The Healdsburg City Council voted Tuesday night to limit firearms sales to industrial and commercial zones outside the downtown area and created 500-foot buffer zones elsewhere, around schools, churches, parks and similar land uses.
“About 50 properties would be eligible to apply for a conditional use permit,” said Joel Galbraith, from the city’s planning department.
The limits came in response to an effort, in late 2017, to open a retail firearms store on North Street, downtown, next to a toy store.
Scott Gabaldon, a Windsor building contractor, applied for and was granted a permit to operate under the zoning rules that existed at the time, but community outcry caused the city to enact two urgency moratoriums prohibiting firearms sales anywhere in the city until a zoning ordinance update could be developed.
City planners wrote a series of recommendations, vetted them through the planning commission in March and presented them to the council Tuesday night.
Under the new rules, which will take effect in October, firearms sales will be allowed in industrial and commercial zones around the outskirts of the city.
It will also be allowed in mixed use zones, including parts of Grove Street, the former lumber mill south of downtown and other areas near the south of town.
In the mixed use zones, it will only be allowed as a secondary use to another operation, such as a sporting goods or hardware store.
City Councilmember Joe Naujokas pointed out that the Big 5 Sporting Goods chain sells guns and ammunition. “Would most of Healdsburg be upset if we had a Big 5 in the Mitchell Center?” he asked, suggesting that residents would be happy to be able to purchase sporting equipment locally and would accept gun sales as part of the package.
Galbraith, Planning Director Maya DeRosa and City Attorney Samantha Zutler made it clear that the city had researched its legal standing if it chose to regulate gun sales.
The staff report on the new zoning changes reads, in part: “While the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes the right of citizens to keep and bear arms, it does not establish the right to sell firearms.”
Few members of the public spoke. Jeanie Kahn, Sonia Beck, Heidi Marino and Robert Neuse spoke against allowing firearms sales. “This is all talking around the issue of gun violence in this country,” Marino said. “I don’t want a gun shop in this community. We don’t need it.”
Paul LeBrett, born and raised here, said that he recalls when there were four places in the community to buy guns and that the concerns are based on fear. “There are misconceptions about guns,” he said.
Gabaldon attended the meeting and expressed his frustration about the zoning changes. “Because of all this I’m starting from scratch,” he said. Regarding the proposed buffer zones, Gabaldon said, “Healdsburg has a church, a school, a park on every block. That really limits what I can do. Where can I go?”
Gabaldon also said he’s been in contact with longtime residents, “who want this” and that fears about firearms sales come mostly from “newcomers” to the community.
The council briefly discussed whether to add buffer zones to places where alcohol is sold, but Galbraith said the city staff had looked at that idea and realized that it could effectively eliminate all gun sales in the city, which could be subject to legal challenges. “We do have to allow some areas where people can acquire firearms,” he said.
After discussing whether to change the buffer zones to 250 feet and to make the buffer zones from building to building, rather than a more restrictive parcel to parcel (councilmember David Hagele’s idea), the council voted 5-0 to proceed with the limits.
Mayor Brigette Mansell voted with the council, saying that the city has to allow “places where people can create a business,” but she also said that, “I don’t understand, as a school teacher, how we can allow people to acquire guns.”
This story was originally posted on Sept. 5.
