City Council
City Council
lun, 6 de marzo de 2023
Puntos de agenda
Registros de votación
Resumen del debate
Transcripción
RESUMEN DE REUNIÓNGenerado por IA
Petaluma City Council — 6 de marzo de 2023
Esta fue una extensa sesión ordinaria del Petaluma City Council que se prolongó hasta bien pasada la medianoche. La sesión incluyó proclamaciones, un calendario de consentimiento completo con varios puntos retirados para su discusión, un informe de avance del Housing Element y un amplio taller público sobre la ordenanza de protección a los inquilinos de la ciudad.
Proclamaciones
El Consejo reconoció marzo de 2023 como Red Cross Month, en honor a los voluntarios locales del capítulo del American Red Cross del Condado de Sonoma. Una segunda proclamación declaró el 19 al 25 de marzo como National Surveyors Week, recibida por representantes del capítulo del Condado de Sonoma de la California Land Surveyors Association.
Comentarios Públicos Generales
Los oradores del público plantearon varios temas no relacionados con los puntos del orden del día:
Dos oradores instaron al Consejo a pausar los planes de instalar césped sintético en los parques East Washington y Lucchese, citando preocupaciones de salud por los PFAS ("químicos eternos") en las hojas de pasto de plástico, riesgos ambientales para los cursos de agua cercanos y la disponibilidad de mejores alternativas de césped natural.
Un vecino del McNair Park pidió al Consejo considerar la incorporación de campos de béisbol juvenil en cualquier rediseño del Petaluma Fairgrounds, citando la enorme presión sobre las instalaciones deportivas existentes proveniente de los deportes organizados.
Un pequeño promotor inmobiliario pidió al Consejo que considerara eximir las subdivisiones menores (cinco viviendas o menos) de la ordenanza de visitabilidad, citando la carga de costos acumulada por los requisitos de construcción 100 % eléctrica, solar, conforme a ADA y de accesibilidad.
Un orador que representaba a la Sonoma County NAACP instó al Consejo a no reinstaurar a los School Resource Officers, citando datos sobre disparidades en las tasas de graduación y el ciclo escuela-prisión, y solicitó transparencia en el proceso de selección del auditor policial independiente.
Un orador instó al Consejo a considerar una resolución que proteja a los rescatistas de animales que han intervenido en granjas industriales, similar a las resoluciones aprobadas en Berkeley y San Francisco.
Un orador criticó la aprobación anterior del Consejo del desarrollo Scott Ranch, argumentando que el informe de impacto ambiental fue certificado de manera indebida dado las preocupaciones sobre los impactos en especies protegidas.
Calendario de Consentimiento
El Consejo retiró los Puntos 3 y 4 para discusión separada. Los Puntos 5, 6 y 7 fueron aprobados como parte de la moción de consentimiento enmendada. El orden del día tentativo del Punto 2 fue enmendado (véase más adelante).
Puntos aprobados sin discusión:
Punto 1: Actas de la sesión del 27 de febrero de 2023.
Punto 5: Resolución que ratifica la finalización de la restauración de emergencia del proyecto de reubicación del emisario de la Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility por parte de Coastside Concrete & Construction, Inc., y que autoriza la liberación del 10% de retención (proyecto de aproximadamente $1.8 millones).
Punto 6: Resoluciones que autorizan al City Manager a presentar una solicitud de Designación Prohousing y una solicitud del Prohousing Incentive Pilot Program ante el California Department of Housing and Community Development.
Punto 7: Resolución que aprueba el Annual Housing Successor Agency Report para el año fiscal 2021–22 y que instruye al personal a presentarlo ante HCD y la Governor's Office of Planning and Research.
Punto 2 — Órdenes del Día Tentativas (Enmendado)
Varios oradores del público —incluidos un organizador de inquilinos, un abogado de vivienda de Legal Aid y un representante de un consejo laboral— instaron al Consejo a trasladar la primera lectura de la ordenanza de protección a los inquilinos fuera del orden del día del 20 de marzo, señalando que un miembro del consejo estaría fuera del país y que dos semanas eran un tiempo insuficiente para revisar correctamente las enmiendas tras la encuesta y los comentarios públicos de esa noche.
La Concejal Healey propuso aprobar el calendario de consentimiento, pero enmendó el Punto 2 para trasladar la primera lectura de la ordenanza de protección a los inquilinos a la primera sesión del Consejo en abril y la segunda lectura a la segunda sesión de abril (señalando que ella no estaría disponible a principios de mayo).
Votación: Propuesta por Healey, secundada por Posakay. Aprobada por unanimidad, 7–0.
Punto 3 — EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan (Retirado)
Este punto autorizó un contrato de servicios profesionales con Sage Energy Consulting para un EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan a un costo de $460,000. La Concejal Healey retiró el punto, expresando su preocupación de que casi medio millón de dólares para un documento de planificación —sin crear una sola estación de carga— era difícil de justificar.
El personal (la Climate Action Manager Rhianna Frank y la Project Manager Diane Ramirez) explicó que el alcance va mucho más allá de un simple informe: incluye análisis de capacidad de la red eléctrica para 21 instalaciones municipales, trabajos de diseño preliminar e ingeniería necesarios para licitar la construcción, servicios de enlace con PG&E y Sonoma Clean Power, identificación de 7 subvenciones elegibles (con un ahorro estimado de $49,000 en costos de redacción de solicitudes) y apoyo para la electrificación de la flota vehicular. El contrato fue licitado de manera competitiva y el precio ya había sido reducido mediante la refinación del alcance tras la recepción de propuestas iniciales más elevadas. El personal señaló que otras ciudades, incluida Santa Rosa, estaban tomando el RFP de Petaluma como modelo.
La Concejal Barnacle propuso aprobar el punto tal como estaba redactado. La Concejal Healey votó en contra, manteniendo su preocupación sobre el costo.
Votación: Propuesta por Barnacle, secundada por Posakay. Aprobada 6–1, con Healey votando en contra.
Punto 4 — Autorización de Reuniones Virtuales del General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC) (Retirado)
Con la expiración de las normas de emergencia por COVID-19 bajo AB 361, el GPAC —un órgano voluntario de más de 20 miembros que asesora sobre la actualización del Plan General de la ciudad— estaría obligado a celebrar reuniones presenciales a menos que se restructurara como un órgano no legislativo. El personal informó que exigir asistencia presencial provocaría la renuncia de aproximadamente el 30% de los miembros del GPAC, poniendo en riesgo la continuidad tras dos años de trabajo.
Varios miembros del GPAC tomaron la palabra durante los comentarios públicos, instando enérgicamente a que se celebraran al menos algunas reuniones presenciales o híbridas, argumentando que las sesiones por Zoom se habían convertido en presentaciones pasivas en lugar de talleres colaborativos. El Community Development Director Brian Oh reconoció el valor de la interacción presencial e indicó que la próxima reunión del GPAC podría celebrarse de manera presencial.
Los Concejales Thompson y Schribs —ambos ex miembros del GPAC— se sumaron al llamado a favor de las reuniones presenciales, mientras que la Concejal Posakay planteó preocupaciones de equidad respecto a exigir la asistencia de miembros con responsabilidades de cuidado familiar o con varios empleos.
La resolución que rescinde las designaciones anteriores y permite la continuación de las reuniones virtuales no prohíbe las reuniones presenciales; el personal indicó que ya se tienen previstas sesiones presenciales para el trabajo intensivo en políticas que se avecina.
Votación: Propuesta por Healey, secundada por Cader Thompson. Aprobada por unanimidad, 7–0.
Punto 9 — Annual Housing Element Progress Report (2022)
La planificadora Karen Shimizu presentó el Annual Housing Element Progress Report del año calendario 2022, correspondiente al último año del quinto ciclo de planificación (2015–2023). El informe debe presentarse ante HCD y la Governor's Office of Planning and Research antes del 1 de abril.
Datos destacados:
Se emitieron 126 permisos de construcción en 2022; aproximadamente la mitad correspondió a la conversión del motel Montero para atender a la población sin hogar.
Se emitieron 123 certificados de ocupación — 32 unifamiliares y 79 departamentos. De esos departamentos, 25 correspondieron al People's Village de la ciudad (instalación COTS) y 53 al PEP Housing en South Petaluma Boulevard.
No se otorgaron nuevos derechos de desarrollo durante 2022.
Los proyectos activos en cartera incluyen Mid-Penn Housing en 414 Petaluma Boulevard, la rehabilitación de estudios de Burbank Housing en Montero y el proyecto Washington Commons de Danko Group y Mid-Penn (en etapas de adquisición del sitio y financiamiento).
La próxima asignación RHNA del sexto ciclo representa un aumento drástico en las metas de vivienda en comparación con el quinto ciclo.
El Alcalde McDonnell señaló que dos tercios de todos los nuevos certificados de ocupación en 2022 correspondieron a proyectos de vivienda asequible dedicada. La Concejal Healey propuso aprobar el punto y pidió al personal que ayudara al proyecto de Burbank Housing en Petaluma Boulevard South a obtener el financiamiento final que le falta.
El Alcalde McDonnell se inhibió del Punto 8 (taller sobre protección a los inquilinos) y cedió el mazo a la Vicealcaldesa Cader Thompson antes de la votación sobre el housing element.
Votación: Propuesta por Healey, secundada por Cader Thompson. Aprobada por unanimidad, 7–0.
Punto 8 — Taller sobre la Ordenanza de Protección a los Inquilinos
*El Alcalde McDonnell se inhibió de este punto a lo largo de todo el proceso. La Vicealcaldesa Cader Thompson presidió la sesión.*
El City Attorney Eric Danley encabezó una presentación integral que revisó la historia de la Residential Tenancy Protection Ordinance (Capítulo 6.60) de la ciudad, la Tenant Protection Act estatal (TPA/AB 1482), comparaciones con jurisdicciones similares, los resultados de los procesos de participación comunitaria y una encuesta con más de 1,000 respondentes. El personal realizó múltiples reuniones con partes interesadas y talleres comunitarios, alcanzando a más de 1,100 personas.
#### Antecedentes
La ordenanza de Petaluma fue promulgada de urgencia para llenar el vacío cuando las protecciones para inquilinos del Condado de Sonoma durante la época de COVID vencieron. Extiende las protecciones más allá de la TPA estatal en varios aspectos, incluyendo la cobertura de unidades con menos de 15 años de antigüedad, viviendas unifamiliares y dormitorios; la exigencia de asistencia para reubicación aumentada en un 50% para inquilinos que sean menores de edad, adultos mayores, personas de bajos ingresos, personas con discapacidad o inquilinos de largo plazo (10 años o más); y la incorporación de protecciones bajo la Ellis Act. No impone control de rentas.
La ordenanza vigente tiene una disposición de caducidad que vence el 1 de julio de 2023, lo que motivó este taller.
#### Resultados de la Encuesta y la Participación Comunitaria
Aproximadamente el mismo número de propietarios e inquilinos respondieron la encuesta (47% y 36%, respectivamente, según autodeclaración).
Alrededor de la mitad de los inquilinos encuestados consideraron que Petaluma debería ofrecer protecciones más allá de la TPA; los propietarios generalmente no estuvieron de acuerdo.
Ambos grupos apoyaron en su mayoría mantener las causales de desalojo por culpa del inquilino contempladas en la TPA.
Los inquilinos apoyaron con mayor firmeza las protecciones desde el primer día de arrendamiento, una cobertura más amplia de unidades y la recuperación de honorarios de abogados; los propietarios favorecieron el marco existente de la TPA.
Ninguno de los grupos apoyó con firmeza las disposiciones actuales sobre el derecho de retorno (Ellis Act).
#### Comentarios Públicos (Extensos)
Decenas de oradores testificaron a lo largo de varias horas. Temas principales:
A favor de fortalecer la ordenanza: Un abogado de Legal Aid describió un caso reciente en Petaluma —el primero en que intervino la ordenanza— en el que tres familias en un edificio de cuatro unidades fueron desplazadas durante una venta; la ordenanza aseguró asistencia para reubicación y tiempo para reubicar a dos de los tres hogares. Una directora escolar de Miwok Valley Elementary (73% de estudiantes en desventaja socioeconómica) abogó por protecciones desde el primer día de arrendamiento, citando el impacto de la inseguridad habitacional en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes. Organizadores de inquilinos de la Sonoma County Tenants Union describieron el miedo generalizado entre los arrendatarios a represalias por denunciar problemas. Abogados de Legal Aid y defensores de inquilinos argumentaron que el requisito de "causa justificada" de la ordenanza simplemente significa que un propietario necesita una razón legítima para desalojar —algo que, según dijeron, no afectaría a los propietarios éticos.
A favor de derogar o reducir drásticamente la ordenanza: Administradores de propiedades, propietarios y profesionales del sector inmobiliario argumentaron que la TPA estatal ya es la ley de protección a los inquilinos más sólida del país y que las adiciones de Petaluma crean un riesgo indebido, desincentivan el desarrollo y podrían llevar a los pequeños propietarios a vender sus inmuebles. Varios citaron disposiciones específicas que consideran problemáticas —incluyendo la prohibición de desalojo por subarriendo no autorizado, el requisito de permisos antes del desalojo por rehabilitación y el derecho de retorno por una década bajo las disposiciones de la Ellis Act— como inviables. Un representante de la North Bay Association of Realtors citó un estudio según el cual, tras la aprobación de una ordenanza similar en Santa Rosa, 72 unidades fueron retiradas del mercado de alquiler. Múltiples propietarios dijeron que planeaban vender sus propiedades antes que lidiar con la regulación.
#### Discusión y Directrices del Consejo
El Consejo no votó sobre la ordenanza en sí (la votación vinculante se realizará en abril). En cambio, proporcionaron orientación directiva al personal para la redacción de enmiendas. Puntos de consenso o casi consenso:
Exención para pequeños propietarios: Eximir a los propietarios que poseen dos o menos unidades de alquiler (incluidas las ADUs en la misma propiedad). Este fue el consenso de trabajo tras la discusión de umbrales que oscilaron entre una y tres unidades.
Causales de terminación del contrato: Mantener todas las causales de terminación por culpa del inquilino contempladas en la TPA. Simplificar el lenguaje y usar terminología coherente con la TPA. Las víctimas de violencia doméstica o agresiones no deberían enfrentar la terminación del contrato —solo el agresor debería ser sujeto de desalojo. Los desalojos por actividad delictiva deberían seguir el estándar civil (sin requerir una condena penal). Las disposiciones sobre deterioro y condiciones insalubres deberían alinearse con las definiciones de la TPA.
Protecciones desde el primer día: Las protecciones deberían comenzar el primer día de arrendamiento, no después de seis o doce meses.
Arrendamientos temporales: Eximir los arrendamientos a plazo fijo en los que el propietario tiene la intención de regresar (p. ej., año sabático, servicio militar).
Asistencia para reubicación: Aumentar a 2.5 meses de renta (con un tope en dólares que determinará el personal), sin distinguir entre tipos de terminación sin culpa ni características del inquilino. Esto reemplaza el sistema escalonado actual.
Derecho de retorno de seis meses: Si una unidad es retirada del mercado de alquiler (Ellis Act) pero se vuelve a ofrecer en arrendamiento dentro de seis meses, el inquilino desplazado debería tener derecho a regresar. La estructura actual de derecho de retorno de 10 años sería eliminada.
Honorarios de abogados: Mantener la disposición actual que permite a los inquilinos que prevalezcan en acciones civiles recuperar los honorarios de abogados (sin extenderlo a un estándar de parte prevaleciente).
Autoridad de cumplimiento de la ciudad: Mantener el derecho discrecional (no obligatorio) de la ciudad para iniciar acciones de cumplimiento.
Protecciones durante el año escolar para maestros y estudiantes: Se instruyó al personal a investigar un lenguaje viable, dadas las preocupaciones sobre la implementación (los tribunales son impredecibles) y el potencial de discriminación contra inquilinos que son maestros; se sugirió una ventana durante el verano como posible enfoque, pero no se alcanzó consenso.
Unidades con menos de 15 años de antigüedad y viviendas subsidiadas: No se alcanzó consenso. Se instruyó al personal a recabar opiniones de los proveedores de vivienda sin fines de lucro e investigar cuestiones de preempción federal antes de la sesión de abril.
Simplificación: Amplio consenso entre los miembros del Consejo para simplificar y clarificar significativamente el lenguaje de la ordenanza.
No se realizó ninguna votación. El punto regresará para una primera lectura en la primera sesión del Consejo en abril.
Puntos clave
La ordenanza de protección a los inquilinos se dirige a una revisión importante en abril: La ordenanza actual será enmendada en lugar de derogarse o prorrogarse tal como está. El Consejo señaló que desea una ordenanza más simple y específica que se alinee más estrechamente con el lenguaje de la TPA estatal, con adiciones clave que incluyen protecciones desde el primer día, mayor asistencia para reubicación (2.5 meses de renta), una exención para pequeños propietarios de dos unidades o menos y una disposición anti-simulación de seis meses bajo la Ellis Act.
El EV Charging Master Plan aprobado por $460,000: A pesar de la reacción ante el precio de varios concejales, el contrato con Sage Energy Consulting fue aprobado 6–1, con el personal explicando que el alcance incluye análisis de la red eléctrica, diseño de ingeniería y servicios de gestión de subvenciones que justifican el costo.
El GPAC continuará reuniéndose de manera virtual, pero se planean sesiones presenciales: La resolución preserva la capacidad del General Plan Advisory Committee, de más de 20 miembros, de reunirse de forma remota, evitando la pérdida de aproximadamente el 30% de sus integrantes, mientras que el personal se comprometió a programar sesiones presenciales para el trabajo colaborativo.
Informe de avance del Housing Element aprobado: Dos tercios de todos los nuevos certificados de ocupación en 2022 correspondieron a proyectos de vivienda asequible o de apoyo; la ciudad enfrenta una meta de producción de vivienda considerablemente mayor en el próximo sexto ciclo.
La primera lectura de la protección a los inquilinos se traslada a abril: La presión pública y el itinerario de viaje de una concejal motivaron una moción para aplazar la votación, garantizando que los siete miembros del Consejo puedan deliberar sobre la ordenanza revisada.
Resumen generado por IA a partir de una transcripción de voz a texto. No es el registro oficial. Verifique los detalles importantes con los documentos fuente vinculados arriba.
Qué ocurrió en esta reunión
Resolución que Autoriza al Administrador Municipal a Celebrar un Acuerdo de Servicios Profesionales con Sage Energy Consulting para el Plan Maestro de Infraestructura de Carga de Vehículos Eléctricos y que Determina que Este Asunto No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a la Sección 15378(b)(5) de las Directrices de CEQA y que, de Constituir un Proyecto, Está Exento conforme a la Sección 15061 de las Directrices de CEQA
Rhianna Frank, Climate Action Manager, responded to Council questions regarding the Professional Services Agreement with Sage Energy Consulting for the EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan. No public comment was received. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-026 N.C.S. passed 6-1, with Councilmember Healy voting no.
Resolución que Rescinde las Resoluciones No. 2021-014 y No. 2023-017 N.C.S. que Designan Miembros del Comité Asesor del Plan General para Permitir que los Miembros se Ofrezcan como Voluntarios para Continuar en sus Funciones y Permitir que las Reuniones Virtuales del GPAC Continúen tras la Rescisión de la Emergencia Estatal por COVID-19, lo que Pondrá Fin a las Normas de Teleconferencia más Permisivas de AB 361, y que Determina que esta Acción No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a CEQA
City Manager Peggy Flynn, City Attorney Eric Danly, and Community Development Director Brian Oh responded to Council questions about rescinding prior General Plan Advisory Committee resolutions to allow members to volunteer to continue serving and permit continued virtual meetings. Public comment was received from Dave Alden, Kris Rebillot, and Veronica O. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-027 N.C.S. passed unanimously 7-0.
Resolución que Acepta el Informe Anual de Avance del Elemento de Vivienda para el Año Calendario 2022 y que Autoriza al Personal a Presentar el Informe ante el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Comunitario de California y la Oficina de Planificación e Investigación del Gobernador, y que Determina que Este Asunto No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a la Sección 15378(b)(5) de las Directrices de CEQA
Housing Manager Karen Shimizu presented the staff report on the Annual Housing Element Progress Report for the 2022 Calendar Year. No public comment was received. Councilmembers discussed the item and the motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-032 N.C.S. passed unanimously 7-0.
Puntos de agenda (8)
Consent Calendar
1Consent CalendarActas de la Reunión Ordinaria del Ayuntamiento/PCDSA del 27 de febrero de 2023
2Consent CalendarAgendas Provisionales para la Reunión Especial del Ayuntamiento/PCDSA del 13 de marzo de 2023 y la Reunión Ordinaria del Ayuntamiento/PCDSA del 20 de marzo de 2023
3Consent CalendarResolución que Autoriza al Administrador Municipal a Celebrar un Acuerdo de Servicios Profesionales con Sage Energy Consulting para el Plan Maestro de Infraestructura de Carga de Vehículos Eléctricos y que Determina que Este Asunto No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a la Sección 15378(b)(5) de las Directrices de CEQA y que, de Constituir un Proyecto, Está Exento conforme a la Sección 15061 de las Directrices de CEQA
Qué ocurrió
Rhianna Frank, Climate Action Manager, responded to Council questions regarding the Professional Services Agreement with Sage Energy Consulting for the EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan. No public comment was received. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-026 N.C.S. passed 6-1, with Councilmember Healy voting no.4Consent CalendarResolución que Rescinde las Resoluciones No. 2021-014 y No. 2023-017 N.C.S. que Designan Miembros del Comité Asesor del Plan General para Permitir que los Miembros se Ofrezcan como Voluntarios para Continuar en sus Funciones y Permitir que las Reuniones Virtuales del GPAC Continúen tras la Rescisión de la Emergencia Estatal por COVID-19, lo que Pondrá Fin a las Normas de Teleconferencia más Permisivas de AB 361, y que Determina que esta Acción No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a CEQA
Qué ocurrió
City Manager Peggy Flynn, City Attorney Eric Danly, and Community Development Director Brian Oh responded to Council questions about rescinding prior General Plan Advisory Committee resolutions to allow members to volunteer to continue serving and permit continued virtual meetings. Public comment was received from Dave Alden, Kris Rebillot, and Veronica O. The motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-027 N.C.S. passed unanimously 7-0.5Consent CalendarResolución que Ratifica la Adjudicación del Contrato, Acepta la Finalización de la Restauración de Emergencia del Proyecto de Reubicación del Emisario de la Instalación de Reciclaje de Agua de Ellis Creek ejecutado por Coastside Concrete & Construction, Inc., Autoriza la Liberación de la Retención del 10% y Determina que Este Asunto fue Abordado en un Informe de Impacto Ambiental Previamente Certificado y que No se Requiere una Revisión Separada, Posterior o Suplementaria
6Consent CalendarResoluciones (1) que Autorizan al Administrador Municipal a Presentar una Solicitud de Designación Prohousing ante el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Comunitario de California y (2) que Autorizan al Administrador Municipal a Presentar una Solicitud al Programa Piloto de Incentivos Prohousing y a Celebrar Cualquier Acuerdo de Financiamiento Relacionado en Caso de ser Seleccionado, y que Determinan que esta Acción No Constituye un Proyecto conforme a la Sección 15378 de las Directrices de CEQA
7Consent CalendarResolución que Aprueba el Informe Anual de la Agencia Sucesora de Vivienda del 1 de julio de 2021 al 30 de junio de 2022, conforme al Código de Salud y Seguridad §34176.1, y que Instruye al Personal a Presentar el Informe Anual de la Agencia Sucesora al Departamento Estatal de Vivienda y Desarrollo Comunitario ("HCD") como anexo al Informe Anual de Avance del Elemento de Vivienda y a la Oficina de Planificación e Investigación del Gobernador ("OPR"), y que Determina que Este Asunto Está Exento de CEQA conforme a la Sección 15387(b)(5) de las Directrices de CEQA
Public Hearing
9Public HearingResolución que Acepta el Informe Anual de Avance del Elemento de Vivienda para el Año Calendario 2022 y que Autoriza al Personal a Presentar el Informe ante el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Comunitario de California y la Oficina de Planificación e Investigación del Gobernador, y que Determina que Este Asunto No Constituye un "Proyecto" conforme a la Sección 15378(b)(5) de las Directrices de CEQA
Qué ocurrió
Housing Manager Karen Shimizu presented the staff report on the Annual Housing Element Progress Report for the 2022 Calendar Year. No public comment was received. Councilmembers discussed the item and the motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-032 N.C.S. passed unanimously 7-0.Votos adicionales registrados en actas
Approve EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan contract (Item 3)
aye 6 · nay 1
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healeynay
McDonnellaye
Nowaye
Posakayaye
Shrimpsaye
Approve GPAC meeting format resolution (Item 4)
aye 7
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healeyaye
McDonnellaye
Nowaye
Posakayaye
Shrimpsaye
Approve remainder of consent calendar as amended (Items 2, 5, 6, 7)
aye 7
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healeyaye
McDonnellaye
Nowaye
Posakayaye
Shrimpsaye
Adopt resolution accepting 2022 Housing Element Progress Report (Item 9)
aye 7
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healeyaye
McDonnellaye
Nowaye
Posakayaye
Shrimpsaye
Extend meeting past 11:00 PM
aye 6
Barnacleaye
Cader Thompsonaye
Healeyaye
Nowaye
Posakayaye
Shrimpsaye
Transcripción literal disponible
229 segmentos de transcripción indexados
foreign thank you oh yeah I was just messaging Mr Mayor are you ready to begin the meeting okay okay recording in progress okay we're ready to begin so good evening and welcome to the regular meeting of the Petaluma city council and Petaluma Community Development successor Agency for Monday March 6th tonight in addition to having Spanish translation available to the zoom audience we also have Spanish translation available for those who are joining us here in council chambers we have Aaron in the back who can help with that technology and let's see if you're interested in listening in Spanish please see Aaron and if you wish to provide public comment in English or in Spanish please fill out a card one site is English to one side is is Spanish and delivered to our city clerk up front here thank you and um let's see I will now invite Monica operation and Maria Galvez to provide information to those who want to participate in Spanish yes good evening everybody uh buenos dias para Las personas is a continuation we are ready thank you and thank you very much may we have the council roll call council member Barnacle here vice mayor Cader Thompson here councilmember Healey here mayor McDonnell here council member now here council member posakay here Council memberships here all members are present let's stand for a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence thank you thank you moving on to our agenda for tonight and uh any any changes in deletions to the current agenda and I know I
CITY OF PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA REGULAR MEETING OF THE CITY COUNCIL & PETALUMA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SUCCESSOR AGENCY (PCDSA) City Hall Council Chamber 11 English Street Petaluma, CA 94952 MINUTES Monday, March 06, 2023 REGULAR SESSION - 6:30 P.M.
CALL TO ORDER Mayor McDonnell called the meeting to order at 6:30 p.m. • ROLL CALL PRESENT: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Councilmember Cader Thompson, Councilmember Healy, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs ABSENT: None • PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE • MOMENT OF SILENCE AGENDA CHANGES AND DELETIONS (TO CURRENT AGENDA ONLY) At the request of Mayor McDonnell, and without objection, Item 9 was moved on the agenda to be considered before Item 8.
am asking uh for one I'd like us to move item nine the housing element report up before our number eight which is our attendance protection so one of us will go to bed at a reasonable hour you're right because I am recusing from that last item so um and um if no objections then we'll move on thank you and tonight we have several proclamations uh one to the American Red Cross and um see it says whereas in times of Crisis the people in the city of Petaluma come together to care for one another this humanitarian spirit is part of the foundation of our community and is exemplified by the American Red Cross volunteers and donors and whereas in 1881 Clara Barton found American Red Cross turning her steadfast dedication for helping others into a bold mission of preventing and alleviating people's suffering today more than 140 years later we honor the kindness and generosity of uh the Red Cross volunteers here in Petaluma who continue to carry out Clara's life-saving Legacy they joined the millions of people across the United States who volunteer give blood donate financially or learn vital life preserving skills through the Red Cross and whereas in Petaluma the contributions to the local Red Cross volunteers give hope to the most vulnerable in their Darkest Hours whether it is providing emergency shelter food and comfort for families devastated by local disasters Like Home Fires donating essential blood for accident and burn victims heart surgery and organ transplant patients and
those receiving treatment for leukemia cancer or sickle cell disease supporting service members and Veterans along with their families and caregivers through the unique challenges of military life helping to save the lives of others with first aid CPR and other skills or delivering International humanitarian Aid and whereas their work to prevent and alleviate human suffering is vital to strengthening our community resilience we dedicate this month of March to all those who continue to advance the noble Legacy of the American Red Cross founder Clara Barton who lived by her words you must never think of anything except the need and how to meet it we ask others to join in this commitment to give back to our community now therefore be it resolved that I Kevin McDonnell mayor of Petaluma along with members of the Petaluma city council do hereby acknowledge March 2023 as Red Cross month and encourage all citizens of Petaluma to reach out and support its humanitarian mission let's see uh and tonight we have joining us um I believe Leland Montel the disaster program manager for Red Cross and merrily Guillory volunteer coordinator of Red Cross Disaster Assistance teams and uh Laura mohoff volunteer With Disaster Assistance team and if you'd like to say a few words that'll be appropriate oh do I need it okay um I want to thank you on behalf of uh Red Cross Sonoma for this Proclamation thank you for the careful reading of it I'm sorry it was a bit long but anyway so it is um I'd like to
PROCLAMATIONS • American Red Cross Month – March • National Surveyor’s Week – March 19-25, 2023 GENERAL PUBLIC COMMENT During General Public Comment, the public is invited to make comments on items of public interest that are within the City Council’s subject matter jurisdiction and that are not listed on the current agenda.
present uh the council with this book that uh is a picture book it's called 100 Year 140 years of service um it's just a token of our appreciation and we are especially happy to to be here in um in Petaluma and be able to provide services uh to the community so thank you very much really appreciate it and uh carry on with your good work [Applause] and thank you for your good work yeah good night we also have a proclamation for National surveyors week and here to receive the uh Proclamation is John Fitzgerald on behalf of the Sonoma County chapter of the California land surveyors Association the proclamation reads whereas surveying has been an essential element in the development of the human environment since the beginning of recorded history and it is a requirement in the planning and execution of nearly every form of construction with its most familiar modern uses in the field of Transport building and construction Communications mapping and the legal definition of legal boundaries for land ownership and whereas in order to accomplish their objectives surveyors use elements of engineering physics mathematics astronomy law and history and whereas since the colonial days the United States surveyors have been leaders in the community Statesmen influential citizens and Shapers of cultural standards former notable surveyors include George Washington Thomas Jefferson Abraham Lincoln Lewis and Clark Daniel Boone Henry David Thoreau amongst many others and whereas many services are
Public comments are limited up to three minutes per person. Depending on the number of persons wishing to address the Council, time will be allocated in equal shares totaling no more than twenty minutes, subject to the Council’s discretion (Cal.
now provided through the use of sophisticated surveying equipment and techno techniques including satellite-borne remote sensing devices and automated positioning measuring recording and plotting equipment and now therefore be it resolve that I Kevin McDonnell mayor of Petaluma along with the members of the Petaluma city council to hereby proclaim the week of March 19 to 25 2023 as National surveyors week thank you [Applause] let me say a few words thank you I'd like to thank all of you for your good work and for um celebrating with me uh along with uh many others the national surveyors week thank you very much [Applause] thank you very much and um now let's move on to General Public comment and we have received four cards here four cards and I'd like to check with our city clerk whether we received General comments prior to meeting yes mayor we received six general public comments prior to the meeting which are posted online with the agenda packet thank you and I'd like to check with our moderator to see what we have from our Zoom audience today for general public comment members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards the clerk says if they have not already done so members of the public attending online should raise the virtual hand or press star nine if participating by phone speakers are reminded to be respectful in their comments and that this meeting is being translated please pause between sentences for translation a countdown will appear for
Gov’t. Code §54954.3(a), Petaluma City Council Rules, Policies and Procedures, III). Calandria Atkinson Erin Axelrod Heather Gallagher Jennifer Ostermann Lendri Purcell Maia Hirschbein Susan Kirks Suzanne Clarke Taryn Obaid Tiffany Thomas Mayor McDonnell opened General Public Comment.
Lendri Purcell 1 Taryn Obaid Chantal Rogers Rollin Bruce Zahyra Garcia Erik Allen Susan Kirks Mayor McDonnell closed General Public Comment. COUNCIL COMMENT Councilmember Shribbs Councilmember Pocekay Councilmember Nau Councilmember Healy Councilmember Barnacle Mayor McDonnell CITY MANAGER COMMENT City Manager Peggy Flynn CONSENT CALENDAR Mayor McDonnell announced Item 3 would be pulled from the Consent Calendar, at the request of Councilmember Healy, and Item 4 would be pulled from the Consent Calendar, at the request of Vice Mayor Cader Thompson.
the convenience of the speaker and the viewers and it looks like we have four hands raised thank you very much and to meet that um 20-minute limit we will uh and we have four we will go to two minutes uh for each speaker and I'd like to invite the in-house speakers to be first in this process and um the first Speaker card I have is for Landry Purcell and the second is for Taran obade please come forward and speak it's usually not that far a walk thank you for your time thank you um and thank you for keeping all petalumens safe um especially our children as the president of families advocating for chemical and toxic safety facts I urge you to place a hold on the 2007 crafted plan to install forever chemical pfas Laden plastic sports turf at East Washington and Lucchese parks these projects were initiated some time ago but the plastic grass has not yet gone in please stop and reevaluate we need to rethink this old plan given recent science and multi-million dollar lawsuits being filed due to pfas serious public health and environmental damages also you should know there's a group called Osborne Organics a national expert on natural turf fields that's through a grant coming to Marin County and they've offered to give all City staff officials from our town free in services on how to maintain Turf naturally which and over the long run is more cost effective it's much better for our waterways it's much safer for our children I have created a brief here with national leading
organizations that know about this topic everyone here will get a copy as well as the City attorney a city manager um please keep our children safe if Boston can ban Synthetic Turf from their playing fields we can too Lil Bray also has a band lots of cities around the country are looking to do this let's be on the Forefront let's protect our kids and show them that we're not just about lip service when it comes to climate change and I have to go but protect our renters rights please thank you thank you please let's not applaud during this part of the meeting and keep it can good for all folks Taryn obade to be followed by uh Chantel Rogers I'm here tonight to also please ask the city to pause their plan to install forever chemical Synthetic Turf up at East Washington you want to put you put three in you want to put three more in not a good idea this idea was hatched 15 years ago science has come out that forever chemicals are carcinogenic especially to Children's whose bodies are still forming they compromise immune systems they suppress endocrine system there is no reason to go with a bad decision that was made 15 years ago these Turf do not last long they cost a fortune if you look at total cost of Synthetic Turf that only lasts for eight years and they are not recyclable they have a massive massive carbon footprint we have a climate emergency declared in the city of Petaluma and for us to consider a 15 year old idea about putting forever chemical plastic grass blades I'm
Mayor McDonnell requested Item 3 be discussed first, then Item 4, followed by the Consent Calendar. 3. Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Execute a Professional Services Agreement with Sage Energy Consulting for the EV Charging Infrastructure Master Plan and Finding This Item is Not a “Project” Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5) and if This Item Was a Project it is Exempt Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15061 Councilmembers asked questions of staff.
Rhianna Frank, Climate Action Manager, responded to Council questions. Mayor McDonnell opened public comment; receiving none, he closed public comment. Motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-026 N.C.S. made by Councilmember Barnacle, seconded by Councilmember Pocekay.
not talking about the old tire rubber fill I'm talking about the grass blades I was down there today and spoke with someone who plays soccer down there they do not like it it's so hot in the summer it is a hazard it is a liability risk that is off the charts and also it's right next to our Creek I can see all these grass blades going down the storm drains into our Creek there are lawsuits against water quality being compromised and I don't think Petaluma can afford it I don't think we have an extra multi-million dollar balance somewhere to pay this out it's a no-brainer pause this and please put in natural grass fields there's been new ones developed and we can do and thank you Chantel Rogers to be followed by Rollin Bruce good evening Parks and Rec has been inundated by a significant increase in teams and organizations both existing and newly created looking for practice fields the McNair Park neighborhood rarely gets a day without the traffic parking issues and noise inherent in constant use of the diamonds and the rest of the community is effectively locked out of being able to use the park park which George McNair specifically dedicated to be used by all petalumens I've been working with Parks and Rec to try to find a balance between ball player use of the park and neighborhood and other user concerns frankly I'm not having much luck and I expect I may have to come back to this Council in the future to help us work this out I understand the pressure on Parks and Rec when
Vote: Carried 6-1 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Councilmember Cader Thompson, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: Councilmember Healy Absent: None Recused: None 4.
there are teams looking for field space the neighborhood is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of Park use users other than baseball and softball are frustrated by their lack of access and the park itself is in terrible shape and suffers from no downtime it doesn't help that McNair Elementary School put their solar panels in a spot that eliminated two practice diamonds for younger kids due to the proximity of their fields I came to ask or more accurately to plead with you to consider youth Playing Fields as part of the reimagining of the fairgrounds my guess is that the citizens who worked on a future vision for the fairgrounds were not aware of the pressure on petaluma's existing parks and the extreme need for new ball fields I'm not talking about multi-million dollar fancy diamonds just regular old grass and dirt ball fields where kids can practice and play with the new housing coming our way and the explosion of recreational opportunities for our youth we are in desperate need of additional space for kids to play All Sports our existing Park infrastructure cannot accommodate the expansion expansion of sports for our kids we don't take advantage of this One-Shot opportunity to create more Playing Fields now where do you imagine that we can build them in the future the fairgrounds are perfectly situated to incorporate additional Playing Fields please please please consider this opportunity thank you thank you and Robin Bruce hello my name is Roland Bruce I'm a real estate
broker here in Petaluma Small Time developer house slave father and fixer-up of stuff anyway we're trying to build some new houses in Petaluma and trying to get ahead of the visitability ordinances subject I'm speaking on and asking you to reconsider um maybe consider giving an exemption to the subdivisions of five or less houses so minor subdivisions to be exempt from the visitability ordinance especially single-family dwellings uh it's pretty hard to build in Petaluma when you're expecting us to be all electric provide solar make it ADA Compliant uh just the list goes on and on and uh I think you could soften The Stance I agree with the visibility visibility ordinance I've read it and uh we definitely need to provide housing subdivisions certainly can accommodate that small time people the cost a building is I could barely build these houses I'm trying to build and make any sense and I'm trying to provide rental housing so you know maybe a solution would be if you don't want to you know kind of give an exemption for the small guy how about subsidizing us and uh kicking in some of the money it costs for elevators and uh all the uh redesigns for making it the engineering and the architectural needed to make the houses level for handicapped people that's it thank you and now let's go to our Zoom audience to have their public participation the first speaker is Zyra Garcia please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes hi thanks so much uh good evening city council today I'm
Resolution Rescinding Resolutions No. 2021-014 and No. 2023-017 N.C.S. Appointing Members to the General Plan Advisory Committee to Allow Members to Volunteer to Continue Serving and Permit Continued Virtual GPAC Meetings Following Rescission of the COVID-19 State of Emergency which Will End the More Permissive AB 361 Teleconference Rules and Finding that this Action is not a “Project” Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5) Councilmembers asked questions of staff.
here as chair of the criminal justice committee for Sonoma County NAACP I want to say that my heart goes out to the Montgomery School Community however there has been a push county-wide where folks are co-opting this tragedy and trying to elevate that and SRO would have prevented uh that death unfortunately no one knows but we have seen data and real experience lived experiences in other parts of the country will wear sros don't save lives the SRO program is expensive we're talking about 200k per year per officer so you can at least um rather than that you can provide two to three Mental Health Professions for the cost of one SRO for the year so let's say um we entertain the idea of the sros for our schools data in Sonoma County tell us other otherwise black students graduation rate has dropped down to 64.5 percent uh graduation rates for lower income students students of color and students with disabilities have a decrease during the pandemic and graduation rates for latinx students have gone from almost 88 to 80.5 percent those are real data so if we did want to entertain the SRO initiative uh most of these kids wouldn't even be able to pursue that profession so racism is the root of a health and economic disparities inequity does not happen by accident let's not be part of the school to prison pipeline I'd rather invest in parks and recs rather than militarization also when are we going to hear about the independent police auditor process I hope that you can at least
2 City Manager Peggy Flynn, City Attorney Eric Danly, and Community Development Director Brian Oh, responded to Council questions. Mayor McDonnell opened public comment. Dave Alden Kris Rebillot Veronica O.
Mayor McDonnell closed public comment. Motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-027 N.C.S. made by Councilmember Healy, seconded by Vice Mayor Cader Thompson. Vote: Carried 7-0 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Councilmember Cader Thompson, Councilmember Healy, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: None Absent: None Recused: None 1.
become transparent with who you chose and how you chose your panelists for interviews because I can already tell you it was not transparent because you chose people who don't rock the boat when it comes to holding police accountable thank you have a good night thank you the next speaker is Eric Allen please admit yourself and begin two minutes welcome thank you for allowing me my name is Eric Allen I grew up in Petaluma and the woman high school graduate um as a constituent um I urge you to consider a resolution for the right to arrest the animals from abuse there are people facing felonies for exposing horrific conditions and for rescuing injured and dying animals and inside factory farms here in Petaluma these rescues and the investigations right after them took place in federal women in 2018 in 2019 prelimited preliminary trials recently have wrapped up and folks who rescued and provided Veterinary cares to these neglected animals for face few years in prison for acts of communist and compassion Berkeley and San Francisco have condemned these prosecutions and put forward a resolution in support of them I urge for the women's city council to consider a resolution protecting those who act in compassion for Animals they've reached out to police the animal control and to the Sheriff's Department before they decided to help the abused animals themselves Federal men needs a right to rest in resolution not just to the activists and for the tens of thousands of farm animals that
are here thank you thank you the last speaker is Susan Kirks please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes thank you and good evening mayor and city council I'm speaking tonight about your unanimous approval of the proposed 28 luxury home development at Scott Ranch the park extension as part of that and the minimal to almost non-existent review and discussion of the final environmental impact report comparing that to Dr Sean Smallwood's extensive conservation biological report two of your planning Commissioners Darren rockason and Blake Cooper contributed substantial enough concerns to the commission review that your Council had a responsibility to learn how to review environmental impact reports compare those to findings submitted for the record contradicting the cities and developers Consultants findings and discuss and make decisions based on that findings of fact the fact that a question arose as to why so much emphasis was on wildlife and the eir reflect to the possible inexperience of reviewing eirs so much emphasis was on Wildlife because this land is a very and very very very important site for survival of multiple species including the threatened California red-legged frog the threat by one public speaker at the hearing that this is it or else in other words more houses would go in is simply false based on the biological resources chapter alone in the feir your Council should not have made findings to certify the feir when a land is wild it is not degraded when
Minutes of the City Council/PCDSA Regular Meeting of February 27, 2023 2. Tentative Agendas for the City Council/PCDSA Special Meeting of March 13, 2023 and the City Council/PCDSA Regular Meeting of March 20, 2023 5.
Resolution Ratifying Award of Contract, Accepting Completion of the Emergency Restoration of the Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility Outfall Relocation Project as Performed by Coastside Concrete & Construction, Inc., Authorizing Release of the 10% Retention and Finding This Item Has Been Addressed in a Previously Certified Environmental Impact Report and No Separate, Subsequent, or Supplemental Review is Warranted.
humans do not encroach and cattle can be removed even if erosion exists the land is better off being a Wild Sanctuary than what you approved there was and is a path to full conservation for this property thank you there are no other speakers at this time thank you very much and that concludes our general public comment for the evening and let's move to council comments and tonight I'd like to start to my left and with our council member schribs foreign page here okay so on last Friday I attended the um the North Bay Watershed associations meeting um and it was totally dedicated to uh for listening to a grant writer who had been investigating all of the um the monies that might be coming in from infrastructure for the U.S and also for the state water funding that's coming in um so to try to prepare for our whole North Bay as to how do we handle the this monies coming in and how do we grab some of it basically so this was uh Sherry lusic who is a grant writer and she reported that there's going to be over 110 billion dollars from the federal government coming out for infrastructure it was also going to be over 8 billion dollars available from the state for for water funding and or for other funding and 40 of that is going to be available for water and water type projects coming in so that um so that's 118 billion dollars that's going to be distributed for in within this next year and uh this is all going a lot of it's coming through Federal grant agencies um they're six or
seven that was promoted for like Cal Fire forestry and the like and um and even in there as was mentioned uh the pfos there's even part of the 110 billion 10 billion dollars has been even designated for fee sauce at pfas pfos contaminants research and projects is also even included in on that um so just to add that in there um and unfortunately because the monies are from the magician there there's time frames the time frames are going to be very fast uh when they get reported when the grants come available there's only going to be 45 to 60 days to submit applications for these large projects and these are going to be large projects needing lots of work to be put in so basically the message is get yourselves ready now there's going to be a Feeding Frenzy by the entire nation of all the cities are going to go after these monies and so to get these travel ready projects ready to go and to in order to apply and working on Partnerships with other cities regionals to get As Nice of an application and as strong of application as possible going after small projects for small little cities by itself probably aren't going to cut it so just as a reminder on that but that was someone who's been working on grants like this most of her life and grant writing is in the middle of it um so anyway there's going to be a scramble we need to get into that scramble um so cooperation versus competing with our neighbor cities for sure all right and I recommend it's things like uh uh Regional
6. Resolutions (1) Authorizing the City Manager to Submit an Application for Prohousing Designation to the California Department of Housing and Community Development and (2) Authorizing the City Manager to Submit a Prohousing Incentive Pilot Program Application and to Execute Any Related Funding Agreements if Awarded and Finding This Action is Not a Project Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15378 7.
projects dredging flood management the pfos Water catchment Systems um there's all sorts of things we could do and then another reminder just came in uh the u.sun just came in if you notice the news about trying to save the oceans so that was big on news today it's hard to protect the entire ocean going on right now so folks are working on that um there is a also from the another meetings um we'll be attending here shortly but it was announced that on April 17th the school district has a special committee on environment education and literacy and April 17th is going to be a date for um uh sort of a presentation of what the schools are doing for environmental literacy and education so it may be worthwhile to put on our calendars to see how um where that where that's going and I am participating with the um with that work group from this uh from the schools and um just and one of the announcements was made was that American Canyon has uh created a commission um that not only includes transport sustainability but also open space which has also been mentioned here has a request so that was they actually did it over there in American Canyon okay that's my report for that meeting that's all I have thank you council member Posey okay excuse me um I had no major meetings but did have some minor beatings of the funding and evaluation Committee of the Continuum of Care our County homeless group and we're trying very hard to find a way to to compare different homeless providers in terms
Resolution Approving the Annual Housing Successor Agency Report July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022, pursuant to Health and Safety Code §34176.1 and Directing Staff to Submit the Annual Successor Agency Report to the State Department of Housing and Community Development (“HCD”) as an attachment to the Housing Element Annual Progress Report and to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) and Finding This Item is Exempt from CEQA Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15387(b)(5) Mayor McDonnell opened public comment.
Diana Kingsbury Margaret DeMatteo Kendall Jarvis Maddy Hirshfield Mayor McDonnell closed public comment. Motion to adopt the Consent Calendar (Resolution Nos. 2023-028 N.C.S. accepting completion of the emergency restoration of the Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility Outfall Relocation Project; 2023-029 N.C.S.
of you know where we should give the most money that we're receiving from HUD from the feds from the state and we're finding this to be very difficult in the sense that each of the groups the of the non-profits in our County that provides homeless care seems to have grown up in a vacuum if you will you know without um such that there are are no job descriptions that are the same from non-profit non-profit that there's no similar definition of a job so that and then also there in terms of the funding that they already have um you might find that they're able to exit people to permanent housing for a much lower amount of money in some in some non-profits and then find that it's because they own their building and their competition doesn't know they're building hard to compare those two folks so we're working hard on that if anyone has any ideas contact me through the city thanks thank you council member now um the airport commission meeting um last week we had a report by the airport manager and he reported that the hangar that was in a collision with an aircraft last fall is um getting repaired they're getting a contractor and all the insurance worked out so if you fly in and it will get fixed soon and there was a response letter that was sent um from the city regarding the complaint at the airport and it was sent to the FAA also some trees at Prince Park 45 in fact will be trimmed um because it could be an issue for ply pilots flying in or out of Petaluma airport and the
authorizing an application for Prohousing Designation; 2023-030 N.C.S. authorizing an application for Prohousing Incentive Pilot Program; and 2023-031 N.C.S. approving the Annual Housing Successor Agency Report) with an amendment to the Tentative Agenda for March 20, 2023, to remove the Tenant Protection Ordinance first reading, made by Councilmember Healy, seconded by Councilmember Pocekay.
rooster run trees will be addressed by the rooster run um maintenance crew and Marie at the oh and on March 18th is our first display day out at the airport this is the third Saturday of the month starting in March for 2023 and good news we're they're in talks with um the two Niner Diner reopening in on the display there will be we hope food trucks out there to feed the public um Marie at the PDA the Petaluma Downtown Association asked me to talk about better an egg's day it's our 40th Ruby anniversary with the theme there's no place like home the parade this year is on April 22nd it's a year at I mean it's a month let me start over it's a week ahead and then the kickoff will be on the um 15th and that will be at the museum with The Good Egg award the Grand Marshal and the sponsors so if you want to enter in the parade the deadline is the 13th of March late deadline is the 18th and they still need lots of volunteers and lots of sponsors the antique Fair will be the following Sunday after the better next day parade and if you want any information or have a booth at the antique Fair please contact admit admin at petalumaddowntown.com and the other thing I wanted to bring up for our next week's meeting um someone I think the zoom caller talked about sros possibly coming back to the high schools I'd really like to talk about that at our next meeting the goal setting and um how maybe the police present or give a report on how that we could work that into the budget and for the
3 Councilmember Healy further requested staff agendize the Tenant Protection Ordinance first reading for the first meeting in April and the second reading of the ordinance for the second meeting in April.
future for our youth in Petaluma and that's my report thank you council member kater Thompson well I haven't had any committee meetings the Planning Commission my next Planning Commission is March 14th and I'm going to leave it at that because we have a long night thank you councilmember Healey thank you no um meetings to report but I can report from the water world that both of our major regional reservoirs Lake Sonoma and Lake Mendocino are now over 100 percent full on on the water supply pool and well having we'll be having more conversations in the near future about how to message with the public about the drought and water restrictions so thank you thank you councilmember barnacle thank you Mr Mayor um I have had a fairly busy couple weeks or week I guess um pbac meeting was canceled so that was a good thing um or not good thing but give me a night back we had a day-long meeting with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District it was our annual goal setting meeting um as a new board member it was definitely a different sort of experience in the morning we heard from a youth organizer and the EPA advisor on environmental justice and in the afternoon we had a panel of representatives from the bay area's Fort ab617 communities which are like the most impacted environmental justice communities this is East Oakland West Oakland Bayview Hunter's Point enrichment and they just sort of talked about the um helped ground Us in the reasons why we're there grounded Us in the
increased cancer rates increased asthma rates that they feel in those communities and just really sort of helped to set the set the stage for the entire board in terms of why we're why the the Bay Area Air Quality Management District exists and it was really powerful really really powerful um also had a board meeting with Sonoma clean power then um probably we had programs update um and we approved three contracts for um with geothermal providers they were each 20 megawatts to start with with the option to go up to 200 megawatts or Beyond I think notably there was one contract there was two contracts with geothermal only companies and one contract with Chevron and it was a split vote seven to four with um I would say over half of the people who voted for it were considering voted against it just because they really aren't um being seen as a good corporate Citizen and despite their sort of bragging about spending 10 billion between now and 2028 on clean energy they're spending 17 billion dollars this year on oil and gas exploration so that was an interesting part of that meeting and then last Friday I participated in the first Friday at five bike ride it was a pretty good turnout with uh considering it was pretty frigid out and I think the the notable thing was just people getting excited about walking roll to school week in May and I'm wondering what the city was going to be doing to promote that that's all for me thank you um it's been a busy one week um I spoke to the
Vote: Carried 7-0 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Councilmember Cader Thompson, Councilmember Healy, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: None Absent: None Recused: None PUBLIC HEARINGS AND MATTERS FOR CONSIDERATION 9.
Resolution Accepting the Annual Housing Element Progress Report for the 2022 Calendar Year and Authorizing Staff to Submit the Report to the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the Governor's Office of Planning and Research and Finding This Item is Not a” Project” Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15378(b)(5) Housing Manager, Karen Shimizu, presented the staff report.
government class over at Casa Grande and and uh and just continue to be impressed how engaged Juniors and seniors can be with City activities I also attended the cool cities 5th street bike Boulevard meeting and the cool block captains for for that area are visiting a radical green transformation of their street but the city's bike Boulevard project will stay on schedule while other topics are explored let's see attended the Mid Penn open house for their proposed Washington Boulevard project and they were showing the neighbors the architectural renderings and showing that what Petaluma is doing to have more affordable non-profit housing in in the works and then I also um I'm just tickled as I go around town to see safe Street improvements popping up everywhere uh on Magnolia near Petaluma Boulevard North things that help it easy make it safer for pedestrians to get through crosswalks or other um of our mode shift issues and you probably notice them in your neighborhood too new new improvements in the corners and that would be my report for the evening I'd like to pass it to our city manager for thank you mayor thank you Council and Community to the gentleman that had the questions about visibility amendments we hear you and we are doing some Outreach and focus groups shortly and are drafting some amendments based on that feedback for the code requirements that should come back to council sometime in the summer our independent police auditor we're planning on bringing that
Mayor McDonnell opened public comment; receiving none, he closed public comment. Councilmembers discussed the item. Motion to adopt Resolution No. 2023-032 N.C.S. made by Councilmember Healy, seconded by Vice Mayor Cader Thompson.
contract to council first meeting in April and we did have folks from our ad hoc Community advisory committee sitting on that selection panel and was based upon the request for a proposal that we brought to council so that criteria is transparent and as far as the sros the school resource officers we've been in a lot of discussions with our Petaluma City schools and talking about a variety of ways to approach that but I would I'd probably save that conversation council member now for the budget versus the goals and priorities but we can have that conversation again next next week and touch upon that and then some good news um councilmember Healey mentioned that our water supply levels are full and so Petaluma is currently in stage four of its water shortage contingency plan but we'll be coming to Council on April 17th to revisit the current water used restrictions in response to our water supply recovery the city of Petaluma is really thankful to our community for working together achieve water savings during this recent water shortage emergency and over the last 18 months Petaluma reduced water use by 26 percent saving nearly 1 billion gallons of water which is pretty impressive so big thanks to our community and then finally the city learned last week that we were successfully awarded uh over two hundred thousand dollars for planning Grant to help us with our integrated water master plan and once we are done with that effort there's construction funds available through the
state so we can Implement those plans so good news and that concludes my comments thank you thank you that that is good news uh let's see moving to the consent calendar for the evening is there anyone on the council who'd like to pull any of the items I like to pull number four number four and council member Healey number three number three okay so um let's do that uh I have them for separate uh conversation and um for purpose of this um we can ask Council if there are any questions from Council um on any of those items or will there be just com more in the comments field it's a question um Council membership comments will come soon yep okay and so then I'd like to uh take this to the uh public comment on the consent calendar which um I have here one two three um I have four cards for um for this item and I'd like to check with our clerk to see if we had uh comments from the public submitted prior mayor yes we did we received 17 comments related to item two on the consent calendar and three items related to three comments related to item four on the consent calendar those are both posted online with the agenda packet thank you very much and I'd like to go to moderator and ask her if we have anyone wishing to speak from the zoom audience on the consent calendar items the members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards the clerk's desk if they have not already done so members of the public attending online who wish to speak to an item on the consent
Vote: Carried 7-0 Yes: Mayor McDonnell, Councilmember Barnacle, Councilmember Cader Thompson, Councilmember Healy, Councilmember Nau, Councilmember Pocekay, Councilmember Shribbs No: None Absent: None Recused: None Mayor McDonnell announced he would be recusing from Item 8 due to a conflict of interest and left the Council Chamber.
Vice Mayor Cader Thompson called for a break at 8:05 p.m. and thereafter reconvened the meeting at 8:13 p.m. WORKSHOP 8. Workshop to Receive Stakeholder Input and Public Comment, and for Council Deliberation and Direction on Potential Amendments to Chapter 6.60 Entitled “Residential Tenancy Protections” of the Petaluma Municipal Code and Finding This Item is Exempt from CEQA pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15387(b)(5) City Attorney, Eric Danly, presented the staff report along with Director of Economic Development and Open Government, Ingrid Alverde, and Assistant City Attorney, Dylan Brady.
calendar should raise their virtual hand or press star 9 if participating by phone at this point we have one hand raised wonderful that's a total of five public commenters I'd like to start with those who are in the room this evening and I'd like to start with Diana Kingsbury to be followed by Margaret de Matteo [Music] hello good evening council members and staff my name is Diana Kingsbury and I am an organizer with the Sonoma County Tenants Union and the North Bay organizing project um I am speaking here tonight on this particular issue of the schedule or the agenda for March 20th um we know that there's one city council member who's going to be out of the country and we also know that this is only two weeks after this very meeting that we're in right now um where you're receiving the input from the survey so we want to make sure that you have enough time to really go through the Amendments um understand the ordinance and also to make sure that this incredibly important issue um does not have its vote arbitrarily affected by the absence of a city council member we want to make sure that um you know the amount of work that's been put into this over over two years does not just get thrown away because of some arbitrary reason like someone being out of the country so we ask that you move the agenda or move the vote on Just Cause to be at least in April to give you enough time to review the Amendments and to have all council members in in the country to be able to vote on it
Councilmembers asked questions of staff. Vice Mayor Cader Thompson opened public comment. Daniel Raff Arthur Newberry ceded time to Margaret DeMatteo Andrea Pompei ceded time to Margaret DeMatteo Margaret DeMatteo Rollin Bruce Carolyn Gavriloff David Jimenez Kerry Davison 4 Tom Maunder Jennifer Rihl Korin Robles Sunny Noh Joe Ansel Steven Curtis Michael Titone Mary Reynolds Pat McDonnell Laura Tallent Rachel Marcus Jojo Oliver Blake Hooper Corrie Johnson Helaine B Dorenfeld Cynthia George Larry Pullin Todd Mendoza Jonah Kanug ceded time to Diana Kingsbury Diana Kingsbury Joe Schneider Scott Shelley Keith T Becker Jeanette Breauz Twila Sanfilippo Lori Alden Justin Milligan Pamela Phimister Esaia Gonzalez Clayton Engstrom Dana Breaux Smith Angelina Soldatos Jesse Goldstein ceded time to Paige D.
and I just want to also say that you know it takes a lot you know we say this a lot but Bear's repeating it takes a lot for people who are um who are tenants who are parents who are working multiple jobs sometimes working early in the morning to get out here and to stay as long as these meetings tend to go I really appreciate the city for providing a space for parents as well as interpretation services and we were disappointed that the just cause item got moved tonight because we understand people want to go home when they need to get some sleep but that applies as well to a lot of tenants here tonight so just would ask you to keep that in mind thank you thank you Margaret De Mateo to be followed by Dave Alden hi good evening City staff and City Council Members Margaret dematteo housing policy attorney with legal aid I just want to Second what Diana said mostly um and urge that the tentative agenda for March 20th be amended to push the vote for the first three or the first reading of you know whatever you guys decide tonight will have to be drafted and have to come back to you and that process takes time this whole process took a lot of time so we would just ask that you think about you know making sure that City staff has the appropriate amount of time to make meaningful changes to the ordinance based on the feedback that you're getting um and and I might just remind you that the sunset is July 1st so technically you know you could bring this back for first reading at the
Paige D. Sara Sass Zahyra Garcia Pam Daniels Diana Mariscal Kendall Jarvis Ronit Rubinoff Joshua Pinaula Vice Mayor Cader Thompson closed public comment. Councilmember Barnacle moved, and Councilmember Pocekay seconded, a motion to continue the meeting past 11:00 p.m.; the motion passed unanimously.
beginning of June and have your second reading or sorry at the in May and have your second reading by June 1st in order for it to not lapse so there's plenty of time let's make sure everyone's here um so that there is a full Quorum thank you thank you Dave Alden to be followed by Chris riba Loop good evening I'm speaking with regard to item four in December 1941 only weeks after Pearl Harbor and with Nazi Germany still preying on Atlantic Shipping Winston Churchill boarded a British Battleship for a trip to the U.S he took that risk because of his need to meet FDR face to face ingratiating letters tourists demanding telegrams and special envoys were no longer enough to Churchill personal engagement with his principal partner in World War II was essential I won't equate the Petaluma General plan to defeat Hitler but the same principles apply Zoom is a marvelous tool and changed for the better how we move through the pandemic but it's not a substitute for in-person relationships thus I don't support retaining the current meeting format for the general plan advisory committed more effective relationships between and amongst committee members planning staff and consultants if we are to give Petaluma the best possible General plan in this time of constraints and opportunities whether it's holding some meetings in person more broadly noticing working group meetings for public participation or other ideas not yet conceived we need to share the same space with each other more often I
Councilmembers provided direction to staff on the following discussion prompts: • Single family units should be exempt • Units subsidized by govt. should not be exempt • Exempt “temporary tenancies” (sabbatical) • Tenants protected day 1 of tenancy • Mirror the TPA’s just causes – “waste” & “subletting” • Remove “threat of violent crime” just cause • Add additional just causes for “Tenant at sufferance” & “Sale of Property” 5 • Breach of Lease should exempt subletting when # of occupants not in violation of lease, family, or State law • Eliminate “unsanitary conditions” as a just cause • Strengthen the Owner Move In Just Cause by only allowing one unit per property • Strengthen “substantial rehab” just cause by allowing tenant to enter agreement at similar unit if available • Eliminate the Ellis Act and reduce the length of owner right of first refusal but maybe increase relocation • Increase the relocation costs for no-fault • Decrease the relocation costs for no-fault • Eliminate the option of crediting rent in lieu of relocation payment • Remove the Educators and Student year protections for OMI/Ellis Act • Eliminate tenant’s ability to recover attorney’s fees if prevail • Eliminate the City’s authority to enforce violations of the ordinance ADJOURNMENT Vice Mayor Cader Thompson adjourned the meeting at 12:40 a.m.
asked the council to continue this evening's meeting while we look for better approaches thank you for your attention thank you very much Chris riebling good evening council members mayor I'm also here to address item number four as a gpac member I also implore you to look for options so that we can meet at least sometimes in person I agree with Dave uh Zoom was was great during the pandemic valuable now that things are loosening up we really need to be able to be face to face and have a chance to talk and to ask stupid questions and to get feedback from each other and to have that give and take it would make the general plan process much more robust more enjoyable and I think it really does um increase the odds of getting the best plan for the future of Petaluma so I know it's a Sticky Wicket there's a lot of people it's a lot to manage but I think with some out of the box thinking that the process can be rebooted perhaps the working groups can be beefed up there's got to be a way to include the public and also allow the gpac members to do their best work so thank you very much we have a zoom comment do I recall or yes you have to um speakers are reminded to be respectful in their comments and that this meeting is being translated as a reminder please pause between sentences for the translators the first speaker is Veronica oh please unmute yourself and begin your three minutes good evening Council staff and Community I would like to concur with Chris rebelow and Dave Alden
on the stance that in-person meetings for the gpac is of great importance um we have many ways we can communicate we no longer have the um constraints of the pandemic and we really need to make this as robust and as interactive and participatory as we can so I implore you to please make General plan meetings public um an in-person and have their more more flexibility for time needed for specific subject matters such as um land use scenarios and writing and working groups thank you so much for your time thank you the next speaker is Kendall Jarvis please unmute yourself and begin your three minutes hi thank you so much my name is Kendall Jarvis and I am a disaster relief attorney with legal aid at Sonoma County I'm here today mostly to support my colleague and the community of Petaluma in relationship to the just cause ordinance and that discussion I believe that this really presents an opportunity for your community and our community to set an incredible Kendall I'm going to ask if you can please keep your comments related to the consent calendar items if you're talking about the tenant protection Workshop that will come later on the agenda thank you nope sorry one second so my point is I would like to Echo the these statements already made that if that could be pushed into the future for discussion in April or May I think that that would be incredibly beneficial because it provides an opportunity for the community to engage in the process as they already have done so today
with the hope that it would be heard so my main point is that here having that push further out so there can be a quorum and that there could be an adequate representation of the people that will be impacted will be most valuable for the community thank you thank you and the last speaker is Maddie hirschfield please unmute yourself and begin your three minutes evening um this is Maddie hirschfield I'm the political director with the North Bay labor Council um I'm speaking on the agenda uh for March 20th I agree with previous comments that um that should be uh put off so that you have awful Council compliment to make that decision so I'm asking that's put off that be put off at least until April um that's it thank you thank you Mr Mayor there are no other hands raised thank you very much and that concludes and closes our public comment on the consent calendar for the evening and they'll bring you back to council I'd like to start with item three discussion uh council member Healey thank you so this is the resolution authorizing Professional Services agreement for an EV charging infrastructure master plan [Music] um and the original staff report did not have a cost estimate but that was revised and the cost estimate was provided and it's um kind of a stunning number it's four hundred and sixty thousand dollars for a report that doesn't create a single charging station anywhere in town and um I I'm having real heartburn over the spending our precious dollars on something that's
just a paper pushing exercise and my preference would be to pull this off the agenda tonight and direct staff to come back with something that's far more cost effective um and um but if people want to proceed with that I'll respectfully vote no thank you do we have any other comments on item three council member shrimps um I'll have to agree with councilman Healy that at that price tag point on that I didn't realize that that was there um however this is a huge movement toward getting EV charging going in studies probably have to be done as to what to be done first um but sometimes I've been a long advocate of uh just doing it um and so there's places where we actually just need we know we need uh charge stations in a lot of locations and we don't need to be told but we definitely need there um if maybe again review that for the cost Effectiveness as uh councilman Healy suggested might be a good idea and bring this on back for that but we would like to see a little bit more detail on why it's four hundred and sixty thousand dollars um like I made comment earlier about the flood or the panels for solar panels over on the water at 300 000 K just for Consulting be nice to know the details behind that so I'm fully in favor of charging stations for sure I'd like to get in as fast as possible and we need to have a program let's start doing it in many places I I got two at the school with ten thousand dollar Grant uh years back so if I can get two for ten thousand dollars and
quartered into a solar panel system um maybe we can just start doing that now and and then have this master plan done in consecutively at the same time maybe hopefully at a cheaper price council member Barnacle yeah I was just wondering if we could have staff respond to the council comments or questions I kind of have the same thing in sticker shock thanks thank you um I've got both Rihanna Frank our climate action manager and Diane Ramirez the project manager good evening mayor and council members my name is Rhianna Frank I'm the climate action manager for the city of Petaluma and I'm actually really excited to be talking to you about this master plan this evening it the completion of this plan will really help Petaluma in achieving its carbon neutrality goals by 2030 the work that is being proposed within this master plan will provide multi-faceted benefits for the city of Petaluma more than just design work for EV charging infrastructure the scope will include energy grid Capacity Analysis for 21 identified sites which will help inform current and future solar and Energy Efficiency projects we have solar projects currently in the works that we are uncertain about the energy grid capacity for and this master plan the way that the scope was written will provide us the data to help us move those projects forward this work will help City staff to better understand the load capacity at each of these facilities and will inform staff on how to prioritize these projects to help us
meet our climate goals the the scope includes that the sage Consultants will act as a liaison for City staff and PG e and Sonoma clean power to help Implement any upgrades and new services that may be needed to increase capacity at the analyzed facilities Consultants will through this master plan determine the quantity type and power level of chargers recommended at each facility to meet Fleet electrification needs Consultants will help identify and manage Grant and incentive applications this will be a direct savings for the city as each grant that we apply for costs an average of seven thousand dollars in consultant fees the Consultants have already identified seven grants that they will help the city apply for which would cost forty nine thousand dollars approximately if we were to pursue these grants with grant writers so that is a direct savings that will be coming out of this master plan this master plan will provide both the preliminary design work as well as the engineering design work um for us to go out to bid for the construction and installation project once this master plan is completed and the consult Consultants estimate that the master plan could be completed within four months of a signed contract um Diane Ramirez is there any additions that you would like to add or speak to no you did great Rihanna council members mayor do you have follow-up questions Barnacles that answer your question my other question I guess did the climate commission look at this and
comment on the scope the climate action commission has known about this and I've been very open with them and throughout their process they are excited to see this moving forward council member schribs uh this question was this put out to a bid from a variety of Consultants or was this consulted just a one-off this was a competitive bid it was um and I even because of the lack of Interest initially I extended it by one month and the the price tag on it was actually significantly more than it is now Diane Ramirez and I met with Consultants multiple times to refine the scope and to and to be able to bring you a better priced master plan than what was originally offered in a proposal um I know I've talked to other folks about what it takes to charge up especially if you start adding vehicles uh to a network and try to either pull off energy to do charging of especially large trucks and a large truck will essentially pull the same amount of energy down as large huge large office complexes on that single line and so there is a really serious matter of how much energy gets used on charging up large Vehicles so um and it says the infrastructure making sure that it's going to work and then eventually hopefully the master plan will also include reverse charging so that if we do have large Vehicles being charged up which takes lots of energy to do that that it can be reversed because that's there's new plans and technology that can do that so I want to make sure that that's part of the
master plan too that that's included a reverse charging system so that and that the grid is capable so this sounds much more reasonable to me is that a question of staff there was a question in there everything reversibility um to be can that be included as well within the master plan I would need to speak further with the Consultants to see if that can be added to the scope and I would just like to also mention that in the city of Petaluma we have aging facilities and there is a real concern about energy grid capacity especially as we look towards electrification to meet our climate goals and the data that we would get from this master plan is really necessary as we move forward with solar projects and electrification of our facilities councilmember Posey thank you thank you thank you mayor um yeah I just wanted it I mean I think these these grid issues are are important and complex and uh gosh maybe I've been here too long now but I think when you use the word Consultants you're up to a couple hundred thousand right away so I I think I think it's going to be money well spent thank you I guess my question would be um is the burden of these studies on PG e or the burden on this on the city and is it um is it typical of other cities and the paths were all following towards EB charging I've actually had multiple cities ask for a copy of this RFP the city of Santa Rosa was the the first and I spoke with Tasha Wright of energy of Santa Rosa Waters energy and sustainability
program today and or Department today and she said that they were meeting to discuss our RFP that we had submitted out to bid so this work is something that other jurisdictions are going to be looking towards for us as an example and they're already starting to take notice can I ask that part of that same question is this is not Paige news responsibility to determine this it will not be PG E's responsibility the Consultants will be the liaison so it will take the burden off of staff to make sure to identify the new service or the upgrades that need to happen and they will work with the Consultants will work with PG e to make sure that these upgrades happen that was one of the benefits of this scope because staff capacity is so impacted that this will do a lot of the heavy heavy lifting on our behalf thank you council member barnacle yeah um I'll support the the item tonight my my concerns with this are that um I can't tell if it does include bi-directional analysis and that's going to be important if we're talking about adding the type of load that council member stribs mentioned and when we talk about like the 21 facilities I just don't um in their aging facilities like doing an EV charging master plan for facilities that might be out of date things like that I would just ask that um take this to the the climate commission and make sure that we look it through the the scope and work to um please you know make sure that we're thinking through like all the resilience issues
and things like that um and if there are let's say questionable facilities before we start spending money on the analysis and things like that I'd like to um you know confirm before we just move forward so that's it I'll move the item I had a little difficulty with the motion being made the uh was the motion to approve as is or is the motion to first go to the climate Commission I'll move it to prove it as it is there's a motion to approve the item as is is there a second second bike I will say council member posakay uh clerk may we have a roll call Mayor as a matter of order this was pulled off the agenda so can we just confirm that there are no members of the public wishing to speak on this item I don't have any speaker cards I don't believe but uh Alyssa can you ask the zoom audience please um I um I opened the public comment for the entire uh comment and I think that provided the opportunity to the public on all items and I'm satisfied and I'll ask the council for satisfied to proceed thank you thank you but thanks for having my back on then um so we have a motion on the floor barnacle yes Cader Thompson yes Healey no McDonnell um yes no yes post okay yes shrimps yes the motion passes six to one with Healy voting no thank you very much moving to item four uh council member cater Thompson my concern with item four is as it I wasn't on the general plan committee and we never met each other and I've actually met some people recently and I didn't even know that they were on
the general plan committee with me so it's very different when you're looking at a zoom compared to having actually inner connections with humans it is the guiding document for the city for what 20-25 years and I think I would like to see more of a hybrid system and I would like to I just we've never really met and I think it's really important if you've been on a committee for over two years it would be nice to actually connect with somebody to know what they do what are their interests how they interconnect within all the Committees within the subcommittees within the general plan and I would like to see how that could be accomplished okay any other council member schribs um I was also on the gpac for for two years before uh joining here and um it was a wonderful experience to do that during covid I agree with the comments that were made the other gpac members uh made up here uh about the need for in person because I've watched the last couple meetings and they've devolved a little bit like a lot of the zoo meetings do to more like presentations rather than really good interactive Workshop type situation and I would like to see that improved as a process and having at this point it is the phase it's going to go through now is review editing a lot of detail type of work needs to get done and doing a lot of presentations to a large group in a zoom meeting is not a good process for efficiency I think in the gpac I would like to see a a shift in in the whole thing I would
request that the gpac members really come up with their own recommendation as to what to do I think as it is this what we're saying yes we can move it into a zoom situation but it still has the option of meeting in person I believe so it's still optional and I think the gpac members who are here and the ones that are that I know from the meetings will be very supportive of not only going to have at least hybrid or partial in person but also at this point to meet that deadlines that we're after possibly even doubling up so that the work groups need to be expanded to be more active they need a lot more participation we had 20 people sign up for the five spots and I would like to remind those 20 or plus people who applied to go ahead and start participating both live and in Zoom there's no real restriction you can't that you can't and I'd like to see the work groups expanded more so this whole process could be improved not just put into Zoom from here on out I think that was that would be the wrong thing to do at this time but let the work group resolve how that wants to operate and and make it much more efficient they know how to do it and there's some fabulous Talent on that gpac for the folks so I'd recommend that we pass this at the moment but then let let the work group um figure out how best to conduct themselves from this point forward council member posake um yeah I I sympathize with with the commenters I I think that there is gains to be made by meeting in person but I
think when 30 percent of the people say they can't do it um there's there's more than minuscule Equity issues here uh because you know we we all have experience with uh who it is it has more trouble you know it's somebody with two jobs it's somebody with uh young children at home so so uh I am concerned I think uh I I I I I think it's a decent idea to to pass this as is with uh with uh recommendation that there's some internal discussion about what can be done but uh I think we have to think about the equity issues as well thanks and um you know I concur that uh that there's a tremendous challenge to trying to do work on of this nature on zoom and that uh you know the interest of folks to meet together and and uh work in an in-person environment it needs to be respected as does those who can't come in and I think we find ourselves in a pickle and a pickle is partially a resource problem uh you know what we have facilities to deal with of uh on on hybrid and that's why the proposal is um headed in the direction it is um I'd like to know if there are more options or we can take it to the next level and thank you mayor and and thank you for the thoughtful conversation uh this item tonight before he does not preclude in person in fact staff already has planned that there would be some be a lot of in person especially due to the work that the gpac is expected to do this year which is all the policy framework so it doesn't preclude it it just allows for the gpac to continue to meet
if they need to on zoom and so Eric I don't know if you want to get into the sure um thank you Peggy and Council and further discussion I just wanted to briefly um touch on why this is before the council and I think a couple of you have already touched on it um now that the um the governor's emergency order in response to covid has expired that means the relaxed rules under ab361 for conducting teleconferenced legislative body meetings without um permitting members of the public to permit from the remote locations from which the the legislative body members are participating have also expired along with it and and as a couple of you mentioned in the um and is in the staff report and staff learned from reaching out to the members it looks like if to to the extent going forward live meetings would be required there'd be a loss of about 30 percent of the current gpac members and it looks like um there's a majority a pretty healthy majority of members that prefer to be able to continue meeting virtually so this action would allow that by but by making the gpac um a a non-bronic body allowing them to meet as they had which as Peggy mentioned and um and also councilmember shrubs does not preclude live meetings um but but again it would allow continuity and none loss of those members and and it's staff's thought I think and and Brian oh our new community development director can elaborate that it's that continuity among the members that's so important because um the gpac I think was
always conceived as a as an important volunteer community member or study group to work with staff and the consultant says the general plan documents were developed as one source of community input among others to help with that process and so loss of that much continuity I think could be significant and that's why we wanted to create this option for moving forward um and so that's that's that's really the thinking behind that and if there are questions I'll be happy to address them and I don't know if Brian has anything he'd like to add or or Peggy about logistics because as you've seen at some of our meetings here in these Chambers which are the most robust in terms of hybrid meeting capacity it's something that still a lot of agencies including much larger ones are not doing um it's it's um and bearing in mind that we have to um to support all of the city council subordinate bodies in response to the um the the expiration of the relaxed teleconferencing rules um not just this one which is the largest so we're navigating all that at the same time so anyway that's that's my answer and I don't know if staff have anything to add there he is thank you City attorney uh Mr mayor council members uh Brian o director of Community Development um all the points that have been made across this diocese today um really great ideas nothing here as our City attorney attest to um the rescission before you today I would preclude any of that um you know one thing that when I think through I
think there's just some ideas about what that potential threshold is when there's a presentation or information that is to be disseminated to the gpac members um you know I think the appropriate forum is absolutely and can be done in a virtual setting I think we've all been part of Zoom meetings where we are squinting and trying to tap the screen to zoom into maps and different figures and infographics I think I do think that there are opportunities and reasons for us to get together and so the action before you today does not preclude any of that in fact it does expand you know there's a point made about Equity implications um should we compel the the 21 person membership to come in person and so we recognize that we recognize the need to be in person um and so moving forward we do have some you know really good ideas and strategies on how to find a balance I think my question um was heading along the path of I know things are not precluded but what would be the pathway or what would be your thought on when the next meeting would be uh hybrid like I mean the community appreciates being in the room you note the values for it um and hybrid is was best best opportunities do we have a path to that or will we stay in this as an alternative so the gpac meets every third Thursday monthly and so since the new members of the gpac have been seated and they have met once virtually um I do think there would be value in setting up an in-person to make that connection two years has been a
long time to be meeting virtually for a 20-plus year visioning exercise um and so I do think that it would be value in whether it's the next meeting or the meeting to follow with the purpose to bring people together in person and then ultimately it's you know we don't want to lose that continuity the two years of work that has gone into the to this effort and so we do want to survey we do want to make sure that this works for the majority of the gpac and so you know that continuity is important the equity implications are important and so the gpac will make those decisions as a group well I remember Thompson I would just hope that the gpac members keep their face on the screen because this has been a problem and I realize you don't have to legally you can you know go off camera but when someone's off camera you don't know what they're doing what they're absorbing and it's a process and so this has been a long-term problem and I know you can't ask people to stay on the video but I think it's also a responsibility for the gpac members to be present thank you and I will be supporting this but what I would like um I'd like it brought back to the council maybe and see where we're going with this council member helix yeah this has been a really good conversation and I appreciate the feedback from staff um and with that I I'm prepared to move the item do we have a second I'll second it it's a motion by Healy second by cater Thompson can we have a roll call vote please Barnacle yes
Cader Thompson yes Healey yes McDonnell yes now yes post okay yes shrimps yes motion passes unanimously thank you um I would like someone to make a motion yes uh councilmember Healey so I will move the rest of the consent calendar but I would like to amend um item two so that the first reading of the tenant protection ordinance is moved off of March 20 so that we can all be here and uh I know this is outside the four corners of what's on agenda item two but I would ask that to be the first meeting in April with the second reading at the second meeting in April and please avoid the first meeting in May because I'll be out of the country so that's my motion I was saying thank you motion by Healy as amended and um second by posa K and and uh council member schribs okay ready for a couple comments please all right uh just so that the three items left five six and seven uh just so folks are aware of some of the good things that are happening in the city because a lot of folks read this note call you what is that uh item and what does it actually say um so an item number five uh we we're spending a 1.8 million dollars to repair necessary pipes that are already uh declining over the Ellis Creek because there's so much water and grit is going through these things they're getting replaced so pipes have life spans and uh so they need to be replaced to function especially waste water needs to be managed well but that also has an implication I also recently heard that um yeah a lot of
our underground pipes are aging so just a good reminder that that pipes do have an age and a lifespan they don't last forever and that's something to think about in the future where we need to put some money on item number six um there is a the pro-housing program is going to start setting up and it's in one more step in the right direction for to get more money for homeless and fair housing so that's a really nice item and item number seven auditing of the housing fund so everything is transparent independent again good goals that we have for the uh from the City of Prior city council that set up for this last year so we're these are all motions and movements for our our goals that we do have so those are good things thank you very much Madam clerkley we have a roll call vote barnacle yes kater Thompson Healey yes McDonnell yes no yes okay yes should yes motion passes unanimously thank you very much and uh now as uh decided earlier we're moving to item nine resolution accepting the annual housing element progress report for the 2022 calendar year authorizing staff to submit the report to the California Department of Housing and Community Development and the governor's office of planning and research and finding that this item is not a project pursuant to sequa um let's see this is Karen Shimizu thank you good evening mayor council members staff and community members I'm going to keep my presentation this evening fairly brief I know we have a very busy agenda so this evening
there's a there is a very comprehensive staff report that's posted online in case someone would like more information we'll also have time for questions this evening we're focused on tonight is our housing element it's our annual progress report next slide foreign so briefly tonight we're going to be doing a presentation discussion of our annual housing element progress report that report is for the calendar year of 2022 so we're kind of looking back at last year and what we were able to accomplish with our policies in in programs I'm going to be highlighting some of our affordable housing projects and looking at our sixth cycle when we refer to our six High cycle you see uh rhna that's our Regional Housing needs assessment currently right now on the city council agenda there's been a lot of conversation about our housing element for the six cycle please keep in mind that tonight what we're talking about is our last progress report for the fifth cycle and then we'll move into brief questions and comments from Council and the public so next slide please so to provide some background the Petaluma housing element was adopted by the city council and certified for the 2015-2023 planning cycle and it was approved by hcd we're required to do an annual progress report in order to maintain the certification of our housing element and with that certification we're able to apply for State funding or be eligible for State funding to support our affordable housing development and programs
with Council reviewing this and considering it for adoption if it is passed this evening we are required to submit it by April 1st to be in compliance with our housing element next slide please briefly this is a slide that demonstrates the activity that we've had with building permits issued in our four income categories so we have very low low moderate and above moderate and the First Column there you can see what our requirements were for the sixth cycle the 199 the 103 the 121 and the 322 for a total of 745 units and when you look down through the years it's listed on our accomplishments and then you see the totals of what we accomplished over that seven year planning period next slide based on that planning you I should have highlighted that from the years 2020 to currently that we've been able to make progress specifically in the areas of our very low in low-income housing units we do that with key Partnerships we work with pep housing Burbank housing Mid Penn and Danko we have several projects people's Village pep River City that have been completed we have projects currently in construction which is mid pen housing which is the 414 Petaluma Boulevard project and we also have the studio Montero project that is in construction right now or rehab being rehabbed with Burbank housing then we also have the Danko group in mid pen with Washington Commons where they have done site acquisition and they're working on pulling together their funding to move those forward I did also
I don't have it there on the slide but as part of the staff report there's an extensive update on all the different policies and programs we have I did want to just highlight a few this last year we were able planning and legal work together we were able to bring forward a resolution that was adopted by the council that provides us to reduce the impact fees in order to support our affordable housing qualified affordable housing developments the pro-housing applying for the pro housing uh program through hcd and seeking funding will give us additional points on competitive highly competitive funding applications as well as provide some funding and then we were also able to last year in June we adopted the city adopted a homeless Services strategic plan which is really helping us in making sure that we're working in Partnership and collaboration with not only the county but our Our Community Partners as well to really have a strategically implementing our homeless Services plans next slide so while this is on the this report is really focused on the fifth cycle what I did want to do is just kind of highlight um with the fifth cycle you can see the numbers up there that we had to complete there's been a lot of discussion it's been brought forward uh in public meetings for consideration but we're currently working through the process of getting Community input on our six cycle but you can see based on what our cycle was last year compared to this upcoming cycle that we're going
to have a lot of a lot of work to do when we're talking about our meeting our affordable housing development the good news is is that we really have established relationships you know we we have a lot of great policies and programs and so in in a lot of affordable housing projects in the pipeline so we have a good start that is a big number but staff is confident is working together with the community will be able to achieve that next slide so before you this evening the auction is we're actually asking Council to consider adopting the resolution accepting the housing element for the calendar year 2022 and authorizing staff to submit the report and with that I will turn it over to council for questions and comments and that's it thank you Kendall thank you very much appreciate the the report any questions from the Council on any of this uh seeing no question seeing a question from council member Healey okay so uh say no questions I'd like to move to uh public comments on this item and I have no cards do we have any uh online prior mayor there are no comments received on this item prior to the meeting thank you and do we have uh can we offer this to the zoom audience please members of the public attending in person should bring their speaker cards the clerk's desk if they have not already done so members of the public attending online who wish to speak to an item to an item on this item should raise their virtual hand or press star nine if participating by phone and there are
no hands raised thank you very much I'd like to bring this back to council for any discussion on this and council member Healey thank you so I'll certainly be supporting this tonight I think most of this information is stuff that um most of us have seen repeatedly over the years um my only comment is that um you know with the various things the various pipeline affordable projects and we're hopeful about all of those um but I think the Burbank project on Petaluma Boulevard South is [Music] um uh has most of the funding it needs and and I would like City staff to be receptive to helping them get the last piece they need so they can actually be under construction because you know they're they're kind of they're way ahead of the curve than most of the other folks in terms of how much funding they've obtained but it's just not quite enough and I'd like to help them get over the finish line so with that I'll move the item and um so we have a motion and uh from Healey and a second from Gator Thompson and uh comment from me and um let's see um I I do love these reports that come out annually because they contain data and it's really fun to read the data um I consider all the arena numbers and and pipeline things to be a little uh counting chickens before they're actually um in your housing inventory I do like looking at this and seeing that the building permits for this year there were 126 building permits issued this year and um of that half of those are the cities Montero uh Motel
conversion to um serving our homeless population so half of all the building permits this year went into the homeless efforts also in certificates of occupancy which is people actually opening a new door for a new house in a new home for someone in Petaluma there were 123 total new certificates of occupancy this year which is minutely small number of new new homes 32 of those were single family dwellings uh 79 were apartments and of the 79.
25 of those of the people's Village that's the city's facility at cots and 53 are at Pep housing on the South Boulevard so 78 of the certificate of occupants of 120 certificate two-thirds of all the new work came up was in affordable dedicated affordable housing projects and um so that really speaks well to the city's efforts to work on affordable housing it really doesn't help all those who don't fit into means tested uh areas is just you know petaluma's not growing very fast and we sure entitle a lot of things we meet our state goals for total entitlements but the data shows that um that where the actual benefits are and then the last part is in 2022 the entitlements I believe are actually it's zero entitlements during this last calendar year so that's you know it's really fun reading the data because it kind of doesn't lie so those would be my comments we have a motion we have a second uh car crane we have a roll call vote on us Barnacle yes Cader Thompson yes Healey yes McDonnell yes now yes okay yes shrimps yes motion passes unanimously thank you very much now we move to our item number eight Workshop to receive stakeholder input in public comment and at this point I need to recuse myself as I have in this process all along and so I will be turning the meeting over to our vice mayor and uh thank you very much um we're going to take a five minute break and then we will start because we've been here a few hours already a lot [Music] could everybody please sit down excuse
me excuse me we're gonna start the meeting could everybody please have a seat hello thank you um thank you for being here and we are going to start agenda item eight and it's a workshop it's a workshop to receive stakeholders input public comment and for Council deliberation and Direction on potential amendments to chapter 6.60 entitled resident residential tenancy protection of the Petaluma municipal code and finding this item is exempt from sequa pursuant to sqa guidelines section 15387 B5 and with that I'm going to ask our City attorney to take over from here thank you very much Madam vice mayor good evening Council staff members of the public my name is Eric Danley I have the honor of serving petaluma's at City attorney as I have for some years now and we have a lot of information to go through tonight I'm going to try to do it at a good Pace to get to the the real Focus for tonight is and that's to hear from the public in the council in response to all this information and get direction before I do I want to start with some thank yous though I want to thank my colleagues um it's it's been quite a bit of effort um and important work to to to get to this point and prepare this and receive input from and engage in dialogue with the public so thanks to Ingrid um alverde and to um Jameson Bunn and to Nancy Sands and Karen Shimizu um and Aaron oyzer um and my colleague Dylan behind me and all his work on research and drafting and thanks to the members of the community who came
out to our workshops and who um and and visited with us and shared comments and have submitted them online um both um renters and and tenant Advocate groups and and and landlords and property managers that was critical information for us I know and and we've heard this um from folks uh rightly so we'll hear it again tonight this process has been a little bit backwards but I'll talk about why the sequencing was the way it was I'm glad we're here in this way um with the input that we've now gotten from the public so it can inform the council's decision making so let's dive right into the slides um Council feel free to interrupt me if you have questions this pretty much follows the structure that we've been using in our community workshops this information so it's going to be familiar to a lot of folks except it's expanded um to include some of the feedback we got as much as we could succinctly provide for for this presentation and and I know folks will will fill in details if they feel they're lacking which will be great um but but if council members if if if if you have questions as I'm going through please stop me so starting with the first slide um after this one that's okay Brian thank you so so why are we here why are we doing this why is this topic um did it come up um tenant protection regulations was a top 10 goal of the council it's a policy that was identified in the current housing element um that we take up that policy consideration council's Direction in response
to input they got from Community stakeholders was for staff to present them um regulations based on the legal aid model which we know that that that model was in turn based on the the one from Marin County the timing was such at the time that the county of Sonoma is covid financial hardship focused tenant protections were about to expire the council was concerned directed us to prepare an urgency ordinance to extend those coveted protections and then to be replaced by local regulations um taking advantage of the authority um in the tenant protection act the council when they adopted those local regulations included a sunset provision wanting us to come back and and for more discussion and Direction um and and and that that timetable did not allow time for the Outreach that we've been engaged in and I'm glad we're we're doing that now and thanks to the council and for the community for that um so as I said it's a little out of sequence but but but here we are in the process like we ideally are whenever we're doing major regulation um deliberation with the city council so the council's direction to us was um um gather data see Community feedback and come back with options and that's that's what we're going to do tonight next slide please this is the itinerary of what we're covering tonight we're going to talk talk about the history of the tenant relations regulations state law we're going to talk about the state and the Petaluma rules as as they exist now we're going to provide
more context um than we have in previous presentations in terms of comparisons with what other jurisdictions have done we're going to talk about some of the data that we've received the community feedback and and that's including the survey results we got um which Ingrid will talk about and I think Jameson Dylan will talk about some of the data that we got and Ingrid will talk about the um the Outreach then then the focus um I'm going to try to provide as much time for that as possible is going to be on the options for consideration which really are the features um and we'll provide them in sort of a listy kind of form but they're really the features for the council's regulations in the context of what the state law permits us to do locally and then we'll receive counseling public comment and Council Direction next slide please so the history um the Ellis Act was was the first of the regulations from the 80s it protects the rights of landlords to take their properties out of the rental market but it also provides an opportunity and Authority for local agencies to to provide some regulations concerning that the tenant protection act was enacted just before the covid pandemic so it hasn't had a lot of chance to to show its effect yet because of the impacts of of covid it as as we'll talk about that provides both rent control and limits causes for terminating rental agreements I believe it's true Dylan correct me if I'm wrong but this is either one of or the um the strongest
tenant protection act in in the um in the nation in locally in Sonoma County we had fire urgency regulations we had covid responses to covid regulations intended to to provide for housing stability during that time and address um Financial hardships that people are experiencing because of covid and inability to work then there's the Petaluma urgency ordinance that as I mentioned was intended to avoid a gap between the county regulations expiring and Petaluma is taking effect and then there's our interim ordinance which we'll discuss and are here to consider potential future options for next slide so the Petaluma ordinance provides termination limitations it provides noticing requirements and noticing to go with them it provides displaced tenant protections it does not Implement rent control it leaves intact the TPA ring control so the state of the California rental housing regulations the Ellis act from 1985 as I mentioned it protects landlords right to remove their property from the rental market also authorizes local regulation the California tenant protection act or TPA from 2019 limits just causes for termination of tenancies limits rent increases authorizes local jurisdictions to enact more protective rules than when they do they replace the state law so our ordinance is currently in effect it does replace the tpas just cause regulations it leaves the rent control part of the TPA intact it includes Protections in addition to the TPA protections as it must otherwise it
will be preempted and it does also Implement lsac protections next slide please I'm probably going too fast for the translators aren't I yeah thanks thanks councilmember um I'm going to try to pause a little bit more but while saving time for for public input and Council discussion so so starting at a higher level to look at how the city's regulations compare with those of the state the city's regulation removes some exceptions and the state law applies to tenants sooner than the state law most tenants it eliminates or changes some of the just causes for termination and adds additional protections thanks Brian um so our comparators that will will provide information about tonight include Marin County San Rafael Richmond Fairfax Emeryville and East Palo Alto so starting with what are the units that are protected in the TPA not these that are listed below not units that are that are received their certificates within the last 15 years not rent restricted um units not dorms not owner occupied units either duplexes or shared bathroom kitchen units not single family homes as long as the the renters receive notice that their properties Exempted from the TPA not hotels and short-term rentals and not property manager units so the comparison with Petaluma um the Petaluma regulations uh reduced the exceptions so um so the Petaluma regulations do not exclude those newer units that receive certificates in the last 15 years and therefore cover them the Petaluma regular regulations also
cover dorms single-family homes there's not an exemption for them and also property manager units the others in the darker color are Exempted rent restricted owner occupied and hotels and short-term rentals um okay so here's here's a little bit of benchmarking for you um and and context with the comparators the TPA is is on the top row so you can see there there are quite a few exemptions Petaluma there are fewer exemptions and you can see how the Petaluma regulations largely largely tracked to those in Marin and also somewhat to San San Rafael a big distinction that we wanted to that we asterisked for you is there are still pretty extensive single-family exemptions in Moran and San Rafael because those regulations only apply to properties with three or more units so um so anyway we can I'll mention to you to the council and the public as we get down to the options at the end of the presentation as needed we can come back to some of these slides to to look what some of our neighbors are doing in terms of when the protections take effect and Marin Emeryville Richmond Fairfax San Rafael East Palo Alto day one right away Petaluma is six months for most tenants and 12 for some those are the ones with owner occupied adus and this TPA doesn't take effect until 12 months of lawful occupancy by the tenant obviously the Petaluma regulations were intended to to sort of split that difference as as they're currently in effect so permitted terminations under the TPA when the tenants at
fault failure to pay rent breach of lease causing a nuisance that's a term of art um that that affect unreasonably interferes with the use and enjoyment of others property criminal activity on site illegal purpose use of the property committing waste another legal term that means diminishing the the value of the property subletting and violation of the lease not permitting the the owner to enter the property in accordance with the lease tenant failing to vacate after notifying the landlord of their intent to vacate and employee property manager failing to vacate after their employment is terminated um the com the uh the comparison with the Petaluma regulations with the TPA so failure to pay rent is still a just cause but the landlord can't refuse to accept contribution to rent from third parties breach of the lease is still a just cause but but only a lawful lease and only written terms of the lease um there's a qualification for domestic violence an assault of which the the tenants the victim the criminal activity just cause requires a conviction unsanitary conditions is not included in the in the nuisance just cause and not included in the in the in the Petaluma just causes our waste tenant failing to vacate after communicating their intent prohibited subleasing an employee failing employee property managers failing to vacate those are those are differences about which we heard a lot from the um in the stakeholder meetings from the from the property owners and I heard a lot
of concerns about that so here's here's another context slide regarding um at fault grounds for termination comparing the state and the Petaluma regulations Marin pretty much the same as far as the level of detail of this slide also mostly Emeryville you can see Richmond Fairfax San Rafael and East Palo Alto have some additional exceptions next slide another context slide the same um the the state law has the the most extensive list of grounds um and most of the other jurisdictions that were that we're showing are have a lot in common um with let with reduced number of of grounds for termination which is a way that those local regulations are quote unquote more protective so as to be permitted under the state law next slide so permitted terminations under the TPA when the landlord I'm sorry when the tenant is not at fault and those are when the owner wants to remove the unit from the rental market that's their lsact right or the owner or family member wants to occupy the unit substantial rehab is needed for the unit compliance with the government order is required requires vacation and the TPA relocation assistance is equal to 100 of a month's rent the comparison slide um to to show the Petaluma regulations treatment of permitted terminations there's a protection for um terminations that affect Petaluma teachers and students K-12 students during the school year that's something we heard a lot about we got feedback on this from the survey about that the Ellis Act Right is
recognized owner family move-in is recognized but there's a requirement that the owner must move in within 90 days and stay a year and for substantial rehab there's a requirement to obtain all the permits for the rehab first there's also a qualification regarding when the owner owns multiple units and another could be made available to the tenant next slide so um again this is the Petaluma regulation complying with the government order is not recognized I mentioned that the tenant I'm sorry that the student and teacher exception the relocation benefit is the same as the TPA except it's increased by 50 percent for for for specified tenants and those are those under the age of 18 over 62 low-income disabled or long-term tenants meaning 10 years or more and then there's our context slide for no no fault grounds to terminate State TPA at the top as you can see there's a quite a bit of consistency between petalum and the other jurisdictions and the state law too um I should know that's Santa Rosa Rosen error right Dylan correct so that said um Okay so so let's we don't have Santa Rosa comparator so so I apologize that row should not be included um and here's a slide that shows a comparison of relocation assistance none at all for Marin and San Rafael one month under the TPA increased in Petaluma for those specified tenants the same for Emeryville for for small smaller units it's increased to two months rent for fair Fairfax plus 3K for I'm sorry three thousand dollars um for some
emeryville's for large units is five months rent Richmond is four thousand to twenty thousand dollars depending on the size of the unit um and East Palo Alto seven and a half thousand to upwards of upwards of ten thousand dollars so quite a range in relocation assistance this slide um is a summary of of of petaluma's um no fault protections and right of return that are provided with respect to those um for for the first 10 years from the withdrawal and and and and they're and and and regarding rehab and um property owner or family member intent to move in next slide please so um there's noticing requirements for the Ellis act um protection the removal notice must be recorded provided to the tenant they have to get notice of the right to relocation assistance CS to receive notice of the owner's plans to move in and also of the of plans to rehab the unit this is under the city's existing regulations um other Protections in this in the petaluma's existing regulations notice of tenants rights is required in this and we have provided that notice for landlords to use in both English and Spanish um the Petaluma regulations prohibit retaliation provides for civil cause of action against alleged violation of the city's regulations tenants that are successful in those civil costs of action can recover their attorney's fees if they Prevail City also reserves the right but does not have a duty to enforce those same regulations the Petaluma noticing requirements these are again additional
Protections in the Petaluma regulations they have to be in English and Spanish and if the language of the lease is in a different language in that language the tenants are entitled to notice of their rights upon entering the lease upon renewal of the lease and upon rent increases also upon sale the property and upon amendments the Petaluma regulations so if the council leaves the regulations in place and amends them then then there'll be an entitlement to to change to notice of those changes uh petaluma's no fault notices that are required under the existing regulations must be recorded provided the tenant they need notice of the right to relocation notice if the owner plans to move in and to the city regarding rehab that may be a repeat side I'm sorry if so okay so now I think this is your is this your slide Ingrid it is so take it over thank you uh thank you so over the last few months we've worked to engage our community to discuss options for local tenancy regulations we held stakeholder meetings Community Information workshops solicited feedback via email and circulated a survey throughout all this work through emails and through surveys and meetings we've heard from over 1100 people next slide this is a partial and a high level overview I know many members of the audience tonight will will fill in but just to give you a sense of what we heard landlords have participated shared serious concerns they had about the new rules in the interim ordinance most who participated
consider themselves mom and pop owners who own one or a few single-family homes that they have been able to collect over years they invested in homes as a retirement investment using the monthly income from Reynolds as retirement income these local investors worry that the new regulations would make it harder for them to sell or one of their units if they needed to and they also worried about subleasing and tenants committing waste in a way that reduces the value of their investment as a result they say that they plan to sell their Investments when they can some said that to remove the risks they perceive with the new rules similarly local property managers also weighed in they presented research from their own files that suggests that most move outs in their experience are driven by tenants most remaining tenancy terminations are related to owner move-ins they shared that most landlords that they work with worry about losing tenants because for them it creates a large cost and their estimate a tenant turnover can cost as much as eleven thousand dollars or more and finally many property managers shared that they rarely evict tenants and only have done so a few times in cases where tenants created extreme problems next slide um we also heard from a lot of renters and tenants and tenant advocacy groups about the challenges around rent stability locally we heard many stories about tenant hardships caused by rental contract terminations we also heard that many local tenants fear
complaining about issues in their in their units because they fear retaliation from their landlord if they complain tenant Advocates were also able to share stories about calls they've received over the recent years about local tenants having issues with their landlords they pointed out that while it might seem that tenants can agree or disagree with the term of a lease it is not an equal relationship with tenants are struggling to find units they can afford locally and they finally pointed to a lack of affordable housing as a major contributor to the lack of stability for local renters to do it Thank You Ingrid so this slide we were able to produce with our draft housing element and the next slides will show the tables that uh show these numbers so 34 percent of the Petaluma units are rentals other in valuable information that might be applicable to council's decision tonight is the annual evictions here in Petaluma is 86 the number has gone down with covid 18.8 percent of Petaluma housing is multi-family and the average bedroom or one bedroom apartment is 2 381 dollars next slide please Brian so here is petaluma's ownership to rental market in comparison with the other cities in Sonoma County as you can see 34.1 percent is renter occupied next slide please Brian so this slide here shows the percentage of renters in Petaluma that are considered low-income buy Hud uh this total is 28.4 percent are considered low income and it also shows the cost burn-in for their rental
income as a percentage of their total salary next slide please can you slow down yeah just we can soak that in thank you and this slide is included as an attachment um and we can provide that later uh cool next slide please Brian okay and here the last column shows the average rental income depending on the type of unit and the amount of bedrooms and next slide please Brian and here is the eviction data here in Petaluma since 2017.
and this PowerPoint is also included as an exhibit okay and we should add I believe legal aid got that data from the from the court system directly from from what we viewed so thanks Dylan I had a question on that yeah if I could does the eviction data include non-profits it does not thank you okay it does okay and can you tell us what portion of the evictions or non-profits I cannot because we're exempting them from our current ordinance right correct okay that would be a good data point to get cool okay next slide Brian and here is the information we don't know and this is because Petaluma does not have a rental registry we don't know how many notices of termination are issued uh for the evictions I did see one data point that says Sonoma County it's about 13 evictions per 1000 rental renters um we don't know the amount of single families units that are renter occupied and that is this slide Ingrid I believe you are next so we also circulated a survey as another way to sort of take the temperature I just want to reiterate that we don't consider a survey really a vote because it was Anonymous and unverified responses but we do want to share what we learned the survey was available from February 12th to the 24th it was provided in English and Spanish we provided 300 printed copies to North Bay organizing and legal aid um again these this is self-reported and Anonymous and unverified so we do have to consider that when we look at the data uh we did receive over 1 000 responses
uh 47 um were landlords and 36 of the responders were tenants or again the self-reported as tenants next slide um I'm going to cover um just some high-level findings particularly when we look at renters versus landlords and how how the two groups um considered uh the possibility the possible features of this ordinance while landlords took the survey in greater numbers and renters the results indicate that the groups are not very far off in their thoughts um well around 50 percent of renters who responded to the survey thought Petaluma should offer tenancy protections beyond what is offered in the state TPA all of the tpa's current reasons for an at fault eviction or termination were favored by large majorities of both renters and landlords renters were more likely than landlords to say that tenant protections should start prior to 12 months renters were also more likely to believe that certain dwelling units should be covered by the TPA protections including units that have received a certificate of occupancy within the last 15 years units restricted as affordable and those that are subsidized by government agency a majority of landlords and plurality of renters felt that the TPA offers adequate relocation fees for tenants asked to move out for no fault just causes with some participants for both camps suggesting that no relocation fees should be paid at all more tenants however were in favor of relocation fees totaling 150 percent of one month's rent or the full total cost
of the relocation as compensation next slide half of renters in almost all landlords did not feel it should be necessary to offer a unit back to a displaced tenant after removing the unit from the rental market if required 45 percent of Runners and 85 percent of landlords felt that such a provision should only be required for a year after that tenant leaves the unit renters and landlords were mostly in agreement about the provision to protect teachers and families of school-aged children from termination during the school year with 49 of renters and 50 five percent of landlords saying that landlords should not be restricted to terminations for these groups during Summers um and then some some discrepancies between the groups 71 percent of Runners felt that all Runners should be provided notices of their rights while only 30 percent of landlords agreed 68 percent of Runners said the tenants should be able to recover attorney's fees while 18 percent of landlords agreed half of renters felt that landlords should have permits in place for a unit's Rehabilitation before terminating a lease while only 14 percent of landlords agreed with that and finally just a note um there were over 300 plus um open-ended comments provided to the survey indicating a high level of Engagement with the survey um some of the high level things we heard again was that these rules will cause landlords to remove units from their Market from the market and that the risk of bad tenants in relocation is too
burdensome back to you Eric thank you Dylan and thank You Ingrid so um I can slow down a little bit because we're getting to the part where we um can have a focused discussion from the council and Direction on potential next steps and their their at this level on this slide they are pretty fundamental ones the first is keeping the current ordinance as it is in removing the sunset provision the next is amending the current ordinance recognizing that it needs to be have at least one more protective feature than the existing tenant protection act to not be preempted and the last is um is rescinding the current ordinance or permit to expire so so status quo amendments um and and and letting the regulations expire or repealing them I will say that I think the feedback that we got um and that we've gathered and shared tonight I think indicates to me that um that that there's disagreement about whether whether um Protections in addition to those of the TPA are needed but I think there is agreement um but with varying focus on different features that if the um the the city's tenant protection regulations continue that they should be amended I think I think both landlords and tenants and tenant Advocate groups and property managers would agree on that although they might disagree on some of the the fine points of what should be amended so for the next slide the key sort of buckets for considering potential changes I think are the the the key ones that we presented um for the
regulations themselves um and and their structure in that is which units tuitions they apply when the coverage of the regulations take effect whether the at fault grounds for termination of rental agreements what are the no fault grounds for termination of rental agreements and and what other amendments are warranted taking into account those those other procedural and noticing and and um remedy protections that we showed in the earlier slides that are in the current Petaluma regulations um and the next slides are the um the summary menu of options that we heard from from community members during our Outreach process and I can either go through those briefly for the council if you prefer or wait um and do that when we come come back to receive direction or we could do both I don't know what the council's preference is in terms of time management or otherwise does anybody have a preference we'll do it later happy to good okay so so that um concludes our presentation if the council have questions for us be happy to respond to them council members anybody have any questions okay so I I kind of gave staff a heads up at our meeting last week that I was current about concerned about one issue in this and and and Mr Danley referenced to the state um tenant protection act as of 2019 is is basically being probably the most tenant friendly uh set of regulations in the country which I think is accurate and it certainly more tenant friendly than what existed in California um before 2019
um but as I mentioned last time if you look at the legislative materials for the TPA um it's very clear that the legislature did not want to do certain things because they didn't want to discourage new market rate construction and especially the exemption for anything less than 15 years old and I have heard I've heard nothing on that from from staff tonight and and what is there any analysis you have done or have seen that says we can cover units that are less than 15 years old and not discourage market rate Construction in our community um I'm happy to um hear from my colleagues but I'm not aware of any any data that we have that cuts either way and I think that's in part because there's been so little relatively little experience of the TPA being in effect post covid um so I mean you saw the context slides and the the our regulations are not an outlier in that respect but the other jurisdictions I don't think can have any much more experience than we you know given covet Etc so um we just don't have anything to fill in that blank for you councilmember I'm sorry we're basically Flying Blind here yes um and you know I think one of the things that I think you're right about the reason for that provision in the TPA I think um you know the the delayed uh or or the the 12 months until the protections take effect I think are a balancing feature there you can one can see various balancing features in the TPA I think that's wonderful okay thank you all right thank you councilmember
Barnacle yeah I have a couple questions um so in some of the comments there was uh one of the comments um well a few of the comments and some of the sort of threads that I've seen suggest that if teachers or and students were not allowed to be moved out during the school year that landlords would discriminate against renting to teachers is that legal well um teachers are not a protected class but you know teachers also come from protected classes so I think that would there's some protections there one of the things we haven't discussed tonight but we we it was a it was it was very much part of the discussion in our community meetings is the fact that the city's had a 35-year relationship with Petaluma people Services Center who provides throughout that time and still does provide Fair Housing Services to the city and and the and the and and landlords in the city and tenants in the city to prevent just that kind of thing you know illegal discrimination from happening in in the rental market in the city so that's also a resource regarding that but I don't think um I I I'm not aware of um we also have the existing regular regulations have the Civil remedy for retaliation that's potentially relevant to that so I'm not sure how great it seems to me that there are some a number of features that would prevent that from becoming a serious risk okay second question one of the comments suggested that it was uh illegal to or that would not be legal to um to actually include school-aged
children protections for school-aged children in our ordinance and I'm wondering if you have any um like to opine on that I I so um um an attorney submitter suggested that as as not permitted under the Ellis act but but um our protection is modeled down to San Francisco protection that was upheld by the Appellate Court so I don't feel like that's a um there's a there's a lot of risk with that protection from that standpoint thank you some of our shrubs okay looking for maybe some procedural issues here um as we proceed through this process if we accept or totally reject that that's a pretty quick decision that would be happening it's in the case of okay let's go somewhere in the middle and let's let's pick and choose it looked like there was at least 30 options as I read through all the documents at least 30 little bits and pieces that could be decided on here which way do we go especially comparison very complex lots of lots of little issues that are actually big and very important to everyone do we have the the timing and the ability to actually um decide okay we'll amend and then which bits and pieces do we keep how do we write it up make the legal language right even using the kiss principle so if we actually went through that process of saying let's amend it and let's do that let's find what's right for Parliament Palomas for what we wanted do we have the time to do that in the time frame we have or how long would that take what process is there and could and somehow are
we will we be capable of finding that ground of picking and choosing the right things and what would be their process and how do we gather the information to actually help make those decisions so thank you um I believe we do have the time especially given councilmember Healey's Amendment um and in response to the suggestions um that we heard about the tentative agenda um also you know we do our best to to um anticipate so we've already been working on what on potential implementation things depending on what the council Direction may be to try to get ready um I'll tell you I mean we gotta you hopefully saw them we got a letter from uh Daniel RAF who's an attorney who represents tenants and landlords so and Margaret De Mateo who spoke tonight who's the housing policy attorney for legal aid one of those was a joint letter the other was submitted by Mr raft to address some areas of disagreement they had in terms of the joint letter their suggestions um I agree with most of them on the implementation side simplify the language yes you know that in terms of the pace for this activity I I'm you know reminded as I sometimes am of the Mark Twain quote where he apologizes for writing such a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short letter so simplification takes some time and we should do that and I think we will have the time to do that consistent terminology with the TPA you know consistent with with the sum of the substance of the TPA like the just causes we heard
there seems to be pretty much consensus between landlords and tenants about that so that's part of my answer um the other is it's always best I think I think we're always most successful and I certainly prefer it in in terms of my job of implementing the council's policy Direction first to start conceptually with policy objectives and then and then do the drafting so that we because we know what laws we need to change or what gaps we're filling in the law and and have some experience in in specialized training to do that to to to really focus on the council's policy recommendations so we've um facilitated a community outreach dialogue process including tonight coming back to the council to take advantage of the time we've been given to refocus the discussion on policy um and that's just that's a simpler and I think um more effective approach than just starting with fully baked regulations especially complex ones especially with a lot of stakeholder investment and and potential disagreement and controversy so I think I mean you'll be the judge the council will and the community but when we get to the uh the menu of options I think you'll see there um you're right there's there's a lot of potential variations if you just do the math but but I don't think it's necessarily as complex um especially if if in taking into account where what are seem to be some areas where there's either agreement between the tenant and the landlord communities or maybe less disagreement I mean we'll
see but but I think there's time for the council to give us feedback in terms of some of those main features um and for us to uh work to implement those along with some of those other cleanups I mentioned that I think will help going forward just with implementability understanding and Clarity um I think there's I think there's time for that and I think we can have that discussion tonight that's what we had hoped and it's at least possible and we'll see as as um as Margaret mentioned we have a little time we've built in some time to into this on purpose the council was generous in allow us allowing us that process time and that allows them to be thoughtful enough to do a good job implementing their thoughtful Direction so we'll see but I I'm optimistic thank you councilmember Healey thank you I had I had one more and this is um partially a question to staff but personally also a prompt to members of the public for public comment if you want to address this issue I'm a great believer in the law of unintended consequences as I've said many times in the past um and I would remind the council that as part of our efforts to combat homelessness in our community one of one of the things we've said is we want to reach out to the landlord community and say pretty please pretty please accept this formerly homeless person who has a Housing Voucher take a risk on this person and I'm I'm very concerned that this Petaluma ordinance with all its facets if it moves forward like what it looks
like now is going to really discourage the landlords from Community from wanting to do that and I realized that their the Discrimination is not allowed against people who have housing vouchers on the one hand but on the other hand landlords were asked to are allowed to ask for rental history and credit history and guess what homeless people don't tend to have those kinds of things so they can be fall through the cracks for non-discriminatory reasons so that's something I'm very concerned about not enough staff has any input on that or if members of the public want to talk about that during public we'll I'll just respond quickly and it looks like there's more Council discussion but um I think one of the things in terms of the survey results which we we recognize there um you know that we can't necessarily take them as as representative of all the stakeholders but in terms of the responses we got the one area where there's I think clearest agreement between the landlord and the rental Community is on retention of all the TPA forecast basis for termination and that is something that it goes directly to the concern you're raising council member Healey another related feature I think is how soon the protections arise because I I think that um the sooner the protections arise the more emphasis landlords are going to place on on on their background checks and screening so thank you any other Council comments council member yeah I just want to add that I met with one group of
landlords and property managers so that when we when we brought up the issue of vouchers that uh it sounded like and one of them can perhaps correct me when in public comment if if I'm not remembering this correctly but that they all had experience with renting to voucher holders and that that was not an issue thank you any other Council comments I'm sorry can you hear better now I'm sorry um what I said was that I had a meeting with several landlords and property managers and we got to the topic of vouchers and the consensus of the folks I was meeting with us to me seemed to be that they'd all rented to voucher holders and and didn't really have an issue with that I guess I brought it up because the county is now starting to uh um to my best of my understanding pay incentives uh to landlords to encourage them to rent more to vouchers so I just wanted to add that to answer Dr Mr healy's Question and I'm happy to hear back from you about that during public comment any other Council comment we're going to go ahead and open public comment um the public is invited to make comments on this item public comments are limited to we're going to do two minutes because the amount of speakers per person if providing your comment in Spanish we ask that you pause after each sentence to allow the translation the moderator will pause the timer when the translator is speaking and if somebody has said the same thing that you're going to say you could just shorten up your time because we have a
lot of speakers I'm going to start with Sean pent cost if he is still here he had children with him and Nick demaio would be next I'm assuming they took their children home thank you I'm going to start with Dan RAF thank you everyone I'm glad that you guys got the letter I wanna thank the city council I know that this is um this is one of those situations where I think no matter what you guys do you're going to have about half of the people in this room that are going to be upset with you and I do not envy you in that position um I also want to thank Margaret uh dematteo I hope I pronounced that correctly um for being willing to come over and work with someone from the Dark Side I am a landlord attorney I do represent I have represented some tenants in the past however most of my practice is uh is representing uh real property owners and uh we hope that that lender provides some sort of help and along those lines since there was some comments on that I did want to address a couple of things that um that were brought up um uh Margaret can probably talk more about the problems with the Ellis act with the student in teacher issue and the with the Ellis act um and I don't really have a lot of time on that but there is a it's a small technical issue um and my point regarding discrimination uh against teachers and students that is absolutely correct that it is not um that it would not be legal to do that source of income is also a protected class in California but that does not
mean that that won't actually happen in practice so I wanted to with the remaining time that I had I wanted to point out that we had something like 50 evictions prior to the TPA and that's in a town of 50 000 people and that dropped down to about I think it was like 30-isha victims so we're talking about putting a huge regulatory scheme into place in order to get address a very very small percentage of this problem or a a very very small issue here and this is going to have a very big effect on landlords and tenants I also want to tell you that I'm available if anybody has any questions and if there's anything else I can do to help on this thank you very much Margaret D'Amato and you have two people that have seat seated time Arthur Newberry and Andrea pompette yes thank you um I appreciate the chance to go first although I usually like to go less um but at least I'm getting it out of the way I appreciate staff's time that went into this I know how much time and work went into this ordinance um you know we had a two-year campaign that led us to this point and not everybody in the room was part of that two-year campaign but it resulted in a law being passed a law that was carefully thought out and a law that wasn't perfect and we knew we'd be back to make fixes and that's hopefully what we're here to do the intention with the sunset was not so that some future city council could let it die but that they would fix it you know and we've had a lot of ideas about what a fix means
I have submitted a lot of comments tons of letters tons of times being here or on zoom and I worked so hard alongside of colleagues uh amazing colleagues and tenants trying to help them find their voice in a place that is sometimes scary for tenants to have a voice I'm a tenant I know what that's like and I'm a tenant attorney and I still get scared of certain situations um I did not feel super comfortable at the at the stakeholder meeting that was predominantly landlords I must admit um but I did speak up because of so many people couldn't be there and I don't think there's anything I could say at this point that's going to change your hearts and Minds honestly um on what matters most to you but it's up to you now to decide what matters most to you but I do want to address the tenants and stakeholders in the room um who are here and on Zoom who come back over and over and over and over again since June 2021 making time for this because it's important because it's an issue it's not a nothing Burger this is an issue um and because I know how much is at stake for our renters our community of renters in this in the city this Progressive City for our bipoc community who's you know twice as likely to be a run be a renter and twice as likely to suffer from harmful effects of evictions um so thank you to all the people who keep coming back and showing support um the fact that we have to keep coming back is heartbreaking to me um because I know what's on the line and I just urge you
not to backtrack um when you go into deliberations on what to do forward going forward and I want to point out that annoyingly I was born in the state of Missouri and the motto is Show me don't tell me and I always interpret that when I'm speaking to judges as uh saying it doesn't make it so and I see a lot of signs in the room that say ethical housing providers and I would just ask that you show it and not just say it because from a lot of the landlords we've heard people seated their time for her and anybody can do that up to nine minutes excuse me can I can I go back a little bit I mean this is an example I'm just commenting on the yellow on the green stickers that everyone is wearing that says ethical housing provider six minutes this is a public meeting and that is your statement in part and we've heard from a lot of landlords who say they've never evicted and they don't raise rents and you know how could we have these regulations when we are ethical housing providers if that is true then these regulations will not impact them the city has done an excellent excuse me the city has done an excellent job above and beyond what I've seen any City do in making the noticing requirements easy to comply with and there are opportunities for landlords to not have to hire an attorney and not have to pay the extra expense but ultimately I want to make a point and hopefully I can get through it is to address the misinformation that I've heard around um what the ordinance does and
doesn't do and I want to just read something that I submitted what it does not do it does not prevent evictions from the Superior Court there's been 34 evictions in Petaluma since the ordinance was passed okay it does not prevent the sale of a rental property fact the eviction of a tenant can be undertaken under the just cause of withdrawal from the rental market that language in the ordinance needs to be clarified true but you can do a sale and a withdrawal at the same time you could do it before the sale after the sale during the sale it doesn't it doesn't control rents this is not rent control the only regulation of rent in Petaluma is that imposed by the state tenant protection act and the anti-price gouging loss of penal code 396.
um and then it doesn't set eviction restrictions permanently we can always come back to this if there's unintended consequences we could pass it with a rental registry where we're tracking if it's working or not we're tracking if it's even needed and come back to it again in the future there's always the option you have that option it doesn't prevent buyouts common ways to get around eviction ordinances I hate to say it but in San Francisco is if you don't want to go through the Ellis withdrawal you can approach your tenant about a buyout this doesn't prevent you from doing all of the things that landlords do across the across the state all it does is close loopholes and provide stability for tenants and if we make some fixes it will be easy for landlords to comply with thank you thank you very much Roland Bruce followed by David Jimenez that's a nothing burger for sure this is really 85 evictions in Petaluma I mean do we really need this I mean 85 evictions in Petaluma why do we even need an ordinance why are we even having this discussion and wasting taxpayers money you guys are really killing me why do you want to control my property I'm a good landlord I love my tenants so I don't need any help managing my tenants you know I probably could raise my hand and said who would like to shelf this thing right now maybe people would raise their hands and show support and direction to the city council to table this thing and forget about it that's all I have to say I mean this is
really totally unnecessary I just found out about it today because I was notified when all this public noticing stuff I'm a real estate broker I'm a landlord and I don't know this is happening where is the noticing I didn't see it David Carolyn gavel gavilov okay appreciate it good evening I am an owner of Westgate real estate and property management and here in Petaluma microphone sorry [Music] I have been a property manager and a housing provider for 25 years in Petaluma I've had the opportunity to meet with many of you regarding this ordinance at those meetings we all agree that the current ordinance is poorly written goes beyond the guidance that you gave that the guidance that the city council gave staff and it will have many unintended consequences we shared a lot of data with you regarding the current state of the rental market in Petaluma and demonstrated that housing providers are not asking tenants to vacate to increase rents we asked each of you to tell us the problem that you're trying to solve the responses were to reduce fear avoid homelessness and provide stability this ordinance does not address any of those issues and the real issue in Petaluma is lack of housing units with greater Supply rents will go down and more families will have housing it is my belief that after these meetings that there is a need to just do something and check a box the majority of the tenant issues outlined at the meetings that I attended are already covered in ab1482 I am hopeful
and I trust the information we provided and showed you that the Petaluma housing providers are not evicting tenants for no reason at least the ones that are not here that are here tonight I trust that the information that you receive tonight will help you help you vote down this ordinance and once you've identified the problem that you wish to solve know that the housing community property managers and Community welcome the opportunity to work with you to address the problem and find a real solution that benefits tenants and landlords in Petaluma thank you very much thank you I'm just going to say David Jimenez another time was he coming up um and then Carrie Davidson Nest next foreign thank you again hi good evening and hello good evening to all of the authorities here present um my name is David Jimenez and I'm a member of the Union at the tenants Union of the county of Sonoma is I'm here asking that you help with approving this Fair law for all of us a few months ago I suffered a stroke because of this I was not able to work eight months ESO and despite all this I was subject to being evicted and despite being sick I was always paying my rent and I was paying on time and all of that foreign for this reason I'm here asking for your support and helping us approve this Fair law for all of us thank you for your attention thank you very much Carrie Davidson good evening as a professional property manager for 32 years in Petaluma a Petaluma voter a landlord an active Community
supporter I believe that the Petaluma tenant protection ordinance is unnecessary and should terminate on July 1st the ordinance was drafted what we thought was in a big hurry but then we since learned that there were two years of input from the legal aid and tenant advocacy groups but none in advance from landlords and property managers so there was no real knowledge of the actual landlord-tenant environment here in Petaluma there's been no proof or data provided that substantiates the need for this ordinance the confusion and divisiveness created here by City staff is promoting dissension among landlords and tenants that is unnecessary and unprecedented here in Petaluma the California state law ab1482 if you aren't fully familiar with that please read it it is protecting tenants to to the extent that has never happened before in California went into place right before I covid and then all the coveted protections went into place so we've really not had a chance to see how it was going to work it is the it protects tenants in a in a greater way than any other state in the country and we're concerned that further restricting our local landlords particularly our mom and pops are going to we're going to lose some of our inventory remember that investing in real estate is done by choice it has particularly been a viable option for those who don't have the benefits of a pension it comes with risk and high cost few new landlords are coming into the market doing that due to the high
cost of real estate and the last thing we want to do is to give our current housing providers a reason to get out of the market I certainly hope that a city council members you've taken the time to fully understand what you're voting for and do the right thing by voting against this ordinance tenants cannot enjoy a place your time has expired thank you Miss Davis and your time has expired thank you Miss Davison Tom under good evening just cause proponents complain that renters live in fear no tenant or landlord should ever have to live in fear no one should be afraid to go home if you are afraid in your own home then it's time to face up to the root cause or find another place to live or both where are these fearful tenants I I haven't heard from one tonight generation Z's in matching teas will tell you that landlords have all the power most tenants aren't even aware of the power at Runner Wheels California courts are among the most tenant friendly in the country the TPA grants extensive new benefits to printers by choosing to rent versus own in Petaluma a tenant for the fraction of the true monthly cost of ownership is given control of an asset worth hundreds of thousands of dollars risk-free and the renter may walk away anytime simply by giving 30 days notice now who has the power that being said I must address the 800 pound gorilla in the room the dreaded no-fault eviction moving is a difficult and costly task that no one looks forward to a tenant subjected to a no-fault
termination should absolutely be compensated by the landlord in return for a high relocation assistance payment however the landlord should be dissolved from any future obligation to re-rent to the displaced tenant I got a couple more recommendations committing waste and subletting art legal grounds for eviction and should remain so we didn't elect you to rewrite the California civil code two establish a rental mediation board to arbitrate disputes giving tenants the power to be heard without having to navigate the court system in the process so your time has expired thank you for your comment [Music] thank you very much Jennifer real hello Council and staff I'm a property manager here in Sonoma County and have been for the last 10 years there is a real housing crisis but it's affordability and I think when you take a look at this at the figures that your own staff has come up with you'll see that this actually is a giant nothing Burger evictions aren't a big problem if you take a look I believe Dylan uh said that it is uh 13 evictions per 1000 homes that's 0.13 of of homes or of renters go through an eviction out of a thousand that's nothing um I believe that the council is also under the impression that homeowners are out there evicting tenants left and right in order to rent the home for a higher cost or for a higher rent uh we've found uh through my own company that our average rental or our average tendency is four and a half years the cost to upgrade a home or turn a
home is just shy of eleven thousand dollars in order to kick out somebody and then recoup that money it would take 34 months before they even break even and that's with increasing the rent every uh or five percent every year versus a home that that is uninterrupted still offering uh five percent per year um total return on investment after four and a half years of tenancy is only 0.884 percent that's less than a percent again on nothing Burger thank you Karen Robles thank you hi um I'm Korean Robles I'm a property manager at Mahoney Davidson and the past president of the Sonoma Marine National Association of residential property managers and we need to exempt single family owners from any sort of ordinance and focus on the real issue this should not be a battle between tenants and landlords instead we need to unite everyone and create the needed change one great flaw regarding 1482's is that it exempts units built within the last 15 years this is done to encourage the developers in low-income housing to continue investing in the area that means any new major apartment development is exempt from ab1482 there are thousands of units that do in fact take advantage of renters constantly large apartment corporations need to be held to a higher standard in their rental practices it's unethical that theater Square Lakeville The Vineyard fiori Estates can serve 600 increases if tenants decide to not renew it is unethical that the landlord who has kept their rents under Market is told
that they cannot move in or sell in their home when they are going through a tough Financial struggle where is the encouragement for all of our landlords to stay on the market why are they the only ones that really get the backlash and heavy restrictions when at most they only own one rental property it makes zero sense to hold off sales until summer breaks in a time where rentals are already in high demand you are pushing and funneling sales and hurting the sales and rental market I provided sales records obtained from title to Ingrid and every council member needs to have that in hand to see what the sales patterns are the actions we should take are raising income eligibility for affordable housing speed up and properly staff the Sonoma County Housing Authority child care assistance needs more funding to help offset the inflation costs and higher rents that families have to pay eligibility for free school lunches needs to increase and then work with Statewide Congress on amending 1482 by thank you for your comment your time has expired thank you very much Sunny now good and Joe answer is next uh good evening Council thank you so much for um allowing me to speak tonight I am a attorney at legal aid Sonoma County but I am speaking to you tonight as a resident of Petaluma as the parent of a soon-to-be TK student um and so as somebody who's going to be a part of this community in our education system um it is shocking to me that the issue of evicting families and Educators
during a school year could be so um partisan and frankly I think that's indicative of uh the divide that we have here tonight I would really just implore you to consider um the value of one family being evicted from a school system and be being destabilized at the cost of all of the complaints by our landlord opposition tonight I think the one family remaining stabilized is imperative to us being the kind of community the kind of inclusive community that we say we are and so I urge you to not only continue these protections but to expand them to protect those also included in subsidized housing and in um uh and in any of the housing that's exempt that it wouldn't take six months to apply that would apply immediately thank you and Stephen Curtis is next no you're first no joke you're Joe hi I'm Joe Ansel I live in Petaluma I own a set of flats in San Francisco unfortunately which is the agony of my life you're on the road to becoming like San Francisco you don't know it yet but that's what's going to happen the state of California has the strongest tenant protection laws in the nation and your city here trying to make them stronger the flaws themselves are actually fundamentally unfair because the tenant can leave the tenancy can can basically leave the apartment at any time but the but the landlord cannot the landlord doesn't have control of his property so that's a fundamental issue here most most countries most other jurisdictions you have a fixed lease and then it goes
month to month either party can terminate that's normal what we're doing now is we're basically putting the onus on the landlords it's you you until you experience tenants that game you until you have to hire a lawyer to talk to tenants you've known because there's another lawyer trying to sue you you have no idea what these regulations do to people I mean we're selling our Flats we're getting out of this rental market that's going to happen that two of them are vacant now and I'm selling them you're going to reduce the amount of housing because you're just tormenting us you're going to raise the prices because in a fixed priced situation you never want to have a low price and San Francisco two tenants both of them wealthy some millionaires were sub Lenny my Apartments while they were living in in Ojai and in in Oregon it took me fifteen thousand dollars to get them out and then I still had to rent to the illegal people they had sublet to that's the road you're going down you don't know it those are my comments thank you thank you very much Steven Curtis [Applause] good evening uh there's not too much I can add but I can add some stories I'm uh a third generation landlord who's actually rented a whole lot more than he's been a landlord so hopefully these are entertaining in New York City I don't think there's a consensus between tenant landlord for Vermin infested buildings with uh PVC pipe running natural gas in but that's what you get the gentleman from San Francisco we've
experienced the same things or my parents have I went up at Potrero Hill door to door to try to get a a permit and I got to look inside of quite a few places and some of those places are a building front with Shacks in them in the back it's unbelievable and you ask and you say why say well I'm 80 and it cost me 500 dollars there's a trade-off so again you're really into the land of unintended consequences I agree with um Mike Healey completely thank you Steve Elise of all Moran Elise of all she -l-i-s-a-v-e-l I think m-o-r-a-m or n ah why don't we go with joy AO Del and then we'll go back to Elise not here Michael is it Tyrone I can't quite spell see your name what is it thanks hi there it's Michael tatone I'm a member of the Sonoma County Tennessee um seeing a lot of ethical housing provider Badges and I kind of wish I had a badge it said bad ungrateful tenant because I don't want to convince you that I'm a good person I don't think you can believe that I don't think you need to believe that um I think that the personal ethics doesn't really matter when you consider the dimension of landlord-tenant relationship and the unethicality of the fact that so many people were discriminated against in housing and this is the way that we've ended up um I believe based on canvassing I did for this meeting that problems renters are facing with regards to the threat of eviction is understated not overstated especially among those who are most vulnerable to exploitation such as immigrants
some of the landlord actions reported to me some of which were included in the survey were downright illegal and blatantly corrupt and you might think that there's going to be a Smackdown for any landlord that engages in that kind of behavior but the reality is that um you know lawyers are expensive renters often have to take a day off just to contact legal support free legal services often aren't available at all or come with constraints and overwhelming caseloads and if you're an eviction often dominates people's decisions on how to respond especially when they have children um and many of the tenants I spoke with were threatened with evictions I want to know how many evictions didn't even show up in the facts and figures because they just don't even make it that far people just give up they just they don't want anything to do with the situation they have to go find somewhere else to live um I think one month's relocation rent assistance isn't much at all when you consider multiple amounts of rent tenants must provide just to start a new place not to mention moving costs and affordable places to rent finding affordable places to rent thank you very much Mary Reynolds as a reminder please speak into the microphones everyone can hear you and take pauses between your sentences for translation thank you good evening city council and community members it is an honor to speak with you this evening my name is Mary Reynolds I am a fourth generation petaluman and it is the greatest
honor and privilege of my life to be the principal of maywok Valley Elementary Charter School Miwok is a public charter school in East Petaluma I have been the Principal for five years we enrolled 297 students across eight grade levels we are a title one school to receive federal Title One funds a minimum of 40 percent of the school's student body qualifies for free and reduced lunch at Miwok Valley 73 of our students qualify 73 percent of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged 40 percent of our students are language linguistically diverse in which English is their second language the pandemic has disproportionately impacted our students in these categories in numerous ways I am here this evening to use my positional power and status in the community of Petaluma to advocate for the students and families at my school who experience ongoing and secure housing which has substantially increased during the pandemic and is our current reality I am here to advocate for the housing protections and that those protections go into effect immediately and take effect on day one of tenancy insecure housing is a key contributing factor that negatively impacts a child's learning outcomes and overall School experience learning is joyful and fun but is compromised when children's parents and Guardians are threatened by arbitrary and unjust eviction practices this system is easy for me to navigate I have been given all the advantages in the world because of my education education
thank you Mary Pat McDonnell foreign hi city council uh thank you for having me it's an honor to speak before you again my name is Patrick McDonnell I am a housing attorney for legal aid of Sonoma County I think many of my points have already been taken but I will just let you know that I think I recently in the past couple of weeks had the first unlawful detainer eviction case that involved the Petaluma ordinance I know that many folks are saying that you know the their property in Petaluma is their retirement vehicle it's what they put their money in is their nest egg and I just want you to consider what is the value of that nest egg versus somebody being housed or potentially being on the street that was what was a risk for my clients two weeks ago we had the first case brought in Sonoma County involving your ordinance I had three families that lived in a quad Plex this is not a building that was ever going to be changed into a single family home it is fundamentally rental housing because of your ordinance and the advocacy of legal aid we're able to get these tenants some time some relocation assistance we have two of the units now safely and stably rehoused we're working on the third the landlord is going to be able to execute the sale that they intended to in the end but for those folks that lived in that unit the ordinance mattered I assure you it mattered a lot more than the property value if there was any loss it mattered a whole lot more than whatever the value of
that loss was which I'm sure was mini School um to the sellers of the property what your ordinance does potentially is it can save lives it certainly saves people from being on the street it did that for my clients two weeks ago and I encourage you to keep it going thank you thank you very much Laura Talent good evening my name is Laura and I'm a property manager I also have a life of experience of property management as my parents are your local mom and pop landlords it is their retirement they would not be able to survive off of their pensions retirement from their jobs with inflation all that this ordinance came to light due to an intake from an outside Source although I do sincerely appreciate council members listening to the community and this ordinance but this ordinance was written in past without any Outreach in order to fully get the picture of their rental market landlords and tenants now the ordinance is in effect and we have to fight to show you why it's not necessary and should be removed altogether when property managers come to speak we are not against tenants this is not in us first them as it's being painted and we need to dissolve that we're coming here to provide for our community landlords tenants and our rental market I believe this ordinance was passed with good intent but I don't believe the goal that you're trying to achieve can be achieved through this ordinance it will do more harm than good and it will drastically affect our rental market and her
tenants tremendously I do not believe the issue we are trying to resolve here is truly an issue it is fear-based and lacks reality and real data that I have not seen on the opposing side in the last meeting you asked for data we have gathered that data and we have delivered that data to Ingrid and Eric and if you guys have not seen it firsthand let me know and I will personally deliver it to you it goes to show we looked at non-incentives of why this ordinance can hinder our rental market in the future with landlords leaving the market we won't have rentals we have to look at all these factors on top just to just have some discrimination with the data that was given to us your average rental pricing does not reflect real pricing it's more of apartment complex uh we looked at no I'll get to it but thank you thank you very much Lee vanderveer Lee vanderveer Rachel Marcus oh good evening council members my name is Rachel Marcus and I'm here with the Sonoma County Tenants Union um I'm here in obviously in support of the Just Cause ordinance um the basic premise of this ordinance is to provide a basic floor of protections for tenants I put it in that language and and this ordinance has precedent in cities such as Richmond Oakland um it's been born out I want to put in basic language that um this is not revolutionary or radical but rather the intention is that a landlord needs a good faith reason to evict their tenant something that was not put in simple language and I'm not sure
how this was developed was the survey that was that the city of Petaluma circulated to to Residence we went door to door knocking on tenants doors asking them to complete this survey it's a 12 question survey with a lot of legalese and I just want you to met I don't know if you've all have read the survey but I just want you to imagine that you're delivering it to I don't know your parent or your in-law or your colleague someone who has no grounding in tenants rights law or policy and asking them questions about should the TPA abstain or include this regulation super bundled questions the person who designed this survey I'm not sure what their background or training is but it doesn't have basic survey design of clear language targeted directly to the people you're serving additionally there was no Outreach from the city to a large swath of the population beyond the bias segments of the population that both this group and the landlord lobbying groups have access to so there was no verification of who took this survey where they were coming from and there was no Outreach done by the city to ABRA a broader swath in clear simple language so I would vote for the survey to not be considered very heavily because of this bias thank you JoJo Oliver all right so first off thank you everybody for hosting this everybody that's here all of your feedback I've heard some good stuff so far for some interesting things as well um I I wanted to ask some questions about the eviction numbers
because in my experience uh as a tenant as a person that knows a lot of people that aren't in the greatest of situations uh with regards to finances and housing eviction is commonly made as a threat because once you have an eviction on your record it's much harder to find new housing going forward so oftentimes a landlord that wants to empty a vacate a unit for whatever reason will find an excuse to threaten eviction and I'm not saying that's any but that's something anybody in here would do this is however something that I have verifiably seen with my own two eyes so it just becomes an albatross you become unable to find new housing and that makes you vulnerable if you have kids at that time it makes those kids vulnerable it could make them maybe engage in some criminal activity they might not have had if they had a you know some stable housing growing up is what I'm saying and I that's something that I've also observed firsthand so I want to know like what are the real numbers on eviction because we and we probably can't know that realistically because we only know the numbers where it's actually filed not just used as a threat um anecdotally speaking as well I'm my hometown is Chico California just Northeast of us it's a small town called Paradise some people may or may not have heard of it when it burned to ashes uh the people there the rich people there relocated and bought up everything that was open on the market even things that weren't on the market which involved
getting people that were previously in a stable rental housing evicted so that they could sell to some like you know massive profit swing you know like 20 times what they paid for 10 times what they paid for it originally sure that's fine but I've got a question for you do fires not happen around here exactly us that's what I'm saying is that the community that we want thank you for your comments thank you very much Blake Cooper foreign Council I'm just going to awkwardly speak at this angle I do apologize um I wanted to oh does it oh this is great never mind I wanted to thank uh staff for crafting this report and I wanted to thank the council for taking all the time tonight I imagine this meeting will probably run much later uh trying to respect the vice mayor's point of not repeating previous statements I did want to open I'm a renter in the city of Petaluma with my wife I've raised been raised in the city of Petaluma my whole life most of the people I grew up with similarly are renters in the city of Petaluma most of us have more than a few stories of trouble with landlords that have moved to try and cause evictions well beyond stated causes now specific to the actual proposal I wanted to just key in on the value of the LSAT components of this ordinance right now one thing we're seeing at the state level is a big problem with outside Equity firms coming in and buying up property and we're seeing a lot of it with single-family homes we're seeing a lot of it with rental
units all over the state with Petaluma being a vacation destination it's only a matter of time before that comes here in Sonoma County alone Goldman Sachs owns either directly clear indirectly over 700 housing units just by themselves an ordinance like this that actually helps close the loophole could be critical if you're going to make compromises on this ordinance I do ask that you focus on local landlords make sure that we're not making concessions for landlords out of Nevada neighboring counties or from the East Coast this could be a severe problem in Petaluma and I hope that you'll be willing to move proactively thank you thank you very much Cody Ender Cody Corey Johnson it's slow maybe I should start hi my name is Corey Johnson I'm a Petaluma resident and I'm also a retired teacher I am and I'm a res and I'm a renter and I um as other people have said I think that I think that there's a um a difference in power between landlords and tenants and landlords have properties and that Inc that increase in in value that's sort of a given now and renters are looking for homes um and need stable affordable homes as we know um and um I think that uh and and so as a teacher I can say I have I know the difficulty it is for um students that have to move in the school year and how much they how effects that has on their emotional and school schooling the effect that that has so I think they really need the protections from um victim during the school year um and I also think that the
um the big thing is is making I think do think it needs to be permanent and that there needs to be more in terms of the if people are displaced more money for um movement in terms of moving costs that needs to happen and I hope that you will continue this permanently and make some um um increase the benefits that they're that is there for the um ordinance and for the families in Petaluma that are renting thank you thank you Helene dornfeld good evening my name is Helene dornfeld and I'm a member of the Sonoma County Tenants Union I have lived in Petaluma for 47 years and seen many changes the better over the years I am here to ask the city of Petaluma to pass a stronger version of the ordinance to protect tenants we need more diversity in Petaluma for middle and lower income groups and the ordinance helps to have a fair rental and landlord agreements we need to protect the tenants from unjust evictions and protection should cover all rental units including subsidized units we need to pass the protection to begin immediately and also renting families needs ability and children need to feel safe thank you thank you very much Michael Viva Vivas manual excuse me foreign Pentecost Cynthia George hello my name is Cynthia and I am a um I don't know I don't like to use the word landlord but I'm a landlady in Petaluma and um I most of my points have been covered so I just want to say that um it's been a real struggle for me I've I've stumbled on this whole thing like about two weeks
ago and I've just been kind of consumed with like I mean at different times I'm thinking this is just outrageous what's going on here I I have a property I'm I rented all my life and I never thought I would even be able to be a landlord or a landlady or own a property and now I'm looking towards my retirement which will happen in single digit years coming up and I feel so jeopardized by this I've never evicted anybody my tenants usually stay like five six years they leave they call me back and tell me oh it's terrible here in Silicon Valley I'm paying more than you know I paid with you for like a one room thing I'm a I'm a great landlord I do everything by the book I've educated myself I do the Nolo thing but I'll tell you um I have had a couple of problem tenants and thankfully they wanted to leave and I was all for it you know you guys go ahead and go but I don't have the same protection you know to um retain a good tenant so I think that we should all be able to abide by our contracts and very careful with my contract I go through it with my tenant I lovingly joyfully get the whole place ready and wonder who's gonna abide there and um you kind of this steals my joy it's it's creating a relationship that I don't want to have I'll have to raise the tenants rent every year I'm not done but I'm going thank thank you very much Larry Pullen good evening I seems to me there's a little bit of confusion about um low-income housing in this ordinance I don't see how this ordinance
has anything to do with low-income housing especially for a single family home um this is low income housing is just not an issue it may be an issue but it's not an issue for the existing landlords and I want to address a couple of points um that are of great importance to me or one that's really important is subletting how in the heck can you allow someone to sublet your house with a tenant that you had no uh you had nothing to do with you didn't vet them they haven't submitted a uh a uh the uh they didn't submit an application there's nothing they're now occupying your house and and they have the right to do that it's crazy and then I want to address what the uh attorney put up there a little while ago um all those little blocks it seems like the objective here is for Petaluma to fill in all those blocks that were left empty by the TPA probably for a very good reason because a lot of people looked at that a lot of legal people looked at that and saw that as not something that they wanted the road they wanted to go down and over 50 percent of in the in the survey of the tenants didn't agree with the extra protections and the same thing with the evictions the evictions are down since 2017.
what's the reason the ground floor is the TPA that is the tenant protection act and it's pretty it's pretty onerous by itself but this one is just off the charts this needs to be resent thank you for your comment thank you very much Todd Mendoza good evening mayor senior Council um I'm going to keep mine short but I I'm a real estate broker manager for the last 21 years very involved in this community and not only um in the real estate Community but to the underserved and and the homeless community but this this um this ordinance is just so uh onerous and not to mention all the different things that people have said before but it's our The Exodus is already happening and we've got calls from people um you know Agents from uh Sebastopol wanting to know what what do I do with my rental property I hear this Draconian um ordinance and we're we're starting to list those properties and it's not good for our community uh there's there's many things around um you know waste and being able to sublet and it's I just think you should reconsider and uh because we're going to lose a lot of housing stock and um as much as I want to be sure that um people that you know have housing stability um we have a a number of people here that need to have income stability so thank you thank you very much Deborah castley Deborah cassley Diana Kingsbury and before I don't know can I clarify how much time I have yes I'll do that right now you'll get four minutes because somebody's seated time for you
okay thank you good evening council members and staff my name is Diana Kingsbury and I am an organizer with the Sonoma County Tenants Union thank you for your work on Just Cause which is a part of the city's housing element there are many things to address tonight uh first with a survey I want to Echo some of the bias that was in the questions take for example question 11 if an owner is removing a unit from the market in order to rehabilitate the unit should the owner have to terminate a tenancy until they have the permits needed to begin their rehabilitation rephrased from attendance perspective should my landlord be able to evict me from my home so that they can rehabilitate my home without a permit kind of lands differently I see that you're weighing needs tonight there's the need for a stable home to raise a child and the need to protect an investment from experiencing a loss um I do also want to kind of ask um who who gave them these stickers uh the California Apartment Association for example we know they provide quarterly meetings teaching them how to Rebrand themselves to obfuscate their actual position in the community I'm just curious landlords heckled my colleague Margaret while she was giving her comment when she was doing nothing wrong and the city did not reset her time she was not able to make all of her points multiple tenants who came here tonight had to go home to put their children to bed or to go to bed themselves because they work early in the morning
some of these are senior citizens or they had to go to bed because they are students and have school in the morning multiple tenants told me that they have been extremely nervous or fearful some are so fearful they chose not to speak this show of heckling by this crowd of landlords only reinforces the fear and alienation that many tenants feel I applaud all of the tenants here who have spoken despite this fear it shows incredible courage you shared tonight that 2 381 is the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Petaluma according to the census in 2020 this rent amount is 67 percent of the median monthly income for folks in Petaluma 67 of your income so to sum up landlords have shown a glimpse of their intimidation tactics in front of the city and face no accountability and tenants have shown courage the way that landlords have shown up and commented tonight and during the com Community workshops you would think this ordinance is outrageous but if you pass this landlords can still charge tenants 67 of their income on rent I'd like to ask the landlords who call themselves ethical who are you trying to evict for no just cause is it teachers is it parents is it school-aged children landlords do not have to pay relocation assistance if they do not evict tenants without a just cause landlords can evict tenants for what is considered a just cause things like non-payment of rent things like breaking the lease or committing a crime or things of that nature tenants need
these basic protections we want to make it so that tenants cannot be evicted without financial assistance without a legitimate reason it is absurd that we have had to fight so hard for as long as we have but I encourage the council to consider how many members of the community you are willing to let landlords harass intimidate and ultimately drive out of the community before taking a stand and standing up for vulnerable constituents thank you thank you very much Joe Schneider thank you very much Council and staff for taking the time to provide this venue for us to discuss these my name is Joe Schneider and I'm I'm here on behalf of the North Bay Association of Realtors I want to reiterate that our housing Supply crisis is rooted in decades of underdevelopment of fractured safety net and ongoing systematic forces years of wildfires in the pandemic have compounded this crisis with this proposed ordinance this policy would compromise legal contracts in place penalized housing providers if they need to sell or move into their unit or to address lease violations only increase the risk to them and the viability of our rental stock a viable renting housing housing market cannot function in an environment of unprecedented risk owning a home comes with an exceptional cost and risk it's the largest financial commitment many of us will make in our lives and our economy will suffer if this is jeopardized we did some preliminary preliminary analysis in Santa Rosa in 2020 after an
ordinance was adopted and found that nearly 72 units were pulled off the market because of this landlords did not want to assume that risk moving forward with that being said um we want to point our to our our comments to the survey that was done over a thousand respondents had replied to that in looking at other cities and surveys that they've done that is an astronomical number and a great turnout so thank you for putting the time and effort and energy into that um of those thousand respondents um nearly three-quarters of them are opposed to expanding the existing tenant protections uh that are providing the California's tenant protection act so with that being said uh we would recommend that you rescind the current ordinance and ensure that we do not further further exacerate our our housing supply thank you thank you very much Scott Shelley hello my name is Scott Shelley and I've been a self-employed Builder here in Petaluma for 34 years and I decided the only way I was going to retire because I don't have a government pension or retirement so I was going to use my skills go buy properties that needed work work on them rent them out I borrowed money I took hard money loans in many of those properties when negative cash flow for many many years I worked my ass off and now you've got my hands tied what happens if I get ill and I need to sell a property and I've got a 62 year old tenant in there that's been there for 10 years and haven't raised a rent what happens moving
forward if I have a family member that needs to move into a place what happens if I get into a purchase agreement and the lender is going to require that the new owner take possession within 60 days what happens then so what I see moving forward is as my properties become vacant I'm going to sell them well I have tenants in my properties their rent's going to go up the maximum amount Allowed by law every year and I'm going to get out I'm going to take my money I'm going to exchange it and I'm going to go buy property somewhere more friendly to my business dealings somewhere where you're not taking the value of my property away from me where I control would I work so hard to achieve thank you thank you very much I'm Keith Becker I agree with the housing providers and one of the excuse me on the tenant Advocates on one of the slides up on the screen earlier we absolutely have an affordable housing crisis there is simply not enough affordable housing of all types throughout Petaluma throughout Sonoma County California America we have a housing shortage nothing associated with this ordinance will do a thing to improve that as a matter of fact it will only make it worse because the fact is that people will indeed leave the single family residences are being sold off will no longer be rental residences because at eight hundred nine hundred thousand dollars you can't justify putting that back on the rental market your single family residents will be only the uh opportunity for the
very wealthy to live in in Petaluma and in Sonoma County Brian you asked earlier about teachers um they are a protected class in California there is a term called arbitrary discrimination anybody who any group of individuals who share a common attribute piercings tattoos teachers motorcyclists you can't discriminate against them because they are so that is taken care of you asked about housing assistance and HUD again this is California source of income is protected immigration status is protected ancestry is protected the laws in California not just tenant protection act but the laws in general are strong the strongest in America we don't need more ordinances and the matching against this saying do what does Petaluma need it we don't know that but we passed it in Emeryville we passed enrichment so why not here it's inevitable it doesn't have to be inevitable and it's not necessary thank you very much Jeanette would be bro bro thank you thank you [Music] well good evening vice mayor cater Thompson and the rest of the council and the staff thank you so much for this opportunity yes I sure can thank you um I'm not used to speaking in a mic um thank you so much for this opportunity I'm very grateful to be able to stand here and to and to share some ideas may I first start off by saying that I have agreed with many of the ethical housing sticker bears and I'm not going to be repeating their information but I do want to commend our community's housing professionals you've heard
several of of them tonight some of them you haven't heard from yet but they actually protect renters here because they are so experienced at serving their clients and knowing the letter of the law the the clients that they serve are in good hands and I also agree with uh Dan RAF that evictions are very seldom seen in Petaluma actually I appreciated councilman healy's uh question about the statistics for evictions and the public housing I would like to see that too I'm not sure if I expressed that well um I don't know how much time uh but I do want to say my husband and I have owned and managed and maintained residential rental property here in Petaluma for 17 years my family has lived here since 1950.
[Music] this do we do we want to become San Francisco Petaluma is a unique rural based community it is like no other it is beautiful so I I my general concerns I'm not going to get to but I want to thank you very much Twila San Filippo I say that right Twyla San Filippo thank you and I I think I don't have to worry because it looked like maybe it's not going to happen but I have a little rental in town and I thought when I can't walk or I can't I need help and I'm by myself I'll move into that little place and hire somebody to stay in the other bedroom cook they have a place to live and they could take care of me so when I thought maybe I couldn't sell that I mean couldn't live in it myself and have to sell it that kind of freaked me out but I don't think I think it's going to be okay that part of it I hope but uh I we worked hard to pay for that so that we have something to fall back on when we got old and the times getting there so that's thank you thank you very much Lori Alden foreign thank you I um I'm a retired Economist and I'm a landlady but I don't own property in Petaluma I want to speak on behalf of a group that was not listed as stakeholders in a group that did not show up today these are future would-be tenants families with children for example who in the future will want to move to Petaluma because and it's a shame that nobody is representing them because this group I think has the most to lose from this ordinance for one thing we've talked we've heard already
about how existing landlords might get out of the distance so we're going to possibly lose housing rental housing stock we're also going to provide a disincentive to developers to build new rental housing stock we're going to discourage homeowners from building badly needed do you use because of this Rule and one more thing that that you know hasn't been touched upon and that is discrimination discrimination is wrong it's against the law but it's hard to prove you've got a landlord with you know two different applications one is a family with school children the other is not um and you will I believe see discrimination and the people who are discriminated again teachers families with young children borderline uh you know let's call them high risk tenants they're going to be discriminated against and they will not have recourse I share your goals I hate to go to Petaluma market and see all these gray hair people like me I want to see more families to do that we need more housing thank you Justin Milligan yeah good evening everybody um so I'm I'm a housing a homelessness prevention attorney for legal aid of Sonoma County and uh you know what I'm hearing today is that this law really provides ethical treatment of tenants and I I see a lot of people here with ethical housing providers I haven't heard anything that in this law would would uh would interfere with that you know I'd be prior to my job as a homelessness prevention attorney I was a defense attorney criminal defense
attorney the reality is is that we do need laws to make sure that people are treated ethically I I don't see I haven't heard anybody come up here who is a homeowner really say anything about how this would interfere with their ability to do what they need to do with their property whether that's make a profit whether that's Justin you need to address us uh whether that is to create uh thank you whether that is to create um you know a situation where you can retire come comfortably I haven't heard anything about that this just ensures that homeowners treat their tenants ethically and I think that passing this law would be very appropriate it adopts the the Ellis act some of the which basically just requires that homeowners do what they say they're going to do so if they're going to take their property off the market then they have to take their property off the market and I I have to say that it is so important to protect everybody's rights so I deal with people who are homeless and just having one person become homeless because of the unethical treatment of a homeowner that's that's that we we can't let that happen so this just ensures that people are treated ethically thank you very much asiah Gonzalez Messiah here Pamela finister oh she's coming great thank you hello my name is Pam I'm actually myself fourth generation petalumen um started my life here 62 years ago um and I stand here currently as a tenant but I have also been in that position of being a landlord as well um
but I can say as a tenant um I'm not in favor of the changes that are being proposed at first glance it looks pretty good the changes that the council have submitted would seem favorable but looking deeper it becomes apparent to me that landlord a landlord finds themselves in a serious predicament it would appear that with all the required changes they would personally feel the need to take action to protect themselves raising rent every year would be one such answer to the problem five percent and I guess up to ten percent when you take into consideration property taxes uh would give them the opportunity to set aside money that may be needed in the future to litigate a possible problem I have many times had a job that didn't take into consideration that my rent rent would go up possibly by hundreds of dollars employers don't always readily give raises for the better part of my life as a tenant I have never had my rent raised I've always been a reliable tenant taking care of my property like it was my home because it was and always always have gotten 100 of my deposit back when vacating the property should the tenant protection act go through people like myself fast approaching retirement age challenged with the task of trying to find work will likely find themselves living on a fixed income and unable to meet the demands of regular rent increases and I'm not the only one many young people out there barely scraping by on minimum wage thank you for your comment your time has
expired thank you very much asaya and I apologize I did not know you were here with the child otherwise I would have had looked for you earlier that's on the slip plus two kids okay thank you um good evening everyone it is terrifying watching that clock um sitting here waiting anticipating three minutes it being shut down to two um I am 27 years old I have lived at more than six addresses in Petaluma over the course of My Life um I it's amazing um to see the stickers the ethical housing provider ethical is a pretty neutral term what that derives too would be Moral Moral being right or wrong and to the nothing burgers I am what is in the middle of that burger I am the product of displacement in Petaluma I've experienced um having to commute back and forth from San Francisco where grandparents do own their home um step step grandparents but having to commute back and forth because we were trying to live a life in Petaluma but couldn't afford it and once you have that eviction on your record my parents being minority and having five children found it incredibly difficult to find another place to live and now here I am I'm now a veteran I'm now a Section 8 voucher holder I am 27 years old to every person with a sticker you have an additional source of income I fled a domestically abusive relationship in October being a stay-at-home mom for the past two years there was no additional income for relocation or anything of the like and this just isn't enough time to get all these
points across it but it was worth it to sit here and wait thank you very much Clayton engstrom Madame vice mayor members of the council thanks for uh taking this on and indulging at least me tonight I agree so much with what the ethical housing providers are speaking of I did want to say a couple of things I think this is an ordinance not chasing a problem you haven't been able to really Define the problem people that don't pay rent get evicted that's what happens I have been a landlord for 43 years I happen to own rentals on just the west side of Petaluma I have asked one tenant in 43 years to leave he was causing a problem in the neighborhood only one I did not I've never threatened anybody with eviction or any of that I have judgments totaling over twenty five thousand dollars for those people that I did evict that I have no way of collecting this ordinance throws this thing those things way into the other direction many of these ordinances are talking about how there are other legal remedies civil penalties they can attendance can go after me civilly um the one that the gal from legal aid said that there's a lot wrong with this ordinance gosh maybe you should be listening to her there is a lot wrong with it uh council member schribs you spoke about jeez can we save some of it or let's go hide and buy item I would love to go item by item and show you all the unintended consequences of this this will drive up the cost of housing absolutely for me absolutely it strives up I
also want to say that the city of Fairfax the landlords have uh they're going to put it on a referendum on the ballot and it's going to over get overturned so don't ever think that that because they did it we should do it this thing's bad thank you thank you Dana bro thank you hello I'm the husband of the other bro and we've as she mentioned uh we're we're property owners and managers for over 17 years and she's been in the uh her family's been in the Petaluma for over 50.
anyway um there's just a couple of items that uh I wanted to reiterate that's kind of have already been said uh one is that this this tenant landlord relationship the tenants need the landlords the landlords need the tenants so we need to work together we are of the of the group of people that work together to maintain a good relationship with their their um their tenants so the the bad relationships do end in other ways than you either one might want but it's not the good ones that um that stay so um a good business owner is going to maintain that relationship and not need these extra ordinances that are already covered by the existing um acts and laws that are in California so we don't need an extra layer of the ordinances and rules and regulations or restrictions that because the the acts and the other ones are already in place we just need to enforce them why can't they be enforced I don't know why they can't be enforced that's um I haven't done any research with that but maybe you guys have some insight into that uh this ordinance this that petalum wants to put on top of the existing ordinances are only going to be added costs for the city added costs for the landlords which will be reflected in added costs for their the tenants as well thus ruining and distributing the relationship that these us business owners want to maintain we don't want to have turnover it costs us money to have turnover so we don't want to have turnover we want to have good tenants tennis be good
tenants they'll have they won't get evicted they won't be asked to leave and everybody will be happy so please thank you very much Manfred honig it's Manfred here Aiden Smith thank you for the time before I begin I would like to mention many of the landlords have brought up supply and demand let's keep that in mind and let's keep in mind the sea of green stickers we've seen tonight first if any of the landlords who corrected me last time I spoke on the scope of this bill are here thank you I was incorrect and I appreciate you letting me know and I trust you our local government to determine which landlords should and should not be covered by this law a consistent sentiment I heard last time and tonight was that this is unfair to landlords or penalizes landlords and I want to speak to that it is very clear to me that this bill is about equity and security not punishing anyone and perhaps you don't see it that way as you haven't seen me in my generation's perspective I will never be able to afford a home most of my friends most of my peers will likely never be able to afford a home this is not because we are fiscally irresponsible my rent is the same as some of my older co-workers mortgage now you all don't understand how you could have any part in the play of this and I mean landlords by that and I understand that completely every landlord has their own reasons for doing what they're doing it's part of a retirement plan it was a family home they want to move into it at a
future date and I don't fault anyone for that but I implore you please look around this room this room is full of landlords that means that everyone in this room or most of them own at least one property that is not their full-time residence many of them own more than one and there is a security afforded to you when you own your own home as long as you pay your mortgage and your taxes that home is indisputably yours for as long as you want it in part because landlords have taken all this housing that is the security that I have never had and that I will never have every home that landlords own and do not live in is a home that could go to somebody who wants to actually live there but because it is profitable the class of people that are landlords and there are a lot of them have taken the housing hoarded it and treated like Investments not homes this is a large part of why many in my generation are resigned to a dead American dream we will never get to be a part of the Society of property owners that wealth is predominantly built upon in this country I'm out of time I had one more paragraph thank you very much and Angela so dados potatoes good evening City Council Members my name is Angelina soldatos and I am with the California Apartment Association we are the largest rental housing trade group in California and we proudly represent 3 000 of our members in Sonoma County who provide roughly 30 000 rental housing units CAA strongly urges Petaluma city council to put an end to
this ordinance tenants in the city of Petaluma are afforded robust protections under ab1482 we need to allow ab1482 to work in a non-pandemic era it is imperative that city council focuses their efforts on education and Outreach as well as investing in much needed housing this problem will not go away until we start building housing CAA is is willing to work with the city of Petaluma with that Outreach thank you so much thank you very much David Marshall I know um and Page D and this is our last speaker and she and Jessica Goldstein has um seated two minutes to her so she'll get four minutes evening council members and thank you so much staff uh I really appreciated the the presentation tonight was really clear um and this is a very confusing topic uh so kudos for that and also thank you for the community engagement that you've been spearheading over these past two months looking around the room at just after 11 pm I can see that it worked thank you my name is Paige D I am currently a renter in Petaluma District Six I am very grateful uh to return for my sixth public comment on this ordinance and I'm here representing myself and I'm here because when I moved to Petaluma in 2021 uh the state TPA did not protect me um I signed a multi-year lease I agreed to all the terms including an early break fee um if I left I would have to pay within those terms I did everything right I maintained my end of the bargain but four months into my two-year lease my landlord decided to sell the
the next steps in my story are kind of special because I happen to have kind of a bad apple so there was harassment pressure illegal entries um but I'm here tonight for the ordinance to speak to the ordinance because I believe that there's a value in the ordinance regardless of the personal ethics of a landlord um because what this person specifically told me was Common Sense was straight up illegal in the state of California in some cases and so the discussions that we were having were com were unequal um so I ask please for you to protect tenants in Petaluma My Hope Is that these protections stand no matter how many units the landlord owns in my case my landlord owned one unit and this person uh displaced my partner and I um I hope that you protect tenants no matter where the landlord lives because if it's a duplex um or like the the TPA exemptions are really complex and confusing for tenants to understand and I hope that you protect tenants no matter how old the building is because when I was displaced I needed to sign the quickest lease that I could find in order to avoid being unsheltered for a period of time regardless of the landlord situation they should share the costs of exiting the lease in the workshop I shared the cost to me of relocating I actually updated my math double checked it and it was eleven thousand two hundred dollars that's eleven thousand two hundred dollars that it cost me to relocate within the city of Petaluma that's eleven thousand two hundred
dollars that did not go into my own retirement my own Investments my own family's well-being we had to leave a unit that never sold and now sits empty and this ordinance would have protected our right to remain in our home thank you so much for strengthening improving this ordinance and protecting our community you're appreciated thank you very much Sarah sass I need to come embarrassing thank you council members and community members for being here tonight I know this is a very charged issue um I just want to share that first of all I've been here for 20 years and um for probably about eight I've been a homeowner but um recently I lived 50 yards away from here for a rental price that I will not share because it was so grossly below market rate but I did sign a lease and that would never be possible if this ordinance was in place it helped the landlord and help myself and that's not something that would be possible um um with this ordinance landlord would have had to raise the cost of rent every year to protect his assets and protect me and protect any issues that might arise um um my grandmother has had the same tenant for 60 years and I really love that idea that she pays like maybe 20 of what market rate is and if I was ever lucky enough to be a landlord I would want to follow in her footsteps I would like to know what the city is doing to penalize homeowners that own single-family homes that have sat completely empty for one year two years seven years eight years multiple
units in the in the city it was shared earlier that less than 13 evictions happened for every thousand homes in town and I can tell you there are several several several completely empty homes in town I don't know why those aren't being penalized in a similar um fashion and um the reason why I put clothes on I came out of bed is because the commenter shared earlier that Richmond at Oakland have previously passed a similar ordinance and I don't want to be anything like them or anything like their communities I meet people every day that come from Oakland just to get out of Oakland and visit our lovely amazing Charming town and ask yourself if you want to be like them I don't want to be anything like those communities so thank you thank you very much with that any other public comment last chance I'm going to go ahead uh you've already spoken you get one chance sorry I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment Vice technology that I was getting there I was just backwards we're going to go to the city clerk yes we did receive 97 public comments emailed prior to the meeting and a handful more have come in during the meeting those will be shared when the meeting ends and posted online tomorrow thank you very much and now we're going to go ahead on our Zoom audience members of the public attending online who wish to speak on this item should race their virtual hand or press star 9 if participating by phone speakers are reminded to be respectful in their comments and that
this meeting is being translated as a reminder please pause between sentences for translation the first speaker is Zyra Garcia please unmute and begin your two minutes thank you so much so racial disparities exist in our County um just kind of state the obvious that most of these landlords in the room are white privileged landlords and it speaks volume to the lack of understanding Equitable Solutions as well as providing a safe and welcoming environment which is why it's vital for tenant protections housing insecurity in all these forms can negatively impact human health whether it's difficult paying rent over crowding living conditions evictions or homelessness housing insecurity exposes families to increase stress mental and physical health problems Petaluma should not be part of a systemic racism that supports unjust evictions and private prison pipelines for our youth rather than thinking about funding law enforcement programs I hope you read and heard comments from some of our school board members and Educators that support this initiative because housing and security is a core root cause our families with children are facing and again I'll say this again racism is at the root of health and economic disparities inequity does not happen by accident just cause saves lives you have an opportunity to actually support our youth thank you the next speaker is Pam Daniels please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes yes thank you so much for this opportunity to provide a
comment virtually thank you um I just wanted to speak from the perspective of having my husband and I are grateful that we have a single Adu adjacent to our home in Petaluma and that we can offer it to our tenant as a quiet and safe rental apartment and as I've realized now that we are certainly um at more than a fair rent um and what's important for for us to sort of reflect on here that just you know may be different than other situations this is an unusual setting in the sense that you know the relationship between us and our tenants really like for us it's like having a roommate or a housemate because we are so close in terms of our proximity and so really a level of trust uh you know supported by the boundaries of our rental agreement it's really important for a long-term stable relationship and living situation for everyone here so I guess what I just wanted to reflect on was a couple things and again I just want to Echo the sentiment that what's really going to make a difference everybody speaks about affordability in stable housing we really need more housing in Petaluma and anything that we can do to encourage building and Rental of adus and other multi-family housing I think we need to do everything to support that and if there's something in this set of regulations that's going to prevent that or discourage that I think that's something that this I hope the city council will take seriously the last thing I'd like to comment on which hasn't been brought up is one of
the parts of the regulation that I definitely do agree with is the option with respect to rent is the option of allowing a third party to pay the tenants rent or having the landlord provide documentation to assist the rent the tenant in applying for rental assistance I think that seems like a very important and appropriate protection for tenants and thank you so much for your time thank you the next speaker is Terry koswick please unmute yourself and begin your oops begin your two minutes Terry can you unmute yourself thank you okay I'm going to move on to Diana mariscal can you mute yourself and begin your two minutes good evening thank you to the city council for having us um I was there earlier I apologize I couldn't stay any later my name is Diana mariskan I grew up in Petaluma I see my former science teacher on the city council um my parents were able to buy a home in Petaluma in the late 1990s and you know I once I got married could not afford to stay in Petaluma so I am now a Santa Rosa resident and it sat in my heart a little bit because I love that town but we just couldn't afford it and we still can't um in addition I also work for legal aid at Sonoma County and I worked at Petaluma people services and I saw many people displaced by the evictions that are happening I know these mom and pop renters believe that this ordinance is going to affect them but it's not you're still very much able to evict if you have a sub tenant and it's in your contract you can very much
evict your tenant for letting someone into the home that you did not vet this does not strip you from your rights as a land lord or the owner of your property you just need to be better equipped and that's okay you already have a lot of resources and I just want to Echo the fact that um we do need more housing but that doesn't mean that the housing that we have now shouldn't have the proper structure and rights and protections for the people that are living there and I know we're running out of time this evening so I appreciate everyone that is still there present thank you speaker is Kendall Jarvis please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes thank you Kendall Jarvis also from legal aid of Sonoma County I just wanted to say that we really need these protections often evictions can be used unfairly and just cause simply limits this for valid reasons as a community this presents an opportunity to lead the way and I I want to be clear that this is not about preventing landlords from asserting their right to eviction we were just asking that there is a reason for that eviction as an agency legal aid would like to remind the city council that their decision will impact hundreds of children legal aid assist thousands of tenants each year in those households there are over three thousand three thousand children eviction housing displacement have dramatic impact on children's health and education just today we were speaking with the client about the impact of their eviction on
her 13 year old the child Sarah suffers from severe PTSD from eviction which resulted in her being homeless and transient for a year once rehoused she did not come out of her room for three months this is simply just not not a reasonable conclusion for our community to draw I would also like to say that this could be strengthened by making it apply to all units having it start the first day of tenancy provide relocation assistance and protect school-aged children by not allowing evictions during the school year and I will yield the rest of my time thank you so much for your consideration thank you the next speaker is ronit rubinoff please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes hi there I appreciate your time this evening um my co-worker Kendall just uh made the comments that I was going to make so I'm going to yield my time given the lateness of the hour thank you thank you the next speaker is Joshua um pinwalla please unmute yourself and begin your two minutes Joshua can you unmute yourself hello can you hear me yes hello Petaluma city council I'm a former Petaluma resident but I obviously can't live there anymore expensive I'm going to focus just on Just Cause specifically because it just makes me so sad to see these tenants who are at such a disadvantage giving from what your figures are saying an average of two-thirds of their income to landlords coming up one by one being so polite and conciliatory when their lives are being threatened so greatly I mean this isn't
right it's objectively gross two-thirds of their income two-thirds of their total Financial lives to say hey I'm okay with you evicting me evict me if I do something wrong but can it could be just could it be for just causes please is this even a decision do tenants need to pay four-fifths of their income before their voices are heard Petaluma is less a place to live and spend money in more of a place that tells tenants that when you come here you're going to be exploited and your your purpose is to be quiet and give money to your landlords rich people here say they can leave they'll move if it because they want to I don't know hold on to like this idea of being able to unjustly evict their tenants I mean I is this something that we debate in Petaluma my my mother raised me better than that that's not how I treat people and I just I just can't I just I don't know I look I I'm disheartened thank you vice mayor there are no other hands raised um thank you very much and with that we'll bring it back to the council um councilmember Barnacle so I'm going to make a motion to go past 11 o'clock before we start with discussion if that's all right second by post okay okay we're going past 11.
council member Barnacle yeah I made a motion to go past 11 post a case thanks councilmember Barnacle yes Healey yes Cader Thompson yes now yes yes okay yes trips uh yes motion passes unanimously now I'll go to council member barnacle thank you um first I want to appreciate everybody who showed up um everybody um I appreciate the ethical housing providers I appreciate the tenants Advocates um I have a little bit of a perspective here um my bias my experience as a renter in the past since 2009 I've lived in 12 places six of them in Petaluma and all of the places that I've lived in Petaluma including the place where I live now which I own happened because I know someone so that just um just going to brandish my privilege here for a few minutes just to give everybody a little sense of what what happened in my life in 2009 I moved back with my um with my girlfriend from college we wanted to move in together her parents had houses in Petaluma and we wanted to move into one and they obliged unfortunately it was a single mother who was on dialysis and her daughter was in the JC she was given plenty of time to move out but couldn't do it because she was on dialysis um I helped her move out I helped her move I was moving dialysis bags out of the uh out of the tub um I um put a bunch of stuff into storage the daughter moved in with some friends and the mother moved in to a fifth wheel trailer out in West Petaluma by Wilson School we moved in without a security deposit two years later my
girlfriend and I broke up as many college sweethearts do I found a small apartment on 6th Street that my friend was moving out of I stayed there until I moved to Oakland um because I got a job in Oakland I lived in Oakland for three years had three places and had two great landlords and Inc incurred one highly predatory landlord then I moved to Portland to close the distance on a long-distance relationship with a woman who is now my wife um I got my first taste at what uh moving in with a premium was when I saw that I had to pay like one and a half months rent as deposit plus the rent that was my first time experiencing that I had great experiences living there when I was faced with the choice of renewing my one-year lease or moving to a month to month but paying an extra 200 a month I went with a year then my job role changed and I needed to move back to California and I had to pay three thousand dollars to break the lease early and then another 2 000 to move across state lines I'm not complaining about having to own you know and abide by the contract terms but I think it does say something that moving is really expensive and that goes to what um so now we get back to my my place here in Petaluma um I put out an all call to my friends and immediately found a place in downtown Petaluma a little bungalow um it was shall I say to be polite a slum it didn't have any ventilation in the bathroom of the kitchen it had an old gas stove we stayed there for a couple months moved into
another place in the little um Zone um that place didn't have ventilation it had a gas stove that was constantly hot the toilet was had a rotten was rotten through the floor with two pieces of Plexiglas holding it up when the toilet started leaking I called the plumber the plumber said I've been here three times in the last three years and he put three new wax seals on it and I said why don't you fix the floor and he said because the landlord doesn't want to um I didn't want to raise my rent everybody there felt that way they liked the low rents and they were concerned about um reporting it I moved out into what was my favorite house that I've lived in in Petaluma was a wonderful landlord it was my 10th place in 10 years it had one problem rats in 30 days I killed 20 rats and I loved this house but I killed 20 rats and the landlord appreciated my efforts and my friends and my wife chuckled about my new name the Petaluma rat trapper but I never got a break on my rent I never got anything when I moved out to buy my house it was because a friend of mine's dad was selling it and I got in and now I'm in the in the ownership Market but I would never been there I still would have been lived in I still would have been living in the rat infested house if I didn't know someone and that's just what it takes to make it in Petaluma right now I heard comments from people um I worked my ass off I did too so to all the other tenants um I've I've heard unintended consequences I think there's
other things that are outside of the concept on outside of the things that we're talking about inside of this room tonight that have created unintended consequences and I'll get into that in a second actually I want to go right there now so um I think about things in in slides I do sales so this is my this is the way I operate but I just want to share a few slides to give a sense of of what um where my head's at and what my priorities are so let me see here so my priority is to protect vulnerable people from circumstances that they can't control but when I say vulnerable people I mean children I mean the disabled and the elderly I mean victims of domestic violence that I mean people who can become homeless when I say cannot control I mean no fault evictions people who've done nothing wrong and could become homeless because of it children who are going to be uprooted and moved out of their their school in the middle of their school year those are things that I think when I think of equity those are things that I'm really concerned with I'm not trying to take um not trying to go too far here but I don't like there's people there's real harm that is created the good news is is that this is a very small number of cases so when I met with the landlords there was or the the property management companies there's three they shared um that one of them had 10 percent were landlord affected notice to vacates one was 12 and one was 14.
so I put 12 here very very small number there's two reasons why that happens selling my house or moving in a family member okay and the one thing that everybody in the room myself included was really concerned with is the impacts of property prop 19.
when we talk about unintended consequences the unintended consequences of Prop 19 pushing more properties to leave the market I think is going to be bigger than this this ordinance so if we have a whole mess of markets leave a whole mess of rental markets leaving the market and going to be sold renters are going to be hit renters are going to be hit hard right those are the people that are going to be forced to move and that's a problem for me that's not a problem the Petaluma city council created but it's a problem that we're going to have to face so I I did a little bit of look a little bit of looking on just sort of like the equity impacts of what we're talking about here this is from 2018 but I would imagine that the data is probably pretty similar maybe even a little more exacerbated now after covid 3.3 million people living paycheck to paycheck it used instead of the federal poverty line it used a self-sufficiency standard which is just a different way of looking at it but anyway I'm going to go on what they found is that obviously race is attached to this now I'm I'm not going to say anything but there are a lot of white people in here and that's not that's just what it is what we have here then is white people are much less likely to be out on the on the edge and at risk women women are more at risk than men Latino women and black women are more are more at risk than white women and single moms are much more likely to fall below the standard than single dads these are
the vulnerable people that I care about children these are Graphics right from the report 58 percent of households with children under the age of six cannot mate their basic needs that's a concern now the right to recall I think there's been a lot of focus on that this to me is not going to ensure that people don't wind up on the street but money might and that's what I'm interested in so I looked at a couple of different rental property management websites today trying to get this and what I found was it's roughly about 2.5 times the amount to get into a house so um the one thing I I love the Jingle the Gen Z and matching tees from Tom um the one thing I really like though most was when you said that in getting rid of the right to recall we could increase the the payment to people because to me the the one thing that I care about is making sure that the very small number of people who are going to be forced out for no fault of their own are not going to wind up on the streets and if that's because people are selling their properties they're going to have money coming in and I think they can afford it if they're moving in family members I'd like to think that they can afford it I'd like to I I know that my family members have moved other family members in a lot of times they leave out the the deposits there's all kinds of things that happen when you're moving family members in and I understand that there may be cases on the other side where landlords are feeling the pain too
but I'm saying that the renters are much more likely to wind up on the streets than the landlords are and that's what I'm concerned about I hope that as the council thinks about this tonight things that are um our front of our mind are protecting people who've done nothing wrong from winding up on the streets because that is a real risk thank you thank you council member posakay thank you vice mayor um yeah I want to make a few points as well and I will say at the top that uh I'm coming from a place very similar to council member Barnacle um I'm probably going to have some different emphasis but uh you know I just want I want to reiterate that that this ordinance does not prevent evictions it does not prevent sales and it does not control rents I think I hope everyone knows that already but sometimes I'm not sure um I appreciate all the landlords being here and all the comments they've made before now and now and and also the suggestions they've made to help improve this ordinance um as has already been mentioned the letter from the two attorneys uh Margaret and Mr RAF um discusses some things that I think most of us agree with that we need to simplify the language we need to use terminology identical to the way it's used in the TPA we need to uh clarify the just causes and make them more consistent with the TPA I think we can we can talk about the education exemption some more um I I've been a well I have been a renter more than I've been a landlord but I have been a
landlord occasionally and I tried to be a landlord as many of you say you've tried to be and it's it's hard for me to imagine how this would change the way I interacted with with my tenants um I uh I guess um rather than repeat everything else let me just let me just I want to talk about an analogy okay when I had one meeting one of the property managers uh gave me a number said only one in 200 people only one no only one in 200 rental households gets evicted in a year okay uh we got a statistic of 13 and a thousand that would be a little over one percent okay one in 200 would be half of one percent okay and we're talking in in in and it's emphasized that this is uh uh what is it a hamburger or something uh it's it's insignificant um but I would ask you to think about so that's um let's let's say it's six tenths of one percent just so we get a number of sixty okay I want to start with the number of 60 evictions in a year which I think is um you know we had 83 last year I think although we're not positive where they all came from my analogy is that uh if there were 60 evictions in the last year they're also approximately by data that I can get available I don't have the exact numbers for petalum but based on our population the incidents the United States 60 people died of coronary artery artery disease last year in Petaluma okay and um that's 60 people uh that's out of sixty thousand um did not [Music] they um they're involved in a Health Care system that is you know has a
great focus in trying to keep them from dying and there also have an ambulance on sometimes seems like virtually every block that can get there in minutes to help them and all that effort's going in to deal with 60 people dying of coronary artery disease which I I don't think they're lucky to to do that but but what I'm saying is that even though people don't die of uh being evicted um there's it's very clear that people and especially children have uh severe Health uh effects from a uh a life of chronic um uh roof anxiety if you will so um that's all I have to say thank you thank you very much council member schribs okay so um I agree with everything pretty much been said it seems like there's been burdens and hardships on from everybody in both sides as a teacher I did have students who are homeless and who are got moved got evicted and things so up so I've seen things like happen um so there is some real concerns here in Petaluma it may not be a large numbers but it does huge impacts so um the question we're raising tonight is is the current TPA from the state adequate or do we need more and if we do more how much more is it going to help reduce the numbers of problems or issues that we're having with the cases that with the evictions that were that are happening um so I'd like to step back a little bit and look at the overall view um I did I did read all the materials I read these surveys I read all the letters and everything so I've tried to educate myself I've talked to
a few folks along the way some of the experts in this room and outside trying to get a clearer picture and so there's a lot of I have some agreements with with a lot of things that have been said but some disagreements with also some things that have been said um I'd like to go back and take a big view of what's happening in the U.S I did attend a meeting there was a brand new U.S renters Bill of Rights at least a principal white paper published by the White House I attended that last month that I mentioned and in there it's an 18 page document and so I just want to go over what principles there are that were delineated by the US government and it's pretty much modeled I understand after the California TPA already the first principle is access to Safe quality accessibility and affordable housing so and a lot of it in there we just need more housing and that's absolutely true we need more affordable housing or any housing the more housing we have the more ways people have to live in different segments top bottom middle whatever we need more housing period and I'm sorry it's we're not going to be a rural people are complaining yes we're rural but like everybody else we are shifting gears to become more acidified all the time and that's going to continue we don't have much choice on that um second principle clear and fair leases is a whole section on that and and this is where the agreements and the leases and breaking the leases so there's whole sections on that there's another
principle education enforcement enhancement of Rights and particularly in in the education part was do all the renters understand their rights do all the landlords understand all their procedures of what they need to do and what they have the rights to do and apparently there's a lot of misinformation that's gone around and I've talked to a couple folks I know Penelope people services do a lot they could do even more there's a lot could could be done I know at least of course yes but um uh whatever it takes but as far as there's a lot going on and at least has seen a lot at the penalt people Services as a bear saw who also talked that the things are happening but we could do a better job I might take a little bit more money a little bit more effort and in the enforcement part it is going to cost City money it's going to take some work it's going to be all sorts of things going on another one fourth principle the right to organize we have the organizers are here and they're speaking their minds and they're pushing it to make things as right as they can in their Direction which is a good and finally he gets to evictions prevention and diversion and relief and in there it does like the TPA comes in we have protections uh the state worked really hard to get those together and then relief and we've seen there's a variety of ways other cities have operated within our local vicinity here but these are very important things that are happening across the U.S we're being used to
California as a model to apply what we've done here throughout the United States so that is all going in a really good direction so I just want to bring up what's going on in the bigger picture um things of of what I'd like to see um and when I talk about education I think there should be at least maybe twice three times a year a bilingual education either provided by the city by the managers of the properties we have folks that say they have 500 plus Properties or three thousand California says three thousand properties and the like many many households um to have those and the city to have an educational packages bilingual both sides frequent enough so that everyone understands what their rights are so we need more of that including for the landlords there should be a workshop for landlords if you're going to be a landlord hey these are the rules regulations is how to do it even some help from Master landlords who've done it really well and say okay helping them Mentor landlords helping with the new landlords um I've talked about more housing is needed and we're working on that I know Petaluma has got that as a huge goal to increase our our housing especially at the lower end um we've got this blueprint to kind of follow and evictions this little bit of that total policy so yes we have more to do than just evictions to work on and a lot of that issues are not just evictions they're about a lot of issues about rats in the house and the like so there's more to work on than
just evictions that need to be made right and worked with to improve that the housing situation here in Petaluma um a lot of some folks talked about missing data that we don't have the uh enough of the information that we need and then there's the thing about we need to make this a Petaluma law not a county or a state law about custody kovid 19th it came in as an emergency and and yet it was needed to get us through this period if the covet is now officially over we need to rethink and reevaluate is this can we petalumize whatever we need to do here that's going to be best for us um and some comments are also made just just backing up on the survey yes I agree with some of the bias within the survey the questions and the way that we're done and the better information and even information portrayed I've mentioned a couple little bit to staff I learned to see more directly from renters the renters alone what they were thinking versus landlords I didn't quite get that information out from the survey so I was hoping to get that still in hopefully near future other things that were said tonight um There's issues about getting units fixed and making it more livable as we see primary examples and but we do have penalt people Services we have a unique organization here that that does a phenomenal job that's unique for us here and I'm really glad we have it um we need to support that even more than to do even more than what they are doing now that's one of the solutions that needed to
happen so does the TPA is it adequate and I think for the most part it's it's the strongest here in the U.S and and yeah so it's a time to work well it just happened before covet so yeah you're right there's not enough time for it to see how it works evictions are down um however I did get a story from one of my friends who is a landlord on several properties if you invested in there then and he ended up well I didn't get paid rent for a whole year and I gee I went tried evictions but the lawyer said before I even got through the court case it wouldn't even get into the courts because the courts are so backed up I couldn't even get it to court in over a year and finally the folks finally moved out so I got got saved by that so our whole system got impacted including the Jews initial system and landlords are going well I'm not going to evict because the cost and the time and the effort and trying to work with the court system is just not viable right now because of covid um hopefully that that gets more resolved so lots and less issues we're dealing with um relocations so um I'm in favor pretty much of um trying to get a few details there's a lot that's in the current I didn't I read the whole ordinance I went through it and tried to understand it I had troubles myself even though I pretty legal pretty well I still was a lot of parts in there confusing um and I I did last time at the last council meeting I did ask two I did ask two um uh the group stuff maybe find some lawyers
that maybe get together and work and I'm really glad to did so representative both of the landlords and a representative from the tenants they did get together they're here they did talk they communicated they came up with some really nice agreements and it's like I really like those agreements what's happening there there are some differences we can work through those our lawyer has said yes um their prepared rate they've done a huge amount of work they've shown it in the staff reports and they're ready to go with something that's going to be workable to get rid of all the onerous stuff for the landlords but still give a little added protections and I think one of the features we could talk about more that's one of the even the landlords spoke up I thought was very clear hopefully I'll repeat that he said if we could just allow increase in Loop relocations to the folks that do get evicted um fair or unfair but if they especially if they had evicted fairly then those relocation costs whatever it is if we just expand that and then remove all the honor stuff of the three five ten years um so it's not as bad and you guys if you said earlier if like my house is now worth over a million dollars I bought it for 300 000 long ago went down to two hundred thousand during to attend but in the last 12 years it's tripled more than tripled in price so there's a nice profit to be made if you saw something sold now so if at even at 900 800 000 800 000 sale g eight thousand dollars for one
percent one percent to help my renter so I'm just evicting because I want that house uh sold if I could put one percent which is even less than what I've given my sales people help to move and relocate that would be pretty fair or whatever number you want to put in there but there needs to be more than one month's rent or that's required now uh by the TPA so there are some things that we can add to the TPA that would be fair and helpful um most helpful but I think there's a lot of stuff we need to remove absolutely from the the current legal ordinance that we've got going now and if our legal department can come up with that with a short period of time and they're prepared and ready to go in his agreements and maybe get the two lawyers that presented their letters work with our city come with the uniform make it work and find a solution that is that's not everybody's going to have to be with that nobody's going to be happy with but at least it's more workable and more petalumized then then I would like to see going that direction but that's that's a summary of my thoughts because I've I've put in a few I've put in many many hours on this I thought I'd just give give them my little speech thank you council member now thank you um it's late um I'm not going to bore you with my 40-year history of um living outside um the the homeowner world but I was a I was a renter my late husband and I with our newborn baby had rented a house on the west side two bedroom Petaluma flooded the
water did not come up into the home it just came to the basement and to the front door the base of the front door it received it it never dried out the mold came as a tenant there was no rights we didn't have anything there was mold growing the landlord said it was our fault we had to go to small claims court to get back our security Baza which we've lost now in 2023 we have tenants rights one of the people that wrote to us we had lots of emails said we don't need this ordinance about a limit most tenants are covered under the tenants protection act SB 1482.
and another one says layers rules just make life harder for people somebody else said who has been helped by this ordinance and here's another one does Petaluma have a rent registry are we going to have to establish one so that we can keep track who's going to enforce these um tenant landlord conflicts and let's see how can we ignore the hardships that we've heard through the emails we got from landlords in the last week how are we going to ignore those hardships though landlords who went without receiving rent for a whole year during covid should we let the job of that SB 1482 take place in a non um pandemic World somebody else mentioned these are very important things the tenants have lots of Rights right now 40 years ago we didn't have any rights we've come a long way it's a late night and I think this tenant protection ordinance that we have right now has too many flaws we did it backwards we should have talked to the stakeholders the landlords before we started writing it and saved us six months of Heartache and we wouldn't be sitting here at 11 20 at night so I'm not going to be supporting this I want to see it improved and I want to see the whole Community come together in a conversation and think about what that SB 1482 already provides thank you councilmember Healey thank you so um I don't have a speech written out so I'm just going to talk a little bit here um I agree with council member schrimps that um and and one of the speakers The Economist actually I thought
she was quite interesting that um we really want to be encouraging more housing of at all income levels affordable housing market rate housing because the law of supply and demand is real and if you have more Supply then the price is going to go down and and that's a real thing um and um I'm concerned that this ordinance is going to discourage strongly discourage market rate apartment developers from wanting to come to this town um you know I'm not exempting stuff that's less than 15 years old not allowing evictions for waste not allowing evictions for unauthorized subletting and on and on and on and I think your apartment developers your market rate apartment developers who we are relying on in our draft housing element to meet a substantial portion of our Arena needs Arena goals are just going to look elsewhere so as I said before I'm a great believer in the law of unintended consequences and I think quite you know just to be cynical about it I think if if someone what were to set out to make sure that a market rate apartment developers didn't want to come to Petaluma they'd write this ordinance just to discourage them um it's I think it's that flawed I think you know it's telling that the City Attorney at the outset said that the California tenant protection act of 2019 is probably the most tenant friendly set of Protections in the United States and council member schrib's reference that the administration is touting that as a model for the rest of the country to follow
they're not doubting Petaluma um there's probably a reason for that um so there there are some modest things that I would be willing to support that are outside the four corners of of what's before us tonight um Elise was kind enough to to forward an ordinance passed by the city of San Rafael which provides some interesting safeguards city of Los Angeles one aspect of their tenant protection act is um is I think something that we could do without causing undue heartburn here and I do think there should be something for sham Alice act evictions but I would go out six or 12 months and not certainly not 10 years um and um but beyond that I am very fearful that this ordinance or anything like it will discourage the market rate apartment folks from coming here and and we're counting on that to meet our Arena targets without them we fail we just flat out failed to meet urbina targets I would also hope we can carve out small mom-and-pop landlords um Mr Hooper made reference to large corporations buying up you know portfolios of single-family homes and and that is true it hasn't happened so much here yet but it might but guess what that's not an exemption under the TPA uh corporate owned single-family homes are subject to the TPA um and and I think that's a a good feature of the TPA so I'm not quite sure what what we're trying to achieve here the the fundamental issue that I heard here tonight was the complaint that the rent is too damn High and and I think we all agree with that and
this ordinance does zero to to address that you need to be building more Supply and you need to be encouraging more Supply to come online if you want to to address that issue and this doesn't do that I think we should be focusing the bulk of our energy in other directions thank you thank you very much um I have you know when I read the ordinance I had you know concerns and I kind of did my red marks but I thought there were some good parts that could be salvaged and I'd rather work on that end and um I was you know talking about what what is a mom and pop mean you know it doesn't mean you have one two three or four I don't know what that really means but I would um consider exemptions for single family homes up to a certain number um I do believe that there's a lot of people that depend on these rentals for their retirement not everybody has a government pension or a union pension um and so I think a lot of people this is how you chose to do your retirement and I don't really want to interfere but if you own you know four five six rentals that's might be above my threshold but I would be willing to um exempt single family homes with a certain number um I um the TPA offers one month rent um I would prefer if you could go up to two especially if somebody is really selling their house and that's the purpose is to sell because you know I heard a lot of stories that are that I actually believe are true that you know in case um you need to sell because you need to go into assisted
living or something happens that I want to make sure that people can sell their homes and that they're but on the other hand if you're selling your home you are making a profit and it might be a better way to expedite just by paying the tenant possibly two months rent which is somewhat reasonable if you're selling your home and you've owned them for a long time other areas that I have would like to us to consider is maybe doing this on a pilot program for three years a pilot program for three years to see what we put together is works for this community and if it doesn't in three years you can look at it and you can just reverse it but I would like to see the existing ordinance paired way down I want to kind of Define what a mom and pop really is what number would be reasonable I do have concerns if there is domestic violence that the person the you know normally it's a woman um that she is able to stay in her home and that children can stay in the home because of domestic violence instead of throwing everybody out I mean give her an OP her or him an option of staying in and of course you have to be able to afford it so I understand that um we definitely need more housing I mean in Petaluma there is no doubt um and a lot of times it's just the market it's we don't necessarily always control that um what other things um I think that public housing should be included in it because you can't tell me that people that live in public housing aren't discriminated against so I just
hate the fact that it's only going with one group and we're not including all the housing which includes Apartments also and actually Eric can ask you that question I can't quite figure where Apartments included in how is it with the TPA um so yes they are they are covered um I think the distinction vice mayor you're getting it is between um like government known and subsidized housing right if I'm understanding right government owned as one but otherwise private also nonprofits pardon me under the TPA right right so but that's a different I'm sorry the TPA does exempt the um the units built within that got certificates within the last 15 years but the Petaluma regulations currently do not but I think Janice is crazy for me um the TPA exempts non-profit correct publicly supported completely so it doesn't touch it at all and the the current Petaluma ordinance does the same thing exempts them yes yes and I don't think they should be exempt that's what I heard you to be saying yeah thank you um so those would um go ahead council member post okay no go ahead no we're not looking for a motion or a vote tonight but I was hoping that we would continue with something that the uh that Eric mentioned earlier and these 20 items that you know I feel like you'd be getting better direction from us if we went through each of those with a roll call Quick roll call yes we I think that's a great idea because um and and what we can do is even check if you want to do one because some of the some
of the options you may not even want to give direction on just let them let them be and that way it won't be too pedantic and exercise but um which I've been known to cause on occasion but um but I'm hearing a fair amount of commonality from from a number of the council members um council member Healey you'd mentioned some features that you didn't really specify and I don't know if you want to do that before we go into this like the one from LA and I think there was one or two others so the uh sure the San Rafael ordinance in a nutshell there's um a provision in state law that requires landlords to provide um I think two months rent to a tenant who is displaced because their unit is red tagged which normally is a fire but it could be other things and you know in attendance in that situation they pretty much need the money right now um and sometimes the landlord doesn't do that so what San Rafael has done is it the San Rafael will actually front the money and then recover it from the landlord later so that that's one thing seems pretty reasonable to me and then one of the features of the Los Angeles ordinance is that it prohibits four cause evictions if for the tenant not paying rent unless they're more than a full month's rent behind um and and the purpose of that is to provide some protection for shift workers um who may be a little bit short on their rent um in in a month because they missed some shifts because they were sick or their kid was sick or I guess AG workers
could be in the same category if you know the fields are flooded would be the current thing and they can't work so um and then and I also mentioned um uh the Ellis act piece but I would cap that in six six months or 12 months and not go out 10 years thanks member should yeah I just had a a question on one of these things um I was talking to someone that says oh if there's a federal funding subsidizing going on um in in this in his rental units that it might may be illegal for the city to um get involved with this to to put this into our ordinance and the like so is there if there's Federal funding and subsidies that are monies that are being used is there any restrictions on what we can do legally councilmember shrubs is asking if like there's preemption if if there's Federal subsidies um there's there's rules against discrimination based on those but what we're talking about is whether whether or not our regulations would would exempt like they currently do government-owned and subsidized housing who knows if we don't make them accept if we say oh even if you are subsidized by federal dollars and everything um you um you're still you're protected whereas if they're subsidized with federal dollars the federal government May step in and say oh no no no no that's our business I don't think they're I don't think there's that kind of preemption council member but I think whatever direction we get tonight from the council we're going to have a little time to check on that which
we'll be happy to do I don't think I don't think so Dylan no I don't think so no okay we just we're checking to see yeah we can do it when there's federal or state dollars involved uh in subsidies and taking care of folks who are in housing and the like how much our city ordinances can supersede those situations I don't think there's a requirement that they'd be Exempted but we can we can definitely want you to check sure sure there may be issues so thank you so um and and you're looking concerned are you is there well no I'd like to I'd like to pare it down and just good so we can go ahead and move forward and take out what is we want to eliminate talk about what we want to keep in and see if we have any agreement beautiful I think that's we're at the point I just wanted to make sure we got the initial comments first because some of the things councilmember Healey mentioned we're not in are not in the menu but so what we have now and Brian put up the slides thank you Brian our list of options that we heard I think they cover pretty much everything we've heard in the council members remarks after the public comment except for the things or some of the things that councilmember Healey raised and I was thinking what we could do is go through these options and we don't even have to do straw votes on the ones you don't want to but it sounds like a number of these I think you will I think you definitely are going to want to do one on on the single family units exemption and
relatedly um if if a majority of the council favor that um up to how many units that's something the vice mayor raised um does that sound like an okay way to go through these there aren't too many and the onesie that you don't even want to entertain we don't have to council member Barnacle should we have a discussion about the definition of Mom and Pop I guess that seems like it's something that like we're going to cover it in this but we need to discuss it feels like that before we can get to a single family be I mean that's one thing that I think is that we're all considering in other words um up to how many units can can those property owner own to be in that category either units or properties yeah um Dylan did we see a is there a clear range in the in the benchmarking we looked at I've seen all the way up to four properties but that's at your discretion Council right and I'll just address uh council member Healey you're talking about health and safety code uh 79 17975 it does allow the city even though we don't have a current ordinance to pay one and a half times what we can if the landlord doesn't pay the HUD rental costs for displaced tenants two months like you said in the city right now we can pay one and a half times and even lean the properties if the landlord doesn't pay but I have seen some cities go with their ordinances go all the way up to three months and that's something we can look into as well the senator fell was off it was exercising their their
Authority Under that statute yeah and I think in terms of the definition of Mom and Pop I think the vice mayor is the Swing Vote on that so we'll see what she would support I thought I heard her flirting with three I was around three yeah yeah unless it's like you know what if somebody had like one property and they had four um tenants in one property I would almost consider that one property and I'm thinking specifically a specific well I'd like that's part of me did somebody say something it's already in the GPS you have the floor okay I was hearing somebody um I mean you know I might exempt that you know if it's a single um building with just no more than four so I I think that's why it's desirable to do it in terms of units um and I think that's how most of the definitions I've done so that they treat three single family units the same as one unit with three units you know one one one well throughout three I'll start with three okay and would that include adus as well um if there were uh yeah it would if there was an Adu on the site I'd support three would that include duplexes um yes two units because that's just two units so like that would included duplex in a single family for say and I also want to go into subletting I have a problem with subletting and I would well we've got an option to talk about in terms of the um just causes in the TPA and I think one of the things about which I've heard in most consensus and and you know bearing in mind what some of the some of
the criticisms we've heard about the survey and but there seems to be a fair amount of consensus about keeping the just causes but that's that's something for the council to give direction on for sure so uh yeah um although we don't so the thing that we were just talking about was the mom and pop is is there more to be said about that yeah well um I would just like to add uh go for the I can live with the three especially units or uh it might be three large houses um but I would like to make sure that under the fair evictions uh that the that is still the relocations and or um somebody's paid for the eviction it still might apply even though some of the other stuff may not so that would be um okay so but that's for everything else yeah except for everybody let's come back to that when we do that would be would be applicable okay to make sure that's differentiated council member postcode was the was the vice mayor saying that she was suggesting three units for the quote unquote mom and pop definitions yes not four yeah um I I tend to be more I uh I'm more comfortable with a lower number um I'm going to say one or two if there's an Adu on the same property that sounds reasonable if there's an Adu on the site I'll support that i i would support exempting folks with less than three units or three or less units well if we can get a consensus then I would go along with that well it sounds like there's I I wasn't sure we heard from council member now but it sounds like there was
there was consensus on that except for councilmember posake um councilmember posakay will you come along if we can move on this if we have three if council member now supports three council member Healy all right barnacle all right I'm with post Decay on this I'm going to walk back my three I'm I'm gonna say one with two if it's an Adu well I I I I wonder if it seems like we should do straw polls because it to get you to move well if I if just kind of a funnel with math Point here but if you want to pass an ordinance and need four positive votes out of this group and I don't think there's four votes for exempting one or two um I'm just saying so yeah I think you're supporting three to three tie at best so so in other words it seems like we should do the straw poll method yeah in view of that what about if we did two with adus yeah so shall we straw poll a number for for Mom and Pop is it is that number three sure okay so good okay who's doing the straw poll do you want me to do it can we start low can we Define the three a little bit different because we're talking about duplexes and things um if it's if so if someone has three large single-family units out there that's that sounds more like a business than a than a family mom and pop operation I'll go with you um just and do so duplexes are included as well as as adus and everything that's usually just one on site and that would be the true Mom and Pops the house they lived in before I'd go with the two uh with the lower
number they'd be more reasonable to a for a true mom and pop because then if they they move from one house they took a second house or they moved to their third house they got two really nice homes that they may have lived in that would be and they're both being Reddit that's still mom and pop but by the time they get to the third house and have a third one that that's like that's a business I can agree to that if we if we're looking for a consensus uh you know I could go there I'm sorry I'm sorry okay four on that one so so let's so we have a working consensus for now which and we recognize we don't need consensuses on all these of of up to two units for Mom and Pop working definition [Music] okay so shall we do then and to clarify that's two units or two separate properties okay um you're saying two separate so it has to be two units on one property or are we talking no just two units it could be two separate single family it could be two units on one property it could be a primary and an Adu or Jadu okay okay so excuse me could we have quite to help the council deliberate so we get some movement thank you um so shall we shall we do a straw straw vote on the uh on the single family exemption itself okay okay you're good okay so um government subsidized units covered or not do you want to do a straw poll on that yep um you know I I can we defer that one because we haven't heard from the nonprofit housing divider providers they have assumed they weren't part of this
conversation and you know back to my concern about unintended consequences since we're not putting this on the meeting uh the next agenda for the next meeting so we can all be here in the first meeting in April I'd like to get more feedback from the non-profit housing providers before we make a straw boat on that I'll support that I'm good with that I can support that I I did talk to a non-profit provider with this question uh in the last day and and was told that they're subject to a lot of federal laws that are they're probably going to supersede what we do okay so bracket that question I'd like you to I'd like you to check that sure okay I mean even though they're with federal laws there can still be problems and there's I think it's always a good idea to protect somebody more than um to the highest degree especially in subsidized housing because there's been plenty of subsidized housings that have been not well taken care of and people have lived with mold so I don't think we should be exempting one set and then I think I don't think it's fair and there are I think there's problems too or can be so do you want a straw poll on on subsidized units or do you want to bracket I understand okay yeah I would agree with that the bracketing um but I have heard that that that's many times the uh where a lot of the eviction problems are located in is when you have subsidized housing and that's where a lot of the issues are not in your single family homes or anything so I always like
to get that checked out also to get a good uh information as to yeah where the these evictions that we're all talking about where the most issues are and I suspect that that's what I've been told is that that's where it might be okay so um um do you want to do a straw poll on um temporary Tendencies like the sabbatical example I'm saying no you can do whatever I'm scanning so wait one of the the options on the on the screen um just going across the top to make sure we cover them all is is the short-term tenancies like the sabbatical example or the activation to so that will be a tendency that expires doesn't have to terminate um and doesn't have to be terminated and doesn't um that's not treated as a as a no fault termination can't we just eliminate it all together is it the one eliminate the exemptions or if the exam exemptions in the ordinance for 10 subsidized oh never mind so currently temporary Tendencies Tendencies is what I'm talking about in other words it's just just not cover them is that what you're saying are we talking about like if somebody's going to go to Europe and they rent their house out for nine months make sure that they can come home and their home is theirs right so would we just exempt that that's that's the way that that you would want to treat that so that someone well that's what I would do I would support that yes yes okay yeah one of the things I was unclear on in that whole language of that section um who that was referring to whether it was the
tenant itself that was uh temporary moving or I thought there was some references there to the possibility it was um that the owner was was military had to move out it's the go somewhere uh for a year or two year on duties and was running out and came back that they could get back to their house it's the latter thing it's the latter thing that's meant by that exemption so yeah so it was designed for for mostly our military folks who are doing Duty and renting their homes well I think that's what that was about well it's it's not triggered by any special regulations but the that's one example another example could be a sabbatical or trip abroad or whatever [Music] um a finite period of time that was that was planned ahead of time where the property owner wanted to be able to return to their property and I thought I saw consensus for that even without a straw poll yes to include that exemption is there any am I missing anything okay um the next the next option is really when when the protections take effect and and the option that's listed there is day one um right now we have six months the TPA is 12.
so it should be be consistent well so there's because there's some options there I'm not I'm not I don't know what the best way to straw pull it is I think I'd like to suggest day one I mean if you sign a lease that's when the protection should start in my mind other questions I'm sorry I'm not trying to I'm trying to help you expedite but not rush you yeah I think what the the chart you showed us is that most of the towns like um almost all of them were day one a lot of the cities had gone to a day one that's right rather than the not so to be consistent with some of the other cities um and also this is only day one for evictions um that would be occurring so the chances of an eviction happening within the first month as long as there's Fair evictions continuing so that oh the landlord oh discovered oh after two months they're terrible uh they're doing that they're being a nuisance they have all these other good at fault that those are not Exempted but um but that would protect the good tenants from day one but but those folks who are being bad tennis still can be evicted as long as that happens that's that's the argument the arguments for supporting day one protection is um preserving the um for cause grounds for terminating tenancies right and but but still we need to strengthen the uh the thought where the tenant is at fault they need to be evicted more easily in in comparison to give and take on this side right I think they they go hand in hand so is is that uh do we
need to do straw pullers their consensus on day one okay remember this is going to come back this is telling us what to come back with so it's not this is not like a written in stone um thank you so are you taking notes too thank you very much okay um so this is this is the the closely related thing of um and and I think there there's some other slides but I'd like to compress them to whether the council's in favor of retaining all the TPA just causes and can can you point us over on the staff report because I think that's two of them but there's others right there um yes give me a sec I think we're moving removing the threat of violent crime goes there with that as well yeah just one sec Dylan can you if you get there faster go ahead [Music] to allow owners property tenant failed after termination sorry I've got an ellipsis either and then employee fails to vacate after termination all right it starts on page bottom of page eight of the staff report and goes the top of page nice so Eric I have a question about this one um in general I wholly support aligning with the tpas uh definitions of Just Cause um the one can the one thing I want to make sure of is that in the instance of domestic violence that the landlord has the full right to remove the offending tenant but that if let's say a woman doesn't want to be you know evicted and she would rather take the security of the home um that that is uh a permissible protection so so by that do you mean um that um domestic violence
in the unit as a grounds for termination um wouldn't apply to the victim is that is that fair correct or it only applies to the offending tenant yeah okay probably best to apply it to the offending tenant just because there may be children or something else yeah this is some of the language that was very confusing to me The Way It Was Written uh whether it applied to everybody so if someone was victimized in the house that's that's criminal activity happening on that property and and I don't want to if the victims on that side absolutely uh they need to be secured and got it yes and the language is confusing as it exists language on that what we mean sure but I'm capturing that is that is is that uh is that are we keep putting that on our list okay um the other part of that was it has to be a convicted you have to be convicted of of the crime um uh so that language there also is like a that's way too much and way too long for for to get an eviction going to have to have to wait to a court to convict um make it a criminal um that way are you talking about the domestic violence combination that would be the language is very confusing yeah that the domestic violence is separate from um if somebody is selling drugs and they you can't evict them unless they're unless they're right yeah being arrested isn't good enough arrested they actually yeah so there has to be some language that allows a lot more flexibility in there that that counts as nuisance it counts as well I had a
question for the City attorney things like that oh go ahead yeah well I was just gonna to add on to that if if they've been arrested and they're incarcerated then they're not going to be in the home so do we have to wait for conviction that's what council member services right that it's too long if that's I think domestic violence you don't have to wait for a conviction but if it is uh you're arrested for something you have to be convicted before somebody can actually evict you out of their rental their home well so well if they're incarcerated well if they're incarcerated then we know that but they're out on bail in the next day so what I heard previously was that the council wanted to go with the TPA just causes correct which with an exception or with direction to make sure that um that that victims of domestic violence are not are not that's not treated as the grounds for their termination or assault I mean if you know you live with someone and they punch the neighbor or something like that like get rid of that guy but like I don't want to lose my house because it he's a jerk right so and so so so so I'm sorry you have a question yeah so I I think we're kind of emerging towards the consensus on that piece but my question to you is under the California TPA um for and at fault grounds of criminal activity does that require a conviction or what what at what level can someone be evicted for criminal it doesn't but you've got to establish it in in a proceeding so so it's a
civil standard not a criminal standard yes as part of it as part of a potentially unlawful deal I would think we would want to be consistent with that with the exception that has been discussed that's the direction I was hearing and I thought I think that's okay and but that's something that you can fine-tune because yes a few weeks yes yes and again that's these are things that will actually simplify yes I know yes and similar to DV our Ordnance also has that exemption for elder abuse is that keep that yeah um okay so I think we're ready for the next slide thanks Brian Brian was making sure that I didn't forget the we had other slides okay thank you um so this is the issue that we heard about um about when tenants when tenancies convert to periodic um tenants tenancies after the first 12 months um and it's a separate issue about sale whether that's a just cause um and and I thought I was hearing consensus about focusing on the relocation assistance to deal with that um and and not have sale be adjust cause because otherwise then that wouldn't trigger sale wouldn't trigger relocation assistance I thought that was the opposite of what we heard so again I have a question on this that's fine you know it's midnight maybe I'm not at my clearest right now but I don't think it tended sufferance is a month to month if someone who is whose lease is actually expired and they're still there doesn't have a valid I agree so that's what I was going to clarify so thank you um so and I think
so um what I suggest is that's best dealt with by preserving as the council's directed preserving the TPA just causes because attentive sufferances in violation of of their lease um so so the next slide deals with um the issue we heard about um and the council has given Direction about which is prohibited subleasing as a just cause for terminating uh tenancy um this this idea would create an exception um for um or require that Elise recognizes um the situation where say a family members are turning from college um and and they and wants to return to the unit there's not the the um the the tenant is not otherwise in violation that that number of occupants doesn't violate the health and safety code um and I don't know if this is too far in the weeds if you even want to address it we don't currently that's what this option is is that even a problem does that come up in Petaluma I've never heard that yeah it actually I think it does just with the um the people you know when people get kicked out one of the places that they might need to go is with a family member and that's where you know that's like the the place of refuge and if you know someone gets kicked out then they move in with you know they move in with their family member um and then the family members in breach and then they get kicked out like we're just sort of creating this snowball that's the scenario that I see playing out so and what I would be concerned with and that's what the workers at the shelter are going
to try to do to try to divert them to live with a family yeah as opposed to just otherwise um attended exiting subletting altogether or bringing unvetted unqualified people on part not part of the hospital so I guess the challenge would be drawing a line that doesn't get you into a situation where a private where landlord is having to tolerate having 15 people live in a two-bedroom house because they're all cousins right you know right so you can try to do some Artful crafting on that yeah okay one of the issues that I can even in my neighborhood um multiple people living in and of course they're all cousins and they so yes we need to prevent that that's not a family member so I would think make sure that the family member it's an immediate family member son daughter um because you start getting into um as you extend out to that family then I know there's lots of situations where folks especially in the immigration process folks are bringing in their their distant cousins and and living with them and and that's family as far as they're concerned so defining family we need to be really rigid about it's got to be a close knit uh close to tie direct family um because if you extend the Family out too far that allows way too much leeway well and and this is a tricky one because if you you start getting into constitutional areas about defining what is and isn't family but one thing that's objective is is health and safety occupancy limits so I mean if the council wants we're happy
to look at that this is a subtle in the weeds one so I don't want to create red herrings and rabbit holes for you can you look at it and bring it back with some assessment of what the health and safety code says too just so that we know just how big of a problem this actually could become because I really don't think it's going to be used that much or be that big of a problem but it might be a safety net for someone okay I'm interested yes this is the health and safety here are going to be number of bedrooms times two plus one or something like that I don't know I think that's about right but yeah that's something we can definitely look into in our building official know right away and a council member schrib's point just how we Define owner's relative in our ordinance it's child parent grandparent spouse or registered domestic partner so um I don't think we get into the cousins that's what I've heard typical is what family is by by court cases and the like so yeah I would agree with that okay so outside of that did yeah if you're going to have someone outside of that then yeah so you need to get what the landlord get permission okay okay so we'll look at that and um and come back with info um where we so the next one was the elimination of unsanitary conditions as it just cause that's one that that is is or is not in the TPI going so it's it's not in the TPA it is in our ordinance and this was a recommendation by the tenant Advocates and Eric I think if you go a couple
slides there might be a comparison of uh what jurisdictions have these just causes okay but what I'd say is um another issue for me is that I think um some of the other local ordinances do it too elimination of the just causes which the council has directed us to preserve creates ambiguity problems anyway because well okay it's prohibited [Music] um subletting it's not recognized in a local regulation as a just cause but but material breaches are I think it's a lot cleaner to just stick to the just causes for all these reasons that we talked about so so I think that addresses that box I think we have direction for that box yeah and I'll just say too I would imagine the unsanitary conditions are addressed in either in the nuisance waste so like Council directed and I would agree I think it's good to mirror the tpa's specific legal terms because there's case law that addresses unsanitary conditions so there won't well there might be some ambiguity but a little more you can look out with the case law rather than what right our warning says and so we don't have to separate create a definition dude councilmember know how to well I was just in the unsanitary conditions is that also like health issues like mold um asbestos well that's that's the problem it's pretty vague it could be arguably it could be so do we have to Define it more no I think we could if we wanted to keep it because it says unsanitary but we should also put in their health like the gas the rodents yeah well again
those things are going to be those those they're going to be potential nuisance issues so if someone's hoarding they could be bringing in the rodents so it's a but but that's probably going to give just cause and a separate issue from all this is there are jurisdictions that have um rental housing inspection type regulations that really go to quality of rental stock that usually charge a cost to those in that business that the landlords in that business for for inspections and that's a whole separate discussion um so um so the next one is strengthen the owner move in Just Cause by only allowing one unit per property so that means if if the landlord um owned more than one unit so it's a multi-family unit on the property they wouldn't be able to do owner move-ins for each of the units just one and again that's a fine point I don't know if the council want to get into that or not I'm getting confused here now I think with the difference from the TPA is because you know is this a just cause this is a no-fault so this would be an exemption under the no fault just cause that the TPA doesn't have currently so under our current ordinance there are some exemptions if a property owner has multiple units in the city that the owner first needs to offer if he wants to have a relative how we Define it move into the property they have to offer the a like unit that is vacant to the tenant so this would be kind of strengthening our existing ordinance currently they're saying if you can't just
have your mother move into a unit and then have your brother move into a different unit it would just be one unit that would be allowed to uh for that property and so it would be in addition to the TPA we there's already the council's already given Direction about enough that is additional protection that satisfies the the requirement to have a valid local ordinance so this would be an addition and you may or may not want to do it so that's I'm not trying to bog down the discussion this is the type of stuff that we're getting really into the weeds of details and stuff and I I personally would rather stick with the current state TPA whatever it says there for reasons why this that is written the way it is and I wouldn't want to add these are the finer little points I'd rather keep a simple ordinance that doesn't include um what you what you're doing now is like wow this is a way too much detail I'd rather see a much simpler um more basic ordinance overall that's fine is that I'll agree with that okay okay I'm seeing you okay great um so that that I feel like those two boxes are in the same category so the next one um I think we've I think you've given us Direction on this this was eliminate the ls act protections um they are the most complex parts of of our regulations um I well I guess these would be mutual exclusive or reduce the length of owner writer first refusal and and potentially if you do one of those things increase the relocation but I think you've given us
Direction about that I think we've covered this box we're totally eliminating LS act when we increase the relocation I'm sorry I didn't think we were totally eliminating the Ellis act when we in when we were talking about increasingly relocation were we that's that's this that's this menu option um all right I mean can we not have to change the lsac TPA and everything but just say this is in addition we're just going to change the relocation just by itself without having yes you can yeah so I'd rather just say let's just work on relocation okay things and not worry about trying to change the ls act or changing the TPA all that much this is just additional things that we're going to be adding keeping it simple again okay so so increasing the relocation is is um something that our regulations already do it's one of those additional protections that the that the TPA permits so it's it's in that bucket do you want to is there one more slide of these Brian can we talk about how much to increase the the relocation assistance yes and I think that's the very next box oh that's right that's why I think it's wonderful okay let's see finger so I'll throw out three months yeah here three months I'm I'm good with three months council member schribs a little on the high side depends on if it's um if it's a small little unit that they're selling the rent is only fifteen hundred dollars or two thousand dollars versus a house that's uh maybe renting at forty five hundred even big houses five
thousand three months fifteen thousand dollars um that's getting up there so if maybe put a Max on it or uh two and a half months or two and a half months eleven thousand dollars yeah run throwing out numbers do some work but I think you know I want to make sure that if someone's thrown out and they've had car trouble and they're you know scraping by on stems and seeds that they're not going to wind up on the street because someone's selling their house right right now I believe it's it's one month plus a thousand dollar TPA I was told is one month's plus um a thousand dollars relocation and so just one month just one month yeah just one month okay um okay so again wrong information kidding um so raising it up to two months for sure now two and a half months versus three months um if I'll go with what the group wants on that it's it's two and a half months to move in right now yeah it's a it's a month it's your first month rent and it's one and a half month to you know have security deposit that's pretty standard you could actually move and get that coverage so two and a half months sounds reasonable to get back though I I would stay with the TPA yeah this is under no fair we're assuming it's going to be for with with that it's gonna the house is going to be sold or family member is going to move in that it's uh um Fair um that's that no fault of the principally four four for sale or or family moving moving in so if it's not for sale then then yeah I would go with even three
months because then you're talking more like one percent of the total sale price which is not much um where if it's a if the landlords are having real problems and that they really need the money and so forth and they just are putting a family member in and they're very restricted in monies so if the landlord I can see a situation where where landlord okay the family member is out of unemployment the only way to save the family member is to move into the house and yet we can't make mortgage payments they're under Financial stress themselves but they need to put it in and all of a sudden they have to come up with this much relocation for that so I would say three months for if it's sold and withdrawn from the market that's that's my main that's the issue that's some bureaucracy though yeah I mean keeping it simple we're keeping pretty straightforward yeah I keep it simple so so it sounds like we're moving toward a 2.5 month consensus but council member Healey was at one I'll go the 2.5 council member now can we put um a maximum on that sure because I I would go with the 1.5 but if it's somebody who's been renting at a low price because the mom popped landlord hasn't increased the rent and now they need to sell because they're going into assisted living themselves and need the money or there's a death in the family maybe just you know it might be as much as three months could we either we can come up with a number or you can bring a number back council member Barnacle suggested
was that what you said yeah 2.5 up and I'm not trying to negotiate with you I'm just trying to help can we put landing pads in front of you and I yeah I've seen cities that have done that with a CPI on whatever that cap is so that's something we can totally do um it's page 11 in the staff report that kind of talks about what other jurisdictions have done I've seen 100 of their monthly rent or whatever the hcd monthly rent is whatever is more I've seen flat fees on top of the monthly rents so um but it's so to be clear it sounds like it's 2.5 with a cap and it doesn't matter if you're that you're a qualified tenant meaning you know no extra 50 if you're disabled or elderly or child it is simpler and if that in the council seeming to want to simplify I think that sounds reasonable because I know there's 60 days notice has to be given and many times the uh when renters are given 60-day notice you must evict and it's a no fault of your own but but you need to move out then then um they've got 60 days to get and that would give them a breather whether it be that two months rent that they don't give in or if it's um Plus or relocation a little relocation but from that day of notice it's going to be flexible but if that renter needs to move that they have to comfort that at they have 60 days notice and enough Comfort financially that oh I can move um that would that would reduce the whole lot of stress on the renters part so yeah so it could be um because two and a 2.5 would it be
um it we're talking about not only months rent but not tie it to the months rent because it could be relocation but it's just equivalent of 2.5 right not just two months rent but equivalent of 2.5 because it's for relocation also in for payments and Banks just so just that the language is uh to tie it in well also one of the issues in some of the different approaches that jurisdictions take is whether it's permitted to to check to credit the relocation assistance obligation to rent or not and and the argument is that the tenants need that cash in hand it also deals with Return of the deposit way that that deposits is part of that two and a half months or not part of that two and a half months um it just says it's just equivalent of two and a half months then that it covers everything and some of the regulations also address by when it needs to be provided to the tenants so that because they need to you know they need to make changes right away so does do we have consensus on this it seems like like council member barnacle's suggestion is being is I was 2.5 up to 11k um but and not distinguishing between sale or other other not for cause other no-fault evictions it's got to be a no-fault or termination okay okay I think so um so what about the protections for students and teachers can I ask a question about that yes [Music] um so in the staff report it says landlords may only terminate a tenancy during the month of June blah blah blah does that mean they serve a 60-day notice
in June or the 60-day notice becomes effective in June or because then then you have to go to court if they don't move out and do an unlawful detainer and get a judgment and that could be I think it's an obituary if right I think it's ambiguous so I think I think it's well intentioned but I don't see how it works in practice you need to clarify that it needs to be the when the eviction is served or when the notice is served it's not it is not the issue it's when it's when it's effective right it's when the effects if I could make a suggestion on this and run this by a member of the school board as well which is which is to to make the window not just June but make it June July in the first half of August which is the which is the summer vacation for most of our schools it's a little bit of a problem for the year-round schools but at least in this in the year-round school so it's the beginning of the year that's getting interfered with you know as opposed to the end of the year uh when when when they've gotten to know their classmates better or something I support that but to follow on that um as was mentioned before the courts are so jammed that there's no predictability as to when you know a landlord will be able to get a judgment that could be enforced by the sheriff it's just it's a total crap shoot and it's going to be so I I think I I don't I mean effectively if one if what I'm hearing would were to be the consensus no one could ever get evicted because you couldn't
predict when [Music] when you get that unlawful detainer judgment and be able to enforce it and if of classifying School teachers and and like us at the unintended consequences that you've talked about earlier when you start bringing a population in oh we're going to treat this population different than uh what the economist said I think a couple other folks who said yeah that's starting to be an issue then all of a sudden I'm not gonna if I have a choice I'm not gonna rent to that person versus because of that quality um um this by if lenders could probably figure out a way of doing it so differentiating populations because what is a school and is how long is the school because we're now a year-round schools a lot of switched to summer schools are in session um this is happening all the time and even the the teachers so um and besides teachers you also have other folks who may be um also have the same issues so maybe this is another homework a homework assignment for staff that yeah you know see if you can find a way to make those workable in a predictable way but I don't really see it right now yeah I don't see it as a practical solution and I think it's understanding consequences I'd rather stick with what the TPA says that go with that okay um thank you so we've got two more options um and that really is the last ones that we've listed at least um one is the um the civil action with potential for attorney's fees recovery for violations of the of the ordinance not just for
unlawful detainer but it's it's what violations which include retaliation um at least as it's as it exists right now and the other is the cities reserving a right not a duty but a right to to reinforcement action so first the attorney's fees recovery for successful plaintiffs so remind me why we didn't just say the prevailing party recovers their attorneys why it's it's kind of the heads I win tells you lose approach I think that's in in the examples that we looked at I think that's because of the different resources but but that has effects obviously I'm I'm good with prevailing party I mean because then it cuts both ways I think it's I think it goes both ways yeah okay now okay I mean yeah I'm still this is another case where okay is this different from what the TPA already is doing the TPA does not give a civil remedy several remedies so do we really want to as in the TPA you have to go through the the unlawful detainer landlord tenant loss so this would mean that the city has to step up and with authority and enforce violations no no it would mean that that parties can um tenants that believe that their landlords are violating the regulations could get private legal counsel bring a lawsuit succeed and recover their attorney's fees and that would be that's enough incentive that if they have a reasonable case they probably would be able to get retained legal counsel on contingency so they're not out of pocket it still takes quite a while yeah right um but you have a tenant
that's going to go through this this battle that's going to have to be supported by a lawyer and that's going to be difficult to find and then you've got to go through all the court cases to do all that um I mean is that a realistic scenario of of occurrence that that this is going to happen is this a problem we need to solve um I don't I just don't feel like this is a problem we need to work on and do things um but maybe you can work um I don't know it looks like we may have some legal we have some people uh Insight on this Dan do you want to come up and participate if I could hear um my understanding of how this would work currently under the uh under the ordinance is that and lava detainer would be filed and if the tenant won the unlawful detainer in other words there was judgment in rule in favor of the tenant and they were not evicted they didn't there there was not a judgment of eviction then they would get a judgment in their favor for the amount of attorney's fees that um that were awarded under the uh yeah so there wouldn't have to be a separate cause of action now the the separate cause of action is the other thing that the City attorney is talking about but this would just be basically when you have the unlawful detainer case who if the tenant wins then they can um then they can get an award against the uh uh the landlord and if you made it reciprocal that would mean that the landlord would be able to get a judgment monetary judgment against the tenant for what
that will be worth which probably won't be all right so yeah since this is the civil cases um isn't that uh is that normal or procedure for the lawyer fees to be paid by the opposite party that lost so normal or not so normally you don't get attorneys fees unless there is a contract that provides for attorneys fees or a statute that provides for attorney's fees um and normally uh well so sometimes leases will have Provisions in them that award Prevail attorneys fees the profailing party those have kind of become disfavored in in recent years because tenants tend to generally If a landlord is going to sue a tenant that probably means that they don't have a lot of money and that means that getting a judgment against the tenant isn't going to be worth much so they tend to so leases tend to not have those Provisions in them but theoretically if there if the lease did then the prevailing party would be able to get uh to get attorneys fees if you have a statute that that does this then it would allow basically people to come to to people like me hire tenants to come to people like me to represent them in uh in eviction proceedings and then we I could represent them on a contingency and they get paid by taking it by basically getting a judgment against the landlord that would be the idea okay so this would be for uh for tenants that are are being treated unjustly and they feel like they have been they can go to yourself or to a legal aid and then the legal aid folks who are
providing all the legal services to the tenants to protect them then the the and the legal aid folks who are doing all this could get reimbursed for their fees if if they get the court case in their favor yes so so this would be a Advantage for the tenants again before they could get it is there an equal opposite for the landlords who are being also mistreated or trying to evict and for for an at fault situation could they somehow get uh money back if if there is anything to be received so I see it's not a fair fair fight both sides so legally yes it would well if you if you made it so that way the prevailing party got got attorney's fees then yes legally there would be um there would be the opportunity for the landlord to do that although I will tell you that in practice this type of provision is way more favorable to the tenants than to landlords because for the reason that I cited basically that generally a judgment against the tenant is not going to be worth much unless the tenant has has assets that you know you can collect on and and that's that's all correct and currently under the ordinance it's not just for the unlawful detainer action yes [Music] yes I was looking for you I didn't see it leaving I watched certain things happening but um so we're taking the teeth out of the ordinance by getting rid of the regulatory scheme for Ellis right we're saying you just pay somebody a little extra money we might be taking the special projections out for owner move-in so what
we're doing is we're taking the teeth out of the local ordinance one little bit of teeth that remains is the attorney's fee's provision so yeah of course a landlord is taking a risk if they want to wrongfully evict a tenant or they want to evict a tenant period And there's an attorney's fees provision in the lease right because some leases have it some don't and it's beneficial for a tenant to have the ability to recover attorney's fees only if they win only if they win because legal aid cannot help everyone we only help low-income tenants right or seniors or low-income landlords but we can't help everyone crla cannot help everyone there are people at court that are not represented and there are people who are wrongfully evicted and they cannot find an attorney to represent them because there's no legal recovery of attorney's fees so they have to pay somebody up front with money they do not have after being evicted it's exactly the example of why the lsac loophole needed to be closed because of something that happened here in Petaluma someone was evicted the market was put back on the property the unit was re-rented even though it was allegedly withdrawn under Ellis and somebody said well why didn't she just you well she couldn't there's no teeth in the yellow sacks there's no teeth in the state law and there's no teeth now in the local law and the only thing that they have is the ability to go to an attorney and say hey will you take my case if you get if we win you'll get
paid that's it that's all there is okay so thank you thank you so I think those are arguments in favor for not having it be prevailing party but like it's written now because the the tenants in that situation are largely judgment proof in terms of recovery from the from the landlord and they still have to prove their case to get recovery but this is this is the council's prerogative where's the council at John we're doing a straw vote uh I'm going with the consensus now uh yeah done yes okay Karen my name is decided much to do because we're we're words messing with the slated knives well it's already there it's going to come this is going to come back to you this is direction to us okay this is I would go with the TPA model and not have attorneys fees as part of this sorry I thought I would go with the TPA model and not have recovery of attorneys faces okay part of the package so so for wordsmithing how does it work I think we have direction to bring it back that way and you'll get to you'll get to revisit and folks um to come back and also when it comes back we'll have a lot of folks that also can give us feedback also on on the new new form and we can go over it just like this very focused because there'll be an actual an actual document not just go over these details again where are we going next so we just have one more box and I think I I let me I'd like to just go crazy and make a recommendation on this one that you not eliminate the city's ability to enforce because
the way we do that is we make sure we don't have a duty so no one can bring a private attorney general's action to force us to do that we can only do it by choice and I think what the the only thing it does is worse as an incentive to some property owners who may want to take a calculated address and think uh the city could go after me even if the tenant doesn't want to and I'd say I I would support that the bad news is I have another box when we're done with this one okay well that's why you're up there and we're down here so that's the last ones we had and sounds like there's another one more comment yeah um yeah I'd like to consider at least like a six month right to recall or something like that I don't know councilmember Healey you brought up six months if we um if we can add that I'd be supportive of that okay I'm sorry say that again six uh six month right to return When what would trigger it were you talking about an lsac provision yes yeah I'm talking about you support that yeah no I I do agree with okay discouraging Hashem Ellis Activation so okay so if it was re-listed within six months so okay yeah I'm still not clear because right to recall and and the terms you just use again is legal language could you explain that in English it would be if the property owner said they're withdrawing their unit from the rental market and and and um terminated the tenancy but the unit was brought back on the market within six months so my understanding right rental market yes
that's correct and it reappeared was relisted presumably at a higher rent what if there was renovations to it in that six months time like the landlord made renovations to improve the property they'd have to offer it back to the tenant who they kicked out to the original tenant yes I thought I saw four votes to at least bring it back that way for you to be able to say thumb supper thumbs down okay got it and um councilmember Healey has another box I think so my other box is kind of the 300 pound gorilla box um and that is whether we want to conform with the TPA and exempt uh units that are less than 15 years old and I would be in favor of that I'm not I would like to not exempt units that are 15 years or less I think it should be consistent why the 15 years so I would say be consistent so you're yes exempt exempt units that are 15 years or less okay councilmember Haley's proposing to exempt them and council member Barnacle is no and it's I'll say no okay on that consistent okay um no no um I would say we have to be consistent if we're going to do the government subsidized housing included and exempt that that this also would be similar and do that um we have to both or none either neither uh to stay consistent either be consistent with the TPA or do both if we're going to go that far um I'm almost there's reasons there's got to be a lot of reasons why the state uh set it up this way and the TPA and I've heard one of the reasons is that oh it's going to really influence the
housing market and development and the like and and this is one thing that may really stick out for uncontended consequences so that's where I get a little concerned with both of these because we want folks that are doing government housing and subsidized housing not to be impacted so much so they want to build and continue to build if without these restrictions and the same thing we want people to build housing without worrying that oh well I'm now going to be in this Petaluma law I'm not going to build so I'm a little I am worried about the unintended consequences on those two areas so I you write it in at the moment but I'm I'm not really I want more information as to why those are in the state before I move forward with them just to I'll try and convince you here um I know we're I'm not gonna I know we're not making a vote tonight but there's going to be thousands of units built in the next Arena cycle there's thousands of units that have been built in the last 15 years that are going to be uncovered that are going to be Exempted and there's a lot of children living in those units and that's like I mean the people that we're trying to protect like a lot of them are living in those units right so the ones that are being built now versus uh things that may or may not be built in the future so again this is where economics and uh future impacts you need to look at a little more closely I jump in on that one think about a little bit more information on it I jump in on that
one too because if we discourage people from building market rate apartments in this community there won't be thousands of them um and so we need to be very careful if you look at the staff reports that were written in the legislature it's very clear that the reason they Exempted construction less than 15 years old was they did not want to discourage development right we're afraid of if we do this then mid pen is going to build some housing for us that's proposed might back might have a reason for them to back out entirely right now from their proposed uh development that that's in the pipeline right now I'm good with just following not just [Music] okay well so in other words um right with council member healy's proposal yeah can we ask midpen and others the Burbank folks how this would impact them because I would like their like the dinner said we haven't gotten feedback from those groups at this time and I really want their feedback before I make a decision on this one um I won't name the names but I did speak to bed Ben about this and uh certainly I didn't get advisor to be any any effect on what they've already you know put forward I don't know what it would do about the next project yeah John I believe that we're not talking about mid pen we're just talking about market rate so we're separating that out so you can talk to bid panel you want but they won't give you an answer so so are you saying no um I I will okay we'll bring we'll bring it back give an example one more
discussion next time then that's fine just as one story that the woman who spoke with her the woman who spoke with her child would be accepted she lives in uh the apartments that are over on um Lakeville and she wouldn't be covered just just to be be real about a real person that's sitting there she's been evicted before presently I agree [Music] legislative history so is that the last one yes unless council members have more boxes have anything to say because I'd like to adjourn the meeting I'm adjourning the meeting you have to move it thank you very much for coming in your patience it was much appreciated okay I'm not sure if I can get up