The Sebastopol City Council’s newly approved RV parking ordinance means a new daily grind for unhoused residents in RVs and exhausted business owners late this March when restrictions take effect.
On Feb. 23, the council passed the second reading and adoption of the Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance. Councilmember Una Glass abstained, setting up for a 4-0-1 vote.
What does the ordinance mean?
The ordinance coming into effect March 26 bans:
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle standing on any public street zoned residential at any time.
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle on a public street zoned commercial, industrial, or community facility any time between 7:30 a.m. and 10 p.m.
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle in any city-owned parking lot unless one is doing “city-related business during business hours at the location for which the parking lot is designated.”
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle standing under 30 feet from any street corner. Following this rule should allow other drivers to survey the area properly.
Exempt from these rules are:
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle standing because of a mechanical breakdown so repairs can be done within 48 hours.
• Parking or leaving a recreational vehicle standing on a public street zoned residential so that a homeowner, tenant or visitor from outside the area can load/unload the vehicle within 72 hours.
• Commercial vehicles serving businesses, like delivery and pick-up, or vehicles permitted by a department of the City of Sebastopol, like construction vehicles, are exempt from the ordinance.
More work to be done
On November 30, 2021, the city council pledged to clear Morris Street and pursue city policy changes to prevent future overnight parking issues there and elsewhere in Sebastopol. The council also agreed to keep RVs from moving into the safe parking village underway “until the parking concerns described here have been addressed and resolved,” per the motion.
Former residents of the Morris Street RV encampment began moving into Horizon Shine Village mid-February to participate in the pilot program run by Sonoma Applied Village Services (SAVS).
The council directed staff and in particular, Sebastopol Police Chief Kevin Kilgore, to return with a clearer definition of the 72-hour parking rule and Paragraph B of the ordinance, which covers exemptions provided by the policy. Kilgore said he hoped to have these prepared by April if not sooner.
Council members also asked if Kilgore could eventually provide proposals to explore for a permitting process that could address certain residential parking. According to Kilgore, one issue is the city doesn’t have the staffing to oversee the permitting yet.
Kilgore said a multi-option system would call for the city manager and an outside consultant given how pressed he is for time, and further, City Manager-Attorney Larry McLaughlin would have a better estimate for the cost of an outside consultant.
Neighboring business owners and community members pushed for long overdue action on Morris Street and throughout the city while homeless advocates and other townspeople opposed the heavy restrictions as callous and criminalizing homelessness.
Plenty of attendees spoke of “unintended consequences.” Some wanted to delay the decision until the prohibitions and exceptions could be made clearer. Housed residents were keen to know what the policy would mean for their guests, evacuation getaways and tourists from out of town.
Going about city business with an RV
In fact, the city council, staff and chief of police weren’t all on the same page about some parts of the Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance, like “city-related business.”
After some confusion around where people can park to conduct what city-related business, City Manager Larry McLaughlin said there are commercial parking lots that aren’t owned by the city that have no restrictions.
“You can park there indefinitely,” he said, adding most city-owned lots are for general commercial businesses where he interpreted RVs would be allowed to park to shop “or otherwise go to city businesses and facilities.”
People can also park RVs in the accommodating parking lots of grocery stores and drugstores to frequent restaurants or businesses, according to Kilgore.
He stated he would not anticipate public safety departments like the police or Sebastopol Fire to let anyone park in their lots for unrelated reasons, since an emergency could demand that space at any time. However, a public city-owned lot across the Sebastopol Police Department’s lot could take RVs for those conducting business related to the city but not necessarily for the police.
“I think it’s so odd that there are municipal lots that are restricted differently,” said
Councilmember Sarah Glade Gurney, asking about the lot between the city hall, the Sebastopol Regional Library and the Sebastopol Area Senior Center.
McLaughlin deferred to Kilgore on the vehicle code, but said parking regulations in municipal lots would probably depend on the lot’s signage, which often only limits parking by hours. For example, people can park in the lot Gurney spoke of to conduct city business in general, whether at city hall or the senior center, library or streets.
“Now, if you have a small parking lot and it’s related to a particular department of the city, it is possible to create signage that restricts the use of that particular small lot to the city facility for which it’s adjacent,” McLaughlin said. “But most of our lots do not have such restrictions.”
Slayter agreed that signage would be useful to define which lots are designated for the city and which are general municipal lots for freer use. How much legal signage would cost has yet to be pinned down, the city manager said, though staff have plans in motion.
In addition, Kilgore said the new rules apply to recreational vehicles regardless of whether they’re considered oversized the way people may picture in their minds.
“That’s not always the situation,” he said. “In fact, we’ve got one that parks across the police department quite frequently that has a little camper on the back of it and it’s probably not bigger than a large pick-up truck.”
He said SPD personnel would use “common sense” regarding various recreational vehicles. “We’re not going to be looking in people’s vehicles to try to figure out whether or not there’s a bathroom in there and a shower in there and everything else that fits this criteria,” Kilgore said.
The police chief continued, “Somebody who drives a vehicle, such as a VW van that’s been modified for that purpose, into downtown to eat dinner is probably not going to see a whole lot of us. But if we see that vehicle that is staying in the same spot over and over and over again or for a long period of time, then common sense kicks in that somebody’s probably utilizing that vehicle to live in and that would be a violation of the ordinance at that point.”
RV residents to live within limits under ordinance
The police chief explained that residential RV-parking was prohibited in part to prevent people from moving into the neighborhoods during the daytime, when they would be barred from parking in commercial, industrial and community facility areas.
In other words, those who didn’t make the list for Horizon Shine Village will have to keep it moving until nightfall under the ordinance that only allows overnight RV parking on public streets zoned for commercial, industrial or community facility use from 10 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.
The city must provide such overnight hours to stay in line with constitutional laws “set and reaffirmed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Kilgore said.
“They can’t be parked in a parking lot, residing in that parking lot during the daytime either. They have to be doing city-related business, either visiting a city-related building like the library or something to that effect,” he told SoCoNews. People living in RVs will essentially need to leave town to take a daytime nap or otherwise exist in their own space, come March 26.
Sebastopol resident Margaret DeMatteo introduced herself as the housing policy attorney at Legal Aid of Sonoma County during public comment and opposed the ordinance on its behalf.
“This ordinance in its form and timing violates the prevailing legal precedent of Martin v. Boise and the eighth amendment of the constitution. Citing and towing RVs that unhoused people make their home, unhoused people that are residents of Sebastopol, is criminalization of homelessness,” she said.
DeMatteo continued, “When unhoused individuals are not offered a placement and there’s nowhere else for them to go, they cannot be removed from public spaces,” asserting the SAVS village is at capacity and can’t take everyone.
72 hours to load, unload and if you’re familiar, eat dinner and stay the night
When the new RV parking policy starts on March 26, there will be two 72-hour parking rules at play in the city. The Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance dictates that an RV can only park in a residential zone while loading and unloading — or visiting — for 72 hours, on a complaint-driven basis.
The homeowner and the individual parking in front of their residence must be affiliated for the RV to have “a 72-hour reprieve from a citation or enforcement action,” with tires marked accordingly, Kilgore told SoCoNews on March 1.
Chapter 10.08 of the Sebastopol Municipal Code applies to all vehicles and says, “Any vehicle that has been parked or left standing upon a street or highway for 72 or more consecutive hours,” can be removed or caused to be removed by an SPD officer.
“If someone calls and complains that a vehicle’s been parked in one spot, then our officers or our personnel go out, they mark the tires and that’s when the 72-hour count begins. And when that 72 hours expires, they typically get a citation,” he said. “We then mark the tires again and if it goes for another 72 hours, then we come back and we tow the vehicle.”
Further, Chapter 10.36.050 states, “No person who owns or has possession, custody or control of any vehicle shall park such vehicle upon any street or alley for more than a consecutive period of 72 hours.”
Glass asked how the 72-hour rule in the Recreational Vehicle Parking Ordinance would apply to a scenario where someone visits her house in something like a Sprinter van.
Kilgore responded, “I think that the 72-hour exception that city council requested be put into the ordinance also covers that for those folks who might be coming to your house for dinner or might be staying overnight for dinner,” referring to the exemption given for 72-hour loading and unloading.
The individual would be loading themselves into a house and unloading themselves back out, Kilgore clarified, which troubled Glass. “Well, I don’t think that’s at all clear for the ordinance, so I find that kind of problematic. I find that when you put yourself in the position of doing selective enforcement, that is not a good position,” she said.
Among other concerns, she took issue with prohibiting relatives arriving in what may be non-oversized camper vans to visit their grandkids for four or five days, given the expansive definition of a recreational vehicle. Ultimately, the issues she saw in the ordinance led her to abstain from voting.
The ordinance does not address recreational vehicles intended for evacuation purposes. Still, the Sebastopol City Council can suspend any ordinance from enforcement during emergencies. In such instances, people may be able to park an RV in front of their house to load up and get out of town, Kilgore told SoCoNews.
Until then, residents would have to keep their RV at a storage facility, parked in their own driveway or temporarily in front of their house to load or unload for 72 hours as specified in the policy’s exemptions.
Community tugs council for and against ordinance in pursuit of respite
Terry Noe runs Beehive Electronics on Morris Street and voiced his support for the parking policy. “We have problems with trash, we have crime problems. Lately, we’ve had a number of vehicle break-ins. Generators running all day long,” he attributed to the RV encampment. A neighbor moved his office to Santa Rosa to get away, Noe said.
Another attendee prompted the council on its past commitment to pair the RV safe parking village with a parking ordinance. The business owner near Morris Street said she’s experienced many issues others mentioned as a representative of the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center.
“The vandalism, the crime, the employees being harassed, the community center being broken into, the thousands of dollars spent to put in alarm systems — the number of nights that my husband and I got up as volunteers in the middle of the night receiving calls from the alarm company saying someone was breaking into the community center and showing up there,” she said.
Support also came from Jennie Bruneman, the facilities director for the West Sonoma County Union High School District. “The RVs and trailers have crept along Morris Street to Johnson Street, directly adjacent to the JV softball field,” she said. “Although many RVs have moved, I still feel as though this area in its current state is not safe for our staff, students and greater community. At best, it’s a health hazard and a safety issue for our students as the path of travel is obstructed, pushing them into the street.”
Elightza introduced herself as a member of the Horizon Shine Village and shared her opposition to the proposed ordinance because not everyone has been as lucky as herself to join the safe parking program.
She said everyone’s situation is different but many feel safe in Sebastopol, “a lot of them are from here and have been here a long time,” and many people don’t have the resources to move every day or every 72 hours.
Elightza thanked Kilgore for his patience with people living in RVs and said people view the city as safer than Santa Rosa, “where a lot more violence, especially with people of the homeless community, occurs.”
“Council needs to uphold its commitment and promise to residents and business owners,” attendee Kate Haug said of the parking policy to go with the new RV parking village. As a tiny city with a modest budget, she said “Sebastopol simply cannot solve the homeless crisis in California.”
Haug claimed the state and the County of Sonoma had lots more funding to spend on unhoused issues and pointed to shelters already available in the city between Elderberry Commons, Park Village, Horizon Shine Village and the Community Church of Sebastopol.
“It’s time for the county to step up and work with Sebastopol. There’s no reason why the county couldn’t have opened up several RV camping sites in the last two years,” she added.
SAVS board member Cynthia Poten pressed the council to delay approval for the ordinance considering present and potential legal challenges. She predicted the new rules would drive people living in their vehicles into unincorporated land and create “unintended problems.”
“One is that the people still living in Sebastopol’s streets will continue to suffer the physical and emotional consequences of ongoing instability and those consequences can spill over into the larger community,” Poten said. “The second reason is there is no countywide plan for addressing the homeless emergency. And until there is one, municipalities are either going to continue to sweep or ticket residential vehicles or alleviate the suffering of some while others remain desperate.”
