From: BM <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 10:14 AM
To: Kalani, Sharon <[email protected]>; Sheikh, Asam <[email protected]>; Lewis, Bridgett <[email protected]>; Gerson, Jeremy <[email protected]>; Lieu, Betty <[email protected]>; Kartsonis, David <[email protected]>; Barnett, Linda <[email protected]> Cc: Ramirez, Michelle <[email protected]>; Chaparyan, Aram <[email protected]>; Le, Jamie <[email protected]>; Sullivan, Patrick <[email protected]>
Subject: Cottage Food Ordinance - Thoughts from the other side Mayor Kalani and Councilmembers,
Before tonight’s vote, I and several of my neighbors ask you to look at this proposal from one very simple perspective: the resident who lives next door.
We also want to remind Council of something that sometimes gets lost after years of debating vending and the Cottage Food ordinance.
The Holiday Lights event worked for decades before all of this. It was primarily a drivethrough experience. Was it chaotic? Absolutely. We knew that during December we would give up some of the convenience of our streets—traffic was heavy, getting in and out took time, and parking was difficult. That was part of living with the event, and for decades there was a balance. But as vending grew and brought more people out of their cars, the congestion moved beyond our streets and onto our sidewalks. We accepted losing the convenience of our streets for a few weeks each year. But now, vending has required us to give up the convenience of our sidewalks as well.
This delicate balance we had between chaos and livability has been broken with vending.
Over time, our drive-through holiday tradition has increasingly taken on the characteristics of a street fair—food sales, lines, people congregating and eating, more pedestrians, more trash and more demands on City resources. The neighborhood and the City are paying the price for that transformation.
Vending changed how people experience Holiday Lights. We took this drive-through event and gave visitors a reason to get out of their cars—to buy food, hot chocolate, stand in line and walk around. But where are those cars supposed to park when the City is simultaneously prohibiting parking on many of our streets to preserve traffic flow and firstresponder access? Where does the resident park who comes home from work at 7pm? 1 PUBLIC COMMENT REPORT #2
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That history matters when considering tonight’s proposal. And the answer should not be to take additional steps at amplifying the push of the Holiday Lights events into a street fair by expressly authorizing front-yard businesses throughout December.
Under the proposed change, you are potentially allowing my neighbor to the left, my neighbor to the right, the homes across the street, and every other qualifying resident in the neighborhood to operate a food business from their front yard throughout the month of December.
I have already lived this experience. For approximately five years, I had a neighbor selling outside for at least 20 nights each December. I will not bore you with the details again— they sit in many emails I have sent to Council and City staff over the years. But I know firsthand that keeping the actual sale on private property does not keep the impacts on private property. And simply making that activity legal does not make those impacts on the neighborhood disappear.
A few questions we hope Council considers:
• Where is the analysis of what happens if participation grows? How many additional residents will sell once front-yard sales are expressly permitted? Making front-yard vending legal and easier creates the very real possibility of attracting more sellers into an already overwhelmed neighborhood.
• What happens to the immediate neighbors? Customers do not necessarily line up, wait, eat and dispose of their trash neatly within the boundaries of the property where they purchased their food. They spread onto sidewalks, neighboring driveways, parked cars and other nearby properties.
• What happens to the sidewalks? This is not a problem that suddenly appeared last year.
For several years, as vending grew, our sidewalks became increasingly congested with food lines, customers waiting for orders, people stopping to eat and pedestrians trying to pass.
Spend enough time in the neighborhood during Holiday Lights and you will see pedestrians, parents with strollers, and even people using wheelchairs moving through the street alongside and competing with vehicle traffic because the sidewalks are simply too congested.
• What happens to traffic and first-responder access? More sellers create more destinations within an already congested residential neighborhood. More destinations bring more pedestrians, stopping vehicles, parking demand and people crossing streets.
The City recently changed the Holiday Lights no-parking restrictions from seven days a week to Friday through Sunday. If we are now going to encourage more front-yard vending, 2 has anyone analyzed whether those restrictions will need to return to seven days a week to maintain traffic flow and first-responder access?
• What happens to the trash? We already see cups, wrappers, napkins, popcorn bags, cotton-candy cones, water bottles and partially consumed food throughout the neighborhood. Keeping the transaction on private property does not keep the resulting trash there.
• What additional City resources will this require? More Code Enforcement? More police support? More security for Code Enforcement Officers? More trash receptacles and collections? More street sweeping? More parking restrictions and compliance monitoring? The City is already spending substantial resources managing Holiday Lights. How does expanding outdoor vending move those costs down rather than up? • Does making the activity legal actually reduce the need for enforcement? Compliance with a new ordinance does not mean absence of impact.
Someone still has to enforce the operating restrictions, and the City’s experience with repeat violations gives us little reason to assume voluntary compliance will solve the problem.
• What problem are we actually solving? Front-yard vending certainly solves a problem for the residents who want to sell—it gives them a much easier and more visible way to make money during Holiday Lights. But what problem does it solve for the rest of the neighborhood? Does it reduce traffic? Pedestrian congestion? Trash? Parking problems? Enforcement? City costs? We struggle to identify a single neighborhood problem that is improved by allowing more vending.
I enjoy Holiday Lights. I decorate, and I want the tradition to continue. Holiday Lights is not the problem. Vending—all vending—is what changed the nature of the event.
After years of pilots, exceptions, ordinance changes and enforcement problems, we believe it is time to bring this annual vending debate to a close. We ask Council to reject the proposed expansion of front-yard vending and return the Cottage Food ordinance to a consistent 5:00 p.m. closing time throughout the year. No special December exception.
One set of rules for the entire year.
We hope Council will consider not only the person who wants to sell, but the resident who happens to live next door.
Brent Maille
Seaside Resident
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