Support also voiced for local small business loan program
Sebastopol Mayor Patrick Slayter is writing a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom to ask if his city and its residents can make some temporary changes in how they’d like to use their Main Street. You might think a city could do whatever it wanted, but that’s not how it works when your Main Street is also a state highway and is maintained by Caltrans.
Slayter, his city council mates and numerous downtown merchants and city residents want to convert the western-most lane of Main Street into a “People’s Lane,” to accommodate pedestrian right-of-ways, parkettes, outdoor dining areas and curbside food and shopping pickup spots. While Caltrans had most of the city’s major thoroughfare coned-off and full of daily jackhammering for many weeks, it turns out the city needs special permits from the state just to hang a banner across the street or paint an extra stripe on the asphalt.
Never mind that 673 Sebastopol business owners and others think the “People’s Lane” is a great idea. If a Caltrans bureaucrat disagrees, then it’s all a “no-go.” The pedestrian-focused idea came from a city’s consultant survey seeking local business economic stimulus ideas.
“I think ‘People’s Lane’ strikes the right tone for us,” said Slayter. “This creates places for humans, instead of storage for automobiles.”
An original proposal to add a people’s lane on Main Street between McKinely Street and Bodega Avenue may be extended further south to the post office if Slayter’s letter holds sway with the governor. “When we want a dog, we might as well ask for a pony,” was how the mayor said he might frame his official request.
The proposal would allow adjacent restaurants to set up semi-permanent seating and dining tables on the former western parking lane. Caltrans requires specific safety barriers and rules for any overhead tenting or canopies.
The People’s Lane idea was not unanimous in the survey completed by consultants CoMission who have been working for several months on various city economic vitality initiatives and planning. Concerns were raised about a loss of parking spaces and a few individual merchants questioned how their normal sidewalk foot traffic might be impacted.
During the prolonged pandemic-related economic shutdown, most towns in Sonoma County are implementing versions of pedestrian-friendly traffic arrangements, open air dining and temporarily closed streets. In Sonoma County, portions of the main thoroughfares in Cloverdale, Windsor, Cotati, Petaluma, Forestville, Guerneville and Sebastopol have various levels of Caltrans control. Any local city could potentially take full control of their main street, but with it comes the 100% expense of maintenance and management.
At the same city council workshop on Aug. 12, the full council favored implementing a small business emergency loan program for Sebastopol business owners facing ongoing economic hardships due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The loan program might offer $5,000 to $10,000 zero or low interest loans to businesses meeting a specific set of criteria, all subject to staff work and further council direction. The total loan program might be $100,000 to $150,000 based on council discussion on Wednesday. Funding would have to come from shifting money from the city’s general fund or previous allocations. Similar COVID-19 emergency loans have been done in Santa Rosa and Healdsburg.
CoMission conducted a survey about two months ago with 160 Sebastopol businesses responding, representing a broad cross section of firms and stores, based mainly in the downtown, Barlow and north and south retail sectors.
Since the closing of most of the county and state economy on March 18, more than half of surveyed Sebastopol businesses said they had lost 50% of their normal revenues, with one-fourth of the businesses having lost all of their business activities and revenues.
One-third (35%) of the businesses reported they laid-off or furloughed their entire workforce, with a total of 70% suffering partial or full staff layoffs. Of the 160 Sebastopol businesses, a total of 103 received some form of federal relief, 58 being Payroll Protection loans from the SBA.
Final details of the proposed loan program will be discussed in a future open session by the city council, date to be determined.
