Recap of Sebastopol City Council for Nov. 15

Council rejects challenge to the 2-year temporary use permit for HorizonShine, the homeless RV village at the north end of town

All council members were present at the Nov. 15 Sebastopol City Council meeting, including Mayor Patrick Slayter, Vice Mayor Neysa Hinton, Councilmember Una Glass, Councilmember Sarah Gurney and Councilmember Diana Rich.

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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, temporary 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.

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Here’s the recap:

In Memorium: The meeting began with councilmember Sarah Gurney following up on Patrick Slayter’s praise of Helen Shane from the last council meeting. “Helen encouraged people to pay attention and become activist citizens following all the council's decisions,” Gurney said. “I'm very grateful to Helen for doing that for our community. And I've not known anyone before or since who had that remarkable achievement.”

Consent Calendar

(Note: The consent calendar consists of items that are routine in nature or don’t require additional discussion, often because they’ve been discussed extensively at a previous council meeting.)

The council unanimously approved the following:

• A resolution authorizing continued use of teleconference meetings based on the COVID-19 state of emergency

• An extension of the proclamation proclaiming the existence of a local homeless emergency.

• Several items were added to the consent calendar because of a court case regarding the Brown Act open meetings law that now requires government bodies to list CEQA exemptions as items on the agenda for a public meeting when a project already found exempt by staff is considered for approval.  These included the acceptance of an audit report for a sanitary sewer management plan, the adoption of water and sewer standards, and the approval of an amendment to the master agreement for the Zimpher Creek Sewer Relocation Project.

Regular Agenda Items

Grant for better traffic/pedestrian infrastructure around Analy High School. The regular agenda kicked off with an item that Sarah Gurney pulled from the consent calendar, which was a recommendation for a grant request for an enhanced pedestrian crossing near Analy High School at Sunset and Taft. City staff intended to submit this grant request to Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who announced in October that there was $2 million available for 5th District Infrastructure funding. Gurney felt the suggested $60,000 ask was too small and recommended that staff add in other traffic and infrastructure projects that had been identified in 2019 Analy High School Safe Routes to School Engineering Evaluation. The other council members enthusiastically agreed with this idea.

Public Hearings

Adoption of the state building code: APPROVED. Every three years the city has to adopt the State Building Code – 6,000 pages, 12 volumes. Most of the code’s changes this year have to do with energy conservation. Building department director Steve Brown said he was working with the Climate Action Committee on this issue. The council unanimously approved and adopted the state building code.

Appeal of a Planning Commission approval of a 2-year temporary use permit for HorizonShine RV Village: DENIED.

The Planning Commission granted a 2-year temporary use permit to SAVS/HorizonShine RV Village. Their approval was appealed by Zachary Imbrogno, president of a neighborhood group known as Friends of Northwest Sebastopol. Imbrogno introduced his argument with complaints about the impact of the homeless on the businesses and neighborhoods of North Sebastopol, and his comments were echoed by several of his neighbors in public comment. Future council member Jill McLewis spoke in favor of the appeal, as did former council candidate Oliver Dick.

The appeal made three claims:

1. The 2-year extension of the RV Village is not a Temporary Use.

2. The Commission may not make the findings necessary to approve a 2-year extension as a temporary use, which in this case refers to a city code  requiring that the use will not “be detrimental to the health, safety, peace, comfort and general welfare of persons residing or working in the neighborhood of such proposed use or development, or be detrimental or injurious to property and improvements in the neighborhood or to the general welfare of the City.”

3. The proposed 2-year extension is not categorically exempt from CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act).

In response to the first claim, that a 2-year extension for HorizonShine isn’t a temporary use, Planning Director Kari Svanstrom argued that HorizonShine was by its very nature a temporary use, especially given that the owner of the property, St. Vincent de Paul, was beginning the permit process for a brick-and-mortar affordable housing complex on the site. She pointed out that there were precedents for a 2-year (or longer) temporary use permit in town—the microshelters at the Community Church have a 5-year temporary use permit—and that city code specifically gave her the authority to determine when a use was temporary or not.

Tony Francois, the attorney for the appellant, argued that the planning director didn’t have that authority, that it was limited to uses similar to those described in the statute – festivals, construction trailers, etc.—and that anyway, there was no such thing as a temporary residential permit.

The second claim—that the use not be detrimental to the health, safety, peace, comfort and general welfare of persons residing or working in the neighborhood of such proposed use or development— was more problematic. During public comment several neighbors testified that they’d seen a material change to the neighborhood around HorizonShine – in terms of noise, trash, shoplifting at local stores, public drug use and public defecation.

In deliberations, several council members said that the neighbors failed to prove that those were caused by HorizonShine, as opposed to, say, the presence of several abandoned buildings in the Redwood Marketplace shopping center, which are themselves an attractive nuisance. Councilmember Neysa Hinton said shoplifting happens all over Sebastopol, and Councilmember Diana Rich read a statement from Police Chief Ron Nelson that he gave before the planning commission, that in his opinion, things would be much worse without HorizonShine:

“Prior to HorizonShine being there, essentially it was a free for all, and we saw the results of that on Morris Street. And it was starting to spread out throughout the city. As we've seen through the managed approach and this resource being available—and all the wonderful work being done by our advocate community, and by HorizonShine—we've been able to lessen the impacts of this. If this facility were to not exist, we'd be right back to square one.”

“To me, coming from our police chief, that's compelling,” Rich said.

Francois, the appellant’s attorney, argued the weight of the evidence suggested that HorizonShine caused at least some of this disruption and that the city’s claim that it was utterly blameless was untenable.

Regarding the third claim—CEQA exemption—the council in their deliberations echoed the staff report, finding that the temporary use permit was exempt because it was an existing facility, that there was no significant effect on the environment, and that it was a minor, temporary use. Francois responded that the disturbances the neighbors were complaining about were not caused by the buildings per se—the usual environmental claim—so much as the site’s existence as an attractive nuisance drawing other homeless people to the area. He also noted that the original permit was granted without a CEQA review and argued that an extension of the permit counts as a “change of use” which should trigger the CEQA process.

The council sided with Planning Director Svanstrom unanimously denying the appeal and supporting the planning commission’s approval of a 2-year temporary use permit for SAVs/HorizonShine, with the addition that the city council be included in the SAVs quarterly reports to the planning commission.

This finding, of course, doesn’t do anything to address the very real issues that Sebastopol’s northwest neighborhoods are having as a result in a rise of the local homeless population. Some pallatives were offered by homeless advocates.  In response to neighbor complaints, SAVs Board President Adrienne Lauby invited neighbors once again to attend the monthly meetings of the SAVs community outreach committee, while SAVs Board Vice President Patrick O'Loughlin gave out the hotline number—707-889-8776—to which he said there had been zero calls. (Oliver Dick said in public comment that there was no such hotline—that it had been promised, but never delivered—but SAVs’ O’Loughlin said it had been there from the start and was listed on the HorizonShine website.) Mayor Patrick Slayter, in answer to a question from a neighbor, advised everyone in the neighborhood, regardless of whether they lived in the city or the county, to call the Sebastopol Police if there was a problem, simply because they could get there sooner than the county sheriff.

Public Hearing on Surveillance Tecnology Ordinance: APPROVED AND MOVED FORWARD. The council unanimously agreed to waive the first reading of the ordinance which had been extensively discussed at the council’s last meeting and voted to move it forward to a vote on the consent calendar at the Dec. 6 meeting. (See discussion here.)

Emergency Operations Ordinance: SENT BACK FOR REVIEW. A new emergency operations ordinance was introduced for a public hearing but found wanting by the council in terms of its format and organization. There was a general agreement to bring it back to the new council after the first of the year.

EV Charging Stations for Burnett Street Parking: SENT BACK FOR REVIEW. It was past 11 pm when the council began to consider whether to direct the city manager to sign a contract for four EV charging stations at the Burnett Street Parking Lot, made possible by a PG&E grant that the city has applied for. In the end, though, there were too many unanswered questions for the council to feel comfortable moving forward. They advised Public Works Director Dante Del Prete to run the proposal past the Climate Action Committee to take advantage of their expertise on this topic, and to return to the council at a later date with a more complete proposal.

The next city council meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 6 at 6 pm. See the agenda here.