City Council - Special Meeting

We love IT. Thank you so much. All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm here, Mayor Erica A. Stewart, and we are all present. Before we get started, I just want to say thank you for your patience. We are having some technical difficulties, and I think we're good. So I'll get us started with the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we'll get into our special meeting. Rise and fear. Well, thank you. As we have a special meeting today, I just want to make sure if anyone would like to speak, not everyone has been here before. We have some yellow cards over here by the assistant city manager and city clerk. So if you've not turned in your card, now's the time, come grab one so that you can come speak and then we'll go from there. With that, city attorney, can you please report out on the closed session?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Council did meet in closed session on one matter of conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, and that is that arises out of a liquidated damages dispute in a public works contract and that further information details on that are on file with the Clerk's Office. There was no reportable action taken by the Council on that matter. Thank you.

Thank you. So today is a special meeting, and one of the things about special meetings is we only talk about this one topic that we have on the agenda, and that is receiving a presentation on the Code Enforcement Program and its priorities. This is a study session. We will not be deciding on something today or planning on an ordinance. And this really came out of our budget conversations that we had with the entire community. So I just want to make sure that people get to know how things get on the agenda and how this happens. So if you have anything to chat about on public comment that's not about this topic, I will cut you off and say, see you next week. So I just want to let you know, I don't want you to be surprised. So with that, we have the Community Development Director, Timmy Tway, and Code Enforcement Supervisor, John Meza-Pesa, and they'll be presenting the presentation today.

Thank you so much, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Timmy Tway. I'm the Director of Community Development and John Mezapeza and I have a short presentation for you for a rather long staff report. So not everything's in there, but I welcome everyone to take a look at the staff report for more information. So this is a study session, as you noted, and why are we here? This is a major city goal work plan item for the community development department to provide an overview and status report on code enforcement. That includes an update on the workload of the team. This also is intended to facilitate a forum for public and city council discussion on the work of the code enforcement division and receive direction from council for future actions. I want to be clear with everyone that this is a high level discussions. There's not any pending changes to ordinances or city regulations that are up for vote this evening. And if there is direction to move forward with studying changes to things like our fine structure or regulatory structures for fraternities or sororities, these would involve extensive public outreach of their own before they came back for final approval. So a very high level summary of what you'll see in the staff report, which we'll dive into is that the requests for investigations from the public are increasing from about 566 in 2017 to more than 1200 in 2025. So that's the work that the Code Enforcement Division is doing. The cases are becoming more complex in some areas, and there are several emerging areas or themes that we're seeing. Fraternity and sorority land use enforcement is one of those things, as well as safe housing, and that's become a priority in the community. The report covers the basics of the team, the process of code enforcement, overview of metrics and statistics, and these emerging themes. There are other themes we discussed, but tonight in this presentation, we're going to be sticking to those two main themes. You'll see a number of recommendations and really we're looking for council to consider providing direction to staff on these recommendations. Again, they're very high level. Thank you. And it would be helpful for us to receive feedback on things like the existing priority and response time standards, whether or not there's interest in adding a work program item to explore and implement adjustments and simplifications to the fine structure. whether or not there's interest in adding a work plan item to analyze and develop alternative regulatory framework for fraternity and sorority houses. We'll get into this further. That's where the overlay conversation is happening. That is just one option that exists out there. In addition, looking for direction about Continuing enforcement of fraternity and sorority land use violations and prioritizing violations that result in disturbances to others. Undertaking an effort to analyze some of our more time intensive activities to make sure that we are really looking at operational efficiencies to address that rising caseload. And then we're looking for the public and council's feedback on whether there are any neighborhood wellness, property maintenance, or nuisance standards you'd like us to look at, and whether there are any future topic specific things you'd like us to bring back as a study session. And with that, I will hand it over to John Mezapeza, who will dive into code enforcement a little bit.

So, before getting into the data and recommendations, I just want to start with a quick overview of what the code and 1st division actually does within the city organization. The code enforcement division plays an important role in maintaining safe, livable and functional neighborhoods throughout the community. And our work ranges from property maintenance and substandard housing to zoning nuisance activities, land use compliance and public health and other safety concerns. One important thing to understand is that code enforcement looks different from city to city based on local priorities and community expectations. And in San Luis Obispo, our overall approach focuses first on education, communication and voluntary compliance whenever possible. And while citations and formal enforcement are tools available to the city, most of the work staff performs involves problem solving, helping residents understand the regulations that protect the broader community. This slide on your screen now shows where the Code Enforcement Division fits within the Community Development Department. The division operates under the Building and Safety Division and includes a supervisor, myself, two code enforcement officers, two code enforcement technicians, and a dedicated stormwater code enforcement officer. This is a relatively small team responsible for enforcing a very broad range of municipal regulations across the entire city. So staff routinely handles issues ranging from minor neighborhood concerns to highly technical or emotionally sensitive investigations involving occupied housing, unsafe structures, or ongoing nuisance activity. These are just some examples of what we refer to as neighborhood wellness violations. They're generally handled by our code enforcement technician one, or what's known as our neighborhood service specialist. They're lower level property maintenance concerns such as waste containers, visible storage, broken fencing, overgrown vegetation, parking vehicles and yards. And while these issues may not represent immediate life safety concerns, they do impact neighborhood appearance and overall quality of life. These are also the types of issues that residents see every day, which is why they generate a consistent number of requests for investigation. This slide highlights examples of the types of substandard housing complaints our code enforcement technician two, or what's known as our safe housing specialist, may respond to. These cases often carry significantly more complex and time-intensive, and are time-intensive because they involve occupied housing units and potentially habitability concerns affecting tenants. Examples on the screen include mold, electrical hazards, pest infestations, missing smoke detectors, plumbing failures, and unpermitted construction as well. These investigations often require coordination between multiple parties and have become increasingly complex as state laws related to tenant protections and safe housing continue to evolve. The code enforcement officer positions are responsible for a broad range of investigations involving zoning violations, unpermitted construction, nuisance activities, land use concerns, and operational regulations affecting both residential and commercial properties. Many of these situations can be difficult and emotionally charged, and staff regularly works with frustrated tenants, upset neighbors, property owners, contractors, business operators, all while working towards compliance as the goal. The stormwater code enforcement officer position was created in response to regional water quality requirements. The primary responsibility of this position is to monitor active construction projects and ensure proper control measures are in place to prevent silt, dirt and debris from entering the stormwater system. The position performs approximately 800 inspections annually and works directly with contractors to encourage quick compliance before pollutants impact the stormwater system. This slide outlines the general code enforcement process, and it's pretty simplified. But once a complaint is received, staff performs an inspection to determine whether a violation exists. If no violation is discovered, the request is closed as either an unfounded or unable to be identified request. If a violation is confirmed, the assigned officer then has the discretion to provide an opportunity for a verified violation to be remedied in a short timeframe, thus avoiding formal noticing and escalated enforcement. The verification of a violation may ultimately result in the creation of a formal code enforcement case resulting in notification to the responsible party, providing a formal opportunity to voluntarily correct the issue. In the majority of cases, compliance is achieved voluntarily without the need for escalated formal enforcement action. However, if violations are not corrected, the City may proceed with citations or additional enforcement measures provided by law. Overall, the process is designed to balance fairness, education with due process, and community protection as well. In 2017, the City established formal priority levels and response time standards for code enforcement matters. The purpose of this system is to ensure that the most serious health and safety concerns receive the fastest response. I'm gonna break down each priority a little bit, and we're not gonna touch on every possible situation, but in general, priority one violations involve immediate public safety concerns such as dangerous buildings, fire damage structures, or other conditions that pose an immediate danger to occupants or surrounding property. A standardized process for response has been established for all priority one situations and typically involves dispatch contacting building and safety staff after hours to request a building damage assessment. And priority two violations include issues such as active constructions without permits, unsafe occupancy, serious substandard housing complaints, and hazardous utility or sewage conditions. These cases are generally assigned a 24-hour response due to the potential impacts on health and safety. Priority three violations include completed unpermitted construction, garage conversions, grading without a permit, and unsafe occupancy concerns relating to conversions to allow living space in non-residential settings. I may also note that the response to concerns relating to substandard housing are currently guided by state law, which require that staff respond as quickly as we offer inspections for building inspections. And in the city's case, We strive to offer next day building inspections, which means our goal for responding to substandard housing complaints is also 24 hours. So these priorities were created prior to that state law being implemented, and we've kind of shifted a little bit to focus on substandard and get to them quickly. Priority four violations are essentially the most common category and include noise complaints, signs, fence concerns, animals, waste containers, visible storage, and other neighborhood wellness issues. And although they're the lower, priority four violations are lower from a life safety standpoint, they represent the majority of the division's workload. Another important component of code enforcement is the administrative structure used for violations. Here we see the current administrative fine structure. And it's a little bit complicated, but I'm going to try to break it down. Over time, different fine categories and escalation schedules have been adopted by council resolution for different types of violations, including property maintenance, zoning, health and safety, and noise. The base administrative fine schedule for most municipal code violations start at $100 and escalate to $500. Lower level violations have been assigned lower fines beginning at $50, increasing to $200, and violations relating to building and construction, health and safety and zoning have a slightly elevated fine schedule capping out at $1,000. Other specialized fines for noise violations and failure to pick up shopping carts have been set as well. And recent state legislation has amended government code provisions outlining the allowable amounts for administrative fines and has increased the maximum penalties cities may impose for specific enforcement areas. As you can see on the screen for building and safety violations, cities may impose fines up to $130 for a first violation, seven hundred for a second, thirteen hundred for a third and subsequent, as well as the addition of a twenty five hundred dollar fine, which is specific to violations of visible refuse or unauthorized use related to a commercial property. Options may also be available to consider whether to reduce fine schedule for property maintenance violations, effectively discourage repeat violations, as well as changes to the fine amount for failing to retrieve shopping carts or submit a retrieval plan. Additional legislation authorizes higher penalties for violations involving short-term rental regulations ranging from $1,500 to up to $5,000. Staff is currently recommending that council consider adding a future work plan item to evaluate whether the current structure remains clear, consistent, and effective. The intent is not necessarily to increase fines, but rather to determine whether the overall structure could be simplified and improved through a future public process. The next section is going to focus on workload metrics and operational data. And the numbers don't always fully capture the complexity of the Division's work, but they do help illustrate kind of the broader trends that we see that's happened over the last few years. This chart identifies the most common request types received between 2023 and 2025. One important takeaway is the sheer variety of concerns staff responds to on a regular basis. These cases range from shopping carts and waste containers to substandard housing and unpermitted construction, all of which require different investigation methods and levels of staff coordination. Abandoned shopping carts have become the most common complaint received by the city. And as we travel down the list, we see that substandard housing complaints are the second most common type of complaint received. This is followed by unpermitted construction and then several property maintenance type violations. And then further down the list we find noise complaints, some of which are misreported to code enforcement that should have been first reported to the police department for an immediate response. There are, however, several noise complaints related to construction, ongoing business activities, malfunctioning equipment, and other activities that might get code enforcement involved. And then just under noise violations where I'm going to stop talking about the list is land use violations which would encompass complaints related to unpermitted fraternities and sororities in addition to other land use violations. This chart is kind of meant to show the dramatic increase in requests over the last several years. We began, we went all the way back to 2017 and followed it through 2015 and noticed that requests have increased approximately 122%. That increase most likely reflects both a growing community expectation and easier reporting access through our citizen inquiry system, AskSlow, just makes it really easy to report. And these increasing workloads have affected staff's ability to not only respond quickly to incoming complaints, but also the amount of time available for follow-up activities related to the existing code cases. Here, we break down the numbers and percentages of requests into their priority levels. I think the main takeaway from this information is that the majority of requests received fall within priority four level, which includes neighborhood wellness, nuisance related concerns, and we also see a large number of priority two complaints, which often involve urgent habitability or active construction issues. and generally require significant more staff time and coordination to gain compliance. This table shows response time performance over the last several years. And what you can see is as workloads have increased, maintaining original response targets has been more challenging. However, even with those pressures, the majority of requests are still addressed within a relatively short timeframe. 82% of requests are responded to within one day past the expected time, expected response times, which then increases to 92 if you extend that to three days past the due date. And then here we can see that not every request results in a formal code enforcement case. This chart breaks down the different dispositions for when we close a request in our system all the way back to 2014. It's a little small up there, but you can see a general increase in the number of complaints determined to be unfounded or unable to be verified, which are shown in pink and green on the chart. And this is somewhat expected with the implementation of ASLO and the general ease in submitting a request. Each of those unfounded requests will still require some sort of on-site inspection typically to determine the validity of the complaint. You can also see that the number of requests resolved on site, shown in blue, have increased. With the growing number of requests, the code enforcement team has taken the approach of allowing violations to be resolved in a short timeframe after inspection is completed. This education-first approach helps to streamline the process so that we're not opening a full-fledged code enforcement case for every identified violation and gives residents the opportunity to comply rather quickly. This one, we see a breakdown showing the approximate timeframes in which a code enforcement case goes from open to closed. There are several factors that might play into why this happens, but when we look at the data, most cases are closed within a month, and approximately 89% are resolved within six months. We can see a small portion, it's about 11% if you add those bottom three tiers, 11% of cases extend past six months. with some open for over two years and some even longer than that. The reasons for these longer duration cases may vary, but can be related to complicated construction issues, occupancy concerns, or legal issues that need to be addressed at a higher level and or require assistance from the city attorney's office.

Thank you, John. Thank you, John. So all of those metrics and key performance indicators show the story of code enforcement through numbers. And that is why we have several recommendations related to our work. Um, the 1st is to concur with the existing enforcement priorities and response time standards that we have established. We think these effectively guide staff and they also provide the public with information expectations about when they may hear back from staff regarding a certain topic of interest. And the next recommendation is to direct staff to undertake an effort to analyze time intensive code enforcement areas to identify and implement operational efficiencies. This would really direct us to refocus, take a high level look at our enforcement and programs and identify areas where procedures or policies could change. One example of that is we saw how high. The shopping cart issue is it's ten percent of the requests that we get. And so one of the things we could do with this is take a step back. Look at all of the plans that the grocery stores have submitted for keeping their shopping carts on the site and work with them to determine what's not working and see if we can get that number down. Other things may be targeted educational campaigns. If we're seeing a certain type of request pop up different times of year trash cans being left out. Are there things we can do from an educational standpoint that then lower that number? So we are helping people understand the regulations before they become problematic. Now we're gonna dive into emerging trends and topics quickly. So the first is fraternity and sorority land use violations. So as stated in the staff report, fraternity and sorority houses must have a conditional use permit and be located in the proper zone in order to be established. And if not, it is a land use violation. Um, the enforcement of this is time intensive and involves coordination with the police department amongst other departments. Um, we respond to complaints to the public about this issue. Um, John and his team also reviewed noise citations from the police department and cross reference those with other information to determine if there was a land use violation. and periodically we do conduct proactive enforcement in the community. I would like to note for everyone, noise calls to the police are different. So a noise citation from the police is different than a citation you would get from code enforcement team for a land use violation. So just as we're talking about that, I think that's an important distinction. So some numbers between 2015 and 2023, there were eight identified requests for investigation since 2023, 168 identified requests for investigation, including 68 in the first four months of 2026. So this is absolutely a growing area of interest in the community. Um, the result has been 90 formal enforcement cases across 66 unique properties. Um, five conditional use permits have been revoked and four conditional use permits have been reviewed by staff and determined to be void. So we actually are also looking proactively at the use permits to determine if they have been, for example, um, vacated for a certain amount of time and then they become void. Uh, during rush period 1 during 1 rush period staff spent more than 100 hours on enforcement. Um, and action staking during the past 3 years include their outline in the staff report, but notices of violation, monetary citation penalties again, revocation hearings for conditional use permits. And then we are also reporting our actions to Cal Poly. So they have an idea of what's going on. And we also are undertaking and continuing to undertake an educational component of this. So, John and his staff work with Cal Poly. They go to regular meetings that are held. We welcome conversations with students who want to learn more about regulations pertaining to fraternity and sorority houses. There is conversation in the staff report about an overlay zone. Um, this is was brought up because it came from the grand jury report. And when we were talking about it, we stated, you know, that's something we can explore at a future study session. And. I just want for clarity to state that this is one example of a regular regulation that the city could implement in order to regulate fraternities and sororities. Overlay zones are geographically based generally, and you can have additional or different regulations and other areas of the city for specific challenges pertaining to that area of the city. You can implement operational standards or required permits for certain activities. Um, there are some examples noted in the staff report. They range from areas where there's an increased enforcement near a university and partnerships with the university to do this enforcement and proactive enforcement to areas near universities where permits can be sought to allow fraternity and sorority uses. This is not dissimilar to the current situation. We have now where. You can have a fraternity or sorority house in an R three or an R four zone with a conditional use permit. It's just that we're defining the zone. You can have it in not necessarily the geographic area if that makes sense. So, again, the overlay zone can do a variety of different things. If we wanted to move in that direction or direction of changing our regulations in any way again, that would involve. Significant outreach, we would want to bring all interested parties to the table to understand what are the goals? What are the challenges we have? 1 of the challenges we've noted is just our current regulations are hard to enforce. It's very hard for us to enforce them as they are. And so that could be beneficial to take a look and see what could we do? to make them more enforceable or to make it more enticing for fraternity or sorority to get the proper permit and keep that permit, if that makes sense. So our recommendation there is to continue enforcement of fraternity and sorority land use violations, prioritizing the violations that result in disturbances to others, and then adding a work plan item in the next financial plan to develop an alternative regulatory framework for fraternity and sorority houses. Again, we're looking to find something more effective and enforceable than what's existing. Um. It could be we keep what's existing, but we update the language. It could be that we move in a totally different direction. That is all unknown at this point. It would require extensive outreach and public meetings to craft the regulations that facilitate neighborhood wellness in the areas that are having this challenge. And John is going to speak briefly about safe housing.

Yeah, so this final section focuses on the safe housing enforcement, which has become one of the more complex and resource-intensive areas that we've had to deal with, especially as state law has continued to evolve over the last few years. As we discussed previously, all our complaints related to substandard rental housing are handled by our code enforcement technician, too, which is known as our safe housing specialist. And what you see on your screen right now is a list of the types of substandard conditions that have been reported over the past few years. So this is kind of a summary of the items that we've received, not just a generic list. Some of the common complaints include mold, water leaks, electrical hazards, plumbing failures, pest infestation, lack of water, hot water or heat, and then just other general unsafe living conditions. The cases that stem from these often require detailed inspections, documentation, and then there's always a continued effort of follow up with property owners, tenants, property managers and sometimes even legal counsel for tenants or landlords get involved as well. There are some of the more complicated and time intense investigation that staff handles and can result in several different types of violations identified as part of a single investigation. And although safe housing complaints represent a smaller percentage of overall requests, they've remained fairly consistent at around 6 or 7% of all complaints. The number of cases opened are generally directly related as a percentage of the number of cases opened. We do have one outlier of 58 cases opened in 2024. which was a result of what we call a focused inspection effort that identified a number of duplicate violations across a 120 unit single apartment complex, but in general, you know, we see a slight increase of cases opened when we see increases of complaints as well. And this kind of breaks down the complaints that resulted in confirmed violations. And a substantial percentage are determined to be either unfounded or unable to violation, according to this chart as well. Out of the 259 investigation requests between 2023 and 2025, 43% resulted in confirmed violations that required some form of follow-up to determine compliance. And then about, I think it's 55% determined to be unfounded or unable to be verified as well. This is, I think, our final recommendation. But we're asking Council to provide feedback on whether there are any neighborhood wellness, property maintenance, or nuisance standards Council wishes to update in light of current operational challenges and evolving community needs, as well as feedback on whether there are any future topic-specific study sessions that need to support more in-depth policy development as well.

And with that, we are finished with our presentation. We have some of the recommendation questions up to guide the conversation and we are open and available for questions if you have any. Thank you.

Thank you. It's a lot of information and we have a lot of questions from the audience and from us I'm pretty sure I just want to remind the audience before we get into questions here that we do have our public comment sheets as soon as we get to public comment then those will be cut off and that's the quantity we have based on how many we have right now your comments will be maximum two minutes I just want to make sure you know that it will not be three minutes because we have at least an hour of people who will be commenting so that's where we're at right now and councilmember Boswell

just a thank you for the presentation staff just a couple questions for now to clarify some of the comments I'm looking back at the priority table party one two three four just want to make sure I understand regarding safe housing and substandard housing. If it's an immediately threatening issue, it's a priority one. It gets an immediate response. If it's not immediately threatening, almost all other safe housing issues would fall under priority two. And is that being driven by state law as well as our table?

Correct. So priority one is going to be essentially accidents where vehicles versus buildings, fire damage, or you could lump earthquakes in there as well, where you need an immediate assessment of a building. And like I said, generally, we have a process for that through the police department for when those issues arise. Safe housing complaints. I think originally in this priority list, we're somewhat split between priority two and priority three based on the type of hazard or immediate hazard. But as state law has evolved, we've, We've seen them push for more immediate responses and it's open to how cities respond to building inspections is how it's worded and so most of our safe housing complaints are now lumped in the priority to which is going to get a 24-hour response.

Thank you, and then a second question. I'm just trying to get a little better sense of the capacity in our code enforcement team. It gave us a lot of good and helpful data on how quickly we're responding. One of the things I'm trying to get a little bit of sense of is to what extent, I don't know how to describe it other than a backlog. Are we in a situation where if we had additional staffing, we could be clearing out cases that are sort of backburnered right now? Or can you just help me understand a little bit more about our capacity to our workload?

Yeah, so as we had a little chart on how quickly we're responding to complaints. And I think that while there is somewhat of a small backlog when addressing new complaints that come in, we're generally responding to those within three days at about 92%. So we have a pretty good handle on responding to new complaints. new ones come in and we're responding to those it does affect whether how much time we could put into our code enforcement cases and We do have a good list of what we call older cases that we've started to sit down and look at and try to figure out plans for how we might address those quicker. It's one of the things that I've talked about with our new building official is kind of a work plan to kind of move forward and towards. So I think that we have the capacity to do it. We just need to be able to get a handle on some of these that are incoming. Like we said, the fraternity and sorority complaints, we have a lot of those that come in, as well as abandoned shopping carts. A lot of those come in, and they require not only an inspection to determine a violation exists, but a notification to the business. and then a re-inspection to try and find a shopping cart out in the wild. So it makes it a little bit difficult. And if the shopping cart's gone, we consider it compliant. So there's a number of requests that maybe we can re-look at how we are handling them. And like Ms. said, the shopping cart thing may be kind of taking a step back and looking at, hey, we're seeing a lot of shopping carts from a specific business. And maybe rather than responding to every single one of these, we look at how many shopping carts are from a specific business and whether or not they're complying with the required prevention and retrieval plan that they're required to submit when the ordinance went in place. So different ways of looking at like addressing these issues might be helpful in allowing us to have the time to sit down with cases. We're also looking at possibility of what we could do staffing wise with our current staff to help kind of allow for staff to be involved with tasks that they may not already be involved in because we're currently somewhat, I don't want to say siloed, but our neighborhood technician one position is focused on neighborhood preservation only and neighborhood wellness violations, but they're fully certified just like our code enforcement officers and being able to utilize their strengths for other tasks would be helpful as well.

We're closing two-thirds of our cases within a month. I don't know, that seems pretty good, but cases that are taking longer than a month, To what extent is that us not having capacity versus I'm sure there's back and forth with property owners. I'm sure that any time the attorney's office has to be involved, that's going to create delay. In other words, there's not much way to speed those up. Can you characterize to what extent that other third functions one way or the other?

Yeah, so we have several cases that do have that back and forth that you're just talking about. A lot of them are complex cases that have to do with whether or not a permit's required for remediation. Sometimes you're dealing with issues of debris on a property that is related to a transient encampment that's going to have multiple steps of a property owner dealing with maybe removing an individual and then dealing with the debris. So we have some of these longstanding cases that require time for property owners to figure out how to address. And because we are so focused on education and voluntary compliance, I don't wanna say we let them drag out, but we make sure we're checking in with them. over and over again to make sure that they're on the right track. But deciding when to move into that citation realm is kind of at the discretion of the officer. And, It is difficult sometimes to make that decision whether we're going to move to citation, especially when someone's saying, oh, I'm working on it. I've got an architect. We're looking at the next steps. And they provide us the architect. I think we could sit down and think of maybe hard timelines for how we approach these code enforcement cases. But we're going to kind of lose some of that voluntary compliance that we really do like to implement as part of the city.

Thank you.

I'm good for now.

Thank you. Council Member Shoresman.

Thank you. Yes, thanks for the great report and the very thorough staff report. Just wanted to drill down on this priority list a little bit because there's some things about it and about the process that seem like priority four cases, if I remember correctly from one of your other slides. although it's priority four, they consume the large majority of the complaints that we get. So within that priority four, because it is so many of the complaints we get, do you have to then prioritize within priority four or how do you deal with that sheer volume without it getting in the way of what seemed to be the higher priority issues?

Thank you.

Oh, OK. I'm not used to that. Yeah, so we don't necessarily prioritize within priority four. As they come in, we deal with them. There are some that are going to take a little bit longer to determine, maybe an on-site inspection interior-wise, such as use of polystyrene containers. We're going to have to visit a business. We're going to have to have a conversation with the business owner. maybe do an interior inspection to see if they exist. But a number of them are we can drive by and we can see that the violation exists. Those are going to be the neighborhood wellness type violations. We can see if a car is parked in the yard. We can see if a fence is broken, whether vegetation is overgrown in the front yard. And those we can address fairly quickly with our code enforcement technician one position. Some of the priority force stuff do fall in the code enforcement realm that our officers would pick up such as polystyrene, maybe noise or odor violations and those are a little more intensive and I think they're split in a way where code enforcement may be able to respond to them quicker than maybe our code enforcement technician could because they're dealing with these constant influx of lower level violations that they see.

Thank you. And then when it comes to unsafe occupancy, I think I saw that in priority two and priority three. So can you clarify what would be the difference between something that would be a priority two and something that would be a priority three?

Yeah, I had to go back a little bit and look at that myself. But essentially, the priority two version of unsafe occupancy is going to deal with someone who's occupying a structure that's clearly unsafe right now. You know, it's a dangerous structure. It poses a safety risk to the occupants or maybe the surrounding residents as well. And then those unsafe occupancy listed in priority three are going to be more of the space was converted to maybe a living space or even a commercial space and it wasn't intended to be and they're occupying those spaces and they weren't meant to be a living space or a commercial space as well. So generally the priority threes are something that's already completed and they're in there and it's not posing really a life safety risk versus an immediate life safety risk we can identify.

OK, thank you for that clarification. Appreciate that. Turning it over to some of the emails that we got and questions from the community, there's a pretty high level of interest in, and I think one of Councilmember Boswell's questions kind of alluded to this, the capacity of our staff and the need for potentially more code enforcement staff. Do any of these citations fees, do they generate a significant amount of revenue that could help offset the cost of expanding our staffing?

Not significantly.

Code enforcement in general is not a revenue generating division. Our goal is compliance. The fines that we do implement are meant to encourage compliance and many times can even just be used as leverage. Say, hey, we've got a violation on record. If you can get this corrected, we can discuss what we might be able to do with those fines. There are other cost recovery options, but those are going to be further down the enforcement procedure. For example, if we were to do an abatement of some kind or declare a public nuisance that resulted in an abatement, Those costs would be recoverable, but we're typically not getting to that point for most of our cases. We do also have one cost recovery fee that's called a code enforcement fee that can be applied when we issue, I think it's two or more notices to a property owner. Those are just going to get tacked onto the property, and there's really no incentive to collect on those either until someone comes in maybe and tries to pull a permit and then we say hey you have a fee that's unpaid and then we can try to get them paid as well. We do have some options for recording notices of violation on title which essentially records that there is a nuisance of some kind on the property and if there are unpaid fees associated with that we may be able to say hey you need to pay your fees and correct your your fines but again not not necessarily a cost recovery process it's more of incentive to get people moving when there are violations and and to add to that just for broad awareness we've taken in about $30,000 in fees for code enforcement

this fiscal year, so basically the end of the year. And so all of this work has resulted in that. So it's not cost recovery.

And and unlike some of our other fee programs if i'm not mistaken, if you can clarify for me some of our other fees that we have as a city are based on cost recovery methodology, whereas some of these were strictly prohibited from finding or charging over a certain amount by law in some cases correct.

Correct. So our user fees where you are opting in to be a user, you're opting in to come in and build a house and get a permit for that, those can be cost recoverable. These fines cannot.

Thank you. I think that $30,000 is a, it's an interesting number because I know a whole person is probably, a whole salary with benefits is probably, I mean, that's depending on the pay scale, that's maybe a third to a quarter of a person. So that's helpful. Just wondered if you could talk because we did get a lot of email also and I appreciate the sort of preface that you gave to the overlay zone concept and if Council directed you to look into other methods of enforcing land use policy across the city in these situations and others. We have issues in R1, R3, R4. If we decided to look at other ways of doing business, What are some other ideas and can you talk a little bit more about the overlay zone, because some of our emails really implied it working one way and others being concerned that it would only work one way so maybe you could just talk about how we could possibly use that as a tool sure.

I'll start first with the question about the overlay zone. The overlay zone is interesting because it can be what people want it to be. You could have an overlay zone that incentivizes a certain type of use and makes it easier than other places in town. You can have an overlay zone that puts more restrictions on a certain type of use because it's more prevalent there and it's creating more issues. The overlay zone is just a broad, Idea of should we and can we regulate. A certain area different than other parts of the city are there unique things happening in this area that aren't happening elsewhere that need their own set of regulations that are maybe more stringent than other places or less stringent in some ways. just depending on what you want to encourage and what you want to discourage. So that the overlay zone is a framework. What you build into that would be the results of conversations about what is our goal? What are the challenges here? What do we want to encourage and what do we want to discourage? Having said that, some other cities also use this idea of an overlay zone or geographically based regulations for think it's Chico. It was that had a really interesting program where the city partners directly with the school. They do, I think, kind of Co. Um. I would say policing in that area. They go door to door every year. I don't walk about to talk to students about being a good neighbor. Um, and they have specific way of doing code enforcement in that area. That is more like door hangers and it's more educational because it's a population that maybe hasn't encountered some of the regulations before. It might be their first time living in in a single family home. Having said that, If we were to move down the path of looking at our regulations, there are a number of things I would do. I would first take a look at what we have now and think through what is not working. You know, frankly, we've provoked a number of conditional use permits and no one has come back in to get a new conditional use permit. And so that's an indication to me as a land use regulator that that it's not working, you know, and and and so unfortunately, Something about that system is there's not a benefit or there's not a perceived benefit from the groups to get that use permit, which is leaving us with the situation we have now where no 1 has the permit they need to have and we don't have the ability to condition. Fraternities and sororities in the way that the code has intended. Right? So, looking at what is working, what's not working and then, you know, looking to neighboring. To other jurisdictions that are similar. I've done some of that research. I've asked colleagues. I think, you know, unfortunately there is no magic answer. We would have done it, but in different cities, just the geography of the city, whether or not there's like a historic Greek row where the houses are not moving and have not changed over time is different than cities where they're kind of moving. all the time, but I would look to whether or not we need different type of fine or fee structure or can do that for different areas of town, whether or not we need to, Categorize these uses differently than we are now, um, and how we would go about regulating them in a way that is both encouraging. The applicants to do the right thing and get the permits. Um, but also encouraging behavior that is consistent with. Healthy neighborhoods that are livable for all people. Right? So, um, it would be a complicated undertaking. It's not impossible. And we would obviously, I keep saying this, I'm a broken record, but, you know, to the commenters that are concerned that this is way far down the line. It absolutely is not. I mean, we would have multiple, multiple conversations. We would need to understand what are the goals of this? What are the goals of the fraternities and sororities? What are the goals of the city? What are the goals of Cal Poly? What are the goals of the neighbors? And we would really have to work through what is a suite of regulations that we could implement that are implementable. And I think that's the last thing is making sure whatever we have on the books isn't just there in words is something that we can actually implement and enforce. And I think that's the other challenge we have right now is what we have now is taking a lot of time and effort to enforce and in my mind, not resulting in a lot of changes. And unfortunately, we're not seeing people come back in to get CEPs.

Thank you okay so one last sort of topic area that I think is confusing for people, and it was confusing to me until you and I talked earlier and you explained it a little bit better to me, but there are with noise violations, there are. police responses to noise violations, and there are code enforcement responses to code violations. And some of the email that we've received over time, I don't know if specifically, but right leading up to this meeting, but over time, one of the comments that I've heard is, Well, if a party is loud, it's just loud. How can we not enforce against that? Maybe you could talk about the difference between a police response and a code enforcement response and why that doesn't feel quite so in line to the community.

Sure. I may ask my friends from the police department to come up in a second to elaborate, but specifically when we're talking about fraternity and sorority land uses, We are using the noise violations that the police are generating to determine whether or not there has been a land use violation. So does that make sense? So they will go out. Our code enforcement staff works normal, I would say normal office hours, kind of eight to five Monday through Friday. So if you put in an ask slow request for code enforcement on Saturday at 10 p.m., they are not going to come respond to the noisy party. That is a police call. And so really the police are the ones out there in real time that can issue that citation. Where it comes into play for code enforcement with fraternities and sororities is that then can tell us whether or not an event happened. And if we can find other information or other information is provided to us to show that it was an event that qualifies that location as being a fraternity or sorority that is operating without a permit, that's a violation. John's team also addresses other noise issues. Noisy construction is a good example. So we might get a call from someone at 8 o'clock on a Monday morning and say, I heard some really loud jackhammering at 6 a.m. this morning. That's unacceptable. That's something that the code enforcement team handles. We go out, look at the job site, work with the contractors, understand what happened, and kindly inform them of the rules about how early in the morning you can do noisy work. Would you like to add anything?

Council, Madam Mayor, Erin Schaffer, Deputy Chief from the Police Department. I think she summed it up perfectly. We do respond to actually noise complaints for construction as well and do and make notices on jackhammering on a Saturday morning when code enforcement's not working. And so luckily we're a 24-7 shop that can respond to noise complaints of any kind at any time. In conjunction with that we've worked with code enforcement with sending them a report each week that goes out to John and his team that outlines all of our noise violations and our disturbance advisement cards for the week. And so they're able to take that information and either apply the code, the land use codes for the conditional use permits or however that's appropriate for his office.

And one thing else, another thing I learned today is that, so maybe you can verify this for me, is a new noise citation, if necessary, hopefully it's not in most cases, can be issued every hour if a if PD finds a violation, then an hour later, if the party is still going on, someone could basically call dispatch again and you could actually cite, if necessary, a second time if you needed to. Is that correct?

Yes. And we do that often.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, the last thing that I have heard from people in the Alta Vista neighborhood that may or may not be a code violation, in addition to noise, I mean, some of the other behaviors that I think are probably priority for parking in the yard, leaving trash cans out, some of those types of occurrences. One of the things that I've also heard is just the large amount of trash that is generated in those neighborhoods. You know, large numbers of people eating a lot of takeout, for example, pizza boxes, things like that. And sometimes it can, you know, on a windy day, the trash can lids can blow open. It can just kind of disperse. And I'm wondering if in those situations what sort of education or recourse we have. It's not necessarily a trash can being left out that's a violation of code, but what do we do in those situations?

Yeah, so we would typically respond to any complaints related to that. I don't know if we touched on it very much, but the proactive element of our neighbourhood wellness violations has kind of dwindled over the last couple of years with the number of complaints that we've had to deal with. But if we did receive a complaint, we do have visible storage, which any trash in a front yard would fall under the category of visible storage in a front yard. Additionally, if it's in the right-of-way, there is a reporting process through utilities to have bulky items picked up and that kind of thing, if it's on the sidewalk or the street. So there's different processes to address it, and it may be difficult for a citizen to know, like, well, what do I report it? But anything that gets reported into the AskSlow system, let's say it is on a sidewalk and it's reported as visible storage, that'll come into our team. We'll assess it. If it's not something we handle, we'll reassign that to whoever does handle it in the city to be appropriately responded to so there's definitely there's definitely property maintenance codes that would apply to situations like that okay thank you so much thank you vice mayor

Yeah, thank you very much for all the questions so far. I appreciated your recommendation earlier to assess kind of the more labor intensive enforcement categories that are perhaps like a little less urgent. And I was curious what that would entail. Mostly kind of is that something we can do within our existing staff structure without then burdening our ability to be able to continue to do what we're doing. Essentially, I guess, how do we stop spending so much time on shopping carts and those other types of things?

It's a great question. I think that this is likely a higher level strategic conversation, if that makes sense, with a lot of input from all of the code enforcement staff because they know what works and what doesn't work. And in my mind, at this point, it would just be something that we try to prioritize and then just work on them, you know, pick one and work on it. And just as we have time, just whittle away at that with the current staffing. I mean, we have to continue to address these these concerns coming in. But really, you know, taking some strategic time with me, John, Trevor, and looking at let's tackle shopping carts first. That's number one. You know, let's talk with the grocery stores, what's what's not working here, you know, and then and some of it we are already doing where we're talking with our colleagues in public works. One of the ones that comes up a lot is branches in the right of way and tree branches are overhanging shrubs and things. So John has facilitated a lot of really good conversations with our public works team of what do we need to do to get to a point where they can abate something if necessary? And are we doing? Are we overly burdensome in our work to get to that point? Or are we doing the things we need to do to legally get us to where we can abate that issue? So really relooking at the things that we've just said, you know, this is how we do it and making sure that we're using that time wisely. So the short answer is, we would attempt to do as much as we can within within the staffing structure we have, and it would be really strategic level

It's like process efficiencies. I think the mayor wants to follow up with something.

I think following up on Council Member Boswell's question earlier with code enforcement officers, do we then also need to look at do we need more public works employees so that there's a maintenance focus so that that can be taken out of the code enforcement work, not work plan, but work plan in that moment?

I think one of the co-benefits of this type of thinking where we analyze one area or a few areas is to see maybe we discover the bottleneck isn't in code enforcement. And so that could help us understand what we need to prioritize in different groups. Some of it is things get to a point where they need a planning entitlement. And so how is that handoff happening? Then what's happening to it? Or they need to get a building permit. How's that handoff happening? And are we doing that in the most efficient way possible? Are those two teams talking as efficiently as they can? But I think that's a really great point that some of this analysis could surprise us with where we need to focus some attention or maybe just improve work plans in different areas.

I did notice in the new fine table that shopping carts was carved out of that and perhaps that's not the best way to get compliance but it was curious if that was something that was specifically carved out of state law or if there is the ability to increase fines on that front since it seems to be such a chronic nuisance.

Yeah, the fines for shopping carts are, I think, discussed in the business and profession code. And I do believe it goes up to $100 instead of the $50 fine that we have, which would be per cart not picked up after three occurrences. I may have to do a little bit more discussion with the city attorney or Timmy about the failure to submit prevention and retrieval plans. I think that is aligned with our baseline administrative fines.

That seems quite low.

Yeah, and it is something that we could look at increasing, especially if we're going to look at coming back to those prevention and retrieval plans as an opportunity to say, hey, you're clearly not complying with that if you have 100 carts that we're finding every two weeks or whatever it is.

Thank you. Kind of changing topics a little bit here. It seems like a lot of our kind of larger safe housing projects, I guess, come from things that are first discovered through kind of emergency services or fire. And I was curious if you could give us a little bit more information about the process for communication and data sharing between our safe housing, code enforcement, and the fire department. how we're kind of ensuring proper coordination and follow up on those kind of life safety issues as they're discovered.

Yeah, every so often the fire department may discover some situation that they believe meets the level of substandard housing. We are in contact with them about what that means, but they err on the side of safety and say maybe it's not, but they'll report it to us to follow up and we'll go out and do an inspection. So they have our direct emails, they'll email us directly, they'll start the process with maybe initiating photos and documentation of what they found. And many times it's also encompassed in their fire reports when they do, generally it stems from an annual inspection of maybe a hotel or an apartment complex that they may notice that there's an issue that needs to be followed up on. But they'll give that information directly to us and then it'll go into our queue for responding and inspecting just like any other substandard complaint.

So then it gets the same response time if it comes from the fire department as if it came from a member of the public?

Yes, absolutely.

And when the fire department is doing their inspections, they're kind of looking for a very different list of safety issues, right, than code enforcement for housing safety?

I believe so. I don't know if there's a fire to respond to that, but my understanding is that they generally don't enter apartments when they do their inspections. They're doing exterior inspections to look for egress issues or fire extinguishers, making sure that they're up to date. I'm not sure of all the items that they look for.

I think you've got a friend to help you out.

Yes, definitely. We do. We look at fire and life safety issues. So we're looking predominantly in the fire code realm. However, because of the amount of communication and coordination that we have with Director Tway's department, my staff knows very well the items that John Mezapeza is looking for. And so we do work cooperatively and extensively. If there's any department that the fire department communicates the most with, it's gonna be his.

So you're looking kind of beyond the scope of necessarily just the fire compliance and potentially reporting other kind of life safety violations that you see to code enforcement. Is that my understanding of what you just said?

That's correct, yeah. We go there for the umbrella of the fire and life safety. but because we report what we see and if we see violations we are mandatory reporters we then follow through with that connection through emails and if it's really serious we'll make phone calls and we could have even have our building official has come out on certain occasions for those real serious issues.

And just a quick follow up on what John was just saying. So there's no interior inspection during those inspections. It's all exterior. Is that accurate?

Not entirely. So when we have a fire and life safety inspection for a state mandated facility, those facilities are put on a 24-hour notice that we will be there and then we do a spot check. And so to kind of put it in context, we don't have the staff hours to go through every single room. So the good number is about 10%. So if you took a facility that has a 500 units. We're looking at about 50 of those units on a random floor. We'll say, hey, we need to take a look at this unit because there are communications, a fire life safety communication suppression systems, fire alarm systems that communicate with each of those rooms. And so we want to make sure that that is happening appropriately. you get to select what rooms are inspected in that case or is that selected by the landowner or it's selected by our staff as we're walking through just say hey let's take a look at this one right here that way it is random by nature my staff does an outstanding job at making sure that we're not looking at the same unit every single time that we try and document which you know we went into and we make it different each time we go there

And remind me, I know it's a pretty comprehensive list, but kind of a baseline list of what types of units are subject to this type of inspection.

Yeah, we're talking about three units or more is where the state mandated inspection are two units. Yeah, so from everywhere, a small like unit to like a Mustang Village who has 506 units.

Great, thank you so much.

Anytime.

And then a quick follow up on Council Member Shoresman question from earlier. We were kind of talking about determining land use violations and Kind of a baseline question I keep coming back to. We've got 20% of our student body currently involved in Greek life ballpark. And so I'm curious how we go about determining a land use violation versus a regular noise violation that just happens to have a number of fraternity or sorority members present. What are the data points that we can utilize outside of, I know social media and some other things have been used, Curious how you go about that type of determination.

Well, we generally get a complaint. It will usually have some form of a post that's been made about an event. And so we might be provided with a social media post that says, hey, there's an event that's held by one of the Greek organizations, but most of the time there's not a location associated with it. So what that means for our investigation is we will look at our list of known locations that we know that maybe a fraternity or sorority have utilized, And we'll try to determine if there was a noise violation that occurred on a date or time. And then the next step is trying to determine if the event, if we are provided the event which is posted by an organization, it's going to be considered a fraternity sponsored event. And that's really the key factor in determining if a land use violation occurred at a location, is did they hold a fraternity sponsored event at that location? it's becoming increasingly difficult to find those. There's not as many social media posts. There's other applications that have been used that make it become difficult to identify. So we really have drilled down to like, what can we do to respond to these? And one of the only things that we have right now is to try and knock and talk. Knock and talk to the residents or ask if there's something that happened. Knock and talk with surrounding residents to see if they recognize that there was a fraternity sponsored event. We can look for letters that are displayed at a location and put those together. But a lot of times that connecting factor of an event happened at a location are just not there, and we're not able to move forward.

Thank you. So pretty labor intensive. Oh, sorry. I'm going to bring city manager back in on the fire. So I just wanted to kind of pop back here one second.

Thank you so much and thanks to our team for answering these questions you can see these are complicated issues that involve a lot of parties in our city and a lot of resources but it's important and particularly the health and safety safe housing element that we do take incredibly seriously but I did want to mention just for kind of anybody listening and here in the room that our Fire Department is looking at health and safety related issues. So they are not going to be looking at land use concerns or doing a thing like, hey, maybe your railing looks a little short over here and telling us about those types of code building code related concerns. They're really focused on those core health and safety related issues that we know that our safe housing team really would need to dig into to make sure that folks are living in a safe and habitable environment and to the extent that they are working with somebody to remedy those issues that they may have identified. And if they're not done maybe quickly enough, those are the things that we all work together as a team. And you see some of those much more serious cases that require elevation of our approach and resources. As an example, 1150 Laurel comes to mind. Incredibly complicated case property and took a huge amount of coordinated teamwork between fire and building, our city attorney's office, and we still don't have a resolution to that, so that's just an example of the way that we work together. But I just wanted to mention to folks that our fire department, our fire marshal and our inspectors go in to look for the habitability fire life safety issues and aren't going down a list of other things that may otherwise create and trigger concerns. We just want to make sure folks are not afraid to continue calling when they need help and that our staff are there to respond to safety issues. So just wanted to put that out there.

Appreciate the clarification on that. Thank you. We're gonna take another abrupt turn here to talk about short-term rental violations. I was actually surprised to see how low the number was of complaints just in comparison to kind of communication from the public and was curious, and apologies for not asking this in advance if the number's not available, but curious how many of the short-term rental violation calls end up resulting in some sort of violation or, yeah, fine.

do not know that off the top of our head yeah i'm sorry for not asking that might be able to do some magic and figure it out by the end of the meeting great thank you i'll leave it there for now and uh let you do some digging thank you count some remarks thank you um yeah just following up on that um do we how do we define short term versus an airbnb or uh a homestay? How short is a short term use?

That's a great question. And we kind of use those phrases interchangeably.

And do you know the time period?

30 days, so less than 30 days would be short term rental and but we call them homestays because the intent of our code is that people are staying in your primary residence. Maybe while you're there, maybe while you're not there, but it's a homestay.

So does TBID at all get involved with this because they're supposed to be collecting or we are supposed to be collecting transit occupancy tax for Airbnb or homestay or I think short-term rentals. I don't know. How does that work?

Yes, so John can interrupt me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that if if the rental runs through Airbnb that they do provide us with the transit occupancy tax, even if they are not a permitted short-term rental, but they still are providing us with the TOT.

Okay, I wanted to back up a little bit to the question of the way we use land use designation and conditional use permits in terms of fraternities and sororities. So could you just explain a little bit more, what is the land use that we're regulating? What kinds of uses?

So for this specific topic, I believe the land use is called fraternity and sorority house or use and those are defined by the municipal code and then once you meet that definition by the activities happening in that home you must have a conditional use permit and that's a permit that's required for a variety of different types of uses in the community usually required when a community has decided that a certain use should be allowed with discretion by the city. They could turn the permit down or not. And with conditions put on that permit in order to mitigate some of the potential impacts that that use could have. It's different than other uses in the neighborhood. And so they want control in order to be able to condition that to make sure it fits in with the neighborhood. So it is a specific land use category fraternity and sorority house.

Right. And earlier you had said that if it's a university sponsored event, that that equals the land use in terms of fraternities and sororities.

If it's if it's I'm sorry, if it's a if it's a fraternity or sorority sponsored event.

OK, not a university, but if the fraternity or sorority is affiliated with the university.

Or not. I believe in the code, the definition in order to be a fraternity or sorority house is that you are affiliated with the university. So in that way, it's affiliated with the university.

OK. So then if there is no conditional use permit, but the land use that is defined by our municipal code is continuing, What happens then?

So what happens then is what we are experiencing right now, which is any time we hear of and can confirm a violation, that becomes a case and the citations will escalate depending on how often we see that within a year. unless someone comes in and gets their conditional use permit for a location in a zone where it's allowed, and then they can operate that fraternity or sorority again in that allowed zone.

So that's completely up to the fraternity or sorority. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So, um, if, um, uh, I had the chance to look at the, uh, AB 524, report that Cal Poly is required by state law to publish every year and in that on that website there's a list of sanctioned event status and they're all hot links and if you click on them you can find which it's it's public record which fraternities did which sanctioned events, meaning university sanctioned, not city sanctioned, and when, but they don't list the actual street address or the location where these sanctioned events have taken place. And so I'm curious, other universities, other CSUs do list the actual street addresses, my understanding Chico does. And I'm curious, has the city asked Cal Poly to be transparent and disclose the street addresses of those sanctioned events on their AB 524 form?

There's been a couple times where we've requested information about locations where events could potentially have been held. But we were not provided the addresses when we requested those. There are several issues. There are concerns that Cal Poly has raised. It essentially turned into a public records request that was formally denied.

So the answer is simple answer is yes, we have we have asked them to publish and be transparent about those locations. Okay, then I have changing directions here. I have a question about the code enforcement of graffiti and vandalism. In the past, that kind of violation has been handled by the police. And I'm just curious how exactly that works. And why is code enforcement dealing with graffiti when graffiti is often used by gangs to as a means of communication to each other like a secret language?

Yeah, I think you are correct. I think prior to about 2021, the police department handled a number of graffiti complaints and documented those. But any even even prior to that, code enforcement would respond to when graffiti is located on private property. We would be the primary contact to address that and notice the property owner to to clean it up. But in about 2021, we were approached by the police department and had a conversation about, hey, whether it's staffing level or their ability to respond, they requested that we take on the initial contact for all graffiti. We aren't necessarily trained in identifying the gangs that are out there if they are associated with graffiti in some way. So our general process is to make sure it gets cleaned up. So if it's on private property, we'll notice a property owner. If it's on some kind of facility that's maintained by PG&E or some other utility, we will route either the person reporting it to the correct place to do that so that it can be reported to the correct agency for cleanup as well.

What about vandalism?

Vandalism would fall under that as well. But if there's a vandalism report, I believe that would have to go to the police department for a proper police report. And I don't know if they want to come up and expand on that. But if it's graffiti, we typically just respond to making sure that it gets cleaned up.

Okay. I see an officer is approaching. Can you clarify this, please?

Perfect deputy chief. So, um, yeah, so we were, if people do report into the police department, we do have a system that we document it and identify it if there is a common theme. So we are tracking that stuff through our through our system and our databases. So we are when it comes to vandalism, we take crime reports and we investigate. So if somebody reports. to the police department that vandalism has occurred, an officer will respond out there and take a report. And if there's follow up video, any of those types of investigative leads that provides suspect information, if you will, then we do follow up with it.

But so then do you turn it over to code enforcement or how exactly does that work?

So we actually, PD has volunteers that clean up graffiti on public property. So California along the railroad tracks, we have people out there every few months cleaning that up. When it comes to private property, we don't get involved and we work with code enforcement as far as making sure that gets cleaned up.

What about with vandalism?

Define, vandalism can be graffiti, it could be destruction of property, broken fences, those kinds of things. Is that what you're referring to?

No, I'm asking you why it's listed as a code enforcement, something that code enforcement is doing and not the police department.

Well, we work with code in order to address the long-term benefits. If there is a vandalism or a graffiti, then we work with them if it's on private property in order to get it fixed. As far as the police investigation and the criminal behavior, then we address that through a criminal investigation. And then we either make an arrest, and then there's restitution through the courts and so forth.

Yeah, yeah. OK.

I think I think the city manager wants to comment on that as well.

Thank you had a lot of volunteers over here trying to help. Um, so essentially our, our police department will investigate the criminal activity, either graffiti or vandalism and our code enforcement team ensures that it's cleaned up. and the distinction is largely can occur between is it private property or public property if it's public property and it's ours then we clean it up if it's another public agency's property then we follow up with them and that takes a fair amount of work sometimes with our um through our code enforcement team to make sure that whoever owns the property is cleaning it up making it safe if something's been broken into but of course our department investigates the criminal part of that and make sure that they carry that forward going through.

Yeah. Okay, that's that's a good explanation. Thank you. I did have one more question about vegetation in the front yard. And my question is our coordination with the fire department with the wildflow wildfire, urban interface zones and the high the very high hazard and the hazard zones and all that. Has that changed the definition of the kind of vegetation that code enforcement is looking at or what is your interface with the fire department now that we have this new whole set of regulations and laws

Yeah, I asked Fire Marshal to come up and share a little bit about what his team is going to deal with. But in general, if we get a complaint of overgrown vegetation, we're dealing with what we've always dealt with. And that's going to be vegetation over 12 inches in the front yard, whether that's grass or weeds or some other kind of vegetation that meets the definition. For that plants or vegetation that meet the definition of fire safety in terms of WUI, I'm going to let you take that one.

Yes, fire marshal. Got it right this time. Yes. So again, that is draft language. The zone zero is still in draft language. And we are very proactive in our education right now with our voluntary DHA And so we have a very robust online right now where you could go in and see slowcity.org backslash wildfire for more information as well as reach out to our community risk reduction interns. But again, that is still draft language. How would that change when it is implemented? We will still continue with an education-based approach.

Okay and so I guess I'm just trying to figure out where code enforcement and the fire department would communicate regarding vegetation so is it completely separate or?

So we handle all vacant lots so any lot that doesn't have any structure we handle all that anything with a structure or residence John Mezapezo handles that.

Okay thank you. That's all I have for now.

Thank you. Well, thank you to my colleagues. You've asked some great questions. And of course, I have a few more. So some for you, some for Cal Poly, some for fire, et cetera. Let's see. So first off, when we talk about the case closure days, I don't remember for sure. I know there was a best something practice, but I don't think it was based on case closures. So yeah, that next one you just, oh, that's fine too. Is there like a best practice for code enforcement throughout California? I know there's a code enforcement association. Is there like a best practice as far as how many days certain types of cases should be closed and where we're at compared to that?

The short answer is no.

I don't think that there is. I did serve a term on the KCO board at one point, and it's all over the map. Every jurisdiction is going to handle how they determine when and how to close a code enforcement case. For example, in some instances, even here in I think that county, they'll close a code enforcement case when a If a permit's required, like a building permit, once the permit is issued, our stance is we are going to keep the case open until that permit is final to make sure that it's complete. So it varies jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Thanks, I appreciate that. Sounds like we're doing a good job then just comparing ourselves to ourselves, but sometimes it's good to get an idea from just kind of the overall statewide. I know California has some unique rules. So we talked a lot in past meetings and in emails and proactive versus kind of complaint driven. There's been, I think, You started on this conversation of, you know, what's the difference of noise from PDE versus code enforcement, and we've received a lot of conversations about it seems as though we're too proactive or not proactive enough depending on who we're talking to. Can you share a little bit more about when we're proactive versus not when it comes to the code enforcement, specifically with fraternity and sorority, and then we'll come back to noise in general.

Yeah, so we are generally complaint-based. We don't do a whole lot of proactive enforcement. When we referred to the short timeframe that we did proactive enforcement for one of the rush cycles a couple years ago, it was in anticipation of actually receiving these complaints. We knew we might get them. We knew that it was coming, and we were able to look on social media and identify that events were planned. There were schedules that were posted albeit no addresses typically. And so what we did proactively was create a list of the times and dates of these events and compared that with what we had as known locations and we said we're gonna drive around and we're gonna see if any of these events that are advertised match up with locations that we know have been operating as fraternities as well. And then we're going to document the evidence of that event happening, whether it's letters displayed or an event happened in conjunction with social media posts from the organization.

Great, thank you. And then kind of on that noise in general, it seems as though there's complaints that might come into PD, might come into code enforcement. So we seem to, I don't wanna say patrol, because I know that code enforcement doesn't patrol, but seems to go to certain areas a little more often, probably by Cal Poly a little bit more often. So is that kind of in that same vein of proactive? I mean we used to hear fireworks quite a bit around graduation time, so you would happen to be driving around those areas, or how did that work?

Yeah, I mean, if we had advanced knowledge that there was potentially something that might occur in an area, we would definitely try to have someone drive. We've got a team of five people, and it would be a conversation that says, hey, you're all out and about during the day. If you can cruise by and see if there's any evidence of any of this happening, then we'll definitely utilize our team in that way. But in general, again, we're complaint based and I think that when we do get a complaint for a specific area, especially with neighborhood wellness type violations, if we're looking at one house and there's overgrown vegetation, we're typically not gonna ignore the house next door. It just is a best practice not to do that because you're just gonna end up with finger pointing and upset neighbors. So we generally try to address what can be seen during a complaint if it's visible from where we're doing the inspection.

Great, thank you. So if more people call in saying that they're hearing something happening in a certain area, there's more chance that we would seem like we're being proactive because we're going to be ready for those calls. Yeah. Okay, great, thanks. And then in the, oh, one second. What did I write down? Oh yes, okay. So as far as in the priority two to four kind of realm, it seems as though we wouldn't know ahead of time if the mold that's being called on for a certain house is renter or an owner, correct?

We would know if the renter is making the complaint. They've said they're the renter. Yes. We differentiate substandard housing complaints for tenants from other substandard housing complaints that maybe a neighbor did for a permanent resident in a location. We do differentiate between those. that if we get a complaint from a tenant, that's what we're dealing with. And that's typically what we have our code enforcement technician to respond to. And then the remaining go to our general code enforcement officers.

Okay. And I know that we've talked about in past study sessions and past meetings that we don't necessarily have all of our rental locations identified. Is that still the case?

Yeah, I don't have a database that I can look at of all the rental locations. There are business licenses, but there are caveats to those business licenses from what I understand that allow multiple locations on one license, and it makes it difficult to identify if a location is a rental. So yeah, there's not one place to look to find a list of all the rentals that I'm aware of. Got it, thank you.

And then as far as... the no violation at this time, I forget what it's called, sorry, when they drive around and something's been called on and then they don't see it. Thank you, thank you. So when it's not there, unable to verify, therefore nothing happens as far as a citation or a knock on the door or a DAC. When you get numerous amounts of calls that are unable to verify on the same property, does that give you as code enforcement kind of a knowledge to be proactive?

Yes. I mean it all depends on where the complaint comes from as well. So if we have a number of anonymous complaints about a location and say they're reporting that there's some violation in the interior of the home or the rear yard, there's not a lot we're going to be able to do. We don't have anyone to bounce that off of or ask questions of how do you know this exists. And if we can show that there is some knowledge from a reporting party, we may be able to have a discussion about doing an inspection warrant to go out and verify violations. But if it's an anonymous complaint, we don't have a whole lot of avenues to move forward with unless we get compliance from the person who lives on site and let us in to do an inspection. Got it.

Thank you. And then if you have a house that has long-term violations and they're in one of those, you know, multiple years or multiple months, is there a way that we've worked on how do we wrap that up? Because if we have a tenant that then goes into that spot and it has a lot of violations, it seems like that would be a problem.

Yeah, we don't get involved if a tenant leaves and a new tenant comes in, but our case remains open until all the violations are corrected. So we will continue to make sure that the violations are corrected and if they go too long or there's no contact or no evidence that things are progressing in that direction, that's when we start looking at citations. to issue to the property owner and say hey this is you need to get on this and make sure you take care of these but in the meantime it's very possible that a tenant could leave and a new tenant could come in our violations run with that property and we just make sure that they all are in compliance so in that case if people are looking to rent something they can look at our database and see if there's violations on that house Yeah, I do believe you, anyone can go to InfoFlow, I think it is, and they can look an address up to determine if there is an open code case. It's not going to give a lot of details about the code enforcement case, but it kind of gives you a starting point where you can say, hey, there is a code violation that exists here. They can then give us a call if they have specific questions about what that case entails, and we can decide what's appropriate to share with them.

Okay, thank you. Appreciate that.

I'm sorry, I just add a little piece is another place that we can have a little leverage is if someone wants to come in and get a permit for some improvement on a property. If there's an outstanding code enforcement case, we absolutely will. note that and say you need to address this first so we can move on there are some limitations in state law now with housing related things but that's also an effective way you know to gain compliance if someone wants to do something um you know or redevelop the property or something like that all right thank you yeah there's a follow-up from vice mayor one second here

Sorry for jumping in here. Just kind of wanted to follow up because it kind of sounded like in some cases with a tenant complaint that the process could potentially be quite drawn out to gain compliance from the landlord. And I was wondering if you could put a little bit more information out there for us about how long that process does take and kind of when and how often we can intervene and are there ways to streamline that process?

Yeah, there's not a general timeline that I can point to for how long those typically take. They're all over the map. But it all is going to depend on the responsiveness of the property owner. It's going to depend on whether or not we're able to re-inspect. If the tenant does move out for some reason, we may not have contact with the current tenant, and we have to work through the property owner to re-inspect, make sure violations are corrected. If a permit's required, that's as simple as checking our system to see if violations have been corrected. So there's several situations that could play into how long that's going to take but we don't have a hard set in 30 days we're going to move forward with you know a citation it's all going to be dependent on what's happening with that case what kind of responsiveness we're getting from the property owner what progress we're seeing towards compliance before we decide moving forward with the citation are we limited in some way by state law and being a little bit um maybe more aggressive with that timeline especially when we're talking about

potentially health and safety violations or the type of stuff?

Not necessarily by state law. We do want to make sure that we give the appropriate due process for people to correct violations. We give them the appropriate time frames to appeal citations or notices of violation. So some of those timelines play in, but there's nothing that says thou shalt not issue a citation until 30 days.

Okay, but typically that first violation or that first citation doesn't come into effect until 30 days or is that not even a hard and fast date?

Our general compliance timeline for substandard housing violations is going to be 30 days. And so we will ask them to comply within 30 days. If they do not, then we evaluate the case and we determine if moving forward with citations is appropriate at that time. If we do issue a citation, they have 10 days to appeal that citation. We're somewhat bound by that in the sense that we don't want to issue a citation that might be dismissed by the first decision. So we generally wait the 10 days to issue a second and then a third. And we can move on to daily citations if appropriate as well. But again, nothing is set in stone in terms of that progression happening in a certain way other than we want to make sure that people are well informed of the violations that they have to correct.

Okay, so if we wanted to kind of streamline that process, we'd still be kind of looking at just ensuring that that 30-day threshold with the 10-day appeal tagged onto the end of it, that that was being followed, right? Is that kind of our best case scenario for streamlining that?

Yeah, I mean, there may be some opportunity to say 30 days is too much in some instances. It may be difficult to identify specific cases where that would apply. But if you have something like a missing smoke detector, obviously could be corrected pretty quickly and in many times could be lumped into resolved on site if it's something that can be corrected you know tomorrow and that's kind of an incentive that we do you sometimes for the real lower level violations hey your your door front door is not locking can you get that fixed by by two days by three days in a week then we can avoid going through the code enforcement process and it incentivizes them to get it done a little quicker

Thank you so much. Sorry for jumping in there.

That's okay. Thank you. So you mentioned earlier that you send your reports to Cal Poly to let them know there's been like a noise violation or I'm sorry, a land use violation. I'm thinking of noise, sorry. Do you ever get a follow up on what happens from Cal Poly?

No, I have not. And right now the reports that are being sent over are based on noise citations. Essentially, we get that list that Erin was talking about of noise citations every Monday morning. I cross-reference those with the locations where we've identified fraternities operating in the past. And I may not have evidence to move forward with the violation, but I kind of put that on a list and send that off to the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities and say, you may know if an event happened at this location. And if so, then they clearly violated our noise ordinance and you should perform an investigation. But I don't hear back from those about the results. Do they report back to the police versus your department? Not that I know of.

OK. Getting a shaking ahead over there? Okay. And then as far as do we then turn around and kind of circle back on the OSS, sorry, OSRR listed discipline that they have on their site?

I will check that periodically. From my perspective, it doesn't seem to be updated very regularly, or at least it's hard to decipher. It's not very clear when sanctions have been in place and when they've been removed. But if you dig in there, you can kind of get some dates and figure out. But those are going to be generally organization specific, not location specific. So, you know, I'm not going to know if they 100% verified that an event took place at a certain location.

Got it. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. I think that's my initial questions. I see another question. Council Member Shoresman.

Thanks. Yes, some of your questions remind me of a follow-up that I was going to ask to Council Member Mark's question earlier, but I appreciate all the questions about especially proactive versus reactive enforcement because I think Some of what staff have said is proactive is actually somewhat reactive because they're looking for information about locations that they've seen issues with in the past. One of the other things that that we have heard, and I think it relates to the definition of fraternity or sorority in our code that I just wanted to clarify and. I spoke about this with staff earlier, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a fraternity or sorority in the definition that. the campus may use or that the groups that are that have some representatives here tonight might it could be it can be any kind of campus affiliated organization correct.

Yeah, so we would make a determination on whether the use of a location meets our definition of a fraternity or sorority. It doesn't necessarily have to be what Cal Poly calls a fraternity or sorority. I call it the three tenets of identifying whether it meets the definition. It's an organization that's recognized by Cal Poly. Events and gatherings are held at the location and members of the organization live on site. So it could be, for example, a ski club if they all lived on site. They would meet those three points of the definition and we could move forward with a violation if we could show them.

So that I think is probably one clarification that if we changed our code, we might want to just look at so that it doesn't feel like it's targeting one particular group or another. Anyway, just a comment. Sorry.

Okay, thank you, Director Tway.

I was just going to concur with that and say, you know, at a minimum, I'd want us to look at the terms and definitions we have in the code and see if they are serving us well and if they are clear to people about what is actually being regulated.

Thank you. That was actually one of my other questions I'd forgotten to ask, so thank you for that. I think we've gotten all the questions at this point. We're going to take a 10-minute break. It's 725, so we'll see you back at 735. If you have a public comment, this is the moment. Please make sure you get your list in or your slip in, and then at that point, everyone will speak. There are two minutes, and we'll go from there. I don't often get to use the gavel. Hello, everyone. Do I have to really hit it very hard? OK. Thank you, everybody. Quick little break. So we are getting ready for public comment. And we have 39 speakers at two minutes max. And believe me, we will love you forever. If you wish to say ditto, we understand it. We know what that means. Also want to do a little bit of reminders on how we run public comment just because there are some new people in the room. And so for Everyone here, if you love what someone is saying, feel free, give us a thumbs up or a kind of an ASL of applause. We see you and hear you and appreciate that. But no clapping or booing people. If you want to say you dislike something, you are welcome to do the thumbs down. We hear you also and see you. But please no booing. We need to get through, again, 39 people at two minutes a pop. I want to also make sure, these are some tough conversations we're talking about today, and we understand that. And so there are going to be some people that say things you do not like, and that's okay. But please, let's respect people and just talk about the issue. Let's make sure we show some courtesy and respect different opinions, and that we listen first before next steps. And if you have some criticism, you're welcome to say it. That's where we're at today. But please criticize constructively. Let's figure out how we solve something. That's what we're doing today is we're having a study session to try to get to a place where everyone can feel like they live comfortably in this community. And that is something that's the outcome we're all looking for. So making people feel bad, in your minds, go for it. And with your friends over happy hour, do your thing. But today, let's focus on criticizing people constructively so we can actually come up with some solutions in the long run. So with that, I will call our first three people. City Clerk has decided that I should be doing this today. So we got three in a row. Please make sure that you line up. There'll be a person that we call. The second and third people go ahead behind them and let's just keep going through so we can get through 39 people. I want you all to be able to share your opinions and your thoughts. And with that I do apologize ahead of time because I will do my best to say people's names correctly, and if they are not written here phonetically, I may not, so I just apologize now. So first we have Laurel Smith, Renata Campbell, and Donnell Default. All right, perfect. So if you all want to go ahead and come in order, and then when we get to about number three, we will keep on going with the next three. And with that, our city clerk will put the green two minutes. You can see that up there. And as it starts to go down, it turns to a lovely brown color, and we go from there. Thank you so much.

Go right ahead. Thank you. In 1950, when my husband's grandparents built our house across the street from Cal Poly, it wasn't quite across the street. Cal Poly at that time had the same motto that it does now, learn by doing, only then it was you had hands-on experience as well as a degree. But in 2026, it seems like some of the students are learning something else, and it's bothersome. Their learning entitlement to be a Cal Poly student is to be special. Laws, codes, and regulations don't apply. They're learning to endanger themselves and others by being entitled because they're not following the rules and regulations that keep them safe. They're learning that San Luis Obispo seems to be more of a city of apology instead of permission. Keep breaking the law, it'll get changed. They're learning to disrespect the residents of this city who pay the taxes because if Cal Poly doesn't respect us, why should they? Cal Poly doesn't follow any of the city ordinances. When they did the St. Friday's Day concert, they woke my brother-in-law up seven and a half miles away. Let Cal Poly pay the price of the fraternities and sororities. They're not all bad. They do amazing work in this city. But move them to campus. Start levying academic probation and suspension when there are repeated citations to the same establishment. Re-institute the memorandum of understanding between slow PD and Cal Poly PD, because Cal Poly PD used to Circle the neighborhoods, they attended to things. And Cal Poly should follow the city ordinances instead of acting like a sovereign nation. Thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and city staff. My name is Renata Campbell, and I serve as the advisory team chair for the Theta Alpha chapter of Delta Gamma at Cal Poly. I have served as an advisor for Theta Alpha for eight years. I'm speaking as a resident volunteer advisor and someone who cares about neighborhood livability, student leadership, and a stronger partnership between the city, Cal Poly, and Greek life. I understand the concerns. Residents deserve safe, peaceful and livable neighborhoods. Students and chapters also need clear expectations, safe gathering spaces and the ability to host events responsibly. I respectfully ask the city and Cal Poly to jointly create a Greek life advisory committee focused on city specific Greek life concerns. This committee should include chapter advisors, house corporation representatives, fraternity and sorority council leaders, Cal Poly fraternity and sorority life staff, and city staff. Neighborhood representatives should join when a specific neighborhood concern arises. Advisors and House Corporation members offer consistency beyond annual student leadership turnover. Student officers change every year. Advisors remain connected to the history, expectations, and patterns within their chapters. We understand chapter operations, risk management, housing, leadership development, and accountability. We also help students understand how their decisions affect the neighborhoods where they live. I believe advisors and house corporation members should be included before new policies are finalized, not only after enforcement issues arise. A committee like this would create a regular place to clarify expectations, strengthen communication before high-risk weekends, support corrective action plans, and build shared responsibility. Thank you for considering a solution rooted in fairness, consistency, accountability, and collaboration.

Thank you so much. And thank you to the audience. After Donnell, we'll have Zach Quattarochi, Dominic Alonso, and Alex Sanchez.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, council members, and staff for hearing the community tonight. We appreciate the time that staff has put into the report and discussion. Housing providers and property owners are already navigating raising costs, including insurance, utilities, maintenance, labor, and state regulatory. Additional fines, administration burdens, and expanding regulations can unintentionally raise the cost of housing, furthering participating for smaller property owners. We encourage the city to remain thoughtful and measured as future policies are considered. And thank you for your time and leadership.

Thank you. That way was for the one minute.

Good evening. My name is Zachary Choki and I'm the president for Bidatheta Pi here at Cal Poly. I really appreciate you guys' time and for giving us a chance to be heard. Before you hear myself and the other presidents speak, I'd like to take a moment to reframe the conversation and help illustrate the benefits San Luis Obispo receives from fraternity operations. In 2025, Greek Life completed 55,361 service hours in San Luis Obispo area and raised a total of $299,546 for national and local causes, 40,000 of which being raised just this last winter by fraternities alone. My chapter has dedicated our philanthropic energy toward the children of the city, building a strong relationship with Teach Elementary, where we donate thousands of dollars every quarter and show up in person to spend time with these kids, help them pull weeds and prepare for new projects. But we do more than just community service. This past fall, we hosted a thrifting event in the R4 zone while we were currently in the process of applying for the CUP, which has taken more than a year. The event was a swap meet where local vendors and young entrepreneurs set up tables to sell clothing and crafts. No alcohol, no noise, no disruption. Just over an hour in, code enforcement arrived and cited us for a land use violation. That citation ended the event these vendors had worked so hard to prepare for and discouraged them from returning with future attempts. This is a real example of our strict enforcement, limited not just Greek life, but members of the SLO community from growing together and supporting small businesses, which is counterintuitive given that supporting small businesses is one of SLO's proudest initiatives. Finally, I want to iterate that IFC dominates Cal Poly's undergraduate average in every academic metric, including GPA, employment percentage, and graduation percentage. Fraternities are giving students the structure, community, and resources to achieve results notably above their non-affiliated peers. And we're a driving force behind Cal Poly being the top CSU, which brings in more driven and talented individuals into the SLO community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, members of the City Council. My name is Dominic Alonso, and I serve as the president of Pi Kappa Phi. I'm grateful to be speaking with you today and thank you in advance for your consideration of the issues I would like to discuss in this address. The days before I joined Pi Kappa Phi were boring, slow, and I struggled with making friends. But following Rush, I started to put myself out there, try new things. This is when I started hiking, rock climbing, camping. It was during this time that I attended barbecues and made my greatest friends. And my story is not unique. This is how most fraternity and sorority members would describe their experience in Greek life. These new hobbies and friends were and still are my favorite part of San Luis Obispo. Starting this fall, with increased code enforcement action against our organizations, these stories have become fewer and far less positive. During recent rush cycles, my organization has been forced to lose an element of our identity, the identity that for so many of my members, including myself, represents a core element of who they are. Many of you proudly wear or display city council or city-affiliated merchandise. I can imagine you understand the feeling of wanting to express your identity and represent an affiliation you hold dear. So perhaps you understand the loss of chapter morale that comes with being advised to not wear letters during fraternity events, a morale that has only worsened when you are told the organization must now limit these events due to the financial burden code enforcement fines have imposed. These events are not a nuisance. The events my chapter has been cited for are during the day or early evening and consist of medium-sized gatherings. They are social networking events designed for people to eat, drink, and have fun. Never have these events been cited for noise or some other form of a partying-related citation. It is for this lack of harm that I would like to see a change in the code or the way the code is enforced with regards to Greek life. It cannot be easy having to balance the needs of so many constituents in the city. I do not envy the position the council is in, but I do believe that compromise is necessary. As things stand right now, Greek life has been forced to drastically reduce the operations that offer nearly 20% of Cal Poly students community and belonging. This cannot continue. Changes in the code and the way the code is enforced are necessary. Thank you.

Thank you. And after Alex Sanchez, we'll have Ben Pfaff, Matthew Dysart, and Nathan Burke.

Hello. I'm Alex Sanchez, a third-year industrial engineering student at Cal Poly and the chapter president of Delta U Salon. Delta U Salon is the oldest fraternity at Cal Poly, and for over 70 years, we've been operating under the motto Justice Our Foundation, committing ourselves to building better men. The most immediate impact of the current code is a severe financial attack that threatens our student housing. Since fall quarter, we've been fined over $12,000 for land use and conditional use permit violations, not noise complaints or unruly gatherings. This penalty directly squeezes working college students struggling to pay for tuition, rent, and groceries, forcing our members to scramble for extra shifts, actively choking the financial life out of normal students. And when we go to appeal, the code's lack of clarity creates operational paralysis. Code enforcement is relying on Instagram posts and door lists to retroactively define what constitutes a fraternity event. We see screenshots of our philanthropy events and our addresses on our Instagram, screenshots of our door list, and it seems completely unfair. Utilizing basic student expression and organization letters as the sole basis for land use citations directly infringes upon our First Amendment rights. The current atmosphere treats the ordinary social use of a residential property with extreme scrutiny. We're here to tell our story, highlight how unfair this process has been, and illustrate how our students are being choked financially. We invite this council to help build a future that values transparency, safety, and fair treatment for all our residents. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, good evening, and how are you doing, Professor? Good to see you. So just to get going, my name is Ben Pfaff, and I'm the president of Sigma Nu at Cal Poly. And to begin, I want to make it clear that our goal is to maintain a positive, respectful relationship with the city while also being able to operate as a student organization. And we felt like our chapter has made a real effort to follow the rules, but we've experienced multiple situations that point to a bigger problem with how code enforcement is currently being applied. And then to begin with the conditional use permits, it costs over $10,000 just to apply, which feels unrealistic for a student organization that has watched our peers get denied even after paying this money just to appeal for the... for the permit. And then going into specific examples, the most concerning one was a philanthropy car wash that we hosted with another student organization, Alpha Phi. And this was noon on a Friday, and we were shut down within 45 minutes for a noise violation which we did not receive a warning or any opportunity to fix this. We've also had to cancel our Battle of the Bands fundraiser for Jack's Helping Hand before it even started after being told it would be shut down immediately and we would be fined. And then for those who don't know, Jack's Helping Hand is a local San Luis Obispo nonprofit that supports children with cancer and other challenges that require special care. And we have partnered with this organization for over 10 years and have raised collectively over $200,000. And the reason I'm pointing to this is because it shows the unfair enforcement directly impacts our ability to give back to the local community. And so overall, this isn't just about unclear rules. It's about enforcement that we feel is inconsistent and disproportionate. And because of this, we're asking the city to make meaningful changes, whether that's implementing warning-based systems, providing clear and reasonable protections for philanthropy events, or ensuring enforcement. applied consistently and transparently across all student housing. Thank you. Quick question, where would this battle of the bands have occurred? This would have occurred at one of our satellite houses. In a neighborhood? Yes, in a neighborhood. Thank you. Correct. Yes, thank you.

Good evening. My name is Matthew Dysart, and I'm a third year student at Cal Poly and president of the Phi Sigma Kappa Eta Septon chapter. I'll be speaking about our chapter's direct experience with code enforcement this year, which has resulted in more than $10,000 in code enforcement fines and raised serious concerns about transparency, communication, and due process within the current system. And of the 10,000 in code enforcement fines, only one fine dates with a noise violation. Let me be clear. We want to be compliant. We are not asking to avoid accountability. However, accountability requires a process that clearly communicates expectations and gives residents a fair opportunity to issue before penalties accumulate. Our experience this year has not reflected that standard. On March 5th, 2026, residents in our fraternity received a lump code enforcement ticket that included four separate violations from the previous four months. These violations occurred on November 6th, 2025, January 31st, 2026 and February 5th, 2026 and February 19th, 2026. Once again, our residents were not made aware of any of these violations until receiving all four at one time on March 5th. These tickets totaled out to $5,200. Prior to these four events, our residents had not received a single code enforcement violation for any reason. It was our understanding that we were in compliance with the rules and regulations, As a result of these expectations and lack of communication regarding the fines, citations quietly accumulated for months while residents were given no opportunity to correct the issues. By the time the paperwork arrived, thousands of dollars in penalties had already occurred. Additionally, on October 1st, 2025, A code enforcement officer entered through our front gate without notice, walked onto the property without knocking, and began questioning residents regarding events and gatherings. Residents were uncomfortable with this inter... Thank you.

And after Nathan, we'll have Ashton Robbins, Neil Parthasarathy, and Elrond Solomon.

Good evening council members, my name is Nathan Burke and I'm the president of Alpha Sigma Phi here at Cal Poly. I'm here to speak about a few concerns surrounding city code enforcement and how it has affected fraternity chapters conducting normal university recognized and sanctioned operations. This past fall and winter our chapter received two separate code violations totaling to $2,600 related to alleged fraternity activity during rush week. One citation stated that the violation was identified, quote unquote, after inspection, but on the date of question that was listed on the citation, no inspection of the property occurred. From our understanding, the citation may have been based on rush-related information tied to our chapter, such as a rush card or other public recruitment materials. If public information about an organization's university-facilitated recruitment is enough to trigger thousands of dollars worth of fines, then the rules are not being communicated in a way that students can reasonably understand or comply with. We are also not given a first or second warning before receiving our initial fine that listed us as having a third violation that totaled $1,600. Had we been notified earlier, we could have corrected the issue, asked questions, or taken steps to comply. Instead, The citation was delivered over winter break, almost two full months after the listed violation date. This left us very little time to respond, pay, or appeal. To make matters worse, the citation listed incorrect location and hours of operation information on how to pay the fine. This is the core issue. We're being told to follow the rules, but when we try to ask questions, clarify expectations, or even resolve a fine using the information provided, the process feels difficult, inconsistent, and unresponsive. These citations were not about excessive noise, partying, criminal activity, or immediate safety threats. They're simply about chapter operations. If the goal of code enforcement is compliance, then the process should help students comply. Fraternities are part of this community. We live here, study here, work here, volunteer here. We want to be responsible neighbors, but that responsibility has to go both ways. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Ashton Robbins, and I'm a Cal Poly student and the president of Theta Chi Fraternity. I want to speak about how code enforcement is being applied to students in Greek life at Cal Poly. At its core, this issue is about fairness, professionalism, and the low burden of proof being used to issue citations. Last year, code enforcement entered a private residence without knocking or permission and began questioning a resident about Greek life after seeing a photo of chapter members hanging on the wall. The interaction was uncomfortable and beyond the scope of the duties of a police officer, let alone code enforcement. Weeks later, that same residence was cited for operating as fraternity, and that photo was used as evidence. I'm also aware of a case where a resident received a citation simply for displaying sorority letters in a window that was facing the street. Another concern is how citations are compounded. My organization has received multiple fines for the same infraction spaced months apart at one time, totaling thousands of dollars without any opportunity to correct the issues beforehand. Appealing these citations requires time and money many students simply do not have. As a result, citations often go unchallenged regardless of their validity. Fraternities at Cal Poly are not just social organizations. We raise tens of thousands of dollars for charitable causes each year. My chapter alone has donated well over $100,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Slough County over the last decade, including $12,000 raised just last Saturday. When student organizations are hit with large stacked fines, that directly reduces what is donated back into the community. Additionally, Cal Poly's Greek system is one of the most structured and regulated communities on campus, with accountability systems designed to promote responsible behavior. When enforcement becomes overly broad or unpredictable, it risks pushing activity outside of those structured systems where there is less accountability and less safety. Students want to be positive members of this community, which requires a system that is fair, transparent, and consistent. Thank you. Thank you.

Members of the City Council, my name is Neil Parthasarathy, and I'm the Cal Poly Interfraternity Council President. Thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts and ideas. IFC's concern is not that fraternity chapters should be exempt from city rules, and we fully support enforcement when dangerous conduct or repeated issues of noncompliance happen or when neighbors are generally impacted. Our concern is whether enforcement is being applied equally and consistently across the community. We feel the city's current fraternity specific definition oversight structure has not been applied consistently in practice. Also, the city's use of chapter apparel, flags, composites, recruitment materials, guest list systems, public recruitment activity or dates, and social media as indicators for enforcement Enforcement raises concerns about selective enforcement focused on identity rather than actual conduct. IFC would like to propose the following recommendations to the City. Eliminate fraternity-specific CUP requirements and focus on consistent behavior-based enforcement standards applied equally across the community. Maintain unrestricted activity standards from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, and until 12 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays while continuing overnight property line enforcement standards. Ensure that enforcement related to gatherings are primarily complaint driven unless there is a clear and immediate threat to public safety. Encourage officers to issue verbal warnings and allow 15 to 30 minutes for the chapter to take corrective actions. Limit enforcement to one citation for a single ongoing violation at a time and give the chapter a reasonable opportunity to correct it before escalating penalties. require citations to be issued within a reasonable timeframe, such as 48 to 72 hours after the alleged violation, and evaluate whether zoning and land use policies around campus realistically reflect the presence of a large 18 to 22 year old student population, while still protecting residents and addressing legitimate safety concerns, including exploring a student overlay zone. At the end of the day, IFC is simply asking for fair, consistent, and equal application of the rules. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry for messing up your last name, Neil. And after Elrond, we'll have Joshua Pinsky, Sophia Zimkowski, and Ella, not sure what it says. OK, great. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and council members. My name is Elieron Solomon, speaking as a resident of San Luis Obispo. Your staff report, page 19, highlights eight unique complainants have driven every fraternity-related investigation since 2023. Eight people in a city of over 50,000 individuals, where Cal Poly students are 45.5% of the population only growing. Page 24 admits no measurable change has resulted from this enforcement despite 168 investigations, five revoked CUPs, and a large amount of fines These neighborhoods are no different than they were three years ago. The approach isn't working because these are extremely student-dense neighborhoods. More enforcement only escalates conflict between the city and the students who live there. And this isn't only about Greek members. Fraternity events draw students across campus. IFC requires its chapters to maintain mandatory safety training, sober monitors, alcohol safety, hazing prevention, Narcan. These protections exist only because chapters maintain Cal Poly affiliation. The more aggressive enforcement becomes, the stronger the incentive for chapters to drop that affiliation entirely. AEPI's CFP was revoked one week ago. Other chapters have let theirs expire. Once a chapter loses Cal Poly recognition, the city's definition of fraternity no longer holds, and neither do the safety protections that come with it. If not fraternities, other student organizations will have these events, and it will happen without oversight. Our framework that we submitted replaces the discretionary CUP with an administrative permit tied to Cal Poly recognition, a clean accountability trigger that preserves safety and infrastructure students depend on, includes identity-based enforcement, protections, fair housing, concerns that staff report itself acknowledged on page 25. It prioritizes R1, R2 enforcement code level priority and integrates the existing slow PD voluntary registration form or registration program, the warning protocol that was made permanent in 2018. This framework also directly answers the grand jury recommendation R3 for a formal process to address illegal fraternity operations. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, student council members. It's good to see you all again. My name is Joshua Pinsky, and I'm the president of the Sigma Omega chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi. And I want to briefly speak about how the current conditional use permit system has failed both student organizations and the city itself. From our perspective at AEPI, we fully acknowledge that mistakes were made and that accountability is necessary. But after spending the last year going through this process, it has become increasingly clear that the current system is not producing meaningful long-term solutions. What stands out to me is that the grand jury report, the staff report, and our proposed overlay framework submitted prior to the hearing all point to the same conclusion. The current enforcement structure is not functioning effectively in the long term. Over the course of this process, our chapter spent more than $6,000 in modification and appeal fees while students, city staff, university staff, and commissioners collectively invested hundreds of hours into repeated hearings, reviews, and enforcement actions. Despite all of that time, money, and effort, the broader issue still remains unresolved. And that is the key issue. The current process focuses heavily on punishment and re-review, but not enough on collaboration, realistic operational standards, or long-term solutions. Even during our Planning Commission hearing, commissioners themselves described the process as Groundhog's Day and acknowledged that revocation alone does not solve the underlying issue because students still live here, gather socially, and remain part of these neighborhoods regardless. That is why we believe this conversation needs to shift away from a system built almost entirely on repeated discretionary hearings and towards a framework that establishes predictable standards, promotes proactive accountability, and fosters long-term cooperation among the city, Cal Poly, student organizations, and surrounding residents. That was the purpose of the overly frameworks me and Elleron submitted prior to the hearing. It was not designed to eliminate oversight or accountability. It was designed to create a structure that is more sustainable, more transparent, and better aligned with the realities of a college town where students make up a significant portion of the community. We appreciate the city beginning this broader conversation and we hope fraternities can continue to help build a better long-term solution. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi there. Good evening, Mayor Stewart and members of the City Council. It's so awesome to be here. My name is Sophia Zemkowski and I very proudly serve as the president of Gamify Beta at Cal Poly. I appreciate the opportunity so much to speak tonight on behalf of the nearly 300 collegiate women who are members of our organization. I understand the purpose of this study session is to discuss neighborhood livability, code enforcement, as well as the future of fraternity and sorority housing in San Luis Obispo. I also understand that there have been concerns raised about the impact some student organizations can have on neighborhoods. Tonight, I want to kindly share the perspective of the women who live, study, volunteer, and build community within these homes. Gamify Beta has been part of the San Luis Obispo community for more than 50 years. Our house is not simply a place where students live. For many of us, it is our support system, our leadership training ground, and our home away from home while attending Cal Poly. Our members are full-time students balancing academics, jobs, internships, research, athletics, leadership roles, community service, to name a few. Through our organization, we learn responsibility, communication, accountability, and service to others. Last year alone, our chapter raised more than $17,200 for charitable causes, including organizations that support girls and families in our local community. We also contribute significantly to Cal Poly's Panhellenic system in the broader campus community. As student leaders, we recognize the importance of being good neighbors. We understand that we live in a community with families, homeowners, and residents, and we take that responsibility seriously. Our chapter works closely with our advisors, housing corporation, neighbors, and the university to promote safety, respect, and accountability. We support efforts that encourage communication, responsible event management, and neighborhood wellness. At the same time, we hope the city will continue to recognize the positive role sororities play in providing stable housing, philanthropy, and more. Thank you.

Thank you. And after Ella, we'll have Sue Olivas, Bruno Guifreda, and Carrie Howell.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and members of the City Council. My name is Ella Voivoda, and I'm a public health and political science student at Cal Poly. I have the privilege of serving as the education vice president for the SLO chapter of Gamma Phi Beta, and I'm grateful to call our chapter house my home. I wanted to share a little about what living in the house has meant to me and so many other collegiate women. For me, Gamma Phi Beta is so much more than just where I lived during college. It's been a support system while balancing academics, internships, jobs, leadership responsibilities, and everything else that comes with being a college student. Living in the house creates a community where our women genuinely support each other. We study together, eat, cook, laugh together, help each other through stressful weeks, celebrate accomplishments, and encourage each other academically and personally. Having the opportunity to live with so many amazing, intelligent women means there's always someone there to help with homework, provide career advice, or even just someone to make you feel loved when life gets tough. We understand that we live in a neighborhood with families, homeowners, and working professionals. We're reminded regularly that we're not just students, we're neighbors too. And being respectful of the community around us matters. One of the only times during the year when we have larger gatherings at our residence is during recruitment. As student leaders, we welcome partnership and support from Cal Poly's fraternity and sorority life staff in evaluating recruitment schedules and event timing, and Gamma Phi Beta is committed to continuing our alignment with the city's noise ordinances and neighborhood expectations. At the same time, I think it's fair to respectfully ask that organizations like ours be viewed similarly to other residents in the community. Families and homeowners also host large gatherings and celebrations at their homes, and many of us are simply wondering whether those same expectations and event registration requirements would apply equally to all residents. We absolutely support the goal of maintaining safe and livable neighborhoods, and we want to continue being part of that effort. For more than 50 years, Gamma Pi Beta has provided housing, leadership opportunities, mentorship, and community for collegiate women at Cal Poly. And I hope that positive impact is part of this conversation as well. Thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Sue Olivas and I'm a resident of San Luis Obispo and I reduced my comments because I would like to ditto what Sophia and Ella have just shared with you as well as what Renata shared with you earlier this evening. First, well second I guess, thank you Mayor Stewart and all the city council members and the city staff for this opportunity to speak. I am a Cal Poly alumna, as well as an alumna of Gamma Phi Beta, which is an international sorority. And as Sophia mentioned, we've had a chapter affiliated with Cal Poly for 50 years. I actually left this area to start my career and raise a family, but about 22 years ago, my husband and I had a career opportunity that allowed us to return to San Luis Obispo. I currently serve, well, and then I worked at Cal Poly, loved it, and retired six years ago, and I currently serve in an advisory role for Gamma Phi Beta, as well as I serve on their affiliated housing corporation board. Our board is responsible for oversight of our sorority chapter's physical facility, which is a historic home kind of near the downtown area. Along with collegiate members, we are stewards of this beautiful property of which we are very proud. And part of our stewardship is being a good neighbor. We know our neighbors and they know us. We communicate directly with them. They even do favors for us. We're good neighbors, as neighbors should be. I ask that our community be careful about creating broad sweeping policy and regulations that could place undue administrative and financial responsibilities on sororities and fraternities, especially on those who are so positively contributing to our community. I am supportive of the City's efforts to address community concerns and evaluate possible solutions. I respectfully request that a working or advisory group be formed with cross-representation that brings stakeholders together. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, City Council. My name is Bruno Jafrida. I'm a resident of San Luis Obispo, and I'm here to specifically talk about this proposed overlay that a couple of the fraternity members submitted and strenuously object to it. In fact, I think it's an outrage. If you look at the overlay, I'm on the eastern side of it in Monterey Heights on San Ynez Avenue. I spent 40 years busting my tail just to get the down payment for that house. It's everything to me. Now these guys want to do this overlay where they get to party right next door until midnight every Friday and Saturday night. We will fight that until the end of time, regardless of what the city council does. Obviously within the bounds of lawful and ethical behavior, but it gets our dander up. I grew up in San Luis. I grew up on Frederick Street right next to Cal Poly. Cal Poly was my playground as a kid. I now live less than half a mile from there and can see Frederick Street from my front yard. I rode around as a kid on a bicycle watching Cal Poly students party. By the time I was in high school, I was trying to get into the parties. I was accepted to Cal Poly and had my first set of classes there before I decided not to go and went on the East Coast. I know about college partying. We all know about it. And that's what this is about. Your balancing test here is my years of hard work versus giving them more opportunity to party. That's the critical need that's being satisfied by intruding upon my 40 years of hard work. Please don't do that. There is a long-term resolution. They need to act like adults. Cal Poly students have been partying in this town for a long time, over 100 years. So get it together. They don't look like this when they're destroying my property.

Thank you. After Carrie Howell, we'll have Brett Cross, Brianna, and Sherri Lynn.

Hi there, good evening council. Thank you very much for having me. I'm Carrie Howell and I've lived in SLO for eight years and currently a renter. The last time I was here I shared about how my family has endured a 73% rent increase during our tenure here. I wanted to share my respectful surprise at the city's choice to focus today on fraternity and sorority life and distract progress towards safe housing. According to the staff report and today's presentation, land use violations which are associated with fraternity and fraternity and sorority life are equivalent to four percent of the investigation request types, whereas substandard rental housing was seven point one percent of the investigative requests between twenty twenty three and twenty twenty five. And yet somehow that's not the focus of today. How do we shift as a legislative body and community from prioritizing response to noise complaints to prioritizing stability? By choosing to focus on fraternity and sorority life today, the city further stigmatizes the experience of renters and sows purposeful derision within the community. Students versus families, renters versus owners, Cal Poly versus the city. This derision negates much needed progress. More importantly, by choosing to focus on fraternity and sorority life today, the city fosters a dangerous narrative that health and safety measures, that tenants' rights and protections are earned with good behavior. I respectfully urge you to focus on solutions to substandard rental housing, including those that have been posed today in public correspondence by the SLO County Tenants Union and shared by others as well. I respectfully urge you to cross train the staff that you have for immediate response to these important issues, and I respectfully urge you to act. Thank you.

Thank you.

Brett Cross, San Luis Obispo. You've read the correspondence from the IFC and from the fraternity presidents with regards to an overlay zone. And I hope the public takes a chance to look at what's being proposed. I don't even know how to correctly describe what they're asking for. I think I sent an email to you earlier today and I called it crazy. What I'm not hearing, I want to also just step back just a second and talk about radical honesty by a guy named Dr. Brad Blanton. He's a PhD doctor. He had this concept about always being radically honest. I don't know if it worked all that well because his kids didn't talk to him for about a decade and a half, but I do appreciate IFC and the fraternity presidents for being radically honest about what they're asking for with the overlay zone. It's really asking you to allow them to party as much as they want, What we haven't heard this evening is Cal Poly's role, and I think that needs to be discussed. Fraternity members have come up here and talked about the city's role. It's Cal Poly's role. Where is Cal Poly in this? And they should be asking Cal Poly to provide space for them, and they need to do that. Cal Poly hasn't been a good neighbor. They've approved events that violated our zoning regulations and they know it. They withheld the addresses from the city. They've created the problem and now they want the city to rewrite the zoning code to accommodate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, city council members. My name is Riana Dury. I'm a Cal Poly student, local resident, and incoming president of Public Health Club. Our club is here tonight to express strong support for expanding staffing and funding for code enforcement. We support policies that protect the health and safety of all residents, including renters in our community. To identify housing violations and respond in a timely manner, code enforcement must be adequately funded and staffed. I also want to emphasize that the Public Health Club will continue advocating for tenant health and safety, including support for a smoke-free multi-family housing ordinance that can be effectively implemented through code enforcement. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and city council members. My name is Sherry Lin, and I am the current president of the Public Health Club at Cal Poly. I'm here tonight to express our continued support for efforts to promote safe and healthy housing in SLO. As students studying public health, we are taught that in order to truly understand and address community health issues, we need access to clear, reliable data that is publicly available. We appreciate the staff report that was published that highlighted information about code enforcement complaints, enforcement actions, and outcomes of code enforcement data. Making this data more easily available for the public would allow community groups to better understand whether policies are working or where improvements are needed. Transparency and data collection are essential tools for effective public health action. At the same time, policies alone are not enough. There must also be meaningful and consistent enforcement. Code enforcement plays a critical role in ensuring that health and safety standards are upheld, and we support increased investment in staffing and resources to make that possible. We also want to reiterate our strong support for strengthening the city's smoke free multifamily housing ordinance, including protections that cover smoking with individual units. This is an important step toward protecting residents from secondhand smoke and advancing health equity in our community. Looking ahead, the Cal Poly Public Health Club is committed to continuing this work. In the next academic year, we will remain engaged and supportive of local efforts to promote safe, healthy housing for all residents. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. And next we have Leon Burnett, Julia Alber, and Terrence Harris.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and city council members. My name is Leah Burnett, and I serve as a student representative for the Tobacco Control Coalition. As you discussed current code enforcement capacity, we would like to share findings from our review of our smoke-free multifamily housing policies across 102 California jurisdictions. We examined local ordinances and contacted jurisdictions directly to better understand how these policies are enforced. What we found was clear and consistent. The vast majority rely on city or county code enforcement departments to respond to complaints and ensure compliance. Our coalition supports a smoke-free, multi-family housing ordinance that includes a graduated, multi-step enforcement process handled through code enforcement, while also prohibiting evictions solely due to smoking violations. This approach prioritizes education, compliance, and public health. without putting housing stability at risk. As you consider code enforcement needs tonight, we ask that you also consider the importance of investing in additional staffing resources for your code enforcement team. These staff play a critical role in protecting health, safety, and quality of life of residents, and they will be essential for implementing both current and future community health standards. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. Thank you for holding this special session on code enforcement. My name is Julie Alber. I'm a local resident, former renter in SLO, and chair of the Tobacco Control Coalition. Our coalition is asking the city council to strengthen current smoke-free multi-family housing ordinance by expanding protections to smoking within individual units, as you've heard from the last three comments. Everyone deserves clean air in their home, especially renters who have little control over secondhand smoke drifting between units. For any health or safety policy to truly work, there must be both education and meaningful accountability. Policies without enforcement cannot be relied on, especially for residents who are already vulnerable or hesitant to come forward with complaints. We appreciate the information that was provided in the report and the reference to the InfoSlow website today. But it's still still difficult for residents to easily access enforcement data on the city's website. Transparency is important not only for accountability, but also for building trust. We encourage the city to make enforcement data more publicly available so residents and policymakers can better understand where gaps exist and where additional resources may be needed. We also strongly support investing in additional staffing and resources for Code Enforcement Division so it has the capacity to respond effectively to current and future community health and safety needs. Importantly, smoke-free housing policies can also save money. Research in California found that Smoking-related cleaning and repair costs averaged $5,000 per unit. Smoke-free policies can also reduce fire risk, nuisance complaints, and health care costs associated with secondhand smoke exposure, while often being enforced through existing complaint-based systems. I also want to share, two weeks ago, I attended an event at State Capitol where SLO was recognized for the first city to ban indoor smoking in public places in 1990. And that was a decision that established SLO as a national leader in public health. And our community has a strong legacy of taking bold, proactive steps to protect public health. And this is an opportunity to continue building on that history. Thank you.

Thank you. And after Terrence Harris, we will have Jerry Clemens, Tyler Corey and Garrett Philbin.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members. My name is Terrence Harris, and I'm here representing Cal Poly. I want to say that on behalf of the university, we want every resident of SLO to be able to sleep when they want to sleep and not to be disrupted by loud or careless behavior to their neighbors. I think we can all agree on that point. Tonight, I want to speak to code enforcement and specifically to one subset of our community that has been a central target of this conversation, students who have chosen to find their place of belonging in fraternities and sororities. I want to acknowledge first what the data shows. Over the last decade, noise violations in SLO have dropped by hundreds, even as both the city and Cal Poly have grown by thousands of residents. Social noise citations fell from 448 in 2015 to 180 in 2024. Even with an uptick in 2025, we are still far below where we were historically. That is not an accident. That is the result of intentional partnership. And I want to name that success before we talk more about what's left to solve. With that understanding in mind, there is clearly still work for us to do. President Armstrong has directed university leaders to hold all of our students to the Mustang Way, a foundational set of core values, both on and off campus, and we have been taking that work seriously. Over the past year, university leadership has met intensively and regularly with city leadership, as well as with our fraternity and sorority leaders. We've brought together content experts to review, our policies and communication, and those meetings have produced real change, including noise violations dropping significantly, with the largest single drop tied directly to increased on-campus housing. We're adding nearly 4,000 beds over the next few years, a project that will cost a billion dollars, but delivering on our continued commitment to growing housing faster than enrollment. We're exploring long-term housing solutions, including potential residential blocks and campus housing for second-year students in Greek organizations. There's more, but I'm out of time.

Thank you. Well, good news is you have the following as Courtney Keenow, which I missed saying, sorry about that. So Courtney Keenow, Jerry Clemons, and Tyler Corey.

Good evening Mayor Stewart and Council Members. My name is Courtney Hino and I'd like to offer a few additional remarks on behalf of Cal Poly. We do not view this as a community versus Cal Poly discussion. We as faculty, staff, students and administrators are a major part of this community. and are committed to the place that we all love. There are so many more things that we've done in partnership with the city and on our own to try to be part of the solution in this effort and wanna make a really direct ask to focus on behaviors and activities, noise and code violations, to treat all residents of the city the same and not single out individuals because of their affiliation with a particular group, club, fraternity, or sorority. We ask this primarily because we are concerned about tactics that elevate conversations around disaffiliation from the university, something we cannot control, and something that could ultimately lead to far more harm in our neighborhoods. This is a critical point. If organizations go underground and remove themselves from university rules and oversight, we have serious concerns about student safety. Cal Poly has been and will continue to be a responsible partner to and with the city and its residents. As President Armstrong likes to say, we all want quality of life, peace, and quiet for every resident. With continued creativity and shared purpose, we can solve these problems together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Can I start? Yep. Okay. Hi, Mayor Stewart, Council and staff. My name is Jerry Clemens and I'm a resident of SLO and I'm here as a concerned citizen, not as a representative of the Housing Authority. And I happen to be a member of the San Luis Obispo Tenant Union. I want to thank city staff for the report on code enforcement. and the priorities for a safe and livable neighborhood and housing. This report acknowledges the need for code enforcement. And now that the city is aware of its shortcomings, you need to act. Action is the magic word. I had to learn that. throughout my life. I can't just sit back. Anyway, because you do know what you need to do. And you do have the opportunity to act on established city codes. Codes, you can do this by hiring more CE employees to do more inspections, which would then allow the city to hold accountable those that are exploiting the rental population, both young and old. that violate the law and some treat tenants terribly. I'm gonna give you an example here. Somebody was just telling me the other day that they had a septic tank that wasn't covered. They didn't even know it was there. They almost fell into it. And I said, you need to contact the city and let them know. And she said, no, because she likes where she's living at, but she's too afraid that they will. Anyway, whatever we do, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I'm done.

Thank you. After Tyler Corey, we have... Garrett Philbin, and Thomas Burt.

That was awesome. Good evening, Mayor Stewart, council members, and city staff, and community members. My name is Tyler Quarry, and I appear before you tonight as a member and community organizer with the Slow Tenants Union. Three years ago, I stood at the same podium as a second year Cal Poly student and told you what we had learned knocking on roughly 400 doors in the neighborhoods adjacent to campus. We heard from over 100 tenants about rent hikes of hundreds of dollars overnight, about mold that made people sick for years, about maintenance workers entering units without notice, about flooded floorboards and broken heaters, and management firms trying to charge tenants for their own legal fees. One resident summarized their experience quite simply, everything is broken. So tonight I want to be direct with this council. Both the state and the city publish health and safety standards. They must be enforced robustly and that requires resources. The city must hire additional code enforcement personnel and permanently assign a full-time officer dedicated to the Safe Housing Program. Until a comprehensive rental registry comes online, there is still work this council can do. Track better data, report it publicly with more granularity and consistency. Give this community the transparency it needs to accurately assess whether current state and your local policies are working. Two questions I believe need to be answered as part of this meeting tonight are as follows. We are a city where nearly two thirds of residents are renters and after a decade during which our leaders have done very little to materially improve conditions for renters, what are you prepared to do and how do you intend to compel compliance with the standards that already exist? In closing, I want this council and this community to know that our movement does not end as individuals come and go. This fight continues until every resident of San Luis Obispo has access to safe, secure and affordable housing. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So right now the city relies on tenants to report safe housing violations. This may sound reasonable until you understand why it doesn't work. Over half of tenants in SLO are rent burdened. They're competing for housing in one of the tightest rental markets in California in the country. And when your choice is between reporting a code violation and risking your landlord's displeasure or an eviction, most people stay quiet. The city actually proved this with its own data. Between 2015 and 2017, slow rental housing inspectors visited 915 units and 768 of them, or 84%, failed their first inspection. A decade later in 2025, out of the approximate 12,000 rental units in the city, there were only 95 self-reported safe housing violations, less than a 1% failure rate. So let that sink in. Under the complaint-based system, those same units are generating less than 1% of cases worth acting on, but the moment someone actually walks through the door, that number is 84%. The most common problems were complicated, missing smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and properly strapped water heaters. These are cheap fixes when you catch them early. They become expensive or deadly when you don't. Critics of the inspection program argue that it was government overreach, but we already require restaurants to be inspected. We inspect childcare facilities. We inspect elevators. We don't wait for someone to get sick before we check the kitchen. 62% of slow residents are renters. They deserve the same basic protections we extend to a tourist eating a burrito at Efren's. So, does Council genuinely believe its approach to safe housing code enforcement is enough when its own data shows that it results in less than one one-hundredth of the violations reported today than it did a decade ago? Thank you.

Thank you. And after Thomas Burt, we'll have Lisa Jouet, Jen Field, and Rachel Whalen.

Good evening. My name is Thomas Burt. I'm here at the Slough Tenant Union. Tonight, I'm here requesting stronger enforcement of state and city public health and safety standards, as well as requesting the permanent assignment of a full-time code enforcement officer to the Safe Housing Program. My story begins in 2023 as a college student during the rainy winter storms, which I'm sure you all remember. For most people, the flooding stayed outside. For me, it came inside. Almost overnight, the walls of my room became soaking wet. These walls were so wet that when I lightly pushed on them, my hand went through the wall. This also brought extensive mold to my room. Something had to have gone terribly wrong for this to have occurred. Nothing about this event was ever officially reported. for two reasons. I was a first-time renter, so I was unaware of how abnormal this was. Secondly, I was scared of retaliation from my landlord. These are both major reasons why the current complaint-driven model is inadequate. A majority of St. Louis' visible residents are renters, exact numbers nobody knows because there's no current method of tracking this. See page 29 of the staff report, renters are hesitant to report. We need a revamped model. They're very clear laws about health and safety. These laws, however, must be enforced. Based on the staff report, a majority of code enforcement activities surrounding public nuisance and not serious concerns such as housing safety. Signing a code enforcement officer to solely focus on housing will allow these existing laws to be enforced, which will greatly improve the living conditions of renters throughout the city. That is why I'm asking the City Council to please consider the changes of stronger enforcement of state and city public health standards, as well as requesting the permanent assignment of full-time code enforcement officer so that something like this doesn't happen to anyone else. Real renters, real people need help. Shopping carts can wait. This can't. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for telling your story.

Greetings Mayor Stewart, City Council, staff. My name is Lisa Jouet. I am a SLO City resident and I just want to say that I'm actually angry because I feel like I'm a member of the Tenants Union and we've been saying the same thing for many years. Some of us have been experiencing being renters for a lot longer and so we all have stories. Over 60% of us, as you've heard before, 60% of us are renters. And so I just don't feel like we're being heard. So when human beings aren't heard, we try our words. And when our words don't work, we do feel angry. And I do express that tonight. I want to see action. We put up with unsafe and unhealthy conditions because we don't have a choice. And that's pretty sad. I went canvassing a few months ago, and one of the renters told me that their clothes dryer was vented into their living space. That's just one example. And then another friend told me a story about the walkway up to their house and just months and months and months of unsafe tiptoeing, trying not to trip and fall. These are the kind of things and more that happen. So I really would like you to hire more code enforcement staff. These things, we need to be protected. A rental registry, we've not talked about that too much tonight, but please, please, I'm asking in the next six months. That's my wish. We need to know where the rentals are, who owns them, what the rents are. And then I really do specifically want to support the ban on smoking and multifamily housing. I don't want people to be evicted for those reasons, but I would like to see some sort of enforcement. Let's keep renters safer than we've been. Thank you.

City Council Chambers and staff, my name is Jen and i'm speaking solely as a renter in slow with the tenants union and not as my role as a human relations, Commissioner. Thank you for hosting this study session tonight. As an environmentalist, I think a lot about our climate future. There's a future where we prioritize the health and safety of renters through proactive code enforcement. Tenants are no longer cost burdened by rent and more resilient to climate disasters. We know our housing stock and slow through a rental registry program, and we are able to justly transition renters as well as homeowners away from fossil fuels. We plan for more migration to our city with the climate crisis. The other future is a little bit more status quo. We continue to let big corporations and landlords instill fear of retaliation in residents and people live in unsafe conditions because they have no choice. Renters continue to be cost burdened and face experiencing homelessness with climate disasters and we are not a welcoming and safe place for immigrant neighbors that we say we are and we have their responsibility to be you have the power today to help guide our future choose the future of proactive code enforcement that protects when renters and holds landlords accountable to meet our city goals i'm urging city Council and staff to hire additional safe housing program specialists to meet our Community needs protect retaliation and evictions when code violations are reported and provide affected tenants meaningful access to legal services. And finally, create a ban on smoking and multifamily housing. that's multi-step and prevents eviction solely based on those smoking violations just like the climate crisis we can't start our way out of it we need actionable policy solutions within this fiscal cycle to protect a majority of our city and plan for the more diverse equitable and inclusive climate future thank you for your time and consideration thank you jen after that we have karen adler tim townley russell hall and shannon larrabee

Good evening, Mayor Stewart and Council Members. I'm Rachel Whalen, the Director of Governmental Affairs at the SLO Chamber. The SLO Chamber Board has reviewed the scope of work that code enforcement covers and would like to provide the following comments. First, the Chamber sees AskSLO as a valuable resource, as it provides direct access between the city and the public. However, we recognize that this access has also made it easier for the public to submit concerns, resulting in a dramatic increase in complaints and increased strain on the code enforcement team. Our board was very impressed by the scope of work that this team covers, and we think the community would benefit from increased education to develop an understanding of the role that code enforcement plays in our health and safety. This will help the community prioritize its complaints so that code enforcement's resources can be best utilized. Second, we understand that renters in SLO are faced with serious challenges and we are committed to working on solutions to address these challenges. With that being said, we think it's important to identify where the problem lies. The Chamber Board noticed that the number of substandard rental housing complaints is very low compared to the actual number of rental units available in our city. we recognize that the low number of complaints may be due in part to a lack of tenant reporting. However, as Council considers adding additional resources to support substandard housing complaints, we encourage code enforcement to direct attention to the most pressing issues and determine if substandard housing complaints require more resources than currently allocated. On behalf of the Chamber, I want to share our appreciation for the code enforcement staff and thank the city for your commitment to community health, safety, and timely public responses. Thank you.

Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor Stewart, City Council members and staff. My name is Karen Adler. I am a permanent resident born and raised in San Luis. There's not many of us left. My complaint, and I think the elephant in the room, is Cal Poly's reluctance to provide a fraternity row for their sororities and fraternities. They think the neighborhoods in San Luis should provide that for their fraternities and sororities. That's not our responsibility. Good civic governance by this city council should automatically change the land density use and say this is not a good idea. Your job is to help neighborhoods peacefully exist, which is what we are entitled to. Greek life housing would put an end to that. In my neighborhood, on my street, I have two fraternity satellite houses. One is very respectful. They let us know when their parties start. We know when their parties are supposed to end. But as you can imagine, Trying to control 100 inebriated guests is extremely difficult, and we, the neighbors, pay that price. Do not compound that. Encourage Cal Poly to step up, provide a fraternity sorority row, Cal Berkeley is a very good example. They have a lovely situation where the street is down the middle, the sororities on one side, fraternities on the other side is totally student controlled, student monitored, and it works. It can be done. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor, council members, and the staff for your time to service our community. Thank you as well to our code enforcement team that are here tonight. The work you do every day to keep neighborhoods safe. And also thank all the people that came to talk tonight. This is great. This is what we need to do. I'm the president of the San Luis Obispo Coastal Association of Realtors. We wear purple because we're not red or blue. We look for the things that bring us together, not the things that separate us. And I think things like this tonight can definitely help that. We've been doing this, San Luis Obispo Association of Realtors have been doing this for celebrating our 100th year this year. And we strongly support enforcement efforts that address genuine health and safety concerns, including dangerous buildings, unsafe occupancy, illegal construction, and substandard housing. Protecting residents and preserving neighborhood quality of life benefits everyone in our community. We believe it's important to distinguish between serious public safety violations and lower level neighborhood concerns. The staff report notes that most complaints involve general neighborhood conditions, while comparatively few involve immediate life safety emergencies. That perspective is important as the city evaluates its staffing priorities, enforcement focus, and future policy direction. Strong neighborhoods depend on cooperation between city, residents, tenants, housing providers, and Cal Poly. It's great that we're all here together to try to do that. We need to continue it. Thoughtful, balanced policies help preserve both neighborhood quality of life and housing availability throughout our community. Thank you again for your service to San Luis Obispo and for consideration this evening.

Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening. My name is Russell Hall. My wife and I have been long term residents of the Alta Vista neighborhood and have been engaged in trying to solve and investigate the tensions between campuses and student neighborhoods. for many years, even to the extent of going to international conferences around this country to see what other cities are doing. I think the young students or the students from Cal Poly miss the point entirely. We admire what they do during the day. I have many who work for my business. That is not the issue. The issue is what they do at night when they are drunk and at a time when the rest of the community is trying to sleep. Clearly, the solution is for Cal Poly to take the Greek organizations back on campus. And I really admire and thank the representative from Cal Poly for being here. but that, a regrow may be a long-term response. Let me propose the following. Cal Poly is now building a housing project called Vista Meadows on the corner of Slack and Grand. Before the city, considers changing the regulations and enforcement on the proposed modification area require that they sell one or two houses to a fraternity or a sorority. Thank you. They will then be able to see how well this integration into a residential area will work. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

All right. And after Shannon Larrabee, there'll be Kathy Walker, Steve Delmartini, and Carolyn Smith will be our final speaker.

Good evening, City Council. I'm Shannon Larrabee. I'm a resident of San Luis Obispo. I am also the chapter advisor and corporation board president for Sigma Kappa, Cal Poly's oldest sorority. And we've owned our house at 615 Grand Avenue and had a conditional use permit since 1982. So we've been around a while. I've been the chapter's advisor for 20 years. And in that 20 years, I can count the noise violations we've had on one hand. We've had two in the last five years, and those come during recruitment, which Cal Poly sets the timeline and the agenda for. And if a party runs late, we adhere to it. And if we have a noise violation, we've been left on our own. So I welcome the comments made by Ms. Renata Campbell and Courtney Keenow and strongly emphasize the need and desire to put together a working group of our corporation board presidents, which every chapter has or should have, and working with Cal Poly and the city to work together. Our executive boards of students turn over every year. Our advisory boards stay pretty consistent. The one thing I think that we're hearing a lot in two things is the presence of bad actors and separating chapter houses from what are called satellite houses. At our chapter house, we have 10 residents who live in out of almost 300 members. When we have activities at our house, they are no alcohol. They are mom's weekend activities, making posters, having a committee meeting, pretty wholesome stuff. of complaints we've had from neighbors. I can count two or three over 20 years of a neighbor who's complained about an activity and we've worked together to resolve that and work with our neighbors. But it sounds like we really need to separate out chapter houses from satellite houses and working on addressing bad actors, bad behavior, and take out the affiliation. So, that's it.

Thank you.

good evening it's steve del martini san luis obispo local realtor and uh just instead of carrying on i'll just like to ditto what tim townley said tonight in front of you i i think it was very appropriate uh and you know that we're fully involved in a lot of situations in san luis as far as discussions with the city whether that be a super lateral a rental registry uh code enforcement i hate to say i know more about and toilet replacements and sewer laterals than I ever wanna know. But I would be glad to answer questions if you have them. One thing I do wanna straighten up if we could tonight, and I'm not an attorney, although I did stay in the Hilton. It comes up all the time that there is evictions tied to code enforcement. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not aware that you can be evicted for doing a code enforcement the city of San Luis Obispo and that has come up during the rental registry and it's coming up now and I don't think that that that can be done now if you have a code enforcement problem and report it to your owner and nothing happens then there is a process to either you can move or there's a retaliation you can have against your owner and not so much against the tenant but if I'm wrong on the code enforcement to the city and an eviction i don't think that that can happen okay um so i just want to make that clear because i'd like i'd like that conversation to maybe either cease or be corrected if that's if that's the case um and as always we're here to always help you as far as the realtors go we get involved in a lot of conversations we enjoy it we enjoy what you guys bring to us and i appreciate uh the tenant unit and as tim said everybody that's here tonight It's a good process. I wish we could have an open discussion sometimes, though, about this, because when you close this session, you're going to have a discussion, and a lot of us in the back are going to be going, oh, no, that's not right. Don't do that. That's the wrong information. But I appreciate you and thank you very much.

Thank you. I, too, know way more about sewers than I ever thought I would.

Hi, good evening. The main reason the city has had to spend so many resources trying to solve this problem is because Cal Poly is approving hundreds of fraternity parties in neighborhoods where they are not legally allowed or exceed the occupancy limits allowed by their permits. But Cal Poly will not confirm the addresses, even though the city has asked, which has made enforcement difficult. Does anyone wonder why Cal Poly President Jeff Armstrong does not live in the president's house on campus right next to our neighborhood? He has a free house there, it's very nice, but he chooses not to live in it. If the conditions created by fraternity parties are too disruptive for the president of Cal Poly, then they are too disruptive for the residents who live in the neighborhoods Our home's video surveillance has captured things that should never be normalized in residential neighborhoods. I've watched a drunk fraternity member, maybe 18 years old, after leaving a big little night, barely able to stand, being carried down the street while groaning that he was so blacked. On another night, a group of young women who were headed to a fraternity up the street, one could not walk on her own. Her friends forced her to kneel in our yard, put their fingers down her throat and induced vomiting while casually talking about that they do it every week and they pull trig every weekend. Freshman girls walked down from the dorms to these neighborhoods to attend these fraternity parties. Cal Poly has an oversized Greek system in relation to the size of our city and our neighborhoods cannot absorb the impact. during this past same friday's day morning on the green it was my husband who was standing by as a first responder at 4 a.m in case anyone needed to be flown by helicopter to the hospital yet fraternity members in our neighborhood told my husband that he shouldn't live there that he doesn't belong there while he serves this community and they are the ones with operating illegally. Do not weaken enforcement or change zoning laws to accommodate a problem that has already been determined harmful to residential neighborhoods by the Planning Commission. Prioritize enforcement of the city's zoning laws and stop the unlawful fraternities from operating. Thank you.

Last but not least, right? Good evening, Council members and Mayor. I wanted to give you some perspective. This map was made by the compilation of the Code Enforcement and Cal Poly's AB 524 that they had before. And it shows 80 fraternity chapter houses in these Monterey Heights and Alta Vista neighborhoods. And I want to tell you we're not targeting a specific group. What we're trying to do is show that other people live in this area. They are workers, they are families, they are people that have to get up in the morning, they work on weekends. They deserve to have livability, quiet, peace and enjoyment of their homes, just like anybody else in any other part of this city deserves. And there are many residents here, renters and homeowners alike, retired people, People that need to have peace and quiet, and they deserve to have that. The fraternities do not have the right to have a party and destroy that livability in their neighborhoods. They are our neighbors, and they should be respectful of all of us. And they should be learning that, because when they get out into the world, they may be facing situations like this, where they're on the other side of it. and they need to learn that this is not appropriate conduct in family neighborhoods. Cal Poly has purposely been registering events at these homes, knowing that they're not allowed to operate in these zones. It leads the members to believe that they are legally allowed to do these types of events in their neighborhood. That should stop. and they should be cooperating with the city in providing the addresses of these fraternity events that they're registering not keeping it a secret partners don't do that they don't sabotage their friends they are their partners they do give this information and we need to get them to do it thank you well thank you so much for all that public comment i want you to know that not only is our our comments um here at the

We already ended that, so sorry. I love you, Mila, but we already closed our public comment a bit ago. So I just really appreciate all of the comments that came in today, but also I appreciate all of the comments that came in in our email, our phones, and I always say it, but in our grocery stores. It truly, it's not taken lightly. There's a lot of opinions here today and in our emails, and we are truly weighing all of this, and that is not just did we, decided to do a study session because it came through the ground jury, but we also decided to do a study session in a larger way including all of the code enforcement, the safe housing, what are we looking at in all of our neighborhoods because of January of 25, yes, sorry, am I having to count it all back? January of 25, when we had community meetings around our budget, and it was what is working, what is not in our community, and how do we work with our work plans? And this is one of those conversations. It wasn't just about noise, it also was about rentals and safe housing, and that is why we've come together today to have this conversation. So with that, I'm going to just do a five-minute break, a quick bio break, and then we'll come back for deliberation. Director Tway and Mr. Mezapeza, can you put back on the screen the multiple decisions would be, not decisions, multiple conversations we'll be having about your recommendations in the presentation? I believe there were six of them. Thank you so much. See you back in five minutes. All right, thanks everyone. So we'll get back to, thank you, the multiple recommendations and conversations to have today. And as I say recommendations, not for one thing or the other, just things for us to communicate about today. And I will say also, along with what I saw here, There were quite a few people who brought up the idea of a task force and I know on the student community liaison committee we talked about having a subcommittee task force and I think what the conversation is today is a more robust group of people on that task force if we were to do that. So I just want to throw that in as a potential additional conversation to be had today because we've heard that a lot of times on our emails and on our different public comments. So one of the options to talk about and go from there. After pulling everything together, are there additional questions? I believe there were some questions that Cal Poly is still here and willing to answer if those questions are still here from the council. And we'll go from there. Vice Mayor.

Yeah, just a couple quick questions for Cal Poly, if someone's willing to come up. There was a comment about university-facilitated rush activities from a couple of the public speakers, and somebody also mentioned that Cal Poly sets the agenda for recruitment, and I just wanted to get a little bit more information on what that means and what that looks like.

Hi, so recruitment is, oh, I'm Elizabeth. I'm the Assistant Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life. Recruitment, or RUSH, is actually facilitated by the Interfraternity Council, so it is not university, The university doesn't facilitate it. The Interfraternity Council does set the time periods that they can host recruitment. They don't start earlier than 8 AM, and they don't go past 10 PM. There's no alcohol involved at all. So yeah, they're relatively controlled environments that are not controlled by the university. It's through the council.

So there's a follow-up only rush for fraternity other were sororities and USFC as well sororities everything is by the council's So the council's manage all of the recruitment processes Okay, and then the I think what I heard was program or agenda But I also heard from the community that there are certain dates that the university chooses so the dates are not chosen by the university either and

No, the university or IFC chooses the dates and they kind of run it by the university just to make sure there's not anything else going on that would conflict. Homecoming or something. Right, exactly. But no, the councils choose the dates. Thank you. Yep.

And another follow-up here. So as you're aware, we have had a series of CUPs revoked recently. And I'm curious what discussion is happening at Cal Poly on how to move forward with supporting Greek life if at this stage we don't find a new path forward for CUPs, if we don't have fraternities applying for them. How do we navigate a world without CUPs?

Thank you for the question, Vice Mayor. I would suggest that that is a key element that we as a community and as partners need to navigate from Cal Poly's perspective. The last thing we want is for our student organizations to disaffiliate, but our students have been very clear in that they are concerned with the process as it stands right now and would take that route if there isn't some sort of resolution. So I think that's something that we have to continue to be in conversation about and find a solution that is suitable, that serves the needs of the community, but that one that we, that our students will be able to comply with.

has um oh yeah please um courtney kino cal poly um a couple other things we are working with the students terence has done such an amazing job of leading conversations about what they want so in terms of event spaces and other opportunities to celebrate gather all of those things on campus and so terence jason mockford and others have led a series of proposals to change some of our alcohol policies on campus, where events can be held. So I know that that's not directly answering your question, but it's a part of this bigger conversation. And then also, there were a few comments tonight about a Greek row. that is still in our master plan although in the near term we are not focused on that what we are looking at is as especially the new residence halls come online starting this fall looking at opportunities to group or offer to especially our second year greek affiliated students to have groups of housing where they can be on one floor or have a section that is specifically for their organizations in that, you know, because we're not going to be able to build a single family in the near term. And so as something that we're exploring.

What's Cal Poly's view of the conditional use permit? Does Cal Poly view it as something that's essential in order to back the existence of the fraternities and sororities? What's your relationship to it from an institutional level?

We have not taken a position, and that is we really appreciate the partnership that we do have, having these conversations, offering where we can either provide information, offer support, but we have no official position on what happens with the CUPs. Okay.

Oh, looks like there's a follow-up.

Yeah, and I know Jason wants to follow up, but I wanted to also just add to the statements that Courtney was making about what's taking place on campus. There are layers, I was just sharing with one of our folks in the gallery, there are layers of bureaucracy that we have to work through in order to approve. many of the things that we are thinking about, but we have taken a very proactive approach in terms of thinking through how we allow for further events, how we modify alcohol policies, how we integrate more student organizations into our our housing program that we currently have. These will continue to take some time and thoughtfulness, but our position is not on you must do this as a CUP or as a city or we must do this as Cal Poly. It is how do we work together to continue to solve a problem and how do we give our students a reasonable outlet while also giving us greater capacity to hold them accountable. commend our students for coming up with some of these opportunities on campus and working directly with us and coming to us and saying, if we're able to do these type of things, we can be a part of the solution in terms of holding out members of our organizations accountable when they do violate codes, rules, and regulations. So we're not sitting back and asking somebody else to make a decision. We're asking to be to be a part of a partnership in solving these challenges.

Quick follow up to that before we finish that thought. I've heard from several of you about some of the plans that you have with using your on-campus facilities and kind of thinking creatively about using those spaces. A lot of those ideas actually sound quite promising, but I think one of the challenges is that that's not something that is public, of course, yet because nothing's final. I'm just curious if you have any sort of, if you can preview a little bit of what the timeline might be for starting to be able to move some of that stuff on campus if that becomes viable, move students, Greek actual organizations on campus if that becomes viable. Do we know when those conversations might actually result in something tangible?

Yeah, I'm measuring my, you can't see the calculations in my head, but I do believe that we will have some tangible forward movement as early as this fall. If we do not, it is simply because we haven't been able to work through some of the red tape required in order to move us forward. But this is, these are, There are opportunities that we believe we can move forward with as early as this next fall or next academic year. We will continue to push for progress. Some things are more long-term than others, but bringing students on the campus for certain events, there are ways in which we can, there are ways in which we feel like we can do this successfully, but it will require outside approval that we don't necessarily have control over.

familiar with that red tape. Thank you for that and thank you for following up.

Hi, Jason Mockford, Senior Director for Leadership and Service. This question around fraternity and sorority housing has come up a few times in a couple different spaces with city staff, so I just wanted to, and especially as it relates to fraternity and sorority recognition by the university, our policies around recognition really come from the CSU, the Chancellor's Office, sets criteria for recognizing student organizations. I'm not gonna go through the whole exhaustive list, But some examples are you have to have five members. Those officers have to meet a certain GPA threshold. They have to be open to all students, those sort of things. And so we view student petitions for recognition along those parameters. It is not a requirement to be a student organization or to be a fraternity and sorority. that they have a house, that they have a house with a use permit. We actually have several fraternities and sororities that you probably won't see in here because they don't have a use permit. They are very small. They do most of their operation on campus or in small residences that don't get complaints, quite frankly. And so they don't rise to that level. But those aren't the ones you're hearing from today. So thanks.

Just one more follow up and i'm not sure if this one's for you, but curious about you know i'd heard from folks who've been members of Greek life at other schools that. oftentimes they utilized you know non residential rental spaces for their events and kind of curious about cal poly role and helping to. facilitate that process. We heard earlier from a fraternity wanting to host a battle of the bands, felt a little ill-advised in the residential neighborhoods, and we do have spaces within the community, and I'm wondering why those aren't being Are they too expensive? Are they too far? What's the hang up?

I think some of those things are definitely true, that they are too expensive to provide what the students are looking for at the cost that they can afford. There are a few that have been interested in having deals with the Interfraternity Council, for example, that we've been exploring, but they are few and far between, and often they are restaurants that are also operating, so you're looking at when the restaurant is closing down or some other aspect of it. So that can be really challenging, and then transportation is a huge factor for that as well.

Got it. Thank you.

I just wanted to follow up in stating that the example that you used is actually one of the types of events that might be able to move on campus into the near future. So that's exactly the type of thing that we're exploring. And cost prohibitive is one of the things that the leaders in Greek organizations have talked to us about in terms of utilizing off-campus spaces. Thank you. Please.

And not just off campus, but I've heard from student members that even on campus was tough at times with costs. So I'm just wondering, is there conversation about what that looks like? Because it seems like some sort of subsidizing from university funds to ASI funds or however that has to happen. I know, again, red tape and time. Yeah, Battle of the Bands is a perfect example of something that would be loud, but also great to have it on campus. There's been where we slowly have scratched the surface of beyond Greek life as the fraternity word these days. And there have been students that have reached out, at least 1,000, written a petition to have local live music in their garages. And so I think whether you're talking about high school or college, it's still something people want to do. So it seems like you could take the actual Greek life name or students who are in organizations that would like to have some loud events on campus and maybe non-alcoholic necessarily. So I just wondered, have those conversations been happening as well?

I would say absolutely they have, not just conversations. We have ran some pilot events. organization, that we hosted a line dancing in the UU Plaza a few Fridays ago. There's a lot of ideas that have gone forward. I don't think it's just high school students or college students, it's our community actually that has asked for these opportunities to enjoy things like live music in a variety of spaces. Yeah, the simple answer is yes. It's more than a conversation. I mean, we have things that we are actively working through and things that we are actively evaluating in terms of opportunities for greater student engagement right on our campus.

Great, thank you. And the complaint told to me by college students was because they weren't 21, they couldn't go listen to the live music at a lot of places, even if they had no intention of drinking. So that was the conversation.

Right. I'm sorry, may I respond? Yeah, one of the ideas that we have discussed is, again, there's parts of this that are part of the alcohol policies and what we are able to do and not able to do on campus. We have to be responsible with any activities that are going on. And we do know that students participate in activities. Yeah. So we want to be mindful of creating an environment and an atmosphere where our students can enjoy and engage, but where we are keeping them safe and where we're not violating the law. Right. And so having that that balance of things that students will come to while also relieving the pressure from the community is what we're navigating and exploring in a variety of ways.

Thank you. I was going to take a quick shift from Cal Poly for just one second, and then you guys can jump in. Sure, we could do all the Cal Poly at once. I'll come back.

All right. So, Councillor Shoresman, do you have a Cal Poly as well? Okay.

Sorry. Sorry, Terrence. You might want us to stand up there for a few more minutes. She did, but I didn't. In meeting with students, this is going to be kind of a comment part question, but in meeting with students, one of the confusions or questions that I've heard in the past is, confusion about the event registration process, both that there's a event registration process on campus, there's an event registration or a party registration process in the city, and not realizing that those are different or separate because they seem related. And so that's a piece that's kind of sitting in my mind for sort of the parking lot of like what we can do to work together to make that more clear for students and help educate them on it. But then the other question part came up with the whole battle of the bands example that was given earlier. So presumably that student group was wanting to do this battle of the bands and they came and you can correct me if I'm wrong, they would come to Cal Poly, to the administration, I don't know where the application process happens, Office of Student Rights maybe, and they would apply, and at that point, it would be flagged where they would want to hold this, and you all would say, well, wait a minute, that's in an R1 neighborhood, that's probably not a bad idea, and coach them to have it somewhere else, or find another location, or change their change their idea. Is that kind of what would happen, that you try and adjust them to not have their events in places where it's not legal?

sort of so our event registration process is not we're not approving the activities necessarily our whole reason why our event registration process was created was around health and safety of the students and making sure that they're following practices around safe drinking, sober monitors, those sort of things. So our whole system is built around that process. We did work with the city staff in the last year to identify language on that registration form that clearly indicates linking out to where they can find zoning information and what the city laws are, but we're not reviewing it for that particular information. And I, just for the record, I don't know specifically about the Battle of the Bands event in particular.

We'd have to- Just an example.

Dig through that for sure, yeah.

Yeah, okay, thank you, that's clarifying. Follow up to that, sorry. Based on what you just said, are there consequences if an organization does not register their event? If so, what are those?

There is. usually those things go through the Student Conduct Office. And usually they come up because there was some sort of complaint or report related to health and safety that caused somebody to look into that further. And so the Student Conduct Office would look into that and the chapter could be held additionally responsible for not informing us of events that took place.

Thank you so much. My last question and then I'll pass it on to others is, our staff talked about that they have been providing lists of locations where citations have occurred to your team and I'm just wondering what happens with those lists and is there a follow up that happens?

Yeah, there is follow up that happens. Some of this depends on the nature of what the violation was. There's an escalation process if there's multiple violations. Things that are simply about noise are maybe treated a little differently than something where there is an incident that has occurred that needs a response. I think one of the questions earlier was about consequences and there, has been at least one that has risen to a judicial process in which the organization was not allowed to be approved for events for several weeks because they were a repeat offender in terms of violations. So there's an escalating process that's,

office our osrr is is is using and um yeah that's what we're asking is there both an escalation process for the organizations and also for individuals if it's applicable i mean what we've been mostly talking about organizations tonight but i would assume there might be some situations where an individual might need

Yeah, there's a code of conduct. There's a very rigorous process for students that have violated our code of conduct. And yeah, there's a fully articulated process that we navigate in those situations.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Don't go far. Council Member Marks.

So Mr. Harris, please don't sit down. I have another question for you.

Yes, ma'am.

Yes. There is a rumor that Cal Poly wants to have more fraternities and sororities and invite them into the community. And I'd like to know if that's a true rumor or if it's just the word on the street.

Yeah, I wouldn't call it a rumor. We have a process that will allow for additional fraternities and or sororities to be recognized student organizations on campus. A part of that philosophy is about the long term opportunity for us to give students greater options of those of the organizations to join and thus potentially shrinking over a long period of time. The size and scope of individual organizations, the campus has continued to grow, right? And that's been a part of our plan. So if we don't grow our clubs and organization opportunities with the growth of campus, you just see those students growing in individual groups as opposed to potentially being spread out over further organizations. So that's a part of the big picture.

Okay, so where do you imagine that these other, these new Greek organizations, where do you think they would practice their chapter activities?

Yeah, I'll revert back, Council Member Marks, to the previous conversation about hoping to expand the opportunities for clubs and organizations to have access to on-campus event spaces. That is something that we are acutely focused on and that we Sincerely hope to expand in the near future and continue to expand long term so as as we grow as an institution as an as a university it's one of our key priorities, there are a lot of priorities that we have in terms of growing faculty and staff housing growing growing the opportunities for. our student engagement, growing opportunities for students to eat on campus, to exercise on campus. Our goal is to create as much of an opportunity for our students to be in and around the campus community as possible. And we have big hopes, big, I won't call them dreams, but big visions about what that can look like over the next several years. And we're committed to doing that as a part of our growth plans. We think it's good for our campus, it's good for our students, and it's good for our community.

So I'm wondering how would the decision be made to hold off admitting any more fraternities and sororities until you have these wonderful other opportunities to bring the activities on campus?

I think we're going to continue to, in the moment, look for solutions. We talked about some that hopefully as early as this fall we can implement and we'll continue to look for solutions that we can implement. But we have not determined that our fraternities and sororities or any other specific type of club or organization will not be able to grow or expand. I mean, our our plans have the university growing and we are doing everything we can to provide the spaces academically and socially in and around our campus community that allow for our students to Yeah, to thrive.

Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

What is the typical size that a fraternity or sorority would like to start with? Like, you know, you just mentioned earlier, Mr. Mockford, about the five people for a club. So for their end as well, what would that look like? I know there are some fraternities and sororities that have joined with two to five people recently at Cal Poly, but is that their goal size?

So for some of our organizations, it is their goal to be very small and to be a tight-knit community. Some of them we do talk to about you have to have at least five members, and you have four of them graduating in three months, right? So that is the reality for some. For many of our newer organizations that join, a typical size they're looking for is around 30 to 50 members to start off with. And I also want to highlight that one of the key things that we do, it is not a fast process to bring a fraternity and sorority onto campus. It is usually a multi-year process in the planning. And as part of that, there's a lot of vetting that happens around what is the national organization bringing and those sort of things. And we have a lot of opportunity to steer them to the Community Development Office and to others in the city as they look for housing and other places to be. That is their first stop by our requirement. Thank you.

I just wanted to ask someone from Cal Poly a question. The specter of disaffiliation that a fraternity or a sorority for that matter might choose to exercise. if they feel that Cal Poly, if they feel that in some way they can't comply with the rules. It's my understanding that the Nationals really would disapprove of that and would disaffiliate them as well. Maybe this is something that your Yeah, because just a little bit of research that I've done on the web, and also my personal knowledge, because my son was an SAE at UCSB, the nationals, one of their requirements is that they be acknowledged and affiliated with a university. And then if they're not, they're not really Latin letter, Latin letter, Latin letter, Greek letter, Greek letter, they're not. They're just people out there. They're not actually, they can't operate as a fraternity or sorority. Yeah. So I'm just wondering to what extent that is a real threat.

Yeah. Thank you. It's a very real threat. I think we're seeing this at a lot of universities such as CU Boulder, USC that have entirely functioning IFC fraternity communities off campus where their headquarters do recognize them still as fully operating fraternities. They have full time staff overseeing them still and they are not. related to the university whatsoever. The university has no oversight. So it is a very real concern of mine. I think if Through my research, what I've been noticing is if fraternity headquarters or the North American Interfraternity Conference feels like fraternities have been backed into a corner and they might have no choice but to leave, that they will still recognize them on their end. So that's oversight from a national organization that is in the South or on the East Coast or in the Midwest, and no oversight of anything from Cal Poly. We do have chapters that are still in this community. Kappa Chi, for example, has been off campus for a while. Cal Poly has no oversight of their operations or functioning, or we cannot step in in any way. So yeah, thank you for that question. It's a very real concern.

Thank you. That's all I have for now.

Madam Mayor, may I follow up briefly? Yes, please. I think it's important to recognize from our perspective It's actually not about fraternity, sorority. Our students will choose to participate in a wide variety of activities and we need to have a wide variety of clubs, organizations for them to be able to anchor to and feel their sense of belonging. That is a critical component of student development and of university life. What we hope to do is Within our structure, we have resources available to help students. We have resources available to work with students. For any club or organization, if they are making a choice to disaffiliate from the university, from the institution, that is a danger, not just to the campus, but to our community. It gives us very little latitude to deal with an organization and only with individual individual issues. So my plea is together we should be working at what resolution looks like in meaningful ways. I think the university has been more than willing to adapt and we have a history of a really good working relationship with the city. We want that to continue and we want to work in partnership to adapt What we have today, we are seeing that it is not as effective as desired, and it will take both of us working together with our students in order to see the success that we all desire.

Thank you, and as you already stated, our two organizations don't move as quick as people would like, so the two of us as partners don't move as quickly as a whole, so that is challenging. Vice Mayor.

Yeah, just one last question for Cal Poly that came up from Council Member Schorzman's questions. And I was curious if we had data on how many students are subject to sanctions for off-campus behavior annually, if that's something we keep track of, or you keep track of. Not us.

That was my question. Good job.

Sorry, running average or, I know, I should have asked you this ahead of time, I'm sorry, I just came up with Council Member Shorisman's question.

Yeah, I was not prepared for that one, so I'm not, I don't have a direct response, but we'd be happy to get you what we can. Yeah, I'd love to see data on that, if that's something that's variable from year to year or if it's... What we're required to report, I mean, we have the Clery Act, there's a number of things that we're required to report on, but we'd have to go back and look and see what we have for you.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you. I'd love to add on to that. And I know that, Mr. Monkford, you've shared in the SELC, there's another page where there's some of the discipline that's shared, but not all. And I think that's been the largest, well, not the largest, but it's been one of the largest frustrations is the community saying, but what really happens? Not asking for Jane or Joe Schmo and what happened to them, because that's completely inappropriate and confidential. But at the end of the year, The Clery report still doesn't do anything in this realm, that's not the purview, which says, so how many people did get disciplined for behavior in the community that should be disciplined on campus. In my other hat, I know that people do get disciplined. But in this role, I never get to get that information. The community doesn't get the information. So it feels like nothing happens. So that's where I think the community has a lot of frustration is, does anyone have discipline when these things happen in the neighborhoods? And so I think that's one of the largest parts that I can't answer in this role. And Cal Poly's not answering. And that doesn't feel like a partnership. Any thoughts?

Yes, Madam Mayor, I have some thoughts. I will only share one or two of them with you. We have some roles and responsibilities around student privacy, and we have to adhere to those. In the aggregate, I'm sure there are some things that we can do. And I would also just like to say that the overwhelming majority of our students are good apples, they're good actors, and as all young people do, some of us old folks as well, we make mistakes from time to time, but the overwhelming majority of our students are behaving in ways that that are responsible and respectful. And when they're not, there are processes that we go through. We have requirements around student privacy that we don't even share within the university. So it's something that we can take back to see what we could, within reason, be more productive in sharing out. It would be helpful to have really direct conversations in some of these, closed door conversations that we do have with city leadership and university leadership about what's meaningful and also what's reasonable from our end.

Absolutely. Thank you. And I think that's fully understand the privacy roles and responsibilities and know that names and things that should not be shared and aggregate is, I think, logical as a start to just saying, hey, we're opening the the transparency in the conversation. So we get those aggregates around Halloween and St. Patrick's Day, how many people went to the hospital or not. So there are some things we can get that don't have to violate privacy. And I think that's the key that let's talk about how do we do that.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. That's the thought that was just going through my head in terms of our report outs on things like the Morning on the Green event or Halloween, that we are proactively sharing that data and that information about what actually took place. Again, the number of really significant incidents has gone down dramatically. And so that's a part of the, from our perspective, it's part of the thing to celebrate and a part of the thing we want folks to be aware of. Thank you. I think City Manager has two cents.

Thank you. There's a few different thoughts that I just thought I would offer, including, as Terrance mentioned, we have been working with Cal Poly in discussing these issues together. I know we've heard from members of our community some questions about What does that entail? And I'm happy to provide more information. You know, I think Cal Poly has covered a lot of what we have been discussing, including the work that they're doing on trying to, you know, open up event space on campus, find housing accommodations for groups and affiliations on campus. You know, the ongoing efforts that they're making toward adding housing on campus that we know is going to help address some of these concerns over time. Those are all things that we've been talking through, along with a recognition that, you know, we've all been saying and you've heard in a few of these appeal hearings that our current regulatory system that we have under our zoning code is struggling. Right. We're all struggling with this and maybe it's not the best tool available to us. So we really owe it to everyone to work through what the options are. And as the mayor mentioned as well, I mean, the grand jury directed us to talk about something like an overlay zone. And we are that is one of a number of different tools that we are evaluating. We are doing that with our partners at Cal Poly because this is a. collective issue that we need to solve together. At the same time, I do want to acknowledge as well that some of the comments that we received this evening, the reason that you're hearing a lot about Battle of the Bands is that I was quite shocked about that idea personally. I want everybody to recognize that you shall not have a Battle of the Bands in a residential neighborhood, period. not okay. And so the idea that this was something that they were unduly not allowed to do. It doesn't matter if you're raising money for charity, that's nice. That is not a use that is appropriate to do in our neighborhoods. And the fact that folks think that that is okay, that's a big problem that we need to work on together. So we wanna find a way that we can together make it incredibly clear what the behavior is that is acceptable and not acceptable where people are trying to live together. Having bands playing is not you can do that other places where there are facilities that it can accommodate that type of thing better. But nope, not allowed. And our team, the work that they did in stopping that ahead of time was really hard fought work. And it took making people a little bit uncomfortable to get to that point. They did their jobs and I'm really glad they did. And so we're going to have to continue to struggle with balancing this this issue, because the reality is, if people don't recognize that having a battle of the bands in a residential neighborhood is not OK, then I think there's work that needs to be done and normalizing what is normal and making it incredibly clear what is not OK. So I just want to make that commitment. to everyone that from my standpoint, and in working with our team, we will continue to make that incredibly clear. And that is going to continue in the conversations that we have with Cal Poly going forward. Because to me, this was eye opening to some degree, because the things that folks seem to feel entitled to do, and how dare you kind of make me not do that? Oh, how? Okay. No, not okay. And I just want to make that clear that that's our commitment from our standpoint that we're trying to do this rationally, effectively, fairly, absolutely. And that includes not allowing people to disturb a neighborhood that way. So thank you for allowing me the moment. And I wanted to state the commitment to the community because they've been working through this issue for a very long time. And I want to just state that we see and hear you. And I know that we will keep working through this together. Absolutely.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And Vice Mayor, do you have more questions for the Cal Poly or are we moving on?

No, this is going to be like a hard turn. I'm sorry. No, it's all good. I just want to be able to let VP Harris sit down. You can sit down.

Thank you. Or go home, whichever you'd like. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I just had a quick follow up actually from also from public comment. There were some questions about that there had been implications. This is less of a question, more of a comment here that there are implications that somehow evictions might be stemming from city code enforcement. And I want to make sure we had some clarity there. I believe that the The testimony coming from other public commenters was more around the implications of when there are inspections done that potentially find issues that need to be rectified, that oftentimes landlords use those as an impetus or an excuse to do what's called a rent eviction. There's a lot of concern. A lot of communities have actually put specific protections in place around rent evictions because when the repairs are being done people get kicked out of their homes and then rents get raised and that's a big problem across the state and so i believe that's what the public commenters were referring to wanted to make sure we had some clarity around that and it was not as hard of a turn as you might think a lot of our students are living in these homes they're afraid to make uh make these calls to code enforcement and so uh So that's kind of something I wanted to make sure we clarified here. And just one more comment question, actually, kind of a chewy one. We had a one of the public commenters get up with a map about 80 satellite homes that had been identified in Monterey Heights and Alta Vista and actually kind of like perfectly captured the thing I've been really kind of just turning over and over in my head. You know, we have 20% of the student body, more than 20% of the student body currently involved in Greek life. And then we add in all the other club affiliations and we end up with just a lot more. So what that means is when we look at the neighborhoods around Cal Poly, up to a fifth of the rental houses are going to be occupied by probably folks that share affiliation. And we have this bullet on here that asks us to look at continuing the enforcement of fraternity and sorority land use violations consistent with enforcement priorities. And I'm really struggling with how are we enforcing the land use violations for these homes when so many of them are occupied by people who share these affiliations. And I know we kind of got at earlier, we're looking for actual events, right? But I know we heard also from the students earlier that sometimes there weren't specific events tied to that. And I'm trying to figure out where we achieve some consistency and clarity in our rules around that. And that's maybe for deliberations, I'm sorry. Maybe I just got into that part, but how do we do it? It was the essence of the question. Great question.

I think that gets to what John shared is so difficult about this. It's not just that Certain people are in a house. It's not just that a party happened. There's a lot of dots that need to be connected, which I understand how frustrating that is to everyone. It's frustrating to people who may be wanting to do certain activities are like, I don't know if this is going to qualify as something that's not allowed or not frustrating to people who are being impacted by events. who report them and then we don't necessarily have enough to go on to issue a violation. And so that's kind of the key place where I would like to look, if we are directed to do this, look at how do we make something that is actually getting at the behavior that is unacceptable in the neighborhoods and is something that is a little more consistently enforceable. from staff and understandable from the public, because I think both of those things would really help in this case. And that's really the challenge we have with with this as it is. Thank you.

And yeah, please go ahead and piggyback piggyback on that for just a second, because to me, it seems like it comes down to, in some respects, like with the noise violation, it comes down to the police department response or the land use response. Right now we have land use restrictions that are related to fraternities and sororities, and that's where it gets really confusing and starts to feel targeted, like was expressed by some of our speakers tonight. But the same violation or a noise violation could happen in our community in any neighborhood with any group. And it does with a loud party held by high school students like occurred during prom this year of so high or, you know, or it could be a fraternity group or it could be an unaffiliated group with the university. But it's the. It's the code enforcement piece that gets sticky, and I'm curious. I think we need to do something about that part.

Yeah, I think that's kind of, I mean, I think we can kind of jump into a little bit of the deliberations. I think that's as we, that's why this work plan is so huge, and people want us to move quick, and I appreciate that, and I wish we could, but it is like this rubber band ball that's just all tied together that we have to undo. Let's also remember that as we're, as a country, talking about removing civil rights from a lot of people on a pretty regular basis, I don't want us to have an unintended consequence of trying to manage who sleeps with whom in their homes. And then that's where we start to unravel into civil rights and some serious problems. So I just think as we talk about this, we have to be aware of the intended consequences and the unintended consequences. And I will say, yes, right now, here and now, we have the noise issues happening all the time. So I think, you know, I don't know the quantity, and I'm sure that if we ask the police department, they could get us that information. And I kind of wish they had that today, but that's okay. So I think that, you know, as I know that just in the small amount of knowledge I have, I mean, we've seen quinceañeras, we've seen eight-year-old basketball, we've seen a little condo with their one singer get a noise violation or a noise call. We've seen people that get noise calls on construction. I mean, within the normal time of day, people call on everything. but what we're really trying to do here is try to create the best type of livability that we can in all of the neighborhoods and so as we talk about this what does that look like um and i think as we talk about the land use we have to kind of peel that separate from the noise and even though that noise is part of that i want to make sure we're talking about these in two different time time periods or two different plans um does noise come into that land use of course it does But I also want to make sure we're not applying everything exactly the same, because I don't think those are exactly the same. So I think that as we have this conversation, we have to look at the other college towns and how does that work. We've done this numerous times, but we've never done it in this way. And so I think that's the conversation we need to keep having. We've talked to Davis. We've talked to Chico. We've looked at Berkeley, as mentioned earlier. And there's always a little bit something different. So I think having them all at one time in a work plan conversation in the future is something that we should definitely be looking at. I don't know how we can't. I know we've talked about going to the, International Town and Gown Association Conference, which in the past has always happened at the same exact time as graduation, and that has been a difficult time for us if we really want to be collaborative partners to go on a trip together to learn about how other people do it. That being said, I think that we have to have this as an actual plan. Otherwise, what are we doing? We're going to keep having this conversation over and over again. So as far as adding a work program, I would hope we do look at that in the future. I also think we have to have a conversation about education in two realms. There's the realms of whether it's Greek life or other clubs and organizations, whatever we want to call it at Cal Poly, but also there's the education of renters, and we can do that quicker than we can create a whole rental registry. Yes, I know we're looking into that in the future, but We have so many great things already on the Community Development Department website and housing, and I think we could, back to partners, partner with Slow Tenants Union or partner with someone else to be able to have some of that communication happening today. It doesn't necessarily have to be your work plan. I just want to be clear on that. That can be a work plan for the community as we move forward. So that's just something that I wanted to throw out there because I think there's, you know, when we look at that off-campus renter certificate that Cal Poly has, that's something for their students. I think that's something that we could have at Cuesta and in the general public because this is general education that people are telling us about that is, like, call code enforcement right now. Like, some of the things that were mentioned today, that should be called right now. So I think that's the conversation that I'd love to continue having as well. Council Member Marks?

Oh. Thank you. I'm ready to move into deliberation. It's being 10 o'clock, of course. I do want to say that I think that an enforcement priority really does need to be rental housing, although the Greek life situation is having its moment and it will continue. And I do want to talk about that. But I do feel that the fact that we have so many people living here in our city who are renters and many of them are students. So it's interesting that we're talking about the student, the small number really of fraternity sorority. folks who are causing certain disruption in the neighborhood. But then we have the vast number of other students who are living in substandard housing. So I think we really do need to prioritize and further develop. I like the idea that came up a couple of times of trying to dedicate a safe housing specialist position the way we have a stormwater, we have a stormwater specialist, and really developing that whole thing. I'm in favor, not that it's in front of us tonight, but I'm in favor of creating the rental registry as soon as possible and you know also just taking the whole dilemma of the tenants who live here taking it really seriously and moving forward on that so that's my idea of the priority in terms of the response time standards i'm going to change subjects here i think that the abandoned shopping carts are taking up way too much of your time. And it's too labor intensive. It's just a waste of your energy, staff energy. And it's also extremely annoying to everyone. And that's why there's so many complaints and it's so easy to do on ask slow. But I would, just throw out an idea of actually picking them up, taking them someplace and holding them ransom. I'm not talking about the people, I'm talking about the shopping carts and saying, okay, it's $100 a day until you come pick up your shopping carts. In other words, we've got them, they belong to you, you have to come get them and if you don't every day, it's going to get more and more expensive to you because what these grocery stores, I've spoken to a number of them, what they say is, it's a cost of doing business. So each cart costs about 400, $500. So maybe if the cost of doing business actually becomes a true cost in terms of fines, I don't know, that sounds really draconian, but you think of some possible way that we can, I mean, I really applaud the effort to look at your time, the staff time, and look at the true priorities that are out there and see if there's ways that you can reallocate the time you have to devote to these low priority activities. Let's see, I had some more. When I look at the number of active members, I'm going to the fraternity, sorority situation right now, there are fraternities that have 250 members or 239 members or 248 members or uh 261 members 234 members and rcups for their chapter house would say that they could only have a meeting with 25 people but they have 200 members how are they supposed to have a chapter meeting okay that i do believe cal poly has has left but i'm sure they will have a chance to look at the tape later um what does cal poly think where are they going to meet what where are they going to actually do their fraternity sorority activities oh i know where they can do it They can do it right here, Alta Vista, Buena Vista, the targeted neighborhood that a very creative student group thought that we should make a student a Greek row overlay and take over all these R1 projects. I want to say this is dead in the water, by the way. I totally will go down fighting for this one, right? This is not what we need to do. there are so that the number of permanent residents is diminishing is because of the small minority of, um, satellite fraternity houses, uh, that create this really it's beyond a party scene. It's a rave scene and, uh, the whole dynamic. And so, uh, permanent residents who can afford it or who frankly age out are leaving and that's the reason it's becoming a student-dominated a neighborhood however that doesn't mean that we should give up and say oh well you know the students are the small minority are territorial and they won and therefore we're going to stop regarding this as our one I think if we do ever look at an overlay we should look at the R3 and R4 neighborhoods that exist close to the university, and then say this is the only place they can be, fraternity, sororities, and then vastly increase the fines if there are satellite houses elsewhere. I think in many ways we're being too lenient. The other thing I want to say is that Cal Poly has created And we heard this from several of the fraternity presidents, and they did a good job, by the way. I thought they were very organized and professional. But we heard from several of them that they're having sanctioned events. Cal Poly has sanctioned these events in the neighborhoods, in the satellite fraternity houses. So they think they've been led to believe and maybe it's just wishful thinking on their part, but they think if Cal Poly says that it's okay for me to have this sanctioned event on Albert Drive or in Buena Vista, that means it's okay. So they think that Cal Poly sets the policies for the city, not that the city sets the policies for what happens in the neighborhoods. okay they're wrong but I could tell from and it wasn't just now we just at least two of them that brought that up so if they are sanctioned Greek events they are not informal gatherings but they are fraternity functions that's the reason that they have to be reported in AB 524 so although People can say, well, it was just people who happened to be part of this Greek organization, so happened to live together in our one neighborhood. But wait a second. Why would they have to register as having a sanctioned event if it's not a Greek related? You see what I'm saying? Why would they have to report it on AB 524 if it's not a Greek or not a fraternity or sorority event? If it's just a birthday party and they happen to all be in the same fraternity, they wouldn't have to report it on the 524. These are all sanctioned Greek events. And then when you click on these hot links and you try to figure out what street address, that's when they just say it's in the city of San Luis Obispo. So I feel that Cal Poly is actually enabling illegal fraternity satellites in R1 and R2 neighborhoods. When you look at all these, When you, where are they supposed to go? Where are these students supposed to go? When you look at the numbers of people, they say 20% of the student population is affiliated with Greek, has a Greek affiliation. Where are they supposed to go? They can't, oh, I know where they can go. They can go right here, Alta Vista, Buena Vista. they can go into the R1 neighborhoods. And so I feel that Cal Poly really needs to step up. They were flexible, as Terrence Harris said. They were accommodating. I think what they did with taking St. Patrick's Day event on campus is a good sign. I don't know if it will continue. A million dollars is a lot, plus the $300,000 that the city had to pay. It's a lot to accommodate the party style. Okay. But Cal Poly really needs to stop pushing their wish to have a really robust Greek system onto city streets in such a way that it makes life in the neighborhoods very difficult. And I do want to say that the cluster of these illegal fraternities in the neighborhoods creates an environment that it makes it very difficult for people who have to work for a living to live there. And so that's why neighborhoods are emptying out of regular long-term residents and i think it's too bad i think we need to really stand by uh our residential neighborhoods and i'm gonna i'm gonna stop there on that but let me just make sure i've got all the things exploring a simplified administrative fine structure i think that would make sense if it's doable and not too uh labor intensive Yes, we should add a work program to, I'd say rather than create, at least explore options for a new regulatory structure. I think we have to continue the enforcement of fraternity and sorority land use violations with the present system until we come up with something better. I think we do need to definitely have a lot of conversations with Cal Poly and with the students and the alumni who are involved with that. But in the meantime, we need to keep the pressure up. And I just want to say my heart goes out to the people in the code enforcement staff who have to do this work. It's tough. But we can't just say, oh, the students are feeling bad because they don't want to follow the law. And so they want the law to change. It's like, oh, yeah, right. Anyway. Yes, and then undertaking work to analyze time-intensive enforcement. I think that's important. In terms of neighborhood wellness and all that, again, I'm just going to say that we need to prioritize health and safety for renters, and I do support the... creation of the multi multifamily smoke-free ordinance I think that that would make a lot of sense and many other organization studies do that so anyway I think I'm gonna stop right there thank you thank you council member Schwarzman I just want to offer to the vice mayor because she had her do you want me to go okay

I know, but she still she was just gathering her thoughts. I wanted to make sure she was had done gathering gathering them. Um, 1st, I just want to, uh, open by thanking everybody. I mean, the room is cleared out a little bit now, but it's late. Uh, it was a packed house earlier and I really. appreciate the just the variety of types of community members that were here today there was a lot of passion and all of the speakers comments and you know this is important this is where we live and sleep and play every day and so it's important for us as a city to get it right and there was a lot on the plate today from safe housing to fraternity and sorority noise violations. So it was kind of the whole spectrum. So I really appreciate everybody sharing their thoughts and feelings and experiences. And I hope that we all in the big picture want the same thing. We want a safe, liveable, healthy community where everybody can thrive no matter what part of their life they are in. And I think we have a natural difficulty because we have such a broad spectrum of different types of people in our community. So it creates challenges and opportunities. Looking down the list here, I think our safe housing has to be one of our highest priorities. I think that that is represented in our priorities that the staff shared earlier and it's pretty clear that that's really high priority right now and I think it needs to be not only for our renters but for our Uh, folks that live in, um, non rental housing as well. We need to be able to keep up with our code enforcement responsibilities. And as council member Mark said, hopefully that means spending less time on things like shopping carts and trash cans. So, whatever we can do, I know this is later in the list, but whatever we can do to undertake. work that is going to analyze and make what is consuming a lot of our time consume less time in the short and long term is going to hopefully give us more time to focus on those high priority needs, which is what is really important. And it's pretty clear, unfortunately, even though a lot of people have asked us to put more funding into one area or another of code enforcement right now, As you heard staff say earlier, this is not really a revenue-generating activity, and there are lots of requirements that keep us from charging higher fees and fines and penalties for some of this behavior and some of these situations. It's not going to close the gap that we would need in order to add another staff person. do what i think governments do all the time is you know try to be more efficient and do more with less and as much as i hate saying that um it's it's the reality that we need to always constantly keep doing um so yes i'm affirming the current enforcement priorities and response times and i do appreciate the idea of exploring a simplified administrative fine structure My caveat to that, it's always easier when these things are simpler and more straightforward and people understand them. So whatever we can do in all of our processes to make things more straightforward, I think we should do it. The caveat to that is I don't think that the fine for leaving your trash cans out once should be the same as something that's a more serious health and safety issue. And I do think that we should, where we can look at, and I would assume this would be a bigger conversation than just tonight, we should look at things like shopping cart fine systems and noise violations and see where we can tweak things to create a better motivation system where it needs to be in order to help us handle some of these issues. In terms of adding a work program for fraternities and sorority houses, I think it's clear that the current CUP process is not working for anyone. That's been discussed by several people today. It's doesn't make sense in a lot of ways. And it also doesn't handle the issues in our R1 neighborhood. It's pretty specifically focused on group organizational housing. And I'm being careful not to say fraternity and sorority, because even though that's in our code, I think it does need to be clarified that it's really any organization that wants to have a house in an R3 or R4 neighborhood that needs to be clarified so that it doesn't seem like it's targeting particular groups because i think that's what it feels like right now even though our definition is accommodates a wider range of groups and the r1 zoning issue is um or the the operation of houses in an r1 zone is a is a separate but related issue that i think we need to tackle and i hope that when we do that we will have lots of feedback loops with Cal Poly, with student groups, with our neighborhood groups, with all of the parties in our community that have a stake in, and I hope it creates an opportunity to come together and fix some of our processes, align things between the university and the city in ways that is more productive and clearer for everybody. Continuing the enforcement of fraternity and sorority land use violations consistent with the enforcement priorities. I wish we had a shorter term solution for doing this better. I don't know what that solution is. So I think, unfortunately, in the short term, we're stuck with what we've got. But I do think that we need to treat these issues as they are noted in our priority list. um directing staff to take oh i already think i covered that one so um there are a few other things that i'd like to say about safe housing in addition to it continuing to be our highest priority um the issue that was brought up earlier about renovations i just want to comment on that and a little bit um We've heard lots of stories of people in unsafe housing conditions, and I have my own recent example with an intern that I've been working with who called her landlord about a window not closing properly. And when the property management company came out to look at the window, they stuck a dowel in the window. and said, just leave that there. Prop it open permanently. Never mind that their heater also didn't work. Never mind that this was a household with, I think, three young women living in it. So there were just all sorts of issues with that. And when I suggested that she contact code enforcement about it, she was like, I am not doing that because I still need to live there for a little while longer. So I think that that fear is real and And even if they're not going to be rent evicted, they don't know that. So we have a lot of work to do on that front. And I liked the idea of making some of our safe housing data more accessible. I think that came up in one of our public comment suggestions. I know that we're talking about a rental registry in the future, but if we do have data now that is findable, but maybe it's difficult to find, maybe we can do what we can in the short term to make it more easy to find. I'm not totally clear what's in that second bullet there that you're looking for guidance from us from. Maybe you could clarify that before I finish the last two.

That's OK. So the second bullet, because this was originally intended to be a conversation about property maintenance standards and, you know, we talked about renter protections. We said we'd talk about this then. We added fraternities and sororities. We've added some other themes. So we wanted to just have this open-ended question of are there other property maintenance standards or neighborhood wellness issues that you'd like us to look at addressing in the future?

I guess my question is, have there been things that have risen to the attention at the staff level that they would recommend in that area?

Not at this time. I really think that a lot of what we'd like to do is covered in the first set of recommendations, looking at what we're doing, the fine structure, I think will be interesting for us to explore and whether or not that's more of a stick, like the carrot and the stick for property maintenance standards. Um, so at this time, I think we don't have recommendations here unless no, I think there's a lot of education. You know, we keep coming back to the education, but a lot of education that can happen surrounding these things. I keep coming back to shopping carts, trash cans. It's a safe housing, but a lot of it is just people understanding what the rules are and then how to address them.

Okay, then I won't add anything to the list there, but I will second your. Your motion to kind of increase the education I know we talked about that in terms of safe housing, I know you mentioned that earlier mayor it's. There are a lot of folks in the Community that could use the education on what what safe housing looks like what what they should. from their safe housing and if they're not seeing it, what to do. And I know we'll talk about that more in the future as we get more into those conversations. I think in terms of the one last thing that I'll mention about Cal Poly that I thought, first of all, I really appreciate them coming. I appreciate them being open to answering a lot of questions. I think I saw a lot of hands up in the air, you know, just appreciating the information that they were sharing. And there is still a lot of work to do. And I appreciated them acknowledging that as well. One thing that they were talking about was with their registration system. It was clear to me that that is just a registration system. It doesn't mean that they are putting any checks and balances in when somebody registers a party, and I would love us to work towards aligning that it not only be just a registration process to make sure that students are safe and that there's harm reduction strategies put in place, but also that, you know, that the students are alerted if they're thinking about doing something in an area that it's illegal. It's up to us and Cal Poly, I think, to to help them learn the proper way in places of doing their events. So i i would like to see us move more in that direction and then last but not least in future study sessions councilmember marks you beat me to it but i would love to see us do something more on the smoke-free housing ordinance i've talked to lots of folks about the data that that the public health folks provided tonight. And we were the first city, as they pointed out, to have a no smoking ban. And not only is this important for our current residents, but I think it would philosophically honor our legacy as caring about people's health and safety. And I think there are ways of doing it. I know I've heard some of my colleagues express concern about people being evicted over they're smoking in their homes and it sounds like there are ways to incorporate such clauses into ordinances so that somebody cannot be evicted solely because of their smoking and that would at least help those who are not smoking be exposed to less of that dangerous secondhand smoke in their homes so i'll leave it there thank you staff for all the work you did

Thank you. Council Member Boswell.

Thank you, and thank you to everybody who came tonight and sent us emails. It's a challenge to sit here and kind of make real-time decisions because I feel like in the last 48 hours from the email and then what we heard tonight, I've just learned a lot of new stuff and gotten some new perspectives. I'd like to go stew on it for a while, but we need to move forward. So I'm going to go through the list and try to be brief on just some responses to each of the prompts from the staff. Starting with A, I think this one's pretty simple. I think the four-tier enforcement priority and our response time standards that we have are appropriate and do reflect our a high priority of safe housing, not only because the state's law is telling us, but it's something we had always prioritized. So I think we're OK there. There's probably there probably is some value to exploring our fine structure. I don't know if I would put it as a priority, given that there are several other things on this list that I think might be a little bit more important. I am curious to what extent we think our fines might be adjusted such that they provide more of a deterrent effect, because I think we can see some evidence that in some cases I mean, that's the point of them. They're not cost recovery. They're there for deterrent, and I think in a number of cases they are not providing sufficient deterrent effects. But it wouldn't be a high priority for me, at least not now. C is adding work program item to create a new regulatory, yeah, the fraternity house one. So yes, obviously we've got to work on this. We've endlessly commented how the CUP structure is not working and our general approach to regulating fraternity and sororities as a land use is not working. We've seen a lot of examples. of that tonight. We are going to need other options. I think we've heard a lot of good testimony tonight from lots of different parties about what the boundaries of that might look like. But, you know, really, this is this is something we kick over to staff. Staff's got to go do a lot of homework and bring us some options. I do think there's a few things that I heard tonight that I've been thinking about that are important to me, so I'll just name a few quick principles. First and foremost, despite what the Beastie Boys had to say about the issue, partying in neighborhoods is not a right. And particularly these massive parties and battles of the band are simply inappropriate. We don't allow, you know, we allow bed and breakfast in residential zones. There's a clause in there that they cannot have essentially parties where there are guests. So, you know, we're incredibly restrictive on the things that we allow in residential. When we allow other kinds of uses in residential throughout our code, I don't see why fraternities and sororities would be separate from that. A second principle I think is important is this issue will not be solved without greater leadership from Cal Poly. I've been on campus for 28 years as faculty member. I've heard endless discussions throughout my career at Cal Poly about the important role of leadership. Well, here's an opportunity for Cal Poly to demonstrate leadership. I appreciate that they came tonight and were very direct in answering our questions. And I do appreciate the good dialogue that we have with them. And I recognize that they've got a tough job. Managing a campus of 22,000 students is no easy task. somebody asked me once would i ever want to be a university president and i said absolutely not even how much they get paid i still would not do that job that is a hard job so i recognize the real challenge that they have but this is a moment where they've got to step up and leadership means not only figuring out quickly how to how to make campus a more of a true community in a way. I mean, it's like a small city. It's a small city there. With faculty, I don't know, 25,000 people would be one of the largest cities in the county by that measure. And it needs to have the full range of opportunities for students to do the things that students want to do on that campus. The other part of that leadership is being clear and regular in communicating with the community and the public about what they are doing. Please keep us regularly updated on how you're addressing this problem and steps you're taking. And then the final principle I would mention is that we've really got to get alignment on our rules. I think a big reason that this problem occurred is that the fraternity system grew so fast and so large. Cal Poly had a whole set of rules that were being changed almost on a regular basis for how they were managing fraternities. Fraternities themselves through their national organizations have changed how they do business, right? It's a lot of things changed in a relative short amount of time and there's just misalignment and miscommunication across all of these ways that we're trying to manage them. So we've got to find alignment with a variety of rules. D on here is continuing enforcement. Here I just put yes. And these are the city's laws. And if we have them on the books, we need to enforce them. And I believe that we need to do better at establishing the administrative record that can be used for civil litigation to enforce these laws if necessary. E is, this is the, sorry, my notes are slightly different from this sheet. Oh, that didn't align with what I have. This is a, sorry, let me look at my, the agenda packet because that is slightly differently worded. Oh, yes, okay, so this is the looking for time efficiencies in how we do current code enforcement. I really appreciate, I understand staff is always hesitant to sit here and say, yes, we need more staff positions. I know you're very aware of the budget situation and the challenge that we have, but it certainly seems to me like maybe we're a bit understaffed in code enforcement. However, I would suggest that this item where we're looking for possible efficiencies that this be prioritized in advance of the financial plan, such that we could make decisions at the financial plan on whether we need to put additional resources into staffing here. So some internal work on how you're organized as in code enforcement team, what you're prioritizing, what we may be able to move to different parts of the organization, or do differently like shopping carts. And then once we've sort of looked at that internal efficiency, then saying, okay, if we do that, are we still in a situation where we would need additional staffing to meet those target turnaround times that we have? I think it's critical, though, that come to us in advance of the financial plan. Because that decision needs to be made within the next year. Number six, I do not see as a priority because I've probably, we've named too many other things to do as it is. And then the last one is any other topics, and I would support a study session on the smoke-free multifamily. It's come up a lot of times. I think there's a lot of interest in us learning more about how that might be able to work. I do think at some point, again, but I think at some point we are going to need to have a conversation or at least some more information on short-term rentals since we're not doing proactive enforcement. It doesn't seem like it's a problem that's gotten out of control yet, but I do get concerned that it could if we're not doing too much on enforcement. And then the final thing I wanna mention, it's not a study session or anything, but I do wanna encourage the tenants union to continue a conversation with the city about a more formal partnership. The city partners with all kinds of nonprofits. We have MOUs with Climate Coalition, with Bikesville County, we have relationships with a lot of non-profits in the arts these are formal relationships and i think there might be a role for this tenant union in helping us better educate tenants out there about their rights under the law so i would encourage that conversation to continue so i encourage the tenant union and i encourage our city staff to continue that conversation about is there a more possibly a more formal role thank you thank you vice mayor

that's nice going towards the end a lot of it's been already been said um i'll just quickly thank everybody again for all of their uh comments and letters today and uh over the past few weeks I'll start off right away by seconding what Boswell recommended with looking at prioritizing and streamlining code enforcement to take a hard look at what actually impacts health and well-being of residents so that we're better balancing the limited resources that we have. Prioritizing that and then looking for efficiencies and figuring out where we need those additional resources ahead of the financial cycle. Number one here, safe housing. We've got to keep focus and resources on this issue. We talked about evaluating process on this one. I think through the discussion today, it seems like sometimes we're given a little bit of leeway here to get compliance to ensure landlords are bringing units up to habitability standards, but kind of finding some some standardized process there, incentivizing immediate resolution, and if it makes sense to look at the fine structure more broadly, kind of figuring out how that might better kind of bring more of our residences up to standards there when health and safety are being ignored. I'm really eager to see implementation of better data strategies so that we can better communicate and educate and analyze patterns within the community. That's coming, of course, in a later conversation, but it keeps coming up here. We've got to look at that rental registry. I was glad to have a conversation today to talk a little bit about the fire inspections and code enforcement and some of the alignment that we have there and kind of maybe spending some time enhancing alignment on that front, making sure that code enforcement has the tools and strategies to help ensure tenants know their rights and are made aware of what resources and laws protect them so that that education, but being really proactive with that education there. Those are all things I want to make sure that we're focusing on ahead of that budget cycle when possible. Sounds like a lot of those things are already in place, just kind of refining what's there. Also in favor of having discussions around smoke-free multifamily, as long as it includes protections from eviction based on smoking alone. uh following up on the short-term rental conversation you know i'm hopeful that the new uh kind of closing of the loopholes that we did a couple meetings ago will will help us streamline verification of compliance um and make sure that people are following our regulation i know it seems like small potatoes we don't have a ton of complaints around that front but it is a limited housing market and There's a surprising number of violators out there of our ordinance and every house counts when we're talking about our housing market here. I want to make sure everybody's following the rules on that front. Getting into the can of worms here on Greek life. I really understand and appreciate the importance of people having community and camaraderie. And I think that we need to make sure that there's space for that. But getting into the city side of things, CUPs, as we talked about in the presentation, are designed to allow for something to be a use in a zone where it otherwise would not be allowed. And in my mind, fraternity and sorority houses that host events are just not compatible with residential neighborhoods. It's fine if they're where people live and sleep, but they are not a place for hosting events, regardless of the density of that neighborhood. So CUPs are not an effective tool for us. Several of you have already mentioned it, but the only solutions that I found through the literature and looking at all the different town and gown communities is when these activities are moved on campus. There needs to be a specific zone where these activities are allowed. Students need meeting spaces. They need event spaces. The solution is for Cal Poly to move these uses on and was glad to hear them talking about things to come. I know we've been having this conversation for a few years here, so I'll be eager to get some clarity on when and how we're going to see more of that stuff moving onto campus. And also some transparency on the communication front with the community, taking a leadership role, as you mentioned, Councilmember Boswell, on communication so it doesn't come to a game of telephone of us having to say we had a conversation once about this thing that Cal Poly might do in the future. Cal Poly needs to be communicating to their neighbors about how they plan to tackle these real neighborhood issues. And we need to continue to focus on impacts to neighborhoods through enforcement of noise and unruly gatherings and making sure that when there are impacts in our R1, our R2, our R3, our R4 zones, that we're getting in there and we're taking care of those noise complaints. The reality is, though, this is going to be a really big problem for us to solve. We've talked a lot tonight about how 20% of students are participating in these organizations. And so I would be in favor of having a work program to look at the regulatory structure. I'm hesitant on that front because I know we have really limited resources and time and budget. And I don't want this to consume our code enforcement. I want us to... look at this problem and collaborate on this problem, but I really think this is a Cal Poly problem for them to solve. And as much as we can kind of reinforce that message, I think we really need to keep focused on that and make sure that we're looking at the health and safety of our residents as our primary problem to solve. There's always going to be some level of college in this town because that's what we all moved here for or we stayed for or we grew up next to and appreciated about. But there's also kind of a cultural expectation piece. And I think Council Member Marks sort of alluded to this in her comments earlier. I lived in Germany with my family for some time. And it was really interesting that the expectations of behavior in multifamily homes where we lived and in neighborhoods There was kind of a zero tolerance, especially during certain hours of the day, for noise and disruption. They even had a word for it, oma polisai, which is the grandma police, because if you made a peep, if you stomped too loud in your apartment, man, somebody was going to turn you in. But, you know, on the flip side of that, there was a ton of spaces for gathering and for celebrating. There's beer gardens and halls and parks, and a lot of space was provided to kind of get your yaya's out. And, you know, we need both of those things. We need respect in the neighborhoods. We need cultural expectations of good behavior. And then we need space for people to be people. So I'll just leave my comment there on that. And then I wanted to come back to the fine bullet here and make sure that If we do approach streamlining fines, and I actually think that could be a useful tool, I want to be really cautious that we're not using them to kind of overly burden people with fewer resources. That has been a long history with administrative fines and code enforcement, and that's a really careful thing we need to navigate because It is a tool and it's an important tool and it needs to be really applied in cases of making sure that people are providing for the health and safety of others when they have responsibility over that. And not as something that we just use to burden the poor with more fines on top of whatever else they're struggling with. So just gonna put that out there that we need to balance those two things. And I think I've answered all of the questions. Anything that I didn't get to there? All right, thank you.

Well, thank you to my colleagues. A lot of things have been said, so I will do my best to streamline. I definitely hear revisiting the shopping cart ordinance. I definitely hear looking at fines. And I guess I'm just going to keep with my theme of being aware or careful of what the unintended consequences could be as well when we have these conversations. So the shopping cart, just as a quick reminder, was because a lot of debris was being hauled around by people and kind of creating camping places. And so as we talk about, wow, 10% seems like a massive consumption of code enforcement's time and it isn't working and i want to make sure we look at give you the opportunity or the encouragement to say hey what else could be done but i also want to make sure we're thinking about we'll be back here having that conversation again if we're just like don't worry about that anymore so i just want to be very careful of that um I think one thing that we're hearing for the 27 to 29 year is let's talk about staff and budget or let's talk about more staff with the understanding of budget. I don't want to say let's do more with less just for the heck of it because that's just not great. That's not resulting in a great experience. But I so I think if we're managing the fines and efficiencies with also maybe more staff because I think about the amount of time we're spending on this, we're going to keep spending this conversation. So maybe instead do it in a more useful way with the more staff. I also want to be careful of, I don't want to tell you, you know what you need? You need this kind of specialist. I think you coming back to us and sharing what makes sense in the best way is logical. Because Yeah, Cal Poly is a little city. They have their own wastewater resource facility. They have food. They have, you know, kind of a theater. They have all these things that they're doing and they're trying to figure out what to do. They need to have these events on campus. They need to have their meetings on campus. I know I've spoken to Of course, Courtney now and Vice President Harris have spoken to President Armstrong of like they understand this needs to happen. They're looking at ways to do it. None of it happened. And none of it happens fast because if we're talking about additional buildings, those don't go up overnight. So talking about what do we do in the in-between, what kind of pilot program do we have? At schools, they add mobile units. What are we talking about? Mobile units don't really work for a 100-person or plus 230-person meeting. But what could work? And we do need to hear from them of what that looks like. more clear expectations could be part of that fine conversation. Is it necessarily changing the cost or is it more streamlined explanations and being clear for all of our community members? Multifamily homes and the no smoking I super appreciate the public health and safety, and I'm definitely open to a conversation in the next 27, 29 year about what that looks like. I also This may be too blunt and assumptive, but I would for sure rather someone smoke tobacco than heroin, lots of other things that cause overdoses of immediate death. So I wanna just be real clear on what are we talking about? Again, unintended consequences and how do we manage that? So as we talk about these things, I don't want us to throw the baby out with the bathwater, cut our nose off, spit our face, all those fun things. I think, yeah, I mean, we've all said it, CUP is not really working. So what else do we do? And I think we need to have those conversations. I think those need to be with multiple people from the Cal Poly community that this is affecting and can actually make change on that campus. I think it should be multiple neighborhood community members and association and how it's affecting them. It hasn't really been successful having this conversation with the two together, so maybe we try something new and say, what works for you, what works for you, and bringing it back together. I'm throwing out ideas at this point because it's a study session and trying to figure out what could work and be more effective than hitting our head against the wall numerous times and expecting something to change doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. safe housing more to be more accessible is definitely something that is top of mind for all of us and myself included. And you know, one of the things that I started thinking about as we've been sitting here is So climate coalition, the by coalition, like you're saying, you know, we've we've outsourced and we've partnered and outsourced with people before. And maybe that's part of the conversation for the next two years of versus trying to add another thing to your plate is what do we look like? What do we look at for education? Because. it's not just postcards it's not just door hangers it's not just social media it's not just email it's not just wow it's not just slow days so i could go on i won't i'm sorry to sound like the count from sesame street but it really is multiple different things and so what how does that happen that's not code enforcement expertise. That's not your you have other expertise that you need to be focused on. And let's give that to people who do that. So let's let's talk about that more. And I think one of the things that we have done well in CDD is the development roundtable. And I think something like a property management roundtable, something like the Cal Poly roundtable, and let's not forget there's also Cuesta. One of the reasons that in SELC this task force idea got kind of kicked out of being part of SELC was that Cuesta doesn't have Greek systems. They kept being in sitting in conversations where they are just whittling their thumbs. It's not there. It's not what they have on their campus. So not saying that student from Cuesta couldn't be at a loud party, of course they could be, but let's talk about let's having a roundtable with Cuesta. And again, not necessarily saying that CDD has to be the person that runs all of this. So as we say this, I'm just throwing out the ideas to say how do we get to truly that goal of for all kind of concept and creating the best outcome. I think the last thing, I guess there's two last things. We talk about event spaces that need to happen on campus. For a hot minute, I don't remember which group, but I think it was HRC. The Human Relations Commission, we've talked about community centers for years now, since at least 2020, but quite honestly way before that as well. We don't really have a lot of large event spaces in the city outside of Cal Poly as well. We have Meadow Park and we have Ludwig and we could continue naming a few places, but really we don't have large let's hang out spaces. So I think that's something as we talk about this and you were talking about gathering, I mean, I still, to this day, feel so bad that people are calling on a quinceanera, a birthday party, a ritual moment, a rite of passage moment, and got to shut that down? Like, come on. So we have to think about places that we can gather as a community as well. And then lastly, you know, I think about this conversation happening in the late 80s to early 90s is what brought around the student neighborhood assistance programs that I'm I'm thinking that there's something that we could do something similar with all the people at the table of. What else can we do in the neighborhoods that are not just a neighborhood watch of watching out? Is there something weird and shady happening? It's really of how do we all communicate together and how do we come together? In the past, that was those neighborhood block parties. Probably not going to do that, but it was neighborhoods getting together and we were helping kind of coordinate that. So what that looks like, I don't have the answer for today, but I think that We have to do this together. Otherwise, we're going to continue to silo and not actually come to a conclusion that works for everybody. I think that's answered all of them. Yeah. I know. It's time to go. So this is a study session. There's no liaison reports. There's no nothing. But I cannot tell you how much I am thankful for your team and how code enforcement has been out here and doing the work. Safe housing. communities at Cal Poly and how that's working together, and truly the community who's continued to come out today, but in the past, from the community and from our emails, et cetera. Please keep being part of the conversation. We appreciate you, and I know that we can do this together. All right, and good night. We'll see you next weekend, or sorry, we'll see you next Tuesday, Tuesday, sorry about that.