City Council - Regular Meeting

Evening with the Pledge of Allegiance. Allegiance led this tonight by Councilmember Funk.

Please rise and join me as able.

Thank you, roll call please.

Council Member Funk? Here. Council Member Newsom?

Here.

Council Member Peek?

Here.

Mayor Borbeau?

Just say Mayor Pro Tem Darius.

Mayor Pro Tem Darius. All present.

There he is. You can say you're here. And I'm here. All present. We're going to move on this evening to our consent calendar. Our consent calendar consists of items that are considered routine and non-controversial by city staff and will be acted upon in a single motion by the council unless otherwise requested by an individual council member for separate consideration. And we will allow public comment on the consent calendar. Do we have any member of the council wishing to ask a question or pull an item? Okay, seeing none, we'll see if any member of the public would wish to like, which would, pardon me, would wish to comment on a consent calendar item. Okay, seeing no one approach, we will bring it back to council for a motion. Move approval of the consent calendar.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Funk and a second by Council Member Newsom. Roll call, please.

Council Member Funk? Yes. Council Member Newsom? Yes. Council Member Peek?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Derris?

Yes.

Mayor Borbo?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

All right. Thank you. We will move on to updates from this.

What's that?

Yes. Is the recording on? I didn't hear the thing that says we're live or did I just miss it? Oh, you won't hear that anymore. Okay. All right. But we're up and running. Very good. And I forgot to welcome anybody who is, of course, in the chamber, but also those of you listening at home. We're glad you're participating. Um, but we're going to move on to our updates from the city manager, Mr. Lewis, our city manager is on vacation this week. So we're going to turn it over to deputy city manager, Laura Henderson.

Thank you. Thank you, mayor council. Um, summer is fully underway. And one of the fun, new things that the city has done is we have launched. our quarterly e-newsletter, the Atascadero Community Connection. If anyone is interested in receiving the newsletter, they can sign up on the city's website under... News and alerts. This newsletter is designed to keep our community informed and engaged. It'll feature updates on city projects, local initiatives, community topics, upcoming events, and other news that matters most to our residents and businesses. This is the front cover of our very first edition. As you can see, you can find it on our website by going to atascadero.org forward slash ACC newsletter. And again, if you go to our news and announcement page, you can sign up to receive those alerts and that you can reach our news and announcements page at atascadero.org forward slash news. The summer, just a reminder, our summer 2026 aquatics program is fully in swing. We're underway. Monday through Wednesday programming includes lap swim from noon to 4 p.m. and rec swim from 2 to 4.15. And on Thursday and Friday... We have lap swim from 12 to 5.45 and rec swim from 2 to 4.15. There are group swim lessons and private lessons available. If you're interested, please reach out to our recreation division. Passes to participate in rec and lap swim do need to be purchased in person. You can do that at Colony Park Community Center. And you can register for lessons. You can do those online through our active net portal or by visiting atascadero.org. A reminder of our upcoming Coffee with a Cop. This one will feature a special appearance by our canine, Pomik. Please join our Tascadero Police Department tomorrow, June 24th, at Jobella's Coffee from 9 to 11 a.m. You can come enjoy a cup of coffee, meet our local officers, and ask your questions and find out what's going on with our police department. As I mentioned, summer is fully in swing, and that includes our Saturday in the Park summer concert series. Our next concert is this Saturday, June 27th at 6.30 p.m. That'll feature the Rockin' BS Band. All of our concerts are outdoors at the Tascadero Lake Park Bandstand. They are free to attend. You'll... get to dance with your friends, hear some great music, bring a low back chair, and there's also food available for purchase. Just a reminder that the, let's see, yeah, the Women in Blue Leadership Camp will be held June 30th, 2026. That's from 9 to 4 p.m. at Colony Park Community Center. Registration is due today. So if you are interested, this is for ages 6th grade through 12th grade for students. It's geared for female youth interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement. There will be guest speakers from Atascara Police Department, Cal Poly Police Department, the CHP, probation, the slow sheriff office, the FBI, and the district attorney's office. It will include a live canine demonstration and the youth will learn a small portion of forensics involved with how we lift fingerprints. Again, it's open to 6th to 12th graders and lunch and refreshments will be provided for participants. Atascadero 4th of July Music Festival is being hosted by the Atascadero Perenary Foundation and Tiny Porch Concerts. That'll be held on July 4th at the Atascadero Lake Park from 3 to 8 p.m. You can purchase tickets online for that. It's a music festival with a dynamic music lineup, including Shane Alexander, Bee and the Hive, the Coffice Brothers, and the Barbershop Quartet. It will also feature food, local wine, and craft beer for purchase. As a reminder, all fireworks are prohibited in the city of Atascadero. Please, please, please remember to celebrate. 4th of July safely and that fireworks are prohibited. This includes what are labeled safe and sane fireworks. So just a reminder, no fireworks. If anyone is caught lighting or in possession of any fireworks, they will be cited and fined. We wish everyone a very happy fourth of July celebration, but also to please remember to keep our Community safe and to not light or possess those fireworks and then as a reminder upcoming this summer is cruising weekend and those. Registration is currently on sale and those are limited. Registration is limited. So for anyone interested in participating, get your registration in while it's still available. cruise cruising weekend is August 21 through 22 Friday night is the 33rd 33rd excuse me annual hot Camino cruise night that'll be from 630 to 830pm along El Camino real here in. The downtown on Saturday in the morning will be the 35th mid state cruisers car show that's from 10am to 3pm at lake park. And then Saturday night will be Dancing in the Streets here in the downtown, and that will be from 5 to 10 p.m. Again, a reminder that registration is open for those wishing to register their cars to participate. Passes are limited, and you can register through the Colony Park Community Center at 5599 Traffic Way. Mail-in registration is accepted through Friday, August 1st, or while registration passes are available. Or you can do the walk-in pre-registration, which also is Friday, August 1st, until 4 p.m., and that's 4 p.m. sharp on Friday the 21st, if passes remain available. Passes are not going to be sold the night of the event. For cruise night registration or more info about the weekend, please go to visitatascadero.com forward slash events, or you can call our recreation department, 805-470-3360. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions and just remind everybody that event information for all city and city-sponsored events and information on the Central Coast Zoo and all things to do here in the city, please visit atascadero.com and for all city-related business, atascadero.org.

Thank you. Now, are you sure that that band is not the Rockin' Bees?

Yes. Yes, sorry. Rockin' Bees. That's not what was on my form. I'm sorry.

Does any other member of the council have a question?

Rockin' Bees. Yeah, that should have been a small s. Sorry about that.

They are a good band to have heard. Let's start on the left. Council Member Peay.

So how much of the Lake Park is going to be fenced off for buying a ticket to enter? I mean, are we blocking off a lot of the... I mean, how much of it's going to be blocked off from somebody who's just going to enjoy the park for the 4th of July?

For the 4th event? I think they have in the past, although maybe... Our community services director can answer that. But in the past, it's sort of been to the walkway and just sort of that grass area that's been around the bandstand. It hasn't included all of the parks. So like the playground has still been open. The whole downslope part of the park where all of the barbecue areas, all of that has still been open for park users.

And around the bandstand area up to the pathway up to the playground is typically where they set up right there.

The whole thing is a fundraiser for the printery?

Yes, it is. It's all for the printery for July 4th.

So is the printery managing security, managing all the different things, or is the city donating all that?

We have an intake meeting for that to go over that with them. We haven't had the intake meeting yet, but typically they have their security people, like their volunteers and things like that. So yeah, it's city sponsored. So we work with them on it. Thank you.

Any other questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none. Thank you. We will move on to community forum and community forum is reserved for persons wishing to address the council on any matter that is not on the agenda. The Brown Act does prohibit the council from entering into a discussion on an item not on the agenda, so we, at most, will be able to ask staff to answer a quick question or refer staff to meet with that individual, perhaps, at the back of the room. Speakers have three minutes, and we ask that you state your name for the record. Please, first speaker.

Good evening, council staff. Jeff Oslin. Three things on my agenda tonight. First of all, being this is part of Terry's wheelhouse, I want to say that the Coach Hartzell in volleyball and the volleyball program going on for the camps is phenomenal. It's incredible what's going on in Colony Park on that. So kudos to the rec staff for that. Secondly, I'm sure council's getting sick of this, so now I'm going to bring out a little laundry. I've been requesting on behalf of residents for over five months to address lighting and the noise complaints that happen at Fresh area in the construction area over there and the highlights we're into five months of me speaking about this a Lady did call into the city was told that it is a civil matter. That's why I got involved to my understanding contact is yet to be made either to the builder or the owner of the market and I will continue on this soap opera box forever because you're talking about doing other projects in town and we're not enforcing the codes, which this council puts into play. It is time to step up. and get this corrected, please. Third of all, I'd like clarification on fireworks, please, because my understanding is you may not have any illegal fireworks in the city of Atascadero, but if I was to purchase safe and sane fireworks and not use them in the city of Atascadero, but use them in an area of the county that is legal, such as Templeton on my property, that would be legal. So I'd like clarification, please. Thank you. Okay, next speaker, please.

I'm Cindy Castle. I've been a resident here since 1982, and I want to tell you what happened to me because it upset me. Last month on the Friday of the Tamale Festival, I was deeply angered when I returned from delivering meals on my Meals That Connect route and found access to the senior center that houses the kitchen completely blocked with big, huge, heavy bollards. I had picked my meals up maybe 90 minutes earlier. Business was as usual with drivers going in and out. There was no warning that the street would be blocked soon. I was blown away. I looked around for somebody. I tried to pull a bollard out and they are big, huge and really heavy. No matter what, I was gonna have to hoof it with the 40 gallon cooler and big insulated bag. Then I became livid. How could this have been allowed to happen? I am a senior volunteering to help other seniors in this community who find themselves in a pickle, impaired and isolated. I want the city to care about these people. And it is very discouraging for me as a volunteer to have no respect from the city. So I want the city to care about services to seniors and respect the volunteer community. And that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

I'm Jill Aguilar. My name is Jill Aguilar. And I am the site manager for the Meals That Connect program, senior nutrition that's located on East Mall at the back of the senior center. As you may know, MTC is a nonprofit business that's been operating in that location for at least 30 years. We operate daily, delivering meals to homebound seniors and also serve seniors who come into the dining room. Currently, there are approximately 60 plus meals delivered daily by five volunteers, her being one of them, delivery drivers, and approximately 15 to 20 seniors coming to eat in the dining room. The reason I'm speaking today is to request assistance from the city during the events that require the road, specifically East Mall, to be closed down during the times that MTC is serving seniors. Those road closures have often negatively impacted the seniors visiting senior nutrition. I feel the changes that have occurred in this downtown area are very positive in the events that take place, provide a sense of community for our population. Although unfortunately over the last three years, a few of the events have impacted the daily routine of MTC and the senior center. I have attempted to work through and adjust to these challenges as they have occurred, but at times it's been very frustrating. I did have a conversation with Terry Banish, the community services director, last year during the fall festival, and I truly thought that we had a plan in place for future events, which was to have someone from the city staffed at the entrance to East Mall, allowing any MTC traffic to come through. She agreed to accommodate our request for assistance. That plan unfortunately failed on Friday, May 1st of this year for the Tamale Festival. I received a call from Terry at 10.30 a.m. telling me that the road was going to be closed and she was checking what timeframe was needed for senior activities. I told her that we needed access until at least 1 p.m., which she agreed to. A half hour later, I received a phone call from Carol at the senior center telling me that the bowlers have been put up and that the road is completely closed. I called Terry back, and she said that should not have happened and was going to check into it and get back to me that that never happened. So at this point, there are five drivers out delivering meals and seniors who are coming in to eat. As it turns out, all of the five drivers had to park on West Mall and carry the two heavy coolers, each of them, across the park, all of them in their 60s and 70s. I also had an 80-year-old man picking up meals for his wife who couldn't walk the distance from the city parking lot and had to call us to bring the meals to him. I'm sure there were other inconveniences that I did not hear about as the majority of the seniors coming into MTC to dine could not get onto the street. The seniors who are volunteering their time and the ones coming into dine are just attempting to enrich their lives by staying involved and connected and having to deal with these types of obstacles that can be avoided is extremely unacceptable in my opinion. So, as I stated earlier, I am truly hoping that the city of Itasca can find some way to assist and accommodate Meals That Connect and the Senior Center so that this does not continue to happen.

Thank you. Perfect timing. Next speaker, please.

There are many of us.

That's fine.

Mayor, council members, my name is Judy Hemingway. My husband, John Fellows, and I are members of the Atascadero Senior Center. which is separate from but co-located with Meals That Connect. We are here in support of Jill and Meals That Connect, who's just spoken about the problems they've had with street closures. Both of us are nonprofits providing services and support for seniors, people with disabilities, and other members of the community. The Senior Center has been in existence since 1974. We bounced back strongly after COVID and we're continuing to grow. We currently have almost 300 members, 30 volunteers, and around 20 activities every week, roughly 225 person visits per week, not counting the Meals That Connect activities. Additionally, we have walk-ins. We have people coming for mobility aids, making queries, coming to teach or to speak, get a tour of the facilities, et cetera. We are entirely volunteer run and we receive no funding from the city. We depend fully on membership dues, fundraising, and a small endowment. to fund our activities and pay our bills, such as utilities, maintenance, insurance, taxes, and currently dead tree removal. When the city closes East Mall for other city activities, it is not a minor inconvenience. It cuts off access to our facility entirely. Our members, volunteers, diners, and visitors cannot drive to the center. Many of us have mobility issues. Some of us do not drive at all and must arrange in advance for transportation to activities. A closure without adequate notice disrupts carefully made plans and can mean going without a meal, missing a health or wellness activity, or simply being left out. Advanced notice is essential so that reliable, targeted assistance can be planned and in place when barriers are up, not improvised after the fact. Those of us who are members of the Senior Center have lived full and productive lives as contributing members of this community. We deserve to be considered and recognized, not overlooked. In the words of the immortal Aretha Franklin, All we're asking is for a little respect and some advance notice. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello. My name is Denise Nielsen. I am a volunteer with the Tascadero Senior Center. And I'm I'm here to speak in agreement of the issues of the informed closures of the street of East Mall and how that impacts us. I understand that you have work to do that may need closure of the street, but it would be very kind and respectful if you could let us know in advance when that would occur and stick to the plan. So say what you're going to do and do what you say. And we could inform our membership accordingly and if it's possible that your closure can occur after the hour of three o'clock in the afternoon that would be the best thing for us and that would be monday through saturday Another item I would like to bring up to you is the fact that the curb in front of our facility on East Mall is too high, and people regularly trip on it and show us their wounds on their shins. And it happens more than you would imagine or guess. perhaps weekly, perhaps more often than that. It's quite surprising. And I'm expecting sooner, soon enough, it will be a serious injury that occurs. And so I would like to be on the record to say this is a problem that really needs to be addressed. And I personally don't step off the curb there or up the curb there. I wait and I go to the driveway entrance because I know that I will fall. So I encourage each of you to do that step yourself and see how it feels. Even park your car on that part of the road and see on the passenger side how it feels to open your car door. The curb is too high. The sidewalk is too high from the street. And it is a problem for us. So thank you for listening. And I do appreciate all that you do.

All right, thank you. We don't normally allow people to come back and speak, but I think you had a few seconds left if you can keep it very brief. Okay, well, okay, you're reading it on behalf of someone else?

Yes.

Okay, please keep it brief. Thank you.

It's really brief. I am writing, this is not from me, but I am writing this letter in support of the Senior Center and Meals That Connect located on East Mall Road. Closing the road for park events impacts the accessibility to these nonprofits. I encourage the council to find a way for people to access these two facilities when there are events at the park. Meals That Connect have drivers that pick up food for delivery each morning and must return the containers later. Many of the drivers are seniors themselves and would find it difficult to carry these containers long distances. Thank you for your consideration in this matter, James and Susan Taylor.

Thank you. Thank you all. Anybody else wishing to address the council during community forum? Okay, seeing none, we're gonna close community forum. You know, I was aware, and I think council was aware there was an issue, but thank you very much for telling us about the specifics and the impacts on you. And I think we can apologize for that miscommunication. As I indicated, the Brown Act prohibits us from entering into a discussion regarding something not on the agenda. But I think you can rest assured we'll individually be discussing it with staff and staff will tell us a little more about it. And so obviously we'll look forward to what we can do in previous or future events, I should say. And I do want to thank you for what you do at both the Senior Center and Meals That Connect. It is very important for our community. So thank you for that. And regarding the questions Mr. Oslin asked, I believe that the new shopping center is subject to a conditional use permit. And Mr. Dunsmore, you can get together with any complainants or Mr. Oslin and address those issues because they are subject to a CUP. All right, we will move on to our next item. Which is item G one, which is a discussion of sidewalk vending regulations. And i'm going to turn that over in this case to our city attorney Mr Dave fleishman and I did want to thank everybody again for participating in Community forum.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the Council, tonight's item concerns regulation of sidewalk vending within the city. In 2019, the state legislature enacted Senate Bill 946, which established statewide rules governing vending in public parks and rights-of-way. that law limits what cities can regulate unless those regulations are directly tied to objective health safety and welfare concerns and the legislature's intent in adopting senate bill 946 is in the bill itself to create entrepreneurial and economic opportunities particularly for immigrant and low-income communities Since SB 946 took effect, city has not experienced any significant issues with sidewalk vendors, but staff has seen recently an increase in some interest in street vending, which is why we're bringing this item forward. The current municipal code does have regulations regarding mobile eating and drinking vendors, but those provisions need to be updated to conform with SB 946. Two additional state laws have further shaped what a compliant local ordinance should look like. There's Senate Bill 972, which went into effect in January of 2023, and that exempted certain small-scale food vendors from getting county health permits if they only sell prepackaged, non-perishable food and whole, uncooked produce like strawberries or other types of fruits provided they're in a display area of less than 25 square feet. More significantly, though, Senate Bill 635, which went into effect of January 1st of this year, limited the amount of information that the city can both collect and disclose regarding people engaged in sidewalk vendors, as well as providing information to state and federal authorities. So to help the council think through some of the options on the ordinance, I've attached the sidewalk vending ordinances from two of the cities that I represent, one from Solvang, one from Pismo Beach. The Solvang one is more current. The Pismo Beach one's a little bit out of date. It came out of COVID originally, and that's where the sidewalk vending was initially considered there. But they basically have the same similar administrative structure, geographic limitations. Solvang takes a little bit more restrictive approach on how they do it. They prohibit it in the central business district, whereas Pismo Beach kind of takes a more focused approach by listing the streets where it is and is not permitted. PB, Jorge Boone, Regardless of which direction, the Council wants to take in setting forth an ordinance there's several core elements that we would want to see and solicit your input on. PB, Jorge Boone, The kind of permitting process what types of local identification would be acceptable Ada compliance is obviously something that we would want to ensure the businesses are engaged in. PB, Jorge Boone, There are also sellers permits tax certificates that have to be obtained city business license. We want some background from you or direction from you on hours of operation and any safety buffers from traffic issues like driveway entrances traffic signals fire hydrants and the like. I did want to point out that SB 946 does prohibit violations of the ordinance from being prosecuted criminally so we can't do it as a misdemeanor or an infraction has to be administrative only and there are fines there. And we also have to make sure that Senate Bill 635's privacy protections are taken into account. We're not asking you tonight to adopt an ordinance. We're asking more for direction on key policy choices as to where you would like to see this, where you think there are objective health safety concerns about the locations of these business. If you want any geographic restrictions, what the bases would be for those from life safety, health issues, and any other direction that you might have for us. Once we have that direction, we'll return with proposed ordinance for council's consideration, and we'll be happy to answer any questions for you.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Fleischman. I have a question quick in terms of where we're headed on this before I turn it over to my colleagues for other questions. In the report, we note that we do have a small amount of regulation regarding mobile vehicle vendors like, you know, food trucks. If we wanted to further address that, which I know Paso Robles has done recently, that would be a separate conversation, correct?

Completely separate conversation. There are also issues of state preemption if it's a vehicle. If they're located on a city street and they're just parked there, they're a vehicle like any other vehicle. If they're, however... vending to people on city sidewalks and they're in the street. It's a little bit different analysis. What SB 946 was designed to address is a kind of a smaller scale type of business. You've probably seen push carts in some areas. You've seen fruit stands, maybe flower stands, people selling flowers. But SB 946 wasn't intended to address catering trucks.

Dave Kuntz, Okay, so we'll we'll not you know ask questions or talk about that part this evening, thank you i'll start on my left Council member peak questions for staff.

Dave Kuntz, Yes, thank you very much Dave. Dave Kuntz, What other vendors, other than the two tacos stands that we've had recently have been reported or been of concern.

I'm not aware of any that have been reported or of concern. The police chief may have taken in some complaints about some others, but there's nothing that's come across my desk, certainly for prosecution.

So two taco stands and an occasional fruit stand here and there. How would a street vendor adopt ADA compliance?

You want to make sure that you have adequate sidewalk clearance if you're set up on a sidewalk. So I believe the standard would be a 36-inch minimum clearance.

They wouldn't be required to bring anything to make it ADA?

No, it's just ensuring adequate clearance on the public sidewalk.

I think that's my two questions for now.

Thank you. To be clear on that regarding the ADA... To me, I thought I found lawyers speak in here regarding enabling pedestrian traffic, but I was looking for the phrase, don't block the sidewalk.

That's basically what the ADA compliance is, but there may be other things. For example, if you are drawing power from a generator that is off the sidewalk and you have an open cable, you might want to put some type of ramp over it so that someone with mobility issues would be both able to get over it and persons with low vision would be able to see it. So there are differences than just blocking the sidewalk that we would want to ensure.

Okay, because, I mean, you know, anybody can trip on a cord, you know, whether they're, you know, have limited mobility or whatever. And it just struck me that I didn't see anything regarding the definition of not blocking the sidewalk. Because a sidewalk is a public thoroughfare, and we're all entitled to walk down the sidewalk without interference or without it being blocked. And certainly anybody in a wheelchair is entitled to walk, to go down the sidewalk without interference, right?

Right, and these are these are definitions that we can put into the ordinance we're kind of just at a high level, right now, as to what you would like to see, but certainly not obstructing a sidewalk in a manner to impede free access by members of the public, whether.

On an ADA basis or otherwise it's certainly something we can put in there yeah and obviously it's different, I mean if you have a six foot wide sidewalk. You know that's different than if you have a four foot sidewalk or a 10 foot wide sidewalk, you know, in terms of how much you take up okay, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem dares any questions.

Thank you. On the first page where it describes this type of activity, any vehicle, wagon, push cart, self-propelled, push, pull, etc. But this isn't ours. It's defining the type of operation that we're discussing, but it doesn't necessarily describe the main one that we – or not the main one. I mean, the issue that this whole thing we're talking about it now, that vendor that had been around Tascadero in multiple locations really wasn't – can't be described by any of these descriptions. It was much bigger, and I don't even want to call it a display. I mean, it was a setup. I mean, it was quite extensive with everything that they had. So I would, I mean, should we add verbiage to this that would make sure that we address somebody that just comes and sets up? I mean, it's mobile because they're going to take it down and put it in their truck when they're done, but it's not mobile in the sense that it's described in this paragraph.

Sure. And the language that you see there is from the existing code. What we would try to do is harmonize that to the extent possible. If we need to modify that to address SB 946, we certainly can. But To give you kind of a comparison, the second bill that came out restricted the requirement of health permits for displays that are 25 square feet or less, so the legislature recognizes that you have an objective standard for the size of it. That may be something the Council wants to do is set a maximum size for the type of. mobile business that you have here. Some cities do kind of a cubic size. It can be no larger than four by four by four. So you have a push cart and it can't be any bigger than that. That is a way to ensure free access on the sidewalks and so on. So there are different ways that you can address it. But having an objective standard like that, you do need to tie it to health, safety, welfare concerns under 946.

And that kind of leads into my next one where it said that if you're selling prepackaged or whole vegetables, uncooked stuff, if you have a space, if you're occupying a space that's 25 square feet or less, you don't need a health department permit than that. 25 square feet is really small. It's five by five, obviously. And most of these, most of like the vegetable stands, which would qualify under that as whole foods, more or less. But if they're going to put up a small pop-up tent, it's going to be at least eight by eight. So they've by far exceeded that. Can we make that a larger number to at least, which I think would be reasonable to say, well, if you're more than, you know, even if it's a 10 by 10, that's 100 square feet, that's a lot. It sounds like a lot, but is it a lot? I mean, it's a big tent. I mean, are they occupying the whole space or just where their table is? So I think it starts to become a little bit of a gray area.

But I'm a little bit concerned about that size.

I mean, I personally like to see that.

more but if that's the county's number i mean we can't increase that because that's what the county well that's actually the state the state the state's uh number yeah and and you can set additional permissive standards that are more permissive than the state permits um that's just something that the state says you cannot require them to have a health permit if they're that small so if you get someone who's got 75 square feet and they're selling raw vegetables That's bigger than what the state allows them to operate without a health permit. So you could impose a health permit requirement for a business that size.

okay um and in reading through the report the the two examples that we have the two other cities um one was pretty extensive with i like how they kind of spelled out violations and how they would be addressed and what you'd mentioned it's not criminally um enforced or it's not a they're not they don't go to court over something administrative it's not a crime yeah it's administrative but what it doesn't say is if uh The police officer should happen to drive by an operation that they're not sure if they're there legitimately with all the proper paperwork. They had approached the individuals and they don't have any of the things. What it doesn't say is that they can shut them down and tell them that they got to close up shop right now. It just says that they're going to get a ticket. So based on the way it's worded in here, would they be able to continue to operate until they're done selling their food that night, or how can that be addressed? Or I wanna make sure that they have the legal means to be able to do what's necessary for what we're trying to accomplish here.

Sure, the initial approach would be to cite, and if the person didn't leave at that point, then you would escalate the situation. If necessary, if you found a violation of some other type of city ordinance that's unrelated to the vending, That would be an option, but it's the same as it would be with any type of code enforcement situation. We can put escalators into a proposed ordinance that deals with it in the event a seller is cited for failing to comply with the ordinance and does not comply within one hour shall be subject to additional citations or shall be subject to cessation of the business, something to that effect.

And I like that idea. I think that's a good response for that. The other things that we're talking about in here is the hours of operations, the locations, the city streets or areas of town where I don't know that we're necessarily equipped up here to be able to say, here's the streets that I think it's good and here's where I think it's bad. But that's what I'd like to see city staff to be able to come back and say, here's where we think it's most appropriate. Here's where it's never appropriate, et cetera, et cetera. And in hours of operation, that's an open discussion I think we can have in certain areas.

Yeah, and I think if you take a look at, Atascadero is obviously very different than Solvang or Pismo Beach, but if you take a look at one of the sidewalks downtown in Pismo Beach in the summer, you can barely walk down the sidewalk as it is. And if you had businesses setting up on those sidewalks and squeezing additional pedestrians into a much smaller area, It does create a safety hazard in that situation. So that's why the city down there decided to exempt certain portions of the downtown area from allowing this type of business. Atascadero is blessed with much larger spaces. We don't have the cramped quarters that Pismo Beach or even a Solvang has. it may be more appropriate to just let it be where it is. If there are other areas, though, that could potentially constitute a hazard, for example, if you wouldn't want anyone setting up one of these businesses on the sidewalk in front of the fire station, for example, there are places where you could restrict it that might not be specific to pedestrian access, but there may be some other public safety reasons you want to restrict them.

And I think the pedestrian access is important, and maybe it should be spelled out in the the required width for ADA compliance. I think it's 48 inches is what it's required. 36 for up to two feet or something. I mean, it gets kind of, I don't want to get in all the weeds of that, but the access, the ADA access, or just access in general, because they can easily go, well, I'll set up here and I'll keep that space open. And actually, you know, you're blocking it and nobody can get through unless you're actually in line and you get to the other end of it. So that's, yeah, that's an important one to make sure that it's clear in the ordinance that we do. So that's all I have right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Funk. Yeah, I do have a number of questions on this. Let me just start with trying to understand the extent to which there's any sense of urgency about taking action. I know we've had a couple of large taco enterprise events recently. Have we been able to use existing authorities to ensure that the sidewalk wasn't being blocked and that public health codes were being followed if there was hot food being served? I'm looking at the police chief on that one.

Yes, Council Member Funke, there has been some difficulties in that because you don't know where they're going to be and when they're going to be there. And to coordinate with county officials, they might not be available at a call just to come out and help us. So typically we have to pre-coordinate with them and then the taco stand might not show up at night. And so we have difficulties there. Also, there are some other statutes that do deal with blocking the sidewalk, but it doesn't necessarily deal with causing others to block the sidewalk. For example, when they set up, their equipment may not be blocking a sidewalk, but the way they have it set up causes their customers to block the sidewalk. So I don't have something specific that I can lean on for that.

OK, thank you. That's helpful. And if we've only had a couple of these events, we have some time maybe to work with this. Have there been any conversations currently with the Chamber of Commerce, with the school organizations that do a lot of events raising funds and that kind of thing, and with our Hispanic business groups locally? where who might be in closer touch with folks who are looking entrepreneurially to be able to do small scale vending to, you know, for whatever reason.

My office has not done any outreach on this. This is kind of the first introduction to the law that we've provided to the council. It just became of interest because of the two taco enterprises that came up that looking at the city's code, we don't have a way to address it one way or another specifically in compliance with SB 946. So it's an opportunity for us to craft the ordinance according to the way that the council would like to see it done. And As that process continues, certainly staff can do outreach, provide draft copies of the ordinance that would be adopted or introduced by the council and seek community input as part of that process. I don't know to what extent the community's interests are going to be necessarily consistent with the council's direction on it initially, but as part of that iterative process, As long as we're in compliance with SB 946 and the other two bills, that's council policy to make.

Okay, and certainly this council member would be keenly interested in having broad community input on this. There are a lot of traditions that we have in our community. Most of us have our favorite strawberry bender or a place we get flowers for our spouse or other kinds of things. And it's not entirely clear how all of these are... So I'm gonna just float a few things to see what might be affected or would not be affected by this. So let me start, we have a lot of events in the Lake Park where we have public pedestrian paths and our vendors, are for all those events like the the wine festival that we just had or the pride festival or any you know any number of other events have vendors in you know pop-up tents along the pedestrian path would they be restricted by whatever ordinance we craft here

You could put in a provision. There is a provision in SB 946 that says a local authority may prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors from vending in a park only if the operator of the park has signed an agreement for concessions that exclusively permits the sale of merchandise by the concessionaire. So, for example, if someone had rented out the park area and was attracting vendors for the event and the vendors had to pay that permit holder for that would be an exclusive operation. And that may be something that you want to include in the ordinance to limit that where the park or portions of the park have been rented out or have been reserved for a special event like that.

Okay. But other than situations where that space has been rented, the parks themselves would be available for small scale? Correct. No, quote unquote sidewalk.

I'll say it this way, the city is restricted in the amount of restriction that it can impose in parks. If you have health, safety, welfare issues. For example, if you had a very steep portion of the park on the path, you might not want people setting up on that portion because the cart might roll away. So there may be provisions for health and safety reasons where you would restrict the location in the park.

And some of that topography gets to be self-enforcing. Most people won't set up where it's going to fall down. Another question I have are situations like, how does this affect, say, the Rotary or Kiwanis Club's barbecue that just happened this last week, where they are selling hot food in the park available? Would there be any restrictions on that?

That's a different situation. That's going to be pursuant to a permit to use the park. I would not expect that a sidewalk vendor would be in the same situation as Kiwanis. But again, if you're giving exclusive ability of Kiwanis to use a particular area of the park, bandstand, wherever, and they are doing concessions themselves there, you would have the power to restrict that under SB 946.

Okay, but this wouldn't affect, but the Kiwanis Club could still do their barbecue. Yes. They could still sell food to the public. Yes. In that, and we don't have to have a big fuss about whatever kitchen it's done in has a public health certificate.

Correct.

Okay. Another element of those kinds of events is folks like to have little bake sale things at the end of it. get a you know pick a few bucks extra and get a brownie or whatever and those two are not going to be vendors that are going to have health and safety permits and that kind of thing are that would that be restricted by this kind of ordinance in any way are you talking about like kids lemonade stands and and cookie stands or are you talking about someone who's engaged in the business of doing this i'm not clear on the question Um, I'm thinking of mostly this is like at the, say at the Qantas, for example, Qantas barbecue, um, at the park a couple of Tuesdays ago, they had a little table there with a bunch of different folks had brought cookies and brownies and pies and it's very tasty. Um, I even applaud them for having a gluten-free option. But that, you know, and those were for sale as an additional item. So this is essentially, you know, there in the park being, you know, food being sold by a community organization. Are they going to be required to have, you know, public health certificates and be made in commercial kitchens and sealed and that kind of stuff?

It's going to largely depend on whether or not they fall within the definition of the sidewalk vendor that you put into the ordinance. So if you have, for example, you want to exempt certain types of locations, certain types of products for health and safety reasons from being covered by the ordinance, that may be something you want to look at. The legislature has obviously included those types of exemptions for uncooked produce and what they call, I think it was low hazard uncooked provisions. I wasn't sure what would be a low hazard uncooked type of product, but that's the language that the legislature used. So you would have presumably the same type of discretion that the legislature has taken to regulate those types of things for health and safety reasons.

Sure. There is a list that's available in the California Department of Health website, because I looked it up on a day to see that. And it's fairly specific as to what kinds of ingredients you use in the icing on your cookies. or your cupcakes, you know, and that kind of thing that is not necessarily where folks are paying attention. Okay, school bake sales that occur in, say, you know, parking the sidewalk outside of Vons or that kind of thing.

Well, if they're outside of Vaughn's and they're just on private property, we're not going to be regulating that if they're on public property, that's what we're going to be regulating.

Okay. So it's a sidewalk outside of Vaughn's, but it's, but you know, just right outside the building, it would still be their, their property.

Correct.

Okay. Good enough. Um, And the specifics are important because people want to know how various traditions that we expect to have in the community are affected by anything that we're going to do. Okay, I think that'll handle my questions for now. I may come back to more later.

Yeah, we can come back. In fact, we're going to go back to Mayor Pro Temderis.

Thank you. I just wanted to follow up. And thank you, Council Member Funk, for the concern about Kiwanis and how we conduct business. I am a longtime member, and I will say that every year we do get our health department certificate. So we are legitimately serving food wherever we serve food. We have the food booth at the fair, and we do lots of barbecues around town all year long. So we are... Qantas, Qantas, Qantas. So we do everything on the up and up. So we're good. And we're all very careful with our sanitary things.

Council Member Newsom.

Thank you. Looking over some of the notes and my colleagues have asked a lot of great questions. What type of staffing resources does the city have to enforce these regulations? Is it going to be code enforcement on a first offense PD? What do we see that looking like?

I think that's really gonna be up to the nature of the type of business that's in operation. It might be just code enforcement. It might be the police department if they're involved in additional non-ordinance issues. For example, if they're blocking traffic and there are cars pulling up as a drive-through, that might be a traffic enforcement situation. So I think it's gonna really depend in large part on what type of business is set up. But if you've just got a strawberry stand on a corner, with an umbrella over it and no one's stopping in the middle of traffic and there's no other complaints about that. I don't imagine that you're going to have a lot of staff involvement in that type of situation.

Okay, a couple things come to mind as is like ECR and Santa Barbara it's just right there in that turnout and so it's always impeding traffic of the signal. So when we talk about those safety buffers, what type of spacing are we looking at between a light signal and a turnout.

I'd have to go back and take a look at a couple of the other ordinances, but I believe Pismo Beach's ordinance had some specifics as to where you could set up and could not set up at distance from the intersection. Those are certainly things that we would take a look at and see if there are other cities that have best practices at this point. One place where I can see where you might want to restrict is no businesses on medians in the middle of the street. Because those can be traffic hazards. They can also be a hazard to the business owner. So you may want to prohibit that altogether if there's a median that they set up on.

Okay. And then we talked about private property we don't enforce. However, if some of these vendors are not getting permission from the property owners, do we step in and enforce that?

They could certainly be cited for trespassing if the business owner doesn't want them there and they've been asked to leave. So there is another tool available to the city if they're on private property without the permission.

Okay. And then once we do, if we move forward with an ordinance, how will these people that are already used to a pop-up tent be notified of the existing ordinance? Will we be contacting them individually?

I think it's a little difficult if we don't know who they are or where they're popping up. That is one of the nature of the pop-up businesses is they may not have a physical address that they're operating from. Certainly, it will be an educational process that we can do in our newsletter. That would be an opportunity. We could also do it through our social media. And it's an educational process once it's in place. If you roll up and see a business that's operating outside of the parameters of the city's adopted ordinance, you say, hey, just want to let you know you're operating outside our regulations. Here's someone that you can talk to about how to comply with the regulations. And these are the regulations that you need to fix. And so there are those opportunities for personal contact on it. But as far as advanced trying to figure out who the businesses are, if we had the contact information of those who have already done this, certainly we could reach out to them. But I don't know that we have that contact information.

Yeah, I don't think the people that are popping up are necessarily reading social media and newsletter updates. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. I'm going to go back to Council Member Peek and then I have several questions.

Two questions, one short, one long. Services. No services seems to be a common thread. Have there been case study of people offering services that aren't food related, like maybe T-shirts, maybe a massage chair, maybe a... I mean, is that something that has been a concern for other cities? That's why they wrote it into the Senate bill?

State? I think the services, there may be a reason. I haven't gone to the legislative history specifically on SB 946 to look at the services requirement, but I can think of all sorts of types of services that might be inappropriate for street and sidewalk vending. If you had, for example, mobile tattoos, That wouldn't take up much space, but there may be some health and safety reasons why you don't want someone outside of a tattoo establishment doing that. It might be endangering the people because of airborne dust and so on getting into a tattoo. That's one of the situations I could think of. But without going back to the legislative history to determine what the legislature was looking at in that, I wouldn't be able to tell you off the top of my head.

And in terms of serving hot food or prepared food or anything like that, we have farmers markets that are in County incorporated areas, like say for instance, Baywood or areas where they're under the purview of the County, or we have our own farmers market here, or we have the Tamale festival here where people are serving prepared food out of a, are the requirements for something like that when it has a confined area, like a, um, A parameter of this is the farmers market boundary. This is the festival boundary. Does the county see that as a different than a street vendor? Because there's no hand washing stations per se at these tamale stands or these farmers market stands that are serving food like soup, you know, the great soup vendor, different areas. So what's the difference there? And essentially, are we. Would it be the same kind of requirement? And then how difficult would be the process to go the same route as a tamale vendor at the festival in terms of county health?

Yeah, I think as far as they're a little bit different types of businesses and there is a provision in SB 946 that says you can prohibit them. these small businesses near certified farmers markets. But as far as the Tamale Festival, I look at that more like a special event and you may be renting out or reserving the entire area around Sunken Gardens for the event where you would be able to restrict businesses from just moving in with their carts.

I'm sorry, let me clarify. The actual Tamale vendor themselves operating in the festival, health... Code reason with the same requirements as if they were a standalone on the corner of El Camino real or operating within the festival, the one let's say, for instance, the one vendor inside the festival. Does the county look at that and say the health requirements for that are the same as a street vendor.

I think those would be different in that situation. I think the county would have a greater regulatory authority over that, as would the city, because it's a different type of business than you're looking at for SB 946 purposes. When I think of SB 946, I'm thinking of literally the pushcart. I'm thinking of a very small business that is not uh it's not a 150 000 catering truck with a full kitchen and and uh exhaust hoods and so on it's more intended to be an entry-level type business and that's what the legislative uh analysis uh or or statement of reasons that the legislature put was to foster basically these small businesses to allow people to get you know get a part of the american dream so to speak

Final question that's like a yes or no answer. For any staff, if you're not using a push cart that is 25 square feet and you are operating a food currently under the current rules or whatever we don't have framework-wise, is it difficult to operate a taco stand in Atascadero under the current guidelines from the county? Would it be very difficult to find a place to do that as it currently stands?

Yeah.

it's maybe subjective but councilman it's not difficult i think we have multiple um of those trucks that operate on private properties throughout the city um and those trucks those food trucks that operate like that they're pre-certified by uh county health they have all the appearances inside and for example the one that operates there's multiple that operate behind Ancient Owl on weekends and other businesses. And there's a lot of locations where they can do that on these private properties. And that's very different than the instrument we're talking about this evening here.

That's what I'm talking about.

Pretty easy. Yeah.

Just opening up on the side of the sidewalk is what we're kind of talking about.

Or the guys walking down a sidewalk, like the guys that have the cut fruit and they're standing on the sidewalk.

The two incidences are taco stands that were easy up tents. That's what we're talking about. We're not talking about the fruit stand wheelie guy or the guy behind ancient owl. So I think that's what I'm trying to see. Like there's much to do about nothing for two taco stands. When you have all these other opportunities that people are taking advantage of legally. I guess, is it difficult to do a standalone, not on wheels food stand in the city limits?

John Potter, We don't currently have any regular yeah we don't we don't have any regulations, so I would say. John Potter, Not that it's easy obviously there's a business investment, but there's no overarching administrative or regulatory scheme that the city would go and use to enforce against that, so I guess to answer your question in a short way, maybe a little longer than a yes or no is no it's not hard.

Right. I mean, we don't have any regulations, so you could literally show up tomorrow with your cart and try to sell prepackaged food.

Without an ordinance, we don't have the ability to enforce.

Right. So I have several questions for you. And some of them sort of relate to questions that other members have asked. So in terms of the timeliness here, they did change some of the law effective January 1st. But otherwise, in terms of what council member funk asked about we're not under a time pressure to do this and and clearly we don't have a current significant growth in this kind of activity that oh my God, we better do something about it. So we have time to give you guidance for you guys to come back with something. Right. Absolutely. Council Member Peek's getting at is, you know, we had a few incidences with particular taco vendors, you know, certainly exceeding 25 square feet, etc. But we don't have this huge onslaught of, you know, vendor after vendor openings.

Sure. It's a council decision. You could take the approach that if it's not broke, don't fix it. You're not obligated to draft an ordinance like this. It's just because this was brought up because of the two taco events. We looked at it and said, okay, well, here's an opportunity to regulate if the council wishes to do so. If the council wishes to do so, we want to get direction. If the council decides, and that's one of the opportunities or the alternatives is just let it go. And it's not a problem where we don't need this ordinance. That's an acceptable policy decision as well.

Right. And I, and I see, you know, having a framework for the future is good. It is saying that there's, there's not a huge rush to do this. Speaking of, you know, the potential here, I'm interested in the concept of competition here, because if, you know, if we have a tamale festival going on in this certain area and then somebody half a block away say, hey, this is a great time for me to set up my tamale cart. And that's why I think, you know, like in Pismo, they have no, you know, not within 500 feet of a an existing farmer's market or of a special event, that sort of thing. But also, there's a sidewalk on San Anselmo in front of Susie's kitchen, so I could set up and sell a competing product right out in front of this vendor who pays rent, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know if we could, but could we say you can't set up and sell tacos in front of a taco stand? And I realize that, like you said, to some degree this is, hey, we're supporting the American dream to where you start out with a push cart and you end up with a taco truck and then you end up with a brick and mortar business. But of course, if now you're the brick and mortar business, you may not see it that way.

Yeah, I think it tips over unless you tie it to one of those health safety standards. The regulation of business is probably not going to be one of those standards. There is a provision in SB 946 that says A local authority can't require a sidewalk vendor to obtain consent of a non-governmental entity or individual before they can sell. So that would be kind of in the same vein that you're trying to get permission from the brick and mortar business to conduct business in front of them. So I think that'd be a little more difficult.

But clearly they would on private property like the Vaughn's question. And then in terms of sidewalks, I was thinking sidewalks, but then one member asked about, you know, the sidewalks in the park. So that is to say that somebody could set up on one of the pathways leading through the middle of sunken gardens. Unless we, for some safety reasons said that was not an appropriate place.

Correct.

And they could do so anytime they see a gathering of people. It's like, I'm going to, you know paddle my ice cream cart over there or whatever and and do that yes and and speaking of that all of these ordinances and premises being that these folks can do this but they still have to get a city permit that's correct um and you know and as part of the permitting process all of them required in you know liability insurance naming the city as an additional insured etc so that when you know their customer line blocks the sidewalk or somebody trips or whatever Like i'm curious and maybe this is a question for administrative services finance director is has any strawberry vendor strawberry strand vendor you know cart vendor come in for a permit for a business license even I should say. At any time, you can recall.

City Council Chambers, I am not aware of one that it might also be something that community development director dunsmore might know about, but it hasn't come to my attention in my department.

City Council Chambers, And then typically here, they should have a business license as well right.

City Council Chambers, Anyone doing business in the city essentially requires business license whether it's a one day business or.

But as a practical matter, I mean, I try to buy my strawberries at the farmer's market, but I have occasionally, you know, partaken in the other places. You know, what I'm hearing is none of them have gotten a license and none of them have gotten a permit.

That I was not aware of. None of them have a license? No.

I am not aware of ones that they may have, but they have not come to my understanding.

I'm not expecting that the answer would be yes. I'm just pointing out that we're talking about something that in practical terms just isn't happening. The other thing in this setup from the other place, they talk about this is not allowed in residential neighborhoods. So that is to say that the stand that I occasionally see at the corner of Portola and Santa Lucia would not be allowed under this circuit.

So there's a difference on the residential. You can prohibit stationary sidewalk vendors in a residential. You can't prohibit the mobile ones where they're moving. So if it's a push cart, it's okay. If they're setting up a stand in a residential, you can prohibit that.

I understand, but I mean, somebody doing a pop-up at a table in a residential neighborhood is not what's envisioned here. Although, you know, again, Tascadero has some wide corners. And I'm wondering, you know, from a practical standpoint, if you require a permit and insurance, whether anybody would actually, you know, do it. Some of these ordinances require a million dollar, you know, liability and policy, and that seems like a great deal. Okay, and I'll get back to the other council members. So, yeah, I just, you know, wonder how practical that is. Oh, the other question is, this new, the new change in legislation January of 2026 says you can't do a criminal background history on these individuals. I understand, you know, in California, the, the provisions regarding you don't want to look into somebody's immigration status that's not relevant to them operating the business and you don't want that information used somewhere else but i am concerned to say that you know i could set up or somebody could set up in the sunken gardens and so you know whatever is hot with junior high kids nowadays and be happen to be um you know a registered sex offender who lives in another city who is not you know registered with our place to park I mean, that's an extreme example, but that would be, you could never, you know, ask when they got there, if they got their permit, you would not be able to ask them about their criminal history or not ask them, but run a background check for them.

That's correct. And that is one of the limitations of the new law on that's from the state. But if you look at the regulatory burden that the city has regarding doing criminal background investigations of any other kinds of businesses, there's a limited subset of businesses where that's the case. So the legislature has drawn that line for cities.

Okay, all right, I just seem to sometimes the state goes a little overboard on certain things and limiting your ability. Okay, I'm gonna go back and have Council Member Funk had another question. Did I hear Council Member Peek or had another question? Nope, nothing over here. Okay, go ahead Council Member Funk.

Yeah, thanks. So I wanted to circle back and what does this do to your typical kid lemonade stand? If the kid wants to do a lemonade stand on the sidewalk in front of their house, are we now saying that you have to have a health department permit and a business license and all of that stuff?

It's certainly something that could be encompassed within the regulation. I would say that that's not practical, nor is it likely to happen that we would be going and enforcing against someone who's got a lemonade stand set up there. But if you go with a very technical reading, that may be considered a fixed location in a residential zone. You do have the power to prohibit it. But the difficulty that you get is in differentiating between the types of businesses, so to speak. And that's a situation where you may be able to differentiate and say that the primary purpose is not for commercial gain. It's something that's of a different sort. And we could take a look and see if there are other ordinances that have dealt with the lemonade stand.

Yeah, I mean, we need to be able to not get too carried away with this. I am not advocating that. What I'm trying to do is if we're trying to, can we do something that manages to prevent cargo takeover of something large that takes over space and creates safety hazards without creating practical issues for abilities to have for our junior CEOs to sell their grandma's cookie recipe and nobody to get too fussed about that, whether they're doing that on a table in front of their house or at Paloma Park during the soccer games or whatever. We need to be able to allow some flexibility for small-scale entrepreneurship, unless there's some compelling reason not to. The other thing I want to ask, two other things about, can we restrict based on... concurrence with events so you know you can't do this during major city events because the tamale festival say you know has you know has certain aspects of downtown that you know the sunken gardens itself but the sidewalks outside and around sunken gardens leading to sunken gardens across the street from sunken gardens etc would all be

still sidewalks they're not rented to the tamale festival um that's and of course which doesn't exactly that says right there you know you can't do it within 500 feet of a special event so i think very clearly you have a special event we don't allow such vending in the area in the vicinity yeah yeah and there are provisions in sp 946 that allow that

Okay, so we can do that on a time-specific basis. And then when we're looking at sidewalks versus parks, how do our plazas get classified? I'm thinking of our El Camino Plaza and our Centennial Park Plaza. Centennial Park Plaza area eventually is going to be smaller and have a building around it, but Certainly their plaza by the pedestrian tunnel is a city-owned plaza that we created to have a public space where lots of activities can occur.

I think the use of sidewalk in the legislation is the legislature's word. I look at it more in kind of public property. So I would include plazas within the regulation. I would include some other types of public property because I think we do have the power to do that. But I think the legislature just called it sidewalk vendors because that's what typically the vendors are using for their businesses.

Okay, so if we wanted to not include those spaces, we would need to be very specific in a legislation correct about defining what is a sidewalk yeah, for example, pismo beaches pier.

They don't allow sidewalk vendors on the on the pier even though it's not a sidewalk. There are two reasons for that. Congestion on a summer day, and they do have exclusive vendors on the pier that have had to go through a specific process to do that. So that would be an example of a public area that's not a sidewalk.

Sure. And we could just be attentive to where it creates traffic, foot traffic issues. As we heard with our senior center, those things can be very challenging. even if it doesn't technically block something. Okay, thank you.

Okay, seeing no other questions from council, I want to open this up to public comment.

Good evening, Council Jeff Oslin, business owner, resident, concerned citizen of our town. I think this is really a simple way to do this. There's two issues at hand. One would be the small vendor with a cart or whatever that square footage is. And if you have a special event, then you have whatever rule you want in place. Because in a special event that's already fenced off and contained, you can't be in there without a permit. So if it's a tamale festival, you can't be in that area unless you have rented your booth space. No different than the wine deal in the park or any of that stuff. So that's a simple one that's fixed. The next part of this is the small one, what you do with regulation, you do, it doesn't matter. It's the larger one. If you set up some type of a food vending establishment on private property, i.e. the Walmart or Kmart parking lot, the old Kmart, they're on private property. What can we do to enforce that so our residents and those in town don't get sick because they don't have a health permit, don't have a business permit, and they're operating illegally with a 20-foot structure with flames shooting up in our town that we're supposedly concerned about fire? How do you regulate that? I would like to see Chief Suttles' explanation because I know he had to do a lot of research to figure out how to go after those folks. That is a bigger issue. When it comes to Kiwanis or Rotary or anything else, we all operate under permits. If you're doing Tuesday in the Park, you're under a permit already. You've already reserved that area. You're under a permit. It's a non-issue. When you're doing the music in the park on a Saturday, it's a non-issue. You have three vendors that are allowed or whatever is contracted with your food vendors and your beer vendor or whatever. You can't operate. It's already been designated the area. So that's that. When we're picking on folks like the fruit stand, because I do own property in this city, I'm going to make this absolutely clear. My tenant on my property has a health permit from the county of San Luis Obispo, is insured, and insures me as well. Also has a Paso Robles and a county of San Luis Obispo and a Tascadero permit to be able to sell his or her fruits and vegetables on the property and is not impeding... The public right away. The other thing is that you brought up was the intersections. You cannot bend period on Caltrans right away. If that happens, the highway patrol are responsible to move it. I do have a letter from Caltrans that was sent to somebody. and they were illegal. And I said, no, you can't do it. CHP will handle it. So I think you have to look at those options and come up with two vendors. And I know I'm out of time, but my last point on this is if you're a brick and mortar and you're a restaurant in this town or any type of vendor in this town, but restaurant particular, you're paying permits, you have health inspections and everything else. You need to be enforcing this. Thank you.

All right, thank you, I wondered about caltrans permits, because I sometimes will buy strawberries from the guy on the corner of San Gabriel and highway 41. They seem to be there on a very regular basis and I made me wonder reading this report, whether or not caltrans you know I assume they have the authority to regulate that, but I also gather that something they rarely if ever do.

I think it's probably the latter that they rarely, if ever, do. Certainly, I could see an argument that SB 946 applies to the state as well as local agencies, and so that sidewalk vending might be permitted, notwithstanding. But SB 946 was more designated to apply to local government agencies, and so that's really what I've focused on.

Okay, so seeing no one else in the public wishing to speak, I'm going to bring it back to council for discussion and to provide guidance to staff. Council or Mayor Pro Tempteris, go ahead with the question.

Yeah, with respect to what Mr. Oslin said about if somebody was to set up, let's just use the case of that individual that was setting up that pretty extensive, he did a big fire going on, all that kind of stuff. If he was in the middle of the Kmart property with permission from the owner of that property, we can still go in and ask him if he's got all the proper paperwork, even though he's on private property. Is that correct?

If there's some probable cause to believe that there's a violation of an ordinance or other law, certainly we've got that power. We can't just walk up and start saying, okay, well, we're going to ask you all these questions. But if you saw a 20-foot flame jumping up, the fire chief would presumably say, okay, do you have the necessary fire extinguishing equipment here?

You just brought up something that... Probable cause. We haven't used that word this entire evening. So now let's go back to the sidewalk where somebody sets up and do law enforcement have a right to stop and ask them, do you have the proper paperwork to be here?

if they believe that there is a basis that they can point to that someone does not have the appropriate permits. It would be like walking in to anything along Entrada or along Traffic Way to the businesses and the police walking in and saying, we want to see all your paperwork. There's got to be a standard there for the police officers to use in enforcing the law, and probable cause is typically that one. But if you have someone who pops up in a different place every night, then there might be a reason to take a look and say, okay, do you have your permits? Why are you moving around every night? Are you trying to avoid having to register with the city for a business license? There may be a basis to ask in that situation.

That's interesting because now probable cause throws a whole other dimension into it and does make it difficult to enforce or to at least approach and inquire what uh authority or what right they have to be where they're at so that that is something i didn't even consider i just kind of thought that the police have the right to say well we see a vendor you know i don't get a memo every day on all the vendors in the city so i'm just going to simply ask do you have a paperwork i mean that that's not so you can't legally do that

Well, it would be the same as the police just pulling over everyone to see their driver's license. That's not something that the police are allowed to do. They've got to have a broken taillight. They've got to have some other reason to stop you for that. So there's got to be some basis for the stop.

All right. Thank you. Along those lines, though, I mean, using the Kmart parking lot as a good example of you know, seemingly readily available, right? And maybe they, you know, in most cases, somebody doing something there probably didn't get the permission of the owner, but let's say they did. You know, they can't just set up a, you know, mobile oil change service in the Kmart parking lot. Maybe, you know, a car detailing operation where they're using lots of chemicals and cleaners or whatever in other words businesses you know we're not trying to stifle business activity but most most businesses activity require a particular license or permit to operate where the city has reviewed what it is what is it you're going to do on said property and so we're getting away from sidewalk vending but i mean you can't just pop up on private property, any given type of business.

And there may be probable cause in that situation. If you had an oil change business set up in the Kmart parking lot, it's not zoned for that. That one's easy.

That's my point. Now, and back to the sidewalk piece of this, one of the things I think we're getting lost in is that these example ordinances and what you talked about, 25 square feet as a potential maximum size, And we're because the state has set this standard that you can't require a food permit. For something that small if it's selling pre packaged stuff so it's like the minute you throw a pop up 10 up, we either want to specifically allow something larger. Or to say that the minute you throw a pop up tent you're not in this category you're in a business category you're you're not a sidewalk vendor because none of our sidewalks are going to hold a pop up. 10 less there at least 10 feet wide and so in terms of the guidance to you, I mean a for me, I think i'm hearing none of us considers this an urgent situation. But I would like to see it's something that you, you know, do address and the staff address in the future, but it's not my number one priority for the use of staff time so You know, we're not even the number two or number three priority. Right. But it is something I think we should we should address at some point. And I think in that sense, we here should talk about, you know, size and, you know, the nature and particular locations where we don't want sidewalk vendors, for example, you know, within 500 feet of a special event. You know, or, you know, do we, and what about in city parks? You know, is that to say that, do we want people setting up in city parks? Is there a reason to not allow that? And certainly again, you know, if Kiwanis has rented out the park, if, you know, if the Pride Festival or the Wine Festival has rented out the park, people trying to say, aha, there's going to be hundreds of people here. This is a great place for me to set up on the periphery. To me, again, that's a special event. And you have a space, a zone around that in which you don't allow this type of activity, but that you do allow it elsewhere in the city unless there's a reason not to and that sort of thing. And I just think as a realistic matter, though, none of these people are getting permits. We can develop the ordinance, but if the permits cost too much, either in terms of the permitting fee, and I didn't see you address anything in the state rules about the size of a permitting fee, but just the insurance policy and the regular business license are all costs that most of these vendors are going to shy away from.

Understood. And the requirement of a business license is something that is imposed locally. It's something that the city imposes. So hypothetically, if you wanted to exempt certain types of businesses from having to obtain a business license, that would be an opportunity if you realize no one's going to get them. They're really not conducting enough business locally. But it's hard to draw those lines, I think. It's hard to figure out which business is deserving of regulation, which is not. But those are the policy calls that a council gets to make.

But you could exempt stands operated by minors, ones that do less than $100 a business in a day or something or whatever.

Correct.

Got it.

All right. Thank you.

Looking for guidance ideas from colleagues here.

Sure, just wanted to check, can a business even get a business license if they don't have a fixed location?

Absolutely. You can be an out-of-town vendor for that very purpose if you don't have a fixed location here, but you are doing business here. And there is also part of our code that allows exemption for minors and that type that have a very minimal, like we talked about the lemonade stand, that type of thing. They would be exempt in our code currently. Okay.

Yeah, because where I'm coming from, I'm with the mayor on this being something that's not real top on my priority list. Given the complexity of what we're talking about and the traditions and not wanting to mess up a useful pathway of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship for folks who don't have access to capital, at the same time not wanting to have chaos and health issues in the community. I think it's really important that we have community conversations. If we do this right, this is a number of workshops with folks and some real structuring of what are the decisions and questions that we want input on. So size, location, the timing around events, how the parks and sidewalks and plazas and different spaces that are involved. All of those things I've asked about are the practical levels of clarity that we're going to need so that people would know what would be allowed, what wouldn't be allowed, or where do we need to have some carve out so that this thing is, so that we prevent the big stuff without driving everybody nuts and keeping people from selling grandma's cookies at soccer games or whatever. And those perfectly normal things that people do and wouldn't think that they would need permission for. so every bake sale that everybody ever did so I'm inclined to suggest that this is something that should not be undertaken until after we've got the general plan update in the bag because that's You know, it has taken a lot of staff time and a lot of focus on the public engagement of that process. And that's a real priority. Maybe we circle back to this in January and put it in our priorities. But I want to see some serious public discussion so that we don't create a problem, you know, unexpectedly.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Newsom.

Thank you. I think that this topic is pretty broad and it's going to be challenging to enforce. I think that we are tasked with being respectful in our community, but also understanding that there is on occasion issues that come about. And I think going forward that our staff is somewhat fixed on where they're utilizing their time. And that going forward, our approach probably is staying along the lines of contacting the public health residents or something sets up shop in a closed parking lot. So I don't think it's something that an ordinance can be drafted tonight.

Comments on my left.

Yeah. If it's not being a major issue and we're not having a wide response, we don't have a, the resources to go and check. We're not, um, going in demanding papers from street vendors. I don't really think that that's necessary. I also think that if we, um, Like, like Councilman Newsom said, the main issue is making sure that we're safe and the community safe. And if we have issues that arise, whereas something is observationally a massive line down a sidewalk, or there's, it's witness that's unsafe food handling, and then maybe pursue it then. But I think at this time, I'm willing to backburn this thing for a while, maybe indefinitely, if it doesn't become a larger problem. If people aren't, if people are, I'm generally a fan of people following the law. And so if people aren't following the law and not getting the correct permits, we're not gonna be able to do anything about it if we're not gonna enforce it. And I don't think we have the resources to track down every single person who opens a fruit stand, nor that I think it's necessary. But anyway, I think it's just at this point, wait, see if it becomes a bigger issue.

Yeah, I'll agree with most of what was said, almost everything that was said. I don't think there's any urgency to have anything done right away. So this can be delayed as needed. I do think health and safety is important. And this is one of those things that could potentially at some point get out of hand. Excuse me. I've seen other cities where one street vendor pops up and it's a vibrant location. And then you've got literally dozens, not anywhere in our county that I'm aware of. There's one city in particular where I saw it. I couldn't believe it when I drove by it. So, I mean, not that I'm worried about that being here, but I think it's something that needs to be addressed to some capacity. Learning tonight the ability that we have to actually enforce it, the probable cause part really kind of threw me, didn't think about that part. But if there's something that we can do that we can at least control it to some degree, And have specific locations. If the ordinance simply said that here's an area or specific streets that it's absolutely a no-go, and if somebody pops up, then you can go in and address it. There's your probable cause. They're not allowed to be there. I guess, but stuff like that. But making it too complicated, I think, is a lot of time spent for something that can't be enforced. But I think it needs to be addressed in some capacity at some point.

I think, you know, none of us are in a rush here because we don't see a particular problem and we don't like to, you know, create solutions in search of a problem. But I will say that I would, you know, maybe towards the end of the year, or maybe we discuss it in our next strategic planning session, but is there are two things that do concern me. One is physical blockages, and that maybe we don't worry about so much regulating these businesses as just to say what is not allowed. You're not allowed to block sidewalks. You must allow at least a minimum of X amount of space for people to get by, and you're not allowed to set up a sidewalk vendor within certain spaces. Like around special events that sort of thing that is where you see so instead of trying to write all the rules for what kinds of businesses and this and that just simply state that you. you can't block sidewalks and you can't set up shop within a certain range of special events or certain locations, and that that might be a more simple way. Because the fact of the matter is, we can write something like this up, and most people, they're not gonna get a license, and they're not gonna get a business license, they're not gonna get a vendor permit, they're not gonna get an insurance policy. And unless we wanna be hard-nosed, There's really not a point in spending a lot of time writing an ordinance that contains those provisions. But there might be a point in saying, hey, you know, you can't do it in these areas. And if you set up shop in these areas, the police can come and tell you you can't be here. You know, you just can't be here doing this commercial activity in this location and tell them they got to move along. So that would be my thought. I mean, there's no rush, but that's where I would see as a practical matter kind of minimal regulation, but clear in terms of what you can't do.

I'd be okay with it putting on strategic planning next year.

Okay. So maybe we defer the discussion until January or February.

Thank you, council has a great discussion on it gives me some idea of where this might go if the council decides to do it but sounds more like a light touch if anything will be where the council wants to go in the future.

Okay. All right, thank you, and that we are going to move on to council announcements and committee reports and I'll start on my right with council member Newsom. Thank you.

SLOCOG had a special meeting this past week. The board met and approved the allocation of costs of the ballot measure, of which will be paid by SLOCOG, and then it moved on to the San Luis Obispo Board of Supervisors for approval.

And the Board of Supervisors did vote to approve, so that will be on the ballot? That is correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Funk?

I have participated happily in lots of community events, but including a test our pride and the mayor's what the winemakers dinner and wine festival and all kinds of other wonderful community things, but no formal events on my assigned committees since last session.

Okay, thank you. I attended IWMA, Integrated Waste Management Authority meeting, adopted a budget for the next year. We set a singular rate of 2.1% for both commercial and residential customers throughout the county, or yes, throughout the county. And so that's a significant, another reduction in fee. And Also met with Central Coast Community energy nothing. Real big report there and counties county mayor's meeting is this Friday and a royal grant day so.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, I attended two very fun events this past week. One was the last two weeks, I guess. One was the wine festival. I volunteered at that. So that was fun. Seemed like it was a pretty good turnout. Weather was perfect. And then last weekend was the Kiwanis winemakers dinner. I'm not at liberty at this point because money's still trickling in. to say how much we raised, but we did very good. It was comparable to what we did last year, so I'm very satisfied with that. And with that, I do need to apologize to my colleagues on the Air Pollution Control District and CAPSLO. My workload was heavier than I thought, and I absolutely missed these meetings accidentally, so... It was supposed to be there and didn't, um, talk to some of the members. And, uh, thankfully it wasn't, I didn't cause any issues with that, but I apologize to them and I won't miss the next meetings. Thank you.

Yeah. Lots of fun events. It's been a great summer kickoff. The beautiful weather has been beautiful in a task at arrow. Great place to live. Um, although, you know, we joke about it. We were happy to support the Kiwanis on Friday at the winemakers dinner. Um, And we're looking forward to getting out this Friday at the A-Town Get Down. Starting at 5, downtown businesses will be hosting a variety of pop-ups, family fun, food trucks, sidewalk sales. Those sidewalk sales will be happening on Friday night. I'll be happy to use my money downtown. Our downtown could use everybody's patronage on a daily, weekly basis. There's been a lot of ribbon cuttings that we've been invited to from the Chamber of Commerce, and it's really encouraging to see these businesses open up and and be welcomed in the community. The next ribbon cutting will be Binks Coffee at 4.30 before the A-Town Get Down. So come on down Friday night.

Mayor Patendarev you had a follow up just something I wanted to add speaking of ribbon cuttings it's exciting to see station number one coming down things are happening it's going to be really exciting to see that building built so congratulations to all you guys and into the city for this is going to be a really awesome project that's going to get done so happy to be a part of that and to see it actually finally happens great awesome.

Mayor Patendarev All right, thank you does any council member have an individual determination.

Let me just, this is perhaps more of a question to staff than that, but relative to the public safety thing, there's been a lot of public interest about bricks, and I wonder if there's any update on whether any bricks from that might be salvageable and available. Do we know yet?

So we don't exactly. The contractor, as some of the facade was coming down today and will continue to come down, they are going to be delivering some bricks over to us for us to evaluate for what will be available unfortunately that comes in chunks and we don't have anybody and we haven't onboarded because it's very expensive for the mortar or any of that to be removed so we need to once we see what they're able to deliver for us determine what availability there is then to make that available to the public so the answer remains until we have a better idea of how that could be accessible and then how we could make that available to the public if possible.

Great. Thanks for the explanation. Might be a bring your own sledgehammer situation. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all. And we will call this meeting adjourned. And speaking of summer, though, Council Member Peek, you mentioned in July we only have one meeting.

So as we move into summer.

So thank you all.