City council contemplates ambitious new housing plan
City council contemplates ambitious new housing plan
A discussion of the housing element of the general plan dominated the Sebastopol City Council meeting on Jan. 3.
All council members were present at the Jan. 3 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Neysa Hinton, Vice Mayor Diana Rich, Councilmember Sandra Maurer, Councilmember Jill McLewis, and Councilmember Stephen Zollman.
Note of Conflict of Interest: In addition to being the co-publisher of the Sebastopol Times, the author of this piece is also a part-time contractor for the city of Sebastopol. The news reported in this article, and any opinions reflected therein, are not dictated by or reflective of the opinions of the city council or staff of the city of Sebastopol.
Here’s the recap of the meeting:
Proclamation: Years of Service Awards
The meeting began with a proclamation of years of service awards for city employees, including Lucas Meyers, Sandi Satyadinata and Bradley Worden (5 years); Michael Sansone and Charlie Wong (10 years); Rebecca Mansour (15 years); Michelle Beckman and Zina Keeran (20 years); Louis Castleberry, Tim Leach, and James Levy (30 years); Larry McLaughlin (35 years).
Consent Calendar
In addition to approving the minutes from the last meeting, the council unanimously approved the continuation of teleconferencing (i.e., Zoom meetings) for city meetings and extended the proclamation of a local homeless emergency. The also approved this year’s calendar of city council meetings.
Regular Agenda
New councilmembers take on the list of capital improvement projects for 2023
The regular agenda kicked off with the list/schedule of engineering projects for 2023, which had been moved from the consent calendar at the request of McLewis and Zollman. These were, for the most part, budgeted projects that had already been approved by the previous city council.
Zollman wanted to make sure there was still time to enhance the safety of the Bodega sidewalk project if need be, while McLewis was interested in the scheduled work on the Ives Park pathway.
McLewis noted that she’d walked the pathway recently and that it seemed so uneven as to be unsafe. (A member of the public said during public comment that her elderly mother had fallen and broken her arm just that week while attempting the navigate the pathway.)
The city’s engineering consultant Toni Bertolero said the plan involved fixing the stretch of pathway running from the picnic grounds to the restrooms, roughly a third of the entire pathway. McLewis questioned how long the city could put off fixing something that was both unsafe and obviously out of compliance with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), directing the question to City Manager and City Attorney Larry McLaughlin. He replied that as long as the city was making progress, within its budget constraints, it was on solid legal ground.
In the end, the council unanimously approved the receipt of the list of projects.
Kathy Oetinger appointed to planning commission
In their next action, the council appointed Kathy Oetinger to another stint on the planning commission. Oetinger is currently chair of the planning commission. She was the only applicant for the open position. Councilmembers expressed their gratitude for her expertise, commitment and her willingness to re-up and unanimously approved her appointment to the planning commission.
Public Hearing on the housing element of the general plan
The state of California requires that the housing element of a city’s general plan be updated every eight years. Sebastopol’s current housing element expires at the end of the month, and the newest version is almost ready for submission and certification.
This public hearing was the culmination of a long process of drafting and review that started back in September 2021. A draft of the housing element was reviewed last year by the previous council and the planning commission. It has also been sent to the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for comment, and their concerns have been addressed in the newest draft.
What’s in the housing element?
The housing element has four goals:
Facilitate development of a variety of housing types.
Remove constraints to housing.
Preserve and sustain existing housing units.
Ensure fair access to housing.
Each goal is supported by a multitude of city policies and programs meant to insure that, among other things, the city meets its all-important RHNA number. RHNA (pronounced Rina, rhymes with Tina) stands for Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which is the number of homes the city must develop—or, more likely, allow private contractors to develop—over a given period of time.
Sebastopol is just entering a new RHNA cycle. It is expected to facilitate the development of 213 new homes, available to a range of buyers and renters across the economic spectrum, over the next eight years.
The housing element of the city’s general plan lays out how it will do that.
“We need to create a document that shows a couple of things,” Svanstrom said, “One, that we have specific sites available that could accommodate at least that [the RHNA number]. The other part of it is updates to policies” to encourage the development of new housing, particularly affordable housing.
Here is a map showing sites that are already planned, approved or pending, along with vacant and non-vacant sites that could be developed into housing.
See that big block of red in the upper left corner? That’s the proposed City Ventures condominium development, which went quiet for a few years after the pandemic struck. In her presentation, Svanstrom mentioned that City Ventures has recently submitted plans for this development. And that mustard yellow rhombus in the center? That’s the Woodmark Apartments, a farmworker housing project on Bodega. These are both huge projects which will set the city well on its way to reaching its RHNA target.
Increasing zoning for mixed use development
Many of the programs mentioned in the housing element are already a part of Sebastopol’s housing regulations, but there were some new proposals like the Workforce Housing overlay, a zoning change that would allow some properties currently zoned commercial to be developed into housing without having to undergo the onerous use permit process. This will be developed over the coming years.
What the council wanted to know about the housing element
The council’s questions focused mainly on two areas—ADUs and the question of whether to include EMF and chemical sensitivity in the language of the housing element.
Regarding ADUs, they seemed mostly to want assurance that ADUs weren’t being used as short-term rentals. Svanstrom explained that under Sebastopol’s current housing rules, ADUs built after 2017 can’t be used as short-term rentals without a use permit (which the city, frankly, will never grant).
A more controversial issue was the last-minute addition, suggested by Councilmember Maurer, to include EMF and chemical sensitivity in the language of the housing element.
The previous housing element included a section encouraging the development of housing for EMF-sensitive individuals. That is not included in the current document but, in discussions with Svanstrom, Maurer aceded to Svanstrom’s suggestion that EMF and chemical sensitivities be listed in the section requiring the city to make reasonable accommodations for the disabled, when it comes to zoning and building codes.
The rest of the council balked at accepting this last-minute change in the language, but said they would be willing to take up the issue separately after the housing element was approved.
Public comment on the housing element
Several suggestions made during public comment got a similar response. Calum Weeks, policy director for Generation Housing, suggested that the city was overreaching by requiring “by-right” residential development in the downtown core to be at least 40% affordable. (By-right development approval is granted when a development proposal conforms strictly to zoning and building codes and thus qualifies for construction without requiring special approval.) In follow-up comments by the council, they decided they couldn’t make such a significant change on the fly and so tabled the issue for future discussion.
When Margaret de Matteo, the housing policy attorney for Sonoma County Legal Aid, criticized the new housing element for not including more protection for renters, that too got approving nods; though again, there was a suggestion that this be dealt with after the approval of the housing element that night. (As a starting point, Svanstrom said she has invited deMatteo to educate city decisionmakers on rental and tenant issues this spring.)
In the end, the council voted unanimously to adopt the housing element, which will now be submitted to the HCD for review, final comments, and certification. It must be certified by Jan. 31.
Duck, Duck, Goose
There was a short item about who would vote in the mayor’s place at the Mayors and Council Members Association meetings. It was quickly dispatched with Rich’s suggestion that after the vice mayor, the responsibility should devolve alphabetically. So the order is this: If Mayor Hinton is unavailable to vote, it goes next to Vice Mayor Rich, then to Councilmember Maurer, Councilmember McLewis and Councilmember Zollman. In general, the decision on which way to vote on issues before the association is usually decided by the whole council, so the issue of who does the actual voting is almost (but not quite) moot.
Urgency Item: West County Community Services grant for homeless outreach
West County Community Services (WCCS), the city’s primary contractor for homeless services, asked the council to approve a resolution of support for its grant application to the Sonoma County Community Development Commission.
WCCS will apply for funding for three fulltime homeless outreach coordinators: two for rural west county and one for Sebastopol. WCCS Director Tim Miller suggested that Sebastopol offer to match funding for the Sebastopol outreach person.
This grant could potentially save the city $40,000 a year, which is a little more than half the salary of the city’s homeless outreach coordinator.
The council voted 4 to 1 in favor of the resolution of support. Councilmember Jill McLewis voted against the resolution because it would basically guarantee that the city would fund its homeless outreach position in the upcoming fiscal year – and thus limit options for trimming the budget, which has been perennially in the red.
You can watch the Jan. 3 council meeting in full here.
The next city council meeting is Tuesday, Jan. 17 at 6 pm.