Agenda Item 4A - Public Comment Report — Citizen Development and Enrichment Council Committee, August 20, 2026

4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Barry Knudson
Comment 08/19/2026 12:59 PM : (No Vote)
Public Comment – Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights / Cottage Food Ordinance Barry Knudson, Seaside Ranchos Resident
Chair Sheikh and members of the Committee, my name is Barry Knudson, and I live in Seaside Ranchos.

For decades, selling hot chocolate and holiday treats has been part of the Sleepy Hollow tradition. It gives neighborhood kids a safe, supervised way to raise money, earn their own money, serve customers, and learn basic business skills.

I understand why the City acted when outside vendors, food trucks, and trunk sales got out of hand. What I do not accept is solving an enforcement problem with outsiders by placing the greatest burden on residents who are easiest to identify and cite.

Our families already absorb weeks of congestion, blocked driveways, noise, trash, and disruption every December.

Yet the current cottagefood rules are not a meaningful accommodation. Sales must occur inside the house, driveway sales are prohibited, only one customer may be present at a time, and sales must stop at 8 p.m. The City itself posts holiday traffic restrictions here until 10 p.m. Requiring permitted residents to shut down at 8 while visitors are still arriving is unreasonable.

Together, those restrictions make the permit effectively useless for this event.

The City already demonstrated a better model. The original Seaside Ranchos pilot allowed properly permitted residents to sell approved cottage foods from their driveways.

Bring that concept back with reasonable safeguards: residents only, permits displayed, realistic hours, no outside commercial vendors, appropriate health requirements, setbacks, and trash rules.

Do not punish compliant homeowners and their children because unlicensed outsiders were difficult to enforce against. That is backwards.

I am asking this Committee to recommend a practical seasonal permit allowing Seaside Ranchos residents to sell lawfully from their own property during the holiday lights period.

Please give our kids back the opportunity to work, fundraise, and learn entrepreneurship while preserving legitimate safety protections. 1 CITIZEN DEV. & ENRICHMENT COMMITTEE
AGENDA ITEM 4A

PUBLIC COMMENT REPORT
AUGUST 20, 2026

None.

Our families already absorb weeks of congestion, blocked driveways, noise, trash, and disruption every December.

Together, those restrictions make the permit effectively useless for this event.

The City already demonstrated a better model. The original Seaside Ranchos pilot allowed properly permitted residents to sell approved cottage foods from their driveways.

Bring that concept back with reasonable safeguards: residents only, permits displayed, realistic hours, no outside commercial vendors, appropriate health requirements, setbacks, and trash rules.

Do not punish compliant homeowners and their children because unlicensed outsiders were difficult to enforce against. That is backwards.

I am asking this Committee to recommend a practical seasonal permit allowing Seaside Ranchos residents to sell lawfully from their own property during the holiday lights period.

Please give our kids back the opportunity to work, fundraise, and learn entrepreneurship while preserving legitimate safety protections. 2 BARRY P. KNUDSON
5149 Carol Drive, Torrance, CA | 949.395.8431 | [email protected] linkedin.com/in/barryknudson

Page 1 of 2 ends

August 19, 2026
Chair Asam Sheikh
Councilmember Dr. Jeremy Gerson
Councilmember Bridgett Lewis
Citizen Development and Enrichment Committee
City of Torrance
3031 Torrance Boulevard
Torrance, CA 90503
Re: Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display and Cottage Food Ordinance Dear Chair Sheikh and Members of the Citizen Development and Enrichment Committee:

My name is Barry Knudson, and I live in Seaside Ranchos.

Our families already absorb weeks of congestion, blocked driveways, noise, trash, and disruption every December.

Yet the current cottage-food rules are not a meaningful accommodation. Sales must occur inside the house, driveway sales are prohibited, only one customer may be present at a time, and sales must stop at 8 p.m. The City itself posts holiday traffic restrictions here until 10 p.m.

Requiring permitted residents to shut down at 8 while visitors are still arriving is unreasonable.

Together, those restrictions make the permit effectively useless for this event.

The City already demonstrated a better model. The original Seaside Ranchos pilot allowed properly permitted residents to sell approved cottage foods from their driveways.

Bring that concept back with reasonable safeguards: residents only, permits displayed, realistic hours, no outside commercial vendors, appropriate health requirements, setbacks, and trash rules.

Do not punish compliant homeowners and their children because unlicensed outsiders were difficult to enforce against. That is backwards.
3 Barry Knudson
Seaside Ranchos Holiday Ligh

ts Display &

Cottage Food Ordinance

Page 2 of 2 ends

I am asking this Committee to recommend a practical seasonal permit allowing Seaside Ranchos residents to sell lawfully from their own property during the holiday lights period.

Please give our kids back the opportunity to work, fundraise, and learn entrepreneurship while preserving legitimate safety protections.

Sincerely,

Barry P. Knudson

CC City Manager Aram Chaparyan
4 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Brent Maille
Comment 08/19/2026 04:18 PM : (No Vote)
Dear Mayor Sharon Kalani and Councilmembers,
First, congratulations to Mayor Kalani on your election as Mayor, and congratulations to Councilmembers David Kartsonis and Betty Lieu on your election to the City Council. I also want to congratulate Councilmember Asam Sheikh on his reelection and thank him for meeting with me in his office last October to discuss the Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights and Cottage Food issues. I appreciated the time he devoted to understanding the history of this matter and listening to the concerns of a longtime resident.
*************************
Your time is important. While I hope you will have an opportunity to read this email in its entirety, as well as the attached Additional Background, I want to begin with the key points that many of us in the neighborhood hope you will consider:

It is time to bring this annual debate to a close. After nearly eight years of pilot programs, exceptions, ordinance changes, and enforcement efforts, the City and neighborhood should not have to revisit essentially the same issue every year.

Return the December closing time to 5:00 p.m. and keep Cottage Food operations inside the residence. Last year’s 8:00 p.m. accommodation did not change the behavior—driveway vending and other noncompliance continued, and even the new closing time was largely ignored.

The Holiday Lights are not the problem—driveway vending has changed the event. Many of us strongly support this 40plusyear tradition. Vending adds parking demand, pedestrians, food lines, loitering, and trash to a neighborhood already operating near its practical limits.

The selectiveenforcement problem has not been solved. The City has tried to create a lawful Cottage Food pathway for residents while removing outside sidewalk vendors, yet resident sellers continue to disregard the requirements intended to justify that distinction.

The direction of City costs should be down, not up. The event already requires significant police, Code Enforcement, traffic, trash, and streetsweeping resources. More vending means more administration and enforcement—not less.

Enforcement has created real safety and resource concerns. Code Enforcement Officers have faced hostile encounters and enforcement difficulties, while a neighborhood resident has even been physically struck during a confrontation. In prior City Council agenda materials, City staff itself documented significant challenges faced by Code Enforcement Officers attempting to enforce the Cottage Food and vending rules in Seaside Ranchos.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

A few residents benefit financially while the impacts and costs are shared by their neighbors and the City. We believe a simple, brightline rule better protects the neighborhood, reduces the City’s burden, and finally allows everyone to move forward.
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Unfortunately, I find myself writing again on behalf of a number of my neighbors who share these concerns, because Cottage Food permits are once again returning to the Citizen Development and Enrichment Committee on August 20, followed by a Seaside Neighborhood Association meeting on August 27 with City representatives attending to discuss the Holiday Lights and Cottage Food permits.

That raises what we believe has become the larger question: Why does the City need to revisit this issue every year?
I completely understand why the relatively small number of households that want to operate seasonal businesses from their properties continue to advocate for rules that allow them to do so. For this group, there are handsome profits involved, and they have every right to make their case. But there are also many of us in the neighborhood who have consistently raised concerns about the consequences of this activity and oppose turning portions of our residential neighborhood into a seasonal commercial district.

Yet year after year, many of us in the neighborhood who share these concerns must remain vigilant for the next committee meeting, the next proposed exception, the next ordinance discussion, and the next trip to City Hall simply to defend rules we thought had already been settled. At the same time, Councilmembers and City staff are again asked to devote valuable time and public resources to essentially the same policy question.

After nearly eight years of annual discussions, pilot programs, ordinance changes, enforcement efforts, committee meetings, and neighborhood debate, we believe it is time for the City to bring this particular issue to a close.

The Rules Change, but the Behavior Does Not
The City has repeatedly tried to find a compromise that accommodates resident vending. But each accommodation seems to be followed by the same result: the rules change, while the behavior does not.

Last year gives us yet another example. The City extended December Cottage Food hours from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., while retaining the requirement that operations occur inside the residence and remain subject to all of the other Cottage Food requirements. The ordinance also continues to prohibit onsite dining and customer loitering and limits the operation to one customer at the site at a time.

Yet many of us observed essentially the same activity again—driveway vending, multiple customers congregating at properties, products that did not appear to meet Cottage Food requirements, and even the new 8:00 p.m. closing time was largely ignored.

At some point, the discussion should shift from “What else can the City change to make resident vending work?” to “Why is the City continuing to spend more money and resources trying to make it work?”
The Cost Is Going in the Wrong Direction
There is a larger question of City resources that deserves greater attention. The cost of managing the Holiday Lights has continued to grow. Police resources are committed to a residential holiday event during December—at the same time the City has other significant demands for public safety, including Del Amo Fashion Center during its busiest shopping season. Community Development and Code Enforcement personnel are needed to educate, monitor, and enforce Cottage Food requirements. Public Works must deal with the aftermath of thousands of visitors, including trash and street cleaning.

How does expanding or further accommodating vending reduce any of those costs? It seems likely to move us in precisely the opposite direction. More vending means more activity to administer and monitor. More food and beverages mean more trash.

Does that eventually mean more Cityprovided trash receptacles, more frequent trash collection, or additional street sweeping? Does another accommodation require additional Code Enforcement staffing or police support? Every additional regulation comes with an administrative and enforcement cost, and those costs are ultimately borne by the City—not by the relatively small number of residents earning income from the activity.

Public safety should also be part of that calculation. Enforcement of vending rules in recent years has not always involved simple, cooperative interactions. City personnel have encountered confrontations and threats. These experiences should give us additional reason to simplify the rules and reduce the amount of enforcement City employees are being asked to undertake in an already crowded and difficult environment.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

A recurring concern has been selective enforcement: the City understandably did not want to cite and remove outside sidewalk food vendors while appearing to tolerate similar outdoor selling by residents. That concern placed the City in a difficult position and helped lead to repeated efforts to create a lawful pathway for resident sellers through the Cottage Food ordinance.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

If resident sellers are being afforded the protection of the Cottage Food ordinance while routinely disregarding the very requirements that distinguish a lawful Cottage Food operation from an outdoor food stand, what has the City accomplished? We have added regulation, administration, enforcement responsibilities, and expense without changing the underlying behavior, while the neighborhood experience has significantly deteriorated—more pedestrian congestion, more loitering, more trash, and more commercial activity layered onto an event that was already operating near its practical limits.

And we should not lose sight of who benefits and who bears the costs. A relatively small number of residents seek to profit from the enormous crowds drawn to a neighborhoodwide event, while many of their neighbors bear the resulting impacts and the City provides the additional services needed to manage them.

Police protection, Code Enforcement, traffic management, additional trash collection, street sweeping, and other City resources are not free. Yet the financial benefit of the vending activity flows to the individual operators, while much of the qualityoflife and financial costs of accommodating that activity are effectively absorbed by their neighbors and the taxpayers of Torrance.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Return the December closing time to 5:00 p.m. Keep legitimate Cottage Food businesses inside the residence under the City’s normal rules. Do not create a special Holiday Lights drivewayvending exception.

This will not eliminate every unauthorized driveway popup. No ordinance achieves 100 percent compliance. There will undoubtedly be an occasional resident who sets up a table or sells from a driveway despite the rules.

But there is an important difference between occasional violations of a clear ordinance and the City continuing to create accommodations around an activity that repeatedly fails to conform to the rules.

A simple rule also gives City personnel a much clearer enforcement tool. Rather than first determining whether a vendor has the correct permits, whether a particular product qualifies as Cottage Food, whether every product is properly labeled, whether the operator is complying with customer and loitering restrictions, whether the hours are being observed, and which exception may apply, the starting point becomes straightforward: Cottage Food operations belong inside the residence, not in the driveway or front yard.

For those who truly want to fundraise for their passions, school team, band, or other organization, perhaps it is time to find a new venue. Why not explore working with Torrance Unified School District to see whether Seaside Elementary could host a few nights of collective fundraising? Whether that particular idea is feasible or not, the larger point is that this small group should be looking for a new solution rather than asking the City and their neighbors to accommodate the same one year after year.

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

After nearly eight years, we believe it is reasonable for the City to make a policy decision and stop requiring Councilmembers, City staff, and residents on both sides of this issue to relitigate essentially the same question every year.

This issue is important to me and to a number of my neighbors. I would welcome the opportunity to meet with any Councilmember who would like to discuss it further and provide some additional history and context on how we arrived here, just as I appreciated the opportunity to meet with Councilmember Sheikh last October.

For those who would like more background, the attached Additional Background provides the history of how we arrived here, how vending changed the Holiday Lights experience, the Cottage Food requirements most relevant to this debate, the compliance and enforcement problems encountered over the years, and why many of us believe returning to the original neighborhoodfriendly approach is the best path forward. I have also attached my September 23, 2024 email to the City, which includes a collection of Nextdoor posts reflecting the concerns and experiences of other neighborhood residents during the Holiday Lights season.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
5 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
6 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
7 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
8 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
9 1 of 7
Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56     PM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight Time Subject:Subject:Subject:Subject: Resident Complaints: Cottage Food Ordinance Changes // Seaside Ranchos Date:Date:Date:Date: Monday, September 23, 2024 at 8:45:51 AM Paciﬁc Daylight Time From:From:From:From: BM
To:To:To:To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] CC:CC:CC:CC: Le, Jamie, CDD Info, [email protected] BCC:BCC:BCC:BCC: Brent Maille
Attachments:Attachments:Attachments:Attachments: image001.png, image002.png, image003.png, image004.png, image005.png, image006.png, image007.png, image009.png, image010.png, image011.png, image012.png, image013.png, image014.png, image015.png, image016.png, image017.png, image018.png, image020.png, image019.png, image021.png
Hello again

Why are we even considering this amendment?
This amendment adds fuel to an already raging ﬁre!
There are no facilities/infrastructure in this neighborhood to make this neighborhood a nightly farmers market in December!!

You should really try reaching out to the residents of our neighborhood directly. See below….You should really try reaching out to the residents of our neighborhood directly. See below….You should really try reaching out to the residents of our neighborhood directly. See below….You should really try reaching out to the residents of our neighborhood directly. See below….

Your “help” for our neighborhood is going in the wrong direction.

You are apparently listening to some that just want to continue to proﬁt from the nightly vending while the rest of us in this neighborhood get punished with the trabic, trash, noise, lack of civility, loitering, etc.

It was bearable 10 years ago.

Now that the City keeps trying to allow residents to sell you have created a carnival atmosphere that has pulled thousands of people from their cars to the sidewalks.

Why does the City think this will help???

As you can see below, there are plenty unhappy people.

Here are some snippets from residents from NextDoor. One night in December, I was at my computer and captured these.

I promise you… none of these are posts from me.

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15 7 of 7

16 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Brent Maille
Comment 08/20/2026 11:11 AM : (No Vote)
Dear Mayor Sharon Kalani and Councilmembers,
First, congratulations to Mayor Kalani on your election as Mayor, and congratulations to Councilmembers David Kartsonis and Betty Lieu on your election to the City Council. I also want to congratulate Councilmember Asam Sheikh on his reelection and thank him for meeting with me in his office last October to discuss the Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights and Cottage Food issues. I appreciated the time he devoted to understanding the history of this matter and listening to the concerns of a longtime resident.
*************************
Your time is important. While I hope you will have an opportunity to read this email in its entirety, as well as the attached Additional Background, I want to begin with the key points that many of us in the neighborhood hope you will consider:

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
17 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
18 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
19 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
20 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

More vending means more rules to enforce—and more opportunities for these situations to occur. Additional details from the City’s own staff reports are included below.

The SelectiveEnforcement Problem
For the newer members of the Council, we also believe it is important to understand why the City has spent so many years trying to find a solution.

But after years of experience, we need to ask whether that attempted solution has actually solved the problem.

That seems backwards.

A Simple Way Forward
Rather than continuing to search for the next exception or compromise, we believe the simpler and fairer approach is to return to a clear rule:

Most importantly, it gives everyone an opportunity to move on.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
21 Additional Background
Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights and Cottage Food
For those who have the time and would like more detail, the following provides the history of how we arrived at the current situation and why many of us believe the City should return to a simple, neighborhood-friendly Cottage Food ordinance rather than continue modifying the rules around the Holiday Lights.

A Neighborhood Tradition That Predates the Vending
The Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights have been a neighborhood tradition for more than 40 years. Traffic and crowds are nothing new. Those of us who have lived here for years understood that December meant long lines of cars, difficult parking, and a certain amount of holiday chaos.

Historically, however, the event was primarily a drive-through experience. Families drove through the neighborhood to see the lights, with some visitors parking and walking.

Approximately eight years ago, resident fundraising began evolving into something much larger.

What started as occasional fundraising by youth sports teams, schools, Girl Scouts, and other community organizations gradually expanded into nightly resident-operated food sales. Visitors who once primarily drove through the neighborhood increasingly parked their cars, walked the sidewalks, waited in food lines, remained in the neighborhood longer, and treated portions of the neighborhood as an outdoor dining area.

I see the consequences firsthand. My street has several resident vendors, and our driveway and even our vehicles have become de facto picnic areas. Visitors congregate to eat and drink, using car trunks, bumpers, and hoods as tables and chairs—often leaving their trash behind. It is not unusual to come outside the next morning and find a half-empty hot chocolate cup or other remnants of someone’s evening meal left sitting on the hood of one of our cars.

That distinction matters because our neighborhood was never designed to accommodate that type of activity.

During the Holiday Lights, parking is already restricted to one side of many streets to preserve emergency access. So where are all of these additional customers supposed to park? Once outside their cars, visitors encounter residential sidewalks, driveways and front yards—not the infrastructure of a commercial district. We have no public restrooms, no public seating or dining areas, and very limited places for people to congregate without affecting private property or pedestrian movement.

The predictable result has been food lines, sidewalk congestion, visitors standing and eating in or near residents’ driveways, requests from strangers to use residents’ bathrooms, and trash and partially consumed food and drinks left behind.

Traffic and crowds existed before widespread vending. The difference is that vending gave thousands of visitors another reason to get out of their cars and remain in the neighborhood.

The City Tried to Find a Compromise
The City’s dilemma is understandable.
22 As California expanded protections for sidewalk vending, outside vendors began arriving in the neighborhood to take advantage of the enormous Holiday Lights crowds. The City developed rules that provided tools to address many of those outside vendors.

But that created an obvious enforcement problem: how could the City remove an outside sidewalk vendor while allowing a resident a few feet away to sell food from a driveway? Concerns about selective enforcement understandably followed.

The City therefore attempted to find a lawful pathway for resident sellers through its Cottage Food regulations and, over the years, through special Holiday Lights policies and accommodations.

The problem is that the accommodation did not resolve the underlying behavior.

Instead, the City created an increasingly complicated distinction between an illegal outdoor food vendor and a lawful Cottage Food operation—while the activity occurring on the ground often continued to look very much like outdoor vending.

Cottage Food Is Not Simply Permission to Sell Food From a Driveway This distinction is particularly important for the newer Councilmembers.

A Cottage Food operation is not simply a permit that allows someone to set up a table and sell whatever food they choose from their driveway during December.

There are rules governing what foods qualify, permits and registrations, labeling, where the operation occurs, customer activity and other operating requirements.

The City’s current ordinance requires the Cottage Food operation to be conducted inside the primary residence.

It prohibits on-site dining and customer loitering and limits the operation to one customer at the site at a time.

The 2025 amendment extended the December operating hours to 8:00 p.m., but it did not eliminate these other requirements.

That is why the enforcement problem becomes so cumbersome.

An officer encountering someone selling food cannot necessarily determine simply by looking whether the activity is lawful. Does the seller have the appropriate authorization? Is the product actually an approved Cottage Food product? Is it properly packaged and labeled? Where was it prepared? Where is the transaction occurring? How many customers are present? Are customers congregating or eating on-site? Is the operation within the permitted hours?
Contrast that with a simple rule that requires Cottage Food activity to remain inside the residence and establishes a reasonable, neighborhood-friendly cutoff time.

The latter gives residents and enforcement personnel a much clearer standard.

Last Year’s Change Did Not Change the Behavior
Last year gives us yet another example.
23 The City extended the December closing time from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. while maintaining the requirement that Cottage Food operations occur inside the residence.

Yet many of us continued to see driveway vending.

We continued to see multiple customers gathered at individual properties. We continued to see products that did not appear to conform to Cottage Food requirements. We continued to see people standing around eating and drinking. And even the newly extended 8:00 p.m. closing time was largely ignored.

In other words, the City provided another accommodation without achieving the corresponding change in behavior.

This is part of the frustration for those of us who have participated in these discussions year after year. Each new accommodation is presented as another attempt at compromise, yet we find ourselves back discussing essentially the same problems the following year.

The City’s Own Enforcement Experience
These concerns are not based solely on observations by residents opposed to vending.

City staff itself has previously documented significant problems encountered by Code Enforcement Officers attempting to enforce the rules during the Holiday Lights.

During the September 24, 2024 Council discussion, Community Development staff reported that during the prior December, Code Enforcement Officers had been assigned to the Seaside Lights area from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily and had approximately 80 public contacts, many involving repeat violators. Staff described Cottage Food noncompliance, insufficient Code Enforcement staffing to keep up with vendors and resident complaints, limitations on enforcement authority, and vendors refusing to provide identification.

This also had consequences beyond Seaside Ranchos. Community Development Director Michelle Ramirez explained during the Council discussion that assigning available Code Enforcement resources to Seaside could leave the City unable to respond to an unpermitted vendor elsewhere in Torrance before the end of the shift.

I believe the City’s own description of these enforcement challenges deserves to be seen directly rather than merely summarized by me. Below is a screenshot from the City’s September 24, 2024 Council agenda materials detailing the challenges encountered by Code Enforcement Officers during the prior Holiday Lights season. 24 The City’s own assessment speaks for itself. This was not simply a group of unhappy neighbors claiming that enforcement was difficult. These were the City’s employees describing the practical problems they encountered trying to administer and enforce the system.

And enforcement and public safety concerns have not always been theoretical. Code Enforcement Officers have faced hostile and threatening encounters while trying to perform their jobs. Residents have experienced troubling encounters as well.

In one particularly disturbing incident, a neighbor was tending to some personal business in his own driveway when a confrontation with a visitor over parking in front of his driveway escalated into a physical assault, resulting in police involvement. He ultimately chose not to press charges in part because of an uncomfortable reality unique to an incident occurring at one’s home: the person involved already knows exactly where you live.

This is not a disagreement in a shopping-center parking lot where everyone eventually drives away. When an encounter occurs in your own driveway, the other person knows where to find you tomorrow.

We have also had neighbors walking their dogs later in the evening who were harassed by strangers and became frightened to return directly to their homes. They continued walking until they could find familiar faces or a place where they felt safe. Again, the concern is different when the confrontation occurs in your own neighborhood and identifying where you live may be as simple as watching you walk through your front door.

None of this means vending caused every confrontation, nor would eliminating driveway vending eliminate every public-safety issue associated with the Holiday Lights. But it should cause the City to question policies that encourage still more people to park, leave their vehicles, congregate, remain in the neighborhood longer, and require additional interaction with residents and City personnel.

There is also a broader public-safety reality today that did not exist when this neighborhood tradition began more than 40 years ago. Social media can now rapidly mobilize enormous crowds at a particular neighborhood, beach, shopping mall, or other gathering place with very little warning. The events in Newport Beach over the July 4th weekend are only the most recent example.
25 Torrance has already had its own experiences with threatened social-media-organized gatherings at Del Amo Fashion Center, requiring significant police preparation, traffic controls, and other precautions. On at least two recent occasions, I have personally seen Del Amo Circle closed to through traffic with street barricades in anticipation of threatened gatherings at the mall. This is no longer a hypothetical concern for Torrance.

I am certainly not suggesting that Seaside Ranchos will experience anything approaching these events. But it would be equally unwise to ignore how quickly crowd dynamics can change today. We already invite enormous numbers of visitors into a residential neighborhood with limited parking, narrow sidewalks, and restricted emergency access. City policy should be aimed at managing and reducing those risks—not encouraging additional activities that give even more people a reason to park, congregate, and remain in the neighborhood longer.

The more complicated the regulatory structure becomes, the more interactions City personnel must have with sellers to determine whether an activity complies—and the greater the opportunity for confrontation.

We should not lose sight of the City’s own findings discussed earlier. Those findings came from the City’s actual experience trying to accommodate resident vending: significant noncompliance, repeat violators, insufficient Code Enforcement resources, enforcement limitations, and difficult interactions with both resident and mobile vendors. After years of trying to make this accommodation work, the City’s own experience should be informing where we go next. Why are we still looking for another way to accommodate it? The Cost to the City Continues to Grow
There is also a substantial financial component to this discussion.

The Holiday Lights require police resources, traffic management, Code Enforcement, sanitation, street sweeping and other City services. These resources are being devoted to a privately created neighborhood event during one of the busiest periods of the year.

The City’s own numbers illustrate how substantial these costs have become. In 2020, Police costs associated with the Holiday Lights were approximately $64,000. For 2023, the City subsequently calculated approximately $109,000 in actual labor costs for Police, Public Works traffic support and Code Enforcement—and acknowledged that figure did not include certain additional trash collection and salaried staff time. By 2024, the City was budgeting approximately $195,000 in labor and non-labor costs for the Holiday Lights. The 2025 estimate remained near $190,000.

These are not insignificant amounts for an event the City itself has repeatedly emphasized is not a City- sponsored or City-sanctioned event. In fact, during the July 2025 Council discussion, as the total approached $200,000, the comparison was made that this was nearly the amount spent on the City’s Armed Forces Day Parade (before advanced security measures such as Meridian barriers were deployed).

The vending component does not reduce those demands. It adds to them.

More vendors mean more people getting out of their cars. More pedestrians mean more congestion. More food and beverages mean more trash. More Cottage Food regulations mean more education, administration and enforcement.

The trash deserves particular attention. On a morning walk during the Holiday Lights season, one will routinely see countless cups, food wrappers, napkins and food remnants in the gutters. The City-provided trash containers are used, but human nature is what it is—not everything makes it into a trash can. 26 And where does everything left in the street and gutter go? December is not a summer month when rain is unlikely. If we wake up to rain after a busy night, much of that debris can be carried into the storm drains and ultimately toward the ocean. The trash we see the next morning is bad enough; the trash we no longer see may be just as great a concern.

This makes the direction we are heading even more counterintuitive. We restrict parking to facilitate street sweeping and devote additional City resources to trash collection and cleanup, while at the same time considering policies that encourage more food sales, more eating and drinking in the neighborhood, and inevitably more waste. Are we going to need more City trash cans? More frequent collection? More street sweeping? More cleanup? Those are additional public costs generated, at least in part, by private vending activity.

There is also something counterintuitive about continuing to expand the activity the City is already struggling to manage. Will allowing more resident vending reduce the neighborhood chaos? Will it help the City restore order? Will it reduce traffic, trash, sidewalk congestion, noise, or the resources the City must devote to the neighborhood? It is difficult to see how.

There is also the potential for the problem to spread rather than contract. Every additional accommodation signals to other residents that they too might try their hand at selling during December—whether or not they ultimately comply with the Cottage Food requirements. What has historically been concentrated primarily along Reese Road could expand farther into Seaside Ranchos.

And the administrative burden does not necessarily stop at the boundaries of our neighborhood. Community Development Director Michelle Ramirez has previously described the volume of calls and emails her office receives during December. To the extent the City changes its Cottage Food ordinance citywide rather than creating a neighborhood-specific rule, Community Development must administer that ordinance throughout Torrance—not simply on the handful of streets generating this debate.

At some point, we should be asking whether each new vending accommodation is moving the City’s costs in the direction we actually want them to go.

The objective should be to reduce the extraordinary City resources necessary to manage this event—not continually add another regulatory layer that requires still more administration and enforcement.

And December is not a quiet month elsewhere in Torrance. Police resources devoted to Seaside Ranchos are resources that cannot simultaneously be somewhere else, including areas such as Del Amo Fashion Center during the peak holiday shopping season.

The Holiday Lights themselves will always require some level of City involvement. The question is why we would voluntarily add another activity that makes the City’s job more difficult and expensive.

The Neighborhood Experience Has Changed
The financial cost to the City is only part of the equation.

Residents live with the consequences every night.

Parking is restricted. Sidewalks become congested. Customers stand in front of homes and driveways waiting for food. People stop to eat. Trash accumulates. Residents find food containers, cups, napkins and partially consumed food and beverages around their homes.
27 This is not theoretical.

In my December 18, 2023 correspondence with City staff, I described the nightly “farmers market” next to my home, crowds congregating in our driveway and along our fence while waiting in line or eating, and food and trash being left behind. I also provided photographs showing the conditions around the neighborhood.

The neighborhood simply does not have the infrastructure for what the event has become.

No public bathrooms. No public dining areas. No public benches. Restricted parking. Narrow residential sidewalks. Private driveways and front yards immediately adjacent to thousands of visitors.

Those limitations cannot be solved by another Cottage Food ordinance amendment.

These Concerns Extend Beyond My Household
I also want the newer Councilmembers to understand that these concerns are not mine alone.

In my September 23, 2024 email to the Mayor and Councilmembers, titled “Resident Complaints: Cottage Food Ordinance Changes // Seaside Ranchos,” I included a collection of Nextdoor comments that I had captured during the prior Holiday Lights season. As I specifically noted in that email, none of those comments were mine. They reflected the experiences and frustrations being expressed by other residents about the increasing traffic, trash, noise, loitering, congestion and overall change in the character of the event.

I have attached a copy of my September 23, 2024 email, including the collection of Nextdoor posts, for anyone interested in seeing those comments firsthand.

Those comments are important because this discussion can too easily be portrayed as a handful of residents who want to sell versus a handful who do not.

The effects extend much further.

There are residents who love the Holiday Lights and want to preserve them but believe vending has pushed the event too far. There are people outside the immediate neighborhood who once enjoyed visiting but now describe the event as too crowded or chaotic. And there are residents who simply want to be able to reach their homes, walk their sidewalks and live through December without having a seasonal commercial operation next door.

Supporting the Holiday Lights and opposing driveway vending are not contradictory positions.

The Goal Should Be to Preserve the Tradition, Not Commercialize It I do not want the Holiday Lights to disappear.

Quite the opposite.

The concern is that continuing to add commercial activity to an already extraordinarily crowded residential event risks damaging the very tradition everyone says they are trying to preserve.

The neighborhood will never be quiet during December. There will always be traffic. There will always be visitors walking the streets. There will always be some trash, parking problems and frustration. And even with a clear prohibition, there will probably be an occasional driveway pop-up. 28 That is realistic.

But there is a substantial difference between accepting the unavoidable impacts of a 40-plus-year neighborhood Holiday Lights tradition and adopting City policies that encourage additional activity on top of it.

For those who truly want to fundraise for a school team, band, club or other cause, perhaps it is time for that group to find a new angle. One possibility worth exploring would be working with Torrance Unified School District to determine whether Seaside Elementary could host a few nights of collective fundraising. I do not know whether that is feasible, but it illustrates the larger point: there may be ways to preserve fundraising opportunities without turning individual residential properties into nightly vending locations.

Eight Years Is Enough
The City has tried.

There have been pilot programs, special accommodations, revised hours, enforcement strategies, committee discussions, Council discussions and ordinance amendments.

Residents who want to sell have repeatedly made their case. Residents who oppose the commercialization of the neighborhood have repeatedly made ours. City staff has spent years attempting to administer the compromises that followed.

Yet here we are again.

That is why many of us believe the best answer may also be the simplest: return the December closing time to 5:00 p.m., require Cottage Food operations to remain inside the residence, maintain a clear prohibition against driveway vending, and allow the Holiday Lights to return as much as possible to what made the event successful for decades.

It will not eliminate every problem.

But it would remove one significant layer of activity, restore a much clearer enforcement standard, reduce the City’s regulatory burden, and tell the neighborhood that after nearly eight years of debate, it is finally time to move on.
29 1 of 7
Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56Saturday, August 15, 2026 at 12:06:56     PM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight TimePM Paciﬁc Daylight Time Subject:Subject:Subject:Subject: Resident Complaints: Cottage Food Ordinance Changes // Seaside Ranchos Date:Date:Date:Date: Monday, September 23, 2024 at 8:45:51 AM Paciﬁc Daylight Time From:From:From:From: BM
To:To:To:To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] CC:CC:CC:CC: Le, Jamie, CDD Info, [email protected] BCC:BCC:BCC:BCC: Brent Maille
Attachments:Attachments:Attachments:Attachments: image001.png, image002.png, image003.png, image004.png, image005.png, image006.png, image007.png, image009.png, image010.png, image011.png, image012.png, image013.png, image014.png, image015.png, image016.png, image017.png, image018.png, image020.png, image019.png, image021.png
Hello again

Your “help” for our neighborhood is going in the wrong direction.

It was bearable 10 years ago.

Now that the City keeps trying to allow residents to sell you have created a carnival atmosphere that has pulled thousands of people from their cars to the sidewalks.

Why does the City think this will help???

As you can see below, there are plenty unhappy people.

Here are some snippets from residents from NextDoor. One night in December, I was at my computer and captured these.

I promise you… none of these are posts from me.

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36 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Brent Maille
Comment 08/20/2026 11:13 AM : (No Vote)
Dear Mayor Kalani and Councilmembers,
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION….

Where is the evidence that allowing driveway vending will improve a neighborhood already burdened by public safety and emergency response challenges? Seaside Ranchos already requires restricted parking for emergency access, significant police and Code Enforcement resources, traffic controls, and extensive cleanup. What study or analysis concludes that allowing driveway vending will improve
—or at least not worsen—public safety,
emergency response
, pedestrian congestion, traffic, noise, or
neighborhood livability
?
What additional City resources will be required? More Code Enforcement? More police support? More resident education? More trash receptacles? More frequent trash collection? More street sweeping? If so, what is the anticipated cost, and how does that move the City toward reducing—not increasing—its annual commitment? Even with the City’s existing trash receptacles, trash is EVERYWHERE during the Holiday Lights season. Is the answer simply more and more City money and resources?
o And one additional question deserves careful consideration: with Cottage Food operations largely confined to the inside of the residence last year, how would staffing needs change if the City now encourages driveway vending? How many residents chose not to participate because of the practical limitations of selling from inside the home? If those barriers are removed, shouldn’t the City expect more participants—and with them, more enforcement, more impacts, and more demand on already stretched City resources?
From City Manager’s staff report for CDEC August 20, 2026 meeting:
· Should the City instead consider returning to a consistent 5:00 p.m.

December closing time? The staff report asks the Committee to provide direction regarding the Cottage Food ordinance, including its operating hour requirements and enforcement. Before preserving or creating additional Holiday Lights accommodations, shouldn’t the Council first ask whether returning to a simpler, neighborhoodfriendly 5:00 p.m. closing time would reduce compliance costs, enforcement demands, and neighborhood impacts? If the objective is to reduce the City’s commitment of money and resources, perhaps the better question is not how to manage more vending —but how to reduce the need for it.

How many City hours and resources have already been
devoted to educating residents about the nuances of the Cottage Food ordinance? And, as reflected in your own staff reports, TO NO AVAIL!
After years of education, ordinance revisions,
and repeated attempts to obtain compliance, the City’s own public record still reflects widespread noncompliance. If the City grants resident sellers the Holiday Lights driveway accommodation they have been seeking, why should anyone expect compliance with the rest of the Cottage Food ordinance to be any different going forward? Are many of the products commonly sold during the Holiday Lights even lawful Cottage Food products? Cotton candy, Cup of Noodles, canned soda, bottled water, bags of chips, candy canes, storebought cookies, storebought cupcakes, churros, hot chocolate, coffee, hot dogs, popcorn, lightup toys and novelty items are all commonly seen. I believe many of these products do not qualify as lawful Cottage Food products. You will have City staff available to answer these questions. Please ask them.

The “menu” is VERY
VERY limited for anyone wanting to be compliant.

Ultimately, I believe the question is a simple one:

After nearly eight years of pilot programs, ordinance changes, accommodations, enforcement efforts, and repeated discussions, is the City trying to make Cottage Food solve a problem it was never intended to solve?
The City’s original concern was understandable. It sought to create a lawful distinction between resident sellers and mobile vendors in an effort to avoid the appearance of selective enforcement. But after years of documented noncompliance, repeated ordinance revisions, and City staff reports describing significant enforcement difficulties, has that objective truly been achieved?
The City’s own public record tells a different story. It reflects widespread noncompliance by resident sellers, repeated requests for additional accommodations, and continuing enforcement challenges. If resident sellers routinely disregard the very Cottage Food requirements that were intended to distinguish them from mobile vendors, what meaningful distinction remains? If that distinction exists only on paper, the Council should carefully consider whether the underlying selectiveenforcement concern has truly been resolved—or whether the City is continuing to rely on a framework that has not accomplished its intended purpose.

I would simply encourage the Council to be very careful and deliberate before opening the door any wider. Once additional residents are encouraged to step into their driveways and participate, changing that behavior later may prove far more difficult than making the right decision today.

Thank you again for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
Reese Road
37 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Brent Maille
Comment 08/20/2026 11:13 AM : (No Vote)
Dear Mayor Kalani and Councilmembers,
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION….

The “menu” is VERY
VERY limited for anyone wanting to be compliant.

Ultimately, I believe the question is a simple one:

Thank you again for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
Reese Road
38 4. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
4A.City Manager – Review and Provide Direction on Appropriated Resource Contributions and Cottage Food Ordinance Related to the Neighborhood Coordinated Seaside Ranchos Holiday Lights Display. Expenditure:

None.

Name
Brent Maille
Comment 08/20/2026 11:13 AM : (No Vote)
Dear Mayor Kalani and Councilmembers,
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION….

The “menu” is VERY
VERY limited for anyone wanting to be compliant.

Ultimately, I believe the question is a simple one:

Thank you again for your consideration.

Respectfully,
Brent Maille
Reese Road
39

Citizen Development and Enrichment Council CommitteeAugust 20, 2026

Citizen Development and Enrichment Council Committee
August 20, 2026