and end of school, and particularly for their players who are in after school hours trying to train up, work out, be on a team. • It's really important to me that our youth feel safe in our community and it is something We should provide with comfort that our youth can be safe in their activities.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• Looking at a more robust 72-hour parking ordinance is already on my list, it is just a matter of when I get to it and have the ability to do that.
• That will be forthcoming. I don't know when.
• As far as Johnson Street, I have to look at the zoning map. • I believe most of Johnson Is already covered as a residential zone. • RVs would only be allowed to park there between the hours of 10:00 P.M. and 7:30 am, which would not interfere with our youth activities and school athletics on Johnson, and the issues that go with that.
Councilmember Gurney commented how do you respond to the high school's concern for the safety of their athletes and team members?
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• As with anybody, we always want to know of any behavior that seems to be threatening to anyone. • From any community member.
• Whether that's a youth member who goes to the school or a resident or visitor or anybody who comes through our city.
• We always need to know about those issues so we can proactively address them, and we'll do our best to address those issues so that there is not a safety concern or at least a mitigated safety concern.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• I have a lot of concerns about this ordinance.
• The first thing I want to say is I disagree with some of my colleagues on some of these matters, I also disagree with the Chief on some of these matters, I have to say, just because I disagree with him doesn't mean I'm not really glad he was our choice when we hired him to be our Chief but I have to say that however, I do disagree.
• So, I think it's unclear
• The Chief told me or just stated that if somebody comes in their RV or Van And it's a camper van, and they park in front of my house, they come over for dinner that's unloading and loading. • I don't think that's at all clear for the ordinance and so, I just, I find that kind of problematic. • When you put yourself in the position of doing selective enforcement that is not a good position. • To me it's just like really not very clear. I do think it's not okay • I just don't agree that it's okay to prevent a family member who comes in not over-sized, not inconvenient camp per Van To see their grandchild to stay four or five days in front of their children's home.
• I just don't think that's a problem.
• I don't think most people in Sebastopol would think it's a problem. • These ready kinds of instances where I feel that this ordinance has serious issues and that's not -- that's not to say I do think that We should do something to prevent overnight parking in RVs around schools think we should do that, I do think having permanent encampments is not okay. • Perhaps we need to immediately put up three-hour park signs during the daylight hours on Morris Street. • I do think those things but I just think this ordinance is full of unintended consequences and just has some issues.
• I am not against doing something.
• But I think there are problems within this ordinance.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• I think that we can what-if a lot of things.
• The unfortunate part is that we can't cover every single scenario. • If we did, then we'd probably be looking at an ordinance that is the size of a book. • I think that there are some things, and I believe that there's a misguided belief that our Police Department has the time to go look at all of these little intricacies that we've been speak about and that's just not the case.
• Our folks are trusted and have a significant responsibility in the jobs that they do every single day. • I trust the discretion, the reasonableness, and the common sense that our personnel exercise on a daily basis.
• Many of the things that we've spoke about as the Mayor has mentioned will be complaint-driven. • If you have a relationship with your neighbors, and you talk to your neighbors, and they're probably going to know that you got a family member who is coming over, and so, the definition of unloading and loading could be very broad, it could be very narrow, and as soon as we change whatever we want to define it as, someone else is going to come up with a new definition we need to now meet and it's going to continue to go down this path so I think the best thing for us to do, if the Council chooses to pass this, is let's give it some time.
• Let me show you the discretion and reasonableness and common sense that our Police Department personnel exercise on a daily basis, and I think that you will see that they will be exercising it with this as well, and if we need to make some tweaks as we move forward, as I say with a lot of things, this is a living document, we move it forward or we don't move it forward, but if it does move forward then we take this all in, we gather that feedback, we make the tweaks as we need to make them, we bring it back to Council for amendments if we need to and it's a living document that we continue to exercise and utilize because it's going to change over time to meet the needs of the community as our community changes. • I think that's the most important thing we need to remember in anything that we do is the reasonableness and the fact that we can always revisit things and look at them again to see what's working, what needs improvement, and where do we go from there.
Councilmember Glass commented as follows:
• I appreciate the Chief but that's the Chief's point of view and I just think that there are issues of unintended consequences.
• There's issues of people able to park in front of their own homes, visitors being able to park and like smaller RVs and commercial areas, I just think that all of those are problematic. • As a result I am not going to vote against this because I do think we need to do something. • But I'm not going to vote for it either.
• I additionally think that we are really pushing our luck in terms of threatened litigation and we're doing this rather precipitous in the face of threatened litigation. • In any case, I do appreciate the work of the Chief.
• I appreciate the work of staff.
• Of colleagues.
• Of the community.
• I do believe this has just not hit the point of being the right tool for the job at hand.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• Discussed section 10.76.050 exceptions, paragraph B.
• Recreational vehicles parked Or left standing on any public street in a city that is zoned residential so as to allow -- here's where the change starts -- the use of a homeowner, tenant or out of town visitor of the vehicle for a period not to exceed 72 hours.
• If we eliminate the load and unload verbiage would that be considered a significant change? City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin stated yes it would be a significant change.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• What if we just added that as a for instance?
• Loading and unloading, for instance, to include visits by -- ….
City Manager/Attorney McLaughlin commented that in my opinion is even more obvious.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I have a question for the Council
• Let's say we move forward with the ordinance tonight in its second reading approve no conflicts with editing as the Mayor was just speaking about, and then we direct staff, particularly the Chief, to return with the revisions to the 72-hour rule and also some samples of the permit process with justifications for resident parking.
• If anybody else is interested in that.
• I don't want to just put this on the Chief's desk without a timeline, when he can get to it in his calendar that's my question for the Council.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• I was actually thinking much along the same lines where the two items are logically grouped together for a single agenda item in the future where staff can look at this paragraph B as well as the greater definition of the 72-hour rule.
• To me that's a perfectly logical and appropriate approach this evening.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• My concern is to not delay our action tonight and to allow our Police Chief to move forward uninterrupted with the proposed ordinance.
• I certainly would support asking our Police Chief to look at those additional issues and I actually kept a list myself which is pretty consistent with what I've heard here and bring that back to Council at some point on a later date.
• I'm just concerned about police resources and the timing for having those come back. • I hope we'd coordinate with our Police Chief to not expect it back earlier than he's able to actually commit the time to put together an appropriate proposal. • But I do agree with the need to continue with the proposal and that those be inquired into as possible modifications later on.
Chief Kilgore commented I believe that the 72-hour revamp would be something that could come back in a somewhat timely manner, it will need to be vetted by our outside counsel as well, who I will be speaking with to get their guidance, however, a multi-option permit system would likely have to be discussed with the City Manager and be utilized and completed by an outside consultant because I just do not have the time to look at the multiple complexities that come with a permit system and the staffing that would come with that as well.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• I think that the Council's interested in that but I didn't hear the hot stove under that particular the permitting system.
• I was hearing a little bit where urgency regarding the 72-hour ordinance and this paragraph B as probably the greater import for the Council and the idea that staff can just magically do this work while doing their day jobs, their regular jobs and managing their departments is unrealistic on anybody's part and I for one don't expect super human, even though you guys are.
Chief Kilgore commented I would expect the 72-hour and the B paragraph could come back, I would like to estimate for April and I will try to have it sooner than that.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I didn't hear that the Council actually was not interested in a potential permit program. • I'm picking that up.
• I know Vice Mayor Hinton and I have mentioned it off and on in different meetings. • Are other Councilmembers interested in that exploration. • Obviously it's not as front-burner as the 72-hour rule but it say problem that our residents had spoken of routinely.
• We know it's a circumstance in our old housing stock, the driveway problem, it answers, I think, some of the concerns perhaps that Councilmember Glass has.
• So I'd just like to poll the Council if we could, is there interest in that besides mine? • I don't want it to get thrown in the garbage can without you guys affirmatively throwing it there • Also through the Mayor, to finish, also I just want the Chief to hear from me, April for that return would be fine because I understand we have really long agendas March 1 of the and March 15th already so I think the Mayor is going to plan another special meeting in March more than likely. • So April works for me, Chief
Vice Mayor Hinton commented as follows:
• I'm still interested in the parking permit.
• In fact, I just did a really quick Google search because I work where they have a permit system. • It's posted on the citywide Website and all of the parking regulations for the city are posted on their city Website under a tab titled parking.
• I think we can easily look to other cities in the regional area and maybe get some ideas for us and I would hope all these new ordinances and changes will be also highlighted ant posted on our city Website. • Agree, it's not the burner issue but I don't want it to fall through the cracks either.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• I think as future issue to consider doing further inquiry into the permitting options would be useful. • I'd also like to remind everyone we're going into budget stage here both Vice Mayor Hinton and I are on the committee so perhaps the Chief could submit some cost estimates on looking into a consultant or providing the resources that he needs in order to require report out to us at some point in the future.
Chief Kilgore commented as follows:
• I would just like to also redirect the Council back to, I don't know if it was the January 18th Council meeting or the Council packet but previously there was a permit option on the ordinance, so, if you'd like to look back at those at that packet and Mary probably has a better idea which Council meeting packet that was.
• There were two options presented, one with permits, one without permits. • That was all I wanted to say about that.
• Then I would probably defer to the City Manager in regard to that cost for consultants for outside. • To the Vice Mayor's point, I have looked at several of those and it would be a matter of trying to come up with a variety of possibilities and maybe one of the things we can look at is different possibilities not written an ordinance-type format deciding on which direction we wanted to go and then starting to do the work related to an ordinance as it relates to what permit option.
MOTION:
Councilmember Rich moved and Councilmember Gurney seconded the motion to approve Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance 1136, An Ordinance of the City of Sebastopol Adding Chapter 10.76 Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance and Amending Chapter 10.36 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code.
Return to City Council with an agenda item to discuss:
• Greater definition of 72 Hour rule
• Paragraph B
• Permit System
Mayor Slayter called for a roll call vote. City staff conducted a roll call vote.
VOTE:
Ayes: Councilmembers Gurney, Rich, Vice Mayor Hinton and Mayor Slayter Noes: None
Absent: None
Abstain: Councilmember Glass
City Council Action: Approved Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance 1136, An Ordinance of the City of Sebastopol Adding Chapter 10.76 Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance and Amending Chapter 10.36 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code.
Return to City Council with an agenda item to discuss:
• Greater definition of 72 Hour rule
• Paragraph B
• Permit System
Minute Order Number: 2022-067
Ordinance Number: 1136
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• Before we start this item, some news that I'm just seeing is that Ukraine has been attacked by Russia and we have a Ukrainian sister city, we've had a Ukrainian sister city for many, many, many years. • We have friends, virtual family members, in Ukraine.
• This type of bully behavior on the world stage is deeply, deeply troubling.
2. Direction to Staff on Recruitments/lack of applications for Openings as follows:
a. Vacancies on the Design Review Board (Responsible Department: Planning/Engineering/City Administration)
Term Ending Dates: December 31, 2021
Lars Langberg Category A
Christine Level Category C
Vacant (Formerly Ron Hari) Category C
Two applications received for three openings:
Christine Level – Category C
Lars Langberg – Category A
b. Openings for Recruitment on Zero Waste Committee (Engineering) Commercial Entity Representative
Citizen Representative
Youth Alternate
Two applications received for three openings (applications are for citizen representative seat only)
Deborah Klein – Citizen Rep
Christina Warren – Citizen Rep
c. Openings for Recruitment on Climate Action Committee (Planning) Youth Representative (ages 17-23) (One Position)
Environmental justice representative (One Position)
No applications received
d. City of Sebastopol Citizen Liaison to the SCTA/RCPA Climate Action Advisory Committee to Provide Expert Citizen Input on Implementation of the Climate Action Initiatives.
Despite noticing the opening, no one has expressed interest e. Openings for City Planning Commission (Planning)
Two vacancies
Vacant seat of Luke Lindenbusch (Fill term to December 31, 2023) Due to Resignation Vacant seat of Zac Douch (Fill term to December 31, 2022) Due to Resignation No applications received
Receipt of the following positions for recruitment:
f. Sonoma County Library Commission City Representative, Appointed Fred Engbarth as the City Representative on the Sonoma County Library Commission to Fill Vacancy of Remaining Term (Term Ends July 31, 2022).
g. City of Sebastopol Citizen Liaison to the SCTA/RCPA Climate Action Advisory Committee to Provide Expert Citizen Input on Implementation of the Climate Action Initiatives – Zeno Swijtink – Term Expires: June 30, 2022
h. Public Arts Committee: Marghe Mills-Thysen, Category 2, June 30, 2022 City staff provided the agenda item.
Mayor Slayter asked for questions of staff. There was none.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I just want to update you on the Zero Waste and Climate Action Committee • Councilmember Rich and I have been talking amongst ourselves whether merging those two committees would be doable.
• We talked to Zero Waste Committee as an agenda item today and Climate Change Action Committee talked about it now the two committees want to talk to each other so it looks like that conversation will happen in March at their next meet being two weeks away. • And perhaps they will come up with a joint recommendation that Councilmember Rich and I can bring to the Council, I'm thinking perhaps in April.
• If that's good with Councilmember Rich.
• This is the first time she and I have had a chance to check in on it with that new detail. • Also, as to the SCTA's Climate Action Advisory Committee -- CAAC, the charter document for that group was included in the packet and it empowers the representative from our city To make a direct appointment.
• I haven't done that for the previous times out of respect for the Council's appointment process. • In this situation I've been sitting on point of decision I'd like to share with the Council. • I haven't been appointing directly because we didn't have a lot of people interested. • At this point in time we have a very dedicated Climate Action Committee of our own and two of their representatives expressed interest to me and two of them have also attended the meeting and decided amongst themselves that one of them, Josho our co-facilitator would be interested for that appointment. • You've interviewed him for the Climate Action Advisory Committee and we've seen his leadership for a year or more so I'd like to directly appoint him, I just didn't want to step on anybody's toes by doing that without telling you and I haven't done it for, I think, two previous agendas where this item has been tabled to a later meeting, so Joshua and I have been waiting for me as a courtesy to inform you that I'd like to do that but I'd also like to do that with your approval since he is waiting in the wings and he has already been thoroughly vetted and has gained a lot of experience on our behalf.
Mayor Slayter opened for public comment.
Linda commented as follows:
• I don't me why anybody would want to be on these committees when this Council just blatantly flies in the face of its otherwise goals.
• Like the Zero Waste and stuff and then, just, plow ahead, with getting more plastic, disposal pieces of junk that don't work in the form of the wireless plastic made in China dangerous because they emit radiation, not found many nature, and very likely made in China because they could contain malware and hackable making us more vulnerable to stuff that's now going on in cyber-crime. • All of that stuff is hackable and vulnerable and making us weaker, our money and our health, and those same smart leaders, and you will of the other smart devices function by wirelessly emitting dangerous radiation.
• So, and about the climate thing, you all you have to do is look up, we're living in a world of geo engineers and there's tons of information on this, all you got to do is look up and see those things as I said before are clearly not clouds that contain metals and stuff that China and Russia openly acknowledge • If you all want to have some kind of relevant committee you need to start embracing the facts and get your heads out of the business-controlled narratives. Which are lies.
City Council Discussion and/or Deliberations:
The Council discussed the following appointments:
1. Design Review Board. Direct staff to return with an agenda item to 1) interview applicants; or 2) consider re-appointment of both applicants based on applications submitted and recruit for the vacant seat Two applications received for three openings:
Christine Level – Category C
Lars Langberg – Category A
The Council discussed re-appointment and was in consensus to re-appoint Christine Level – Category C and Lars Langberg – Category A for term ending December 31, 2023.
Mayor Slayter moved and Councilmember Gurney seconded the motion to approve reappointment of each of the current members who have reapplied for a new term and not go through the interview process with those two since we have interviewed them many times in the past and to go out for reopening to try to get that category C which it would be the one remaining seat that is open.
Mayor Slayter called for a roll call vote. City staff conducted a roll call vote.
VOTE:
Ayes: Councilmembers Glass, Gurney, Rich, Vice Mayor Hinton and Mayor Slayter Noes: None
Absent: None
Abstain: None
2. Zero Waste and Climate Action Committees. Postpone this item until such time that the Staff and Committees can discuss the potential future composition or merging of these committees Council was in consensus to postpone this item until such time that the Staff and Committees can discuss the potential future composition or merging of these committees.
3. Citizen Liaison to the SCTA/RCPA Climate Action Advisory Committee.
Council was in consensus to have the SCTA/RCPA Council Liaison appoint Josho Somine as the Citizen Liaison to the SCTA/RCPA Climate Action Advisory Committee.
4. Planning Commission: Staff recommends recruitment for these positions or direction to staff to return with an agenda item to discuss the size of the Planning Commission.
Vice Mayor Hinton commented as follows:
• The planning commission came to us and asked that we consider reducing their size to five and especially in right that we are too short right now.
• Think we should discuss that request from current members, I think that's respectful and they do the work so I'd like to go in that direction and see that discussion happen as suggested by staff.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I'm fine with that coming back for discussion but not fine with reducing the number in a time democracy is threatened I don't want to make sure fewer people participate with significant decisions so I welcome that coming back for that discussion.
• We also interviewing for the planning commission one candidate two or three times and not appointed him.
• I'm wondering if based on the Mayor's example that we previously interviewed Lars and Christine if the Council would be interested in appointing Kyle Falbo to the seat he's previously applied for and been denied.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• In terms of Kyle Falbo I'd be in support of appointing him assuming he is interested, no problem appointing him without additional interviews in terms of how to deal with this item on the agenda I'm in support of having the numbers of applicants come back the say time that the other issue is coming back from the planning commission.
• I'm not sure how those two issues overlap given I'm unaware whether Kyle continues to be interested.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• This isn't an appointment item. So that's something we could not take action on this evening. • I'm hearing is general consensus that we look at both of these items under the same umbrella. • Agenda item that is the boundary of what applicants we will entertain as well as the potential changing of the number of seats of the planning commission so that will be the agenda item.
City staff clarified the Council is postponing recruitment for the planning commission appointment(s) at this time until such time that the City Council discusses the formation of the commission when it comes back with the ordinance.
City Council discussed when this item would be returned to Council. City staff stated it is on the April 5th City Council agenda.
4. Staff recommends the Council receive the information of the upcoming vacancies and direct staff to conduct recruitment for the following:
A. Sonoma County Library Commission City Representative, To fill term ending appointment currently filled by Fred Engbarth (Term Ending Date: July 31, 2022).
B. City of Sebastopol Citizen Liaison to the SCTA/RCPA Climate Action Advisory Committee to Provide Expert Citizen Input on Implementation of the Climate Action Initiatives – Zeno Swijtink – Term Ending Date: June 30, 2022
C. Public Arts Committee: Marghe Mills-Thysen, Category 2, Term Ending Date: June 30, 2022 City Council was in consensus to recruit for the positions in item A and C above. City Council was in consensus to have the SCTA/RCPA Council Liaison appoint per the Charter (following the same process as for the earlier agenda item for a similar appointment) with the Council liaison to provide a consent calendar item with the recommendation for appointment at a Council meeting prior to the appointment. This term would be for a term ending date of June 30, 2024.
Councilmember Gurney commented as follows:
• I have one item I'd like to share something Planning Director Svanstrom mentioned today at the Climate Action Committee because we were talking about the RCPA's advisory committee and she pointed out that Petaluma has an application and appointment process with a closing deadline may 31st every year they list all their appointment opportunities and then they said certain seats listed remain vacant, applications for these vacancies are being accepted on an ongoing open and continuous basis until the seats are filled.
• That's what our Climate Action Committee has asked we do for their openings and the suggestion today was that the Council consider this kind of process.
• I just went to their web site and that is the language they have • That there's this only and continuous process where applications can be submitted. • I don't know how they internally handle the interview scheduling or any of that. • I thought it was important for us to know that another city and bigger city with a whole lot more appointments than we have has dealt with the difficulties of applications coming in with a notice period and all of the work up of staff in a pretty flexible way.
It seems like that approach might save staff a good deal of work.
Mayor Slayter commented as follows:
• I think the rejiggering of that application process I would agree that what we have is an awful lot of staff time and a lot of administration just due to all of these stagger term ending dates. • What I think I'm hear something request for agenda item to do a limb bit of research and get some information for the Council to look at a more efficient way to do it. • That's the way Sonoma Clean Power does for their advisory committee, it's always open and once every 18 months an ad hoc is formed to do interviews and go through the process more formally. • City Clerk Gourley did you have input on that? City staff stated not at this time.
Councilmember Rich commented as follows:
• I'd like to make sure we include in the request that for me one of the key factors would be which approach would be easiest for our hard-working staff
• As I recall it may be that she was the source of the proposal to do this once a year. • So I'm fully in support of bringing that back, so long as we focus on what her recommendation would be in terms of efficiency.
City Clerk Gourley commented I did not bring this proposal forward and it was not my recommendation to do it once a year and understands the recommendation was brought forward by the Planning Director. I do have a lot of questions about it. Petaluma is a lot larger staffed so they may have the staffing to do something like that. I have a concern about we have limits to our committees and commissions and boards so not sure how ongoing recruitment would be for opening if the term was on for two month mores or something. We would need to research it. We'll bring it back as an agenda item.
City Council Action: Approved actions as noted above.
Minute Order Number: 2022-068
PUBLIC COMMENT FOR ITEMS NOT ON THE AGENDA :
Speakers are allowed to speak for a maximum of three minutes so that all speakers have an opportunity to address the City Council.
Power point or visual presentations for public comment shall not be permitted unless approved by the Agenda Review Committee two weeks prior to the requested meeting date.
Speakers may not "yield" a portion of their allotted time to others.
The Mayor has the authority to limit or extend the time allowed for speakers dependent on the number of speakers in attendance.
The Mayor can poll the members of the public for an indication of the number of people wishing to speak, then call on individuals to speak.
It is the goal of the Council to conclude the public comments portion of the agenda within 20 minutes. If the public comment period exceeds twenty minutes, the presiding officer, typically the Mayor, reserves the right to reduce the time per speaker or carry over public comments to after all business items are completed.
The City Clerk will monitor the time for public comments and inform the speakers when the time limitation has been reached.
The Mayor could survey the members of the public, as appropriate, to move agenda items up or back to address the members of the public items of concern.
Public participation is encouraged on all public agenda items.
Council and staff will treat participants and each other with courtesy. Derogatory or sarcastic comments are inappropriate.
The public will likewise be encouraged by the Mayor to maintain meeting decorum.
In Council meetings when citizens are agitated, the Mayor may call a short recess to calm the situation.
If a member of the public is unable to attend the Council meeting, written communications may be sent to the City Clerk by e-mail or by regular mail.
Communications received after distribution of the agenda packet will be made available to the Council at/or as soon after the meeting.
The following public comment was received:
Jim commented as follows:
• I'll start by just thanking all of the members of the Council for the hard work you do. • I know it must be really stressful sometimes and if I speak passionately about something on its not necessarily because I'm totally fired up, I just need to, like, get out what I think is just or unjust about a thing.
• I know, especially the Councilmembers that have a full-time life with other commitments and things, you work really hard and I really appreciate it and I also really appreciate the staff. • How they run things.
• I could go on individually but I'm not going to.
• I think it's good when boards -- I've been on a number of non-profit boards and run meetings, I think it's good when there's some not necessarily contrarian but having unanimous votes on everything is not always a good sign but having a lot of public comment that is fired up is a sign that somehow information is not getting out appropriately.
• I felt that way about the parking ordinance and some of it is just hard to be a really informed citizen, it says one thing on the document and you go and read it and yet it is a little different from how it's interpreted, it's a little difficult.
• I want to acknowledge that there are issues I think we could work on. • I would love to see, I am not asking you to have more meetings per month but if you could have meetings with contentious issues and meetings with easy ones maybe that would help the flow a little bit better. • I just thank you for your service and hope you all see each other with the same light I do, which is really having Sebastopol's interest at heart, that's where you're all coming from and I appreciate it.
Linda commented as follows:
• I kind of apologize, I'm explaining on a fully-corded land line phone the frequency that comes off it makes me ill, makes me sick, and it also is my mood.
• So any of you that have been paying attention, I'm kind of like this a lot of the times but I definitely the radiation that I'm being exposed to it just makes me very unwell and prohibits going to places like downtown or shopping or farmer's market or so on so forth. • What I wanted to say though is that the Ukraine isn't the only one being attacked communities with illadvised and wrong-headed policies with the proliferation of more man-made dirty radiation in the form of wireless water meters.
• The real point that I want to talk about is that we need to have an inquiry needs to be held • An investigation into the process that allows this kind of thing to happen, that allows business interests and department heads to promote their interest and conceal what they're really doing to control nearly every aspect of the public
• It happened before and Councilmember Gurney knows about it because she's been around. • We allowed our past planning directors to get away with altering traffic studies time and time again in order for business interests to control and prevail and it's happening again with our Public Works
ADJOURNMENT OF SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING
February 23, 2022 City Council Regular Meeting will be adjourned to the March 1, 2022 City Council Meeting, 6:00 pm, Zoom Virtual Meeting Format
Mayor Slayter adjourned the City Council meeting at 9:39 pm.
Respectfully Submitted:
Mary C. Gourley
Assistant City Manager/City Clerk, MMC