City Council — February 23, 2026

Good evening everyone and welcome to the City Council meeting for Solvang on February 23rd, 2026. We're beginning at 630 this evening and Miss Mayor would you ask our clerk to roll call please? Just roll call please.

I know what that means.

That's okay most of people here don't either. Would you just say would you read the roll call please? Would you say that?

Would you read the roll call, please?

Would everyone please stand and remove your caps

I pledge allegiance to the flag of United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

That was great thank you. Now we have Would you like to do what? You want to go tell your mom? No. You wanna sit with her? Here, take your junior firefighter card and maps. Thank you Carter! And later, Carter and her family will be doing a tour of all our department heads and see all the facilities of Solvang as the junior mayor. So thank you Carter for being here tonight.

Our next order business is the presentation by Santa Barbara County Fire Public Safety. Garrett? Is that right?

So I want to take a moment. We have a new fire chief, Mark Hartwig retired recently and Garrett was appointed and he's here to give us a review of last year's fire information so take away Garrett

That's right, thank you. Do I? Okay it's on hot mic good yeah my name is Garrett Huff i'm a new fire chief. I became the chief on December 8th last year uh new to that new to the position but not to the county. I've been with the county fire department for 20 years so I know it well. I actually worked um at station 32 next door when Solvang came into the fire district so uh been been here since the partnership began I have my PIO right here is Mike Gray. Mike's new to our PIO shop, he just came on board about a month ago maybe? So we're building a new team, we're in the process right now. We had many retirements at the top end of the fire department so it's a good thing and we get to kind of assemble a new team and put everybody together that kinda meshes well.

So we are in the process of that. I have a slideshow, you all received a copy of it. Are we ready to show that? They're trying to make

it work probably.

While they're doing that, real quick our first slide says on the top answering the call since 1926. So this year is our 100-year anniversary of our fire department. We started out as a forestry department with the county and we evolved into an all hazard fire department. So what that means is we do everything from vegetation fires, which are what our roots were to structure fires, water rescues, EMS, vehicle accidents, medical emergencies, hazmats. We kind of do it all.

I'll kinda wait till

the...

No pun intended. There you go. Perfect. Next slide. Perfect. So that's a slide indicating that we've been answering the call since 1926, and we're an all-hazard fire department. That's kind of what that's... So we do community outreach, we have a bunch of programs. We have a fire safety trailer that goes to all the elementary schools. We do car seat installation checks. Station 30 has historically been one of the sites that has a trained technician. That's believe it or not a 40 hour class that you need to get recertified in every couple years so there are only a handful of people that have actually obtained that certification. So if anybody is interested our website has more details on that We do defensible space inspections. That's also weed abatement, there's a bunch of different terms we call it defensible space.

We do it every spring. We do community CPR and CERT which is a community response team. Next slide. I'm proud to report out last year, I remember kind of talking that this was coming. We're here the Regional Fire Communication Center opened and went live with all the county fire departments and AMR our ambulance provider for the county. It was a slow transition but we cut over AMR on June 30th of 2025 so by July 1st every fire and EMS call was running out of our dispatch center What that means for the county, county wide is we've dropped all jurisdictional boundaries. And so now if there's, for example a Santa Barbara engine is closer to a call than a county engine even though it's in the county's jurisdiction, the city will get sent to that call to start care sooner.

So kinda it's the best thing for the community as far as it kind of drops all the borders. We're an ALS fire department, so we have a paramedic on every fire engine. So most of the time we'll still send an engine because a lot of the city departments don't have a paramedic on them. So we'll send a fire engine as well but that's a huge accomplishment for our county is to have one regional dispatch center The other thing, part of that project was we expanded the Office of Emergency Management. They expanded their information center and we did the ribbon cutting on the same day on December 9th for both the expansion of OEM and the RFCC. Next slide.

So, just two of our canines we have in our department. We have a search and rescue canine and an emotional support canine which is actually pretty popular. Rhonda is her name. She kind of goes with the song Help Me Rhonda. And Dee is the search dog and she's just as much of an emotional support dog as Rhonda is but Two of the things that we have that are kind of unique to our department.

Next slide. Station 30, it's your fire station. So we're staffed here 24-7. We have a captain and engineer, a firefighter paramedic and a firefighter EMT on every day. This station is a core station so no matter what's going on we try to staff this station because it can hit Next slide. Okay, next slide again. This is the county overall incident stats for 2025.

We ran just above 17,000 calls. You'll see most of those are EMS and rescue calls and then the next biggest number is the public concern call. I want to get you a good definition between public service and public concern because those are worded very similarly so A public service call is where there was never an emergency. It was just somebody needed help. I fell down, I need help up. Not really an emergency but somebody's requesting help from the fire department where a public concern call or good intent call was there was most likely an emergency at some point but it's resolved by the time we get there. That's kind of the difference between those two.

All right, so then we're gonna go to the next slide and we get into station 30 or Solvang stat specific. So last year in Solvang we had 690 calls. Again, most of them were fire and EMS. You'll see that there was eight fires reported last year, 83 public service calls, 15 vehicle accidents and 113 good intent calls. And the dots on the map there represent where all those calls were. If you were able to open or expand that map, you would get more granularity.

Next slide. Okay, so this kind of goes into a little bit more detail. Same numbers as before just gives you a little different view of that and then the next slide. This is where we kind of compare and contrast last year's numbers with this year's, the 2024 and 2025. You'll see that it was pretty consistent. We only went up a couple calls from 2024 in all areas but basically remained very consistent across the board.

That's kind of the purpose of that slide. The next slide goes into rescue EMS, kinda gives you a little bit more depth into the increase. Actually this was a decrease by two calls between the years. Next slide. Fires, eight last year. The year before was also eight so again consistent. Next slide. So this is the one of the bigger fires that happened last year.

We called it the Mole Fire, when we name an incident we name it based on a street or geographic location not necessarily the title of the building so that's why it's called different things This fire is still under investigation. So that's all I can say at this point, is that our arson investigators are still investigating that fire and we hope that there's some resolution soon on that one.

Next slide. Solvang Brewing, they did determine that this fire was started by cleaning products that were left out. So it's spontaneous combustion and so that was the determination of the Solvang Brewing Fire. Next slide. And the Sears Steakhouse is also under investigation as well. So those two fires I can't speak any further about except that there's still an open case.

Next slide. This goes into a little bit more granularity on the public service calls. Like I said, these were calls that somebody needed help but there was not really an emergency so to say. Next slide. Vehicle accidents and I'm pretty surprised that there's not more than 15 accidents with the amount of traffic that goes through here but luckily everybody goes pretty slow. Fifteen accidents for years is actually pretty remarkable for the amount of traffic Next slide. Public concern good intent call, remember this is the call that somebody thought might have been an incident but by the time we got there it was ruled to either resolved or was no longer an issue.

Next slide This slide indicates how many calls Engine 30 did in this district, right? So there were 650 calls that Engine 30 went on. Backed up by Engine 31 in Buelton is the next largest. Engine 32 in San Ynez is the next largest. Station 24, I believe is next. No 26 that's in Orkut The next two stations are an orchid as well and then Los Alamos So this kind of shows a one call I would I would say those engines probably were here for the mole fire That's why they're showing up as one Next slide.

This is just a snapshot on the County Fire Department, so we have 16 fire stations plus an aviation unit crew, a hand crew, construction unit dispatch and Station 30 historically kind of fits in the middle of our busier station calls right kinda smack in the middle and that's pretty consistent with what we saw last year as well. Next slide. Always want to give Mike Schopp some kudos. We're on social media, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, X for live and trending information.

Mike can also give you his information or maybe leave some cards but you can get a hold of him on those channels there. And that's the end of this slideshow are there any questions?

Thank you. It's delightful to have you here, too. I mean we get quarterly reports and nobody is here to explain anything so it kind of bounces off as an echo type of thing. So we're glad you're here to answer questions. What's your typical response time? Because I didn't see anything that was related to response times to incidents.

That's a great question. And let's see if we can include that next time. We go by, there's this organization called the NFPA and it sets recommendations which become industry standards so we set our benchmarks at what the NFPA recommends as far as what's acceptable response times I don't have that slide in front of me and I don't want to make up information on the fly for you, but I can report that back. And get that to you for maybe the first quarterly report that we would get you.

Thank

you. Yeah.

Thank you. You mentioned the 4x4 brush truck, I think you called it? How often do you

use that? Pretty frequently actually. Really? Yeah. Well in the summertime that engine, it's also a fire engine and carries 500 gallons of water and a lot of hose and all the hand tools, but it's mostly designated for wildland fires Sometimes we'll use it for flooding because it's a high clearance vehicle We can get across like flooded streets and stuff as well And in its four-wheel drive, but historically and most prominently. It's a for wild landfires because of the location here in the valley It gets utilized quite a bit. And then we're also part of the state system, so whenever there's a big fire anywhere in the state usually our county sends out a strike team and the strike team consists of five of those type of engines. There's a set...

it's not random but it always rotates for like every what we call every pay period. So every two weeks a new engine comes up into the mix of the five that would go So it's a rotation. Sure. So Station 30 is in that rotation and when they get activated then we backfill the station and have crews come in either from home to staff the station or will send a cover engine because like I said this station is kind of a hub or a core station so we want to maintain coverage here. It's kind of a high priority, very high priority So when that engine goes out quite a bit though, I could get you the specific stats on that one too because it's a good... It was just curious. Yeah.

It's hard to imagine here in the city that you would use that but I never thought about... It's more of the periphery around and then the state responsible. Like when you guys went out to help with Sedgwick when we had the big fire a couple years ago?

Yeah, probably that engine was on it. And it's on every first alarm response for any fire in the San Ynez Valley so we'll send four of those type of engines to any fire that's anywhere really in the county but if it's in the valley most likely that engine is going to get triggered Excellent. Yeah,

thank you on that point is that Chief Huff? Is that the engine that has extended extension ladders or is that on all of the engines that you

have? That engine does have an extension ladder but it's uh I believe it's 16 foot. It's only one ladder and it's not very large All the ladder truck that we have here, the Truck 30. That has all the ladder complement so that's yeah. The other one is like just to kind of get you on a roof of a residential house if you're posted up at a residential house.

I have three questions just maybe i'll try to make them very quick. The call volume looks skewed on District 30. Am I reading that right? We have 650 calls and then the next Largest volume is 20. Is that because we're a hub district or what would you say should be our takeaway on that?

Which

slide sorry mine aren't numbered call volume this one right here

Okay

there yeah

So the overall calls if we, is 690 in theory. Oh

overall it

looked

like it was in the 30 district station 30 calls?

Yeah that's true because this is for the city of Solvang which is station 30s district

okay

if we add all these these up it should equal 690. Okay so

it's an aggregate not a skew

thank you yeah that's the total number of incidents

So next question is there, what is your station's interlock with the helicopter service that we see out of San Ynez Airport and how does that support your efforts?

No direct correlation between the two. The station in San Ines, there is a direct correlation too so the paramedics that are assigned to that fire station cross staff the helicopter when there's a medical call. So this station it doesn't work like that but we would be able to utilize all those air resources that our department has because it's all under our umbrella.

But there is no connection like there is at station 32.

So next question on, really because we've had such high rains and early rains if you will this year huge growth I went on a hike the other day and some of the weeds were already yeah at eye level for me seems pretty early for that what would you say is our fire risk for the remainder of 2026? And what can we be doing to prepare for that. What advice would you give us and what stack ranking would you give us in terms of readiness for our risk or exposure?

That's a really great question. And in my career, I've always heard it's going to be the worst fire season ever because when you have a lot of rains and you have high growth then there's more fuel right? And then when we don't get rain and everything is really dry then we have no what we call ground fuel but we have drier Big plants, like the brush and the chemise and those types of things.

Usually the grass goes and catches those on fire and it's kind of like a chain reaction or a ladder. We call them ladder fuels. So this year we have a lot of ladder fuels but they're really green. And so unless it starts to really brown up or dry out, we're still doing okay. But as you know, the summer is gonna come, it's gonna get hot All of that's going to brown up pretty quick and then we're going to have a really significant potential for those ground fuels, for the ladder fuels.

So the best way to combat that is through defensible space and doing your weed abatement or your clearance around your homes, road clearances around all the public right-of-ways, public roadways. All of those types of things will help mitigate the risk but really it's gonna be a big defensible space here for us to go around and check all the properties and the homeowners to get that stuff done

So we encourage our community to take advantage of your defensible space recommendation calls?

Absolutely.

All right, thank you.

Yeah Any other questions

Assuming a incident in Los Levos would that be station 30 or 32 or how do you determine

yeah Before the dispatch center was built it was did we had defined jurisdictional boundaries Now it's all based on your vehicle's location. So if, for example, Engine 30 was at the grocery store at Nielsen's, it would be closer. It would be what would get pinged to go to Los Olivos. The computer-aided dispatch calculates what unit is the closest and that's what it recommends to be sent.

In the old days, it would send whatever engine was whose district. It was on a map that we figured out a long time ago so really there is no such thing as a district anymore. It's all based on vehicles location. So if Engine 30 was at the store or at something in Buelton for whatever reason maybe getting fuel then 32 in San Ynez would go there. And it really depends on where everybody's at for that specific moment now.

Thank you. Staff, any questions? Anything else?

Thank you so much for your report and stay safe and keep us safe as well.

Thank you. And if there's an opportunity for us to be more present, I'm definitely willing and would be honored to come more often if you guys would like quarterly reports in person so yeah. It is best staffed and we'll set that up.

Thank you so much. Okay we're gonna move on to public communications. Would you like to read that into the record please?

At this time you may address the council on items not on the agenda and on consent. Time limit is three minutes and we will start with in-person public comments first.

Okay, first up is Tracy Beard followed by Ravi Hargroves

Thank you this evening. I want to let you know we have an economic summit coming up on March 13th We have Greg Hart that's going to speak, we have Randy Murphy who's gonna talk about our increase possibly on doing the BID downtown update and And where we are with that, we have Scott Wolf that's going to talk about initiatives happening over there. We have Joan Hartman that's going to just talk about what's happening in the Valley and Esther Bates is going to talk about the state of nonprofits and Erica Flores will talk about housing so we have a full summit set up for the 13th.

from 2.30 to check-in and 3.00 to 5.00 is the summit, so we hope you all can attend and be part of it. And we also want to thank Randy Murphy for his award that he received at the League of Cities. Congratulations on that, to receive that. Thank you.

Robbie followed by Susie Townsend

Council, Mayor Brown. My name is Robert Richard Hargreaves III. I am the owner of Solvang Skate Shop. It was brought to my attention today that there is an app called Solvang Passport that is promoting local businesses and I just wanted to make sure that the process that was taking place is fair and just for all the businesses in town I was notified earlier today by Dave Brown, and I was just notified that this is not or maybe not a city-run app. And I just want to make sure that we are creating a fair space for all the businesses to be successful, thrive in the City of Solvang, creating a platform that creates memories for our tourism, that builds customers and our tourism to come back to the city building memories for them that will last a lifetime.

Thank you.

Thank You Susie Townsend followed by Shauna Oh I'm sorry This is general comment. Did you want to talk about a specific 7A? I'm sorry, she gave them all to me and I wasn't looking at the items. I apologize for that. That's, I think the junior mayor would do a lot better job. I'm quite certain of it. I don't have any more speaking forms for public comment. Is there anyone on Zoom or anyone else in the community that has anything they wish to bring up?

Okay then we will proceed to item four our city manager report

Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor and Council I have a few things to announce first of all there is a survey out couple of surveys actually one is specific to the American with Disabilities Act The links are posted on the city's website There's also paper copies available here in City Hall It will be up until April 30th And it specifically asking for public input to help us identify areas of improvement. We also have a survey up, and I said that goes through April 30th, and we also have a survey up for Freedmen's Board Canyon. I know I've received a few requests and I know a few other council have as well from members of the public to participate in that survey and it is at www.surveymonkey.com and then slash the letter R like Randy, then another slash FSSDJF7.

And if you want to send me an email I can forward this to you. You can also look on the city's Facebook page. We posted that link about three days ago and I believe it's going to be in our upcoming newsletter so... That survey is open until March 20th. So those are a couple of surveys We also have had some concerns expressed about having difficulty accessing the agendas. We went through a new agenda management system on the first of the year, unfortunately our computers typically are creatures of habit and they like to go back to whatever you've cached C-A-C-H-E-D, not cash like money. Cash in the past and so that's kind of the default. So if you're having difficulties, recommended quick fix and this will be in our newsletter and on Facebook soon That deleting previous bookmarks to the old agenda page, clearing the browsers cache and cookies, creating a new bookmark using updated link below on this page.

It's cityofsolvang.com I think if you start searching that it is available on our website, you just kind of have to look for it. So I want to make sure that information is out there. A couple of items on the upcoming agenda and the next agenda in two weeks. We're going to have a couple of ordinances, first reading and or second reading because there's a first reading of one tonight We're going to award the website design. We're currently in a process, we're gonna be updating the city's website.

I'm not sure how many people know this but there is a state mandate to update everything to a .gov extension. We are a dot-com extension so we have to change anyway. We've had a lot of issues with the platform that we're currently using So we've solicited a proposal, we have 19 I believe? 21 actual responses ranging in price from $20,000 or so to over a million.

To update the city's website which I thought was interesting Anyway, so that's going to be awarded at the next, well we're gonna bring it to Council and request an award at the next council meeting. On the following meeting a month from tonight, we will have a presentation about the Parks and Rec master plan We also intend to award the Alamo-Petado Road Reconstruction Project. We received bids and a recommending award, and that project should get started soon thereafter at one of these next two meetings. I don't know for sure which one yet but one of the next two meetings we'll be bringing back...we just had a council goal setting session and we'll be bringing Council meeting April 13, 2018 Thank you. Any questions of our city manager? Wow, a report with no questions

No wonder you won the award. Way to go, well done. All right

Government Code Section 53232.3 D aka AB 1234 and government code section 84308 aka SB 1439 report out ex parte communications council comments requests

okay Who wants to start?

We start from left to right. I don't have much to report out, I do want to disclose that I met with the homeowners association or the Association for the Mobile Park group this past weekend just to join into their meeting and give them a city update and they're quite engaged so good news is they're paying attention. A lot of good questions

Thank you.

A few things, I just want to say thank you to Jose and Trevor and Nathan and Ulrich who joined us on a tour of the wastewater treatment facility so that was eye opening. And I said show me everything and boy did you guys show me everything. Went along with also council member Arona. So that was the first time when I had visited it and I really appreciate the time that you all spent on that very very windy day Also, very briefly attended the chamber mixer to welcome The Giving Inc. And also last week I attended a Zoom meeting which was addressing the housing and homelessness situation in Santa Barbara County and that's about it.

Thank you.

I have nothing to report tonight. Okay

The only thing was I was there, excuse me at the chamber meeting also and see anything I attended in the last couple weeks.

Okay, I'll give you a quick report. On the 11th, I was at the North County sub-regional meeting for SCAG and then on the 12th I participated in a meeting with Fred Tan organized the meeting for our initiative for biolubricants And then on the 18th, I met with many dignitaries including Senator Adam Schiff at the San Jose Valley College Hospital with the new designation that they received.

Well not new but continued designation would be a better word. And then the 19th was the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments meeting on the 19th in Santa Maria. And then the Coastal Rail, coalition committee on the 19th and then, excuse me, on the 20th. And then I just came from the Danish History or Danish Museum group at the Elverhoi and so we have a large contingent of, well Wendy was there and so is Mr. Murphy, nice event for a gathering of many brothers and sisters from Denmark and Danish communities throughout the United States.

So that's all I had. Oh, shout out again congratulations Mr. Murphy for the award and your team. I get many compliments throughout the week and I'm so delighted that I can share that credit with you guys in your team. So thank you. We'll move on to consent items number six would you read that into the record please Miss Clerk?

Consent is for routine administrative city matters and is approved with one motion. These items are only discussed on request of council members

Thank you, we have any modifications to the agenda or any anybody wish to pull any those items

Okay, I'll move we approve the consent agenda

well second

Thank you, it's been properly moved and seconded to approve the item 6 consent items. Roll call please.

Motion passes 5-0

Okay, now we have our public hearing item 7A. Would you read that into the record please when you get a chance?

Public hearing to consider introducing for first reading ordinance number 260390 amending section 1163 allowable uses and permit requirements of chapter 6 residential zoning districts in section 11 12 20 short-term vacation rental regulation of chapter 20 supplemental regulations of title 11 of the Solvang municipal code and making a determination of exemption under CEQA.

Thank you very much. Staff report, please. Mr. Castillo?

Thank you Mayor and good evening Council. So this is sort of the last stop of our almost year-long journey of updating the short-term rental ordinance so again just to give a background of where we are at our previous ordinance was adopted in 2014 through an emergency ordinance that ordinance was again codified with no changes in 2016 since that time technology and platforms have outpaced our existing regulations And so in March 2025, this council directed staff to begin on working amending the vacation rental ordinance. This was an action coupled with the Measure U and the extension of TOT funds to sort of act together.

So again why are we updating the ordinance? We are updating it due to a couple reasons one is our lack of enforcement tools in the current ordinance There's currently a lack of applicant follow-up. So our current Vacation Rental Ordinance just has one application and that's it where they're supposed to follow up with city staff, but no nothing is really done There's limited safety and inspection requirements to ensure these units are in compliance There's currently no permit cap or oversight And then the last one is the housing availability concerns particularly with our new zoning ordinance allows for mixed use developments as well Currently permitted and allowed.

There is a little section of what's called R3, it's our higher density residential areas. It's in this area that's currently also allowed but as part of this amended ordinance those will be removed again for consistency with our adopted housing element to remove those properties and preserve long-term housing So some of the key features are a citywide permit-based regulatory framework. So while it's only allowed in the Village Mixed Use areas, these rules and regulations do apply for the entire City again with the idea from the Council direction was to just include housing units within the Village Mixed Use District only and eliminate the ability for any short-term rental to be outside of that zone.

There's currently a 40 permit cap limit with a waiting list, so that was an item that we brought back for direction and we were given direction from the council to include a cap limit. So currently right now we have approximately 25 units that are currently permitted with permits. That's actually going to drop down to about 20 because we have two short-term rental operations that are actually hotels and so they will be defined as hotels and will not need to go into SDRs are limited to village mixed use only versus our carve-out approach.

Thank you very much. So again, this action really does implement our housing element. So we've went through a pretty prolonged battle to get our housing element approved and certified by the state of California. So it prohibits short term rentals in what's called ADUs or accessory dwelling units. SB9 that's actually the ability to do a buy right lot split so if you have a single family home in a single family zone You're actually, you can do a lot split by right. So there's no public hearing. There was no public notice. It's simply an application surveyor and off you go to get your lot split. And then finally affordable housing so it's kind of known as a double dipping what we don't want to have happen is have developers take advantage of state density bonus rules which basically alleviates things such as heights setbacks in parking What does that mean?

And so, again as I touched on earlier it does allow existing permits outside of the VMU to continue operation and so they can apply for permits within a time frame but they just can't transfer the permits upon sale at conveyance. And again these items before you this evening do support our regional housing needs assessment in Housing Elements goal as we are currently in the sixth cycle of the Housing Element reporting period.

From a life safety neighborhood portion, there are mandatory safety inspections. So there was a revisement proposed by the Planning Commission that's included in your staff report to go out every few years and sort of renew a safety inspection. There's occupancy limits based on bedroom counts so again it allows for neighbors to one be notified of a short-term rental that's in their neighborhood two and understand the maximum number of people that are allowed Parking trash and posting requirements are also all included into the new proposed ordinance, as well as requirement to have a local contact respond within 60 minutes of the complaint. So again as we issue out these permits, we'll be notifying our neighbors every 300 feet. They'll get a card in the mail indicating the property owner who the local contact person is their number the number of parking spots that are required on site and the maximum number of occupants and of course a QR code on the back to provide any complaints that hopefully at a 24-hour clip So from an enforcement and compliance standpoint, we're proposing graduated penalties in administrative citations.

So our current code enforcement runs on voluntary compliance. We definitely do not want to fine people first off so as a matter of fact in November we went ahead and started, we reviewed properties that were actually operating short term rentals outside of the village mixed use and so we had sent out approximately 25 letters to property owners. We currently have a 100% compliance rate without issuing any fines, so we were able to send out letters. We did do a couple follow-ups on some folks where they didn't realize that they still had their listing up and so we helped them understand just how to remove it.

And then this these changes do provide a permit revocation authority which our current ordinance does not have There is a two-year ineligibility after revocation, so usually revocation is the last step of what we want to do. Again, we're looking for voluntary compliance. Typically once we send out a letter or message, we get the compliance that we need but this ability to have enforcement helps us ultimately have better ordinance in the end.

And finally, we are including what's called platform reporting requirements. So that's for Airbnb and VRBO which is now allowed by the state of California as of January 1st so we do have a caveat that we can request information to audit tax information from Airbnb and VRBO to make sure we are recouping our required TOT taxes. So the proposed action this evening is consistent with the general plan you're adopted 2045 general plan which supports village area tourism Protects our residential neighborhoods by focusing our short-term rentals within the village.

It promotes the missing middle housing as it eliminates sort of that R3 housing which is desperately needed and if we don't have much infill left of, and advances anti displacement strategy particularly with older units As a part of any project, we do have to go through what's called the California Environmental Quality Act review. It is exempt from CEQA due to section 15061B3 as it has no potential environmental impact.

So planning commission is recommending the City Council introduce for first reading ordinance number 260390 amending section 1163 allowable use and permit requirements of chapter 6 and section 112020 known as short-term rental vacation rental regulations of title 11 of our zoning ordinance, and make a determination of exemption under CEQA. With that I'll open up to any questions that the council may have.

Thank you Any colleagues have any questions?

I was just wondering what is the difference between a short-term rental and a hotel, what triggers that distinction.

They're actually one in the same almost. Short term rental typically is done in a residential home but it's stay of less than 30 days.

Okay thank you

I had a question regarding the enforcement aspects of it. You'd mentioned that we had no previous enforcement throughout the city, and I understand the administrative, what did you call it? You just had up there, I'm sorry. I don't know if this is going to be of that caliber or not for violations.

Again, we're seeking voluntary compliance usually so usually the first letter gets folks out but it you know if it's necessary we can step up if it becomes a nuisance issue and it looks like Chelsea's gonna step in a little bit on that

Mayor, are you referring to the prior ordinance that we've introduced? Yes. So that ordinance that we did the other night affects the general penalties provision so that does apply across the code and that would make any violation of this new ordinance should the council ultimately adopt it be default to a misdemeanor however we would still have administrative fines as an option and even under the criminal penalties The way we've set it up is the city would still have the discretion to charge anything as an infraction, which is a lesser violation. Anything that's a misdemeanor can also be charged as an infraction so that change didn't lock us into charging violations of for example short-term rentals as misdemeanors.

Thank you and then how did you arrive at the max of 40?

So that was the discussion we had at our last City Council meeting in regards to direction. Originally, we had proposed no cap and it was a number sort of thrown out as it doubled the amount of permits that were available because again based on what we have under the existing program which is approximately 25 and again as I mentioned earlier would drop down to 20 as a couple of those properties begin to exit out.

And how would a waiting list work?

So a waiting list would work as if there is a cap. Essentially, city staff would open up a waiting list through a form that someone fills out and when it comes to renewals, if there's a property that decides, elects to drop out, the first person on the list will then be called up and asked if they want to apply for a permit and be given a certain time frame to apply for said permit. If there are additional members on the waiting list and they elect not to, then we go onto the next person in the list.