Cats can not sit on the lawn of a neighbor, and dogs, if licensed, can run free in parks.
Trash cans must be kept out of view, along with children’s playground equipment, and undergarments drying on a clothesline that can be seen by neighbors are prohibited.
These are some of the outdated municipal code provisions addressing nuisance that were first enacted in 1956, and with little revisions since then, the city council in Nevada City addressed proposals for change during this week’s meeting.
“This is part of our continuing effort to modernize our municipal code; you’ll see another half a dozen updates throughout this fiscal year,” Sean Grayson, city manager told the council.
A public hearing was held during this week’s regularly scheduled city council meeting, and even though some jokes were made, an effort to update the document was serious when it came to particular issues.
The council decided to continue the public hearing until the next regularly scheduled meeting on August 28, giving staff a chance to recommend some revisions and for the public to have more opportunities to share their input.
“One of the most common complaints we receive about nuisances in general is things that are visible from the street,” Grayson said.
The council and public comments recognized that determining a nuisance includes a certain amount of subjectivity.
“I would urge you to tread lightly when it comes to the subject of nuisance,” Don Fraser said during public comment. “One person’s nuisance might be another person’s sense of wonder.”
Over regulation and an amount of subjectivity when determining municipal code were some of the serious concerns addressed in public comment and by members of the council.
“I wanted to highlight some of the items in the ordinance before you tonight that people might perceive as creeping into over regulation and are certainly not interested in,” Grayson said.
The subject of decorative lights, with holidays such as Halloween and Christmas approaching was also rejected as a classified nuisance.
Making the City of Nevada too sterile would be unwelcoming according to another unnamed public commenter.
“I personally like going through a town where I can tell that people live there, and it’s not just a Disneyland movie set, but actual human beings — drying their clothes, sitting in their chair in their yard,” the commenter said.
An ordinance to allow tiny homes on wheels is currently seeking public input by Nevada County, and Tom Durkin, creative director for Sierra Roots No Place To Go Project, asked the council to support efforts to include RV’s and trailers as tiny homes.
“We’re going to ask them to include RVs and trailers as tiny homes; that’s where people live. It’s affordable housing. It may come to you at some point,” Durkin said. “You have people living in RVs and trailers right now in town. They are living in the shadows. Let’s make them legal… there are RVs and trailers that are livable. People shouldn’t be living in the streets if they can be somewhere safe.”
The ordinance would be enforced by neighbor complaints, which complicates things as well, according to Doug Fleming, councilmember.
“I don’t know how we do this without getting into a very slippery slope and a subjective analysis of what is a nuisance,” Fleming said. “I’m pissed at my neighbor, so I’m going to call him on every little thing that he does?”
Mayor Gary Petersen made the suggestion to give staff more time to revise the ordinance and focus on areas that may be of some serious concern.
“In my own experience where neighbors like to use these ordinances against other neighbors if they don’t like you — the grumpy neighbor thing,” Petersen said. “I’m going to recommend that we send this back and that we not advance it… and maybe we can refine it more carefully for our specific needs.”
Dan Foss, Nevada City Chief of Police, presented information to the council regarding how illegal encampments are dealt with in Nevada City, how some of the recent statements and court rulings affect policy, and how recent fires in illegal camps have been dealt with.
First, in a court case, Martin v. Boise, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it is cruel and unusual punishment to punish somebody for being unhoused.
“If they’re sleeping somewhere and they have nowhere to go, then it is cruel and unusual punishment to actually convict them or charge them with a crime,” Foss said.
That ruling was upheld and challenged in a separate case where eventually the Supreme Court ruled that punishment does not happen when you implement law, according to Foss.
The punishment is different than the regulation.
“There’s a lot of talk of what the Supreme Court did and didn’t do; they didn’t make homelessness necessarily legal or illegal. They just said that this is something that can be regulated differently by different communities, but the punishment cannot be extreme,” Foss said.
Recently Governor Gavin Newsom gave an executive order urging local governments to use unprecedented state funding to address unsanitary and dangerous encampments within their communities and provide people experiencing homelessness in the encampments with the care and supportive services they need — or else.
“I will say this affects us, not at all,” Foss said. “There’s no state law that says it’s illegal to be unhoused or to sleep on sidewalks or anything else. That is an ordinance, not a state law; those are regulated by the city council and municipalities.”
Foss went on to say “The governor can order state departments such as CHP, which he is doing, to enforce different state ordinances, but that doesn’t affect us, right? So when he introduces this, it has no effect or bearing on us whatsoever. You’ll see that in his comments, because he’s now saying, ‘Do it or else,’ and people are saying, ‘Or else, what?’ They say they will withhold your money. Well, it’s not an issue for us here.”
Foss then reviewed the key points in Nevada City’s camping ordinances.
The camping ordinance states that a person can not sleep on public or private property without permission from law enforcement or the city council.
The punishment for violating the camping ordinance the first time is $100; the second offense inside of 12 months is $200; the third offense inside of 12 months is $500, and the fourth offense is a misdemeanor, according to Foss.
“When we’re talking about this, there’s always discretion,” Foss said.
The threat for the community of Nevada City is fires, and two fires in June, one at Hirschman’s Pond, and one on Sugarloaf Mountain, required that the OES, public works, and the Nevada City Police Department were tasked with extinguishing the fire, posted 72-hour notices, and then removing the illegal camps that were a hazard.
Three tons of material was removed from the elaborate illegal camp at Hirschman’s pond.
“Fire safety is a huge threat,” Foss said. “The stats and the numbers are coming out for these campsites for fires, and most of this data is coming from bigger cities, but it’s up 75 to 80 percent from these campsites for fires.”
Many comments from the public disagreed with the manner in which the occupants of the camps and their belongings were treated, others informed the council that the fines would absolutely bury an unhoused person with no financial resources.
People camping illegally do not cause the majority of fires, according to Zachary Anderson-Collins, a resident of Nevada City.
“90 to 95 percent of fires are started by humans. The vast majority are not homeless people. It’s a smoke screen. It’s not the main issue,” Anderson-Collins said. “Fires start in this county every day; it’s not homeless people. It’s a way to push them out to blame them for the issue. It’s chains dragging from boats. It’s PG &E. It’s industry. It is not homeless people. It is scapegoating the problem to push them out because we don’t like to see them.”
Another unnamed public speaker called restrictions on public camping as a form of discrimination.
“The classifications and steps of genocide, it is a very long one. It does not just begin with discrimination of people. It begins by classification of people and defines them as something else, and then it moves on to discrimination and many, many other steps… The systemic dehumanization of homeless people,” the speaker said.
Other suggestions from the public were to accommodate basic needs.
“Let’s put more public restrooms around. The fact that you have to pay to use a restroom in this town because so many places say, ‘Customers only,’ make it highly inaccessible. Give people a dumpster. Oh my goodness, what a great idea. Now you don’t have to deal with three tons of waste, because people can actually get rid of the things they don’t want, instead of it accumulating in a place that will become a fire hazard, the speaker said.
Councilmember Daniela Fernández commented that the City is approaching the issue of fire danger and the dangers of illegal camps with superficial methods.
“We’re approaching a systemic issue with a bunch of band-aids,” Fernández said.
Fernandez expressed her confidence in the community policing practices that Chief Foss and the department take to heart; she also suggested that she and Councilmember Adam Kline work together with the Housing Committee, Sierra Roots, the County, and law enforcement to find new approaches to the camping ordinance.
“Because we are a small community of people who care, of volunteers, of people who show up. We are able to do things differently here,” Fernandez said. “I would love for Adam and I to find ways to work with the County, Sierra Roots, and law enforcement to look at another way to approach this, to figure out how we can mitigate and take care of people… the fact of the matter is, these are homes. You know, I have hazards and fuel in my home too, and so does my neighbor, and so does that neighbor… I don’t have an answer.”
Mayor Gary Petersen responded that with his many years of experience, he recalls actions by former United States President Ronald Regan that springboarded the problem of homelessness, and that a true solution was the distribution of wealth.
“You can weigh all of this at the feet of Ronald Reagan. California used to have a mental health system that was fantastic. It was amazing with state hospitals, with group homes. It was completely dismantled when he was governor… it exploded here well before anyplace else and was due to the dismantling of that mental health system.”
Petersen went on to say, “This is a very complex situation. It is our problem. It is all of our problem. I do know the answer. The answer is redistribution of wealth — that’s the answer.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-15 22:59:00
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