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Nevada City Council & Planning Commission Meetings
Nevada City Council & Planning Commission Meetings
2002-01-28 - Nevada City Council Meeting with Nevada City Council
- 10 minutes
Public comment focused on ongoing Thanksgiving water-quality and odor issues, with residents urging a full investigation and remedies, to be explained by the city engineer; a broader agenda item was anticipated. Correspondence from the California Department of Veterans Affairs addressed creating a Veterans Memorial Registry and a Vietnam memorial project, seeking volunteers to distribute surveys and discuss veteran representation on the council. Housing element Policies 14–16 were presented to guide growth based on city services, proposing a 35-unit per-project cap (including adjacent developments by the same applicant), a 12-unit overlay zone, 20% of subdivision lots with second-unit rentals, and 30% of homes at or below 1,500 sq ft to diversify housing and protect town character. State-law caveats noted the cap is per project (not annual permits) and two-year construction cycles may raise per-unit costs; affordability concerns raised by HUD prompted consideration of deed restrictions or partnerships. Planning Commission feedback highlighted concerns about large upfront projects and ensuring second units contribute to affordability. The council moved to adopt Resolution 202-4 amending the housing element with minor wording tweaks. Other topics included timber harvest/Banner Mountain Trail, city manager recruitment advertising strategy, and budget/administrative items.
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January 28, 2002, the record reflected on the numbers that are present.
I pledge allegiance to the fire of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Before us, the minutes from the January 14 meeting.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it in.
Second.
Page three, I'm going to take it.
Page three, toward the middle of our meeting for the talk.
Since I became United States, because I didn't feel the council should be able to report it, I actually didn't reverse that, because I felt the council should be able to report it.
So it doesn't feel it should be seen.
And then the last sentence would be, that urge me to support you is not welcome to be here with that urge.
That meeting?
I will yield to the city court.
I think I asked for support.
I asked for general support.
I asked for Steve specifically.
It doesn't matter.
And you said that was directed to Steve.
I remember saying it in a general way, but that's okay.
The key one was that we're changing.
It doesn't feel.
It doesn't feel.
And it certainly feels the same, because he feels the council should be able to report it.
Nobody yield to the city court, I'll show you.
Okay, any other corrections?
All those in favor of the Hiking to Ministers amendment?
Aye.
Talking reports.
Council committee reports.
Comments on items not on the agenda are welcome at this time.
However, action for discussion by the council may not occur at this time.
Comments will limit you to three minutes.
Is there anyone that would like to address the council on item not on this evening's agenda?
Hello, I'm Ianna Greenberg, the New York 14 German time drive from the city.
I want to talk about the water.
It was a problem just before Thanksgiving that the water had an awful lot of steam to it, and I've talked to some of you.
And that plea of a phone letter from my dad now, and I still smell it.
It's not the strongest before, but it's still there.
And I was wondering if maybe we could look into what's going on.
I hear it's only in the pockets of the city.
I talk to other people in my neighborhood that have the same problem still too.
It's not as pronounced as it was there, but it's still there.
Especially when you take a shower.
It's to the point where sometimes you start ganking or you're pressuring your team and you're too close to the water.
It's awful.
The water water filled them.
I'm not going to talk about the water, but I'm still getting the same money as everybody else in town.
I think it's maybe a little better water than I think it is.
But I would love for you to look into that.
14 German time?
I'm just a prospector.
Prospector?
I had a complaint from someone who lives just above you.
And it's not all mainly related.
Because when it started a week or so before Thanksgiving there was no rain.
And then there was rain and it smelled the same before and after.
Thanks.
Someone who spoke to me today, and it has to be Steven, and it's a friend of yours right now.
She had noticed the November problem and then said it had gone pretty much gone away.
And I believe sometime maybe from the end of December 1st of January, then it got it again.
And I noticed over the last few days that it happened again.
I did ask her to just give either the City of Paul or the President of Paul that the last time it was reported and now she needed it.
It's the same thing.
I talked to the water plant supervisor today.
We have received some complaints most of them from back into the system.
We tried to get part of the system.
And by the time it reaches other parts of town it was dissipated.
He started correcting the action on Saturday.
It takes a couple of days to notice it and then it's cleared up.
He has already started correcting the action and there is already more improvement in the speech.
At least from my house, it's much better.
We should really have a couple of days.
It's already amazing.
You're on Longstreet.
You're just down the street.
But just our water plant supervisor did say that he is an already working problem.
It's the same thing.
It's been on and off since we were built.
I also talked to Chris about it.
I'm sure we all read that article in the union back when the problem first emerged last fall where he was quoted as saying,
or somebody was quoted as saying that five years ago the state recommended some kind of fix.
I don't remember what the technical description there was that may have helped.
Perhaps this fix would have helped, but that fix was never implemented in the past five years.
I ran into Chris on the street a month or so back and asked him about that.
He said, well, we've got to talk to the city.
He needs to spend the money if we're going to do that.
It may be that there's a solution.
I don't think that the Spyler County just said that the solution is to wait until we notice the problem.
But what's getting really bad?
There is something Chris can do with some additional charcoal for the filters from there.
And yes, it does improve it temporarily, but it's ridiculous that we should have to deal with,
you don't know if you get up in the morning, what the shower's going to smell like,
and then wait several days.
It never gets to normal anyway.
At least at our house.
It hasn't been neutral since last November.
It's just the stench is either really bad or you notice a faint version of it.
Either way, we're being warned that people are in grass valley to get any less.
I really urge you to put this on the agenda and look into it very seriously.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, I was going to suggest that if we put them on the next agenda,
maybe the city engineer and Chris and the city manager and others could maybe give us an idea of what is causing it
and what possible remedies might be and what possible costs might be to remedy it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Anyone else?
We're close to hearing from the public.
Correspondents.
You can see two items of correspondence versus from the State of California Department of Veterans Affairs
and where we're trying to put together a Veterans Memorial Registry
of all the places throughout California that have any type of warm collapse or any type of Tetris.
We have a number around here on the three-way overpasses.
There are flaps for Vietnam.
There's a plus for Vietnam.
We have a memorial road.
Others.
So there's a little survey form asking for us to give them information so we can move on to the registry.
We might want to consider having the journey go to the bedrooms or getting some volunteers to hold them.
Locate all those.
Fill them out.
We may need more swarms if we have a lot of people here.
The next item is from Matt.
We're now asking the council to consider community contact information on us
to see if we can use it to make us serve the studio.
With regard to the first one, I didn't have the form.
It wasn't the task.
It was just the cover letter.
I don't know.
How many veterans do you have in the table here?
I may be the only veteran.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'm talking about the council.
I know about you.
I know about you.
It was a long time ago.
If the mayor would then authorize David and I as the two veterans in the table, take a look at this.
I'd be wrong to hear.
Absolutely.
With regard to Madlix, Chancellor getting great on service based on conversations I had with Arizona,
which makes the decision to serve her and transform her.
But I certainly, it's nice to see the service once in a while,
and remember what we used to have about her.
The folks in Arizona are made out of it.
No interest.
The article she referred to pointed out that you can take a vote on your stage after the facts were not all.
Remember that the prey on this is available.
That's the layer.
It's not.
Wait a minute.
When does that listen to you?
That's the end of that translation.
Yeah, I have a trade ticket.
You can't use it for just shovel purpose.
The transportation commission is one of their goals.
That's great.
I'm not here for people to use the whole country stage to offer any code for their own connections.
Okay.
Thank you, Madlix.
Public hearings.
Proposed amendment to the housing element of the general plan that include policies limiting the number of forms for the project
per year to 35, adding an overlay zone for 12 units, subdivisions, and requirements.
20% of plots and subdivisions contain second units, and that 30% of total homes and subdivisions are to be limited to 1,500 square feet.
Do you want to start us off on this?
Yes.
Council members, the planning commission has recommended these policies be added as part of the housing element of the general plan.
Their genesis was a year ago.
Councilman McKay presented to his fellow council members this sheet in which he was addressing the issue of rapid growth
and the possibility of large projects coming to Nevada City.
And in this sheet he was recommending a policy where the city limit projects to 35 units per year per project.
That was followed up two weeks later by a proposal by the commissioner of the ulcer,
considering the size, diversity of housing, and the requirement in certain subdivisions that houses have seven unit projects.
And what the staff did was take those two proposals and combined them and should they have acted in front of you.
And we've named, we've turned them into three policies, which have been named Housing Element 14, 15, and 16.
And a staff report and mitigated negative declaration was prepared, which has gone through the agency and the planning commission.
I'm sure you're probably familiar with it.
You may have questions.
There's a lot of information in the staff report.
But just to walk you through it briefly, what the staff report did was it took the policies and looked at them in terms of general plan consistency
and identified certain policies and objectives in the existing housing element, which it was consistent with.
These were policies that involved encouraging diversity of homes and encouraging second units, that type of thing.
And then since the policies include a regulation on how much development per year per project, the staff report has a description of Nevada City Services
because in order to justify regulating the rate of growth, the issue was whether the city's services and utilities could keep up with that type of growth.
So there's a section in here mostly taken from the draft SPIR report describing city services.
The most constrained systems seem to be water and wastewater street systems, too, would need to accommodate growth.
And there was a justification for regulating the rate of growth.
And then there's a policy by policy analysis.
First policy, no individual housing development or adjacent housing developments owned by the same applicant shall exceed a maximum of 35 constructed units
or 35 recorded lots in any one year.
The state planning law has several provisions which discourage regulating the rate of growth.
And city attorney Jim Anderson has looked at that policy and determined that the language in question simply limits the number of units that may be built on a particular site on an annual basis.
And does not limit the number of total building permits that can be issued on the city on an annual basis.
So the city, according to the city attorney, the city is in compliance with state law regarding most of those provisions.
There was a question as to whether limiting the amount of units per year would increase the cost of housing development.
Obviously, it takes, for instance, a 70-unit development.
Under this provision, it would be required that it be built under two years, two construction cycles, rather than just one construction cycle, so that would raise the cost per unit.
And because of that fact, the city attorney recommends certain findings when an ordinance, an implementing ordinance, is to be considered, which will be later in the process.
Based on the findings made in Lee v.
the City of Monterey Park, a case where a similar situation in which the City of Monterey Park had a similar policy that the court found.
The findings were where a complaint with state law.
Excuse me, just for my own curiosity, in the scenario that you gave, say, 70 units, they could be able to do the whole thing through the planning commission and have everything approved.
And then this year, bill 35, and next year, bill 35, or would they have to do two trips to the planning commission in a situation like that?
That's one of the specifics of the ordinance would be decided at a later time.
Either approach would be consistent with this policy.
It would be a matter of pragmatic, which is the pragmatic way to go and how the public hearing process goes, I would imagine.
The second policy is Housing Element Policy 15.
On parcel zones with the potential to provide for 12 or more residential lots or housing units, the City Council shall make determinations in the form of a zone change.
The one, ultimate density of the project property, not to exceed the maximum density of the base zoning district.
And two, the number of units to be constructed annually, not to exceed the annual number of units allowed to be constructed.
This policy would be implemented by adding an overlay zoning district on our zoning district map for all residential and planned development zone properties with the potential to provide 12 or more residential lots or housing units.
And what it would mean would be that no development would occur on those parcels.
If, unless it had been rezoned, which would take an ordinance change, which would involve the City Council.
And the memo that was prepared by Commissioner Oberholzer says this rezoning would be discretionary, and the allowable units for each residential property would be different on a property by property basis.
So that the base zoning could be adjusted to a lower density, not to a higher density, but to a lower density based on information that the Council receives and determines, justifies a change in the density.
The third policy is proposed housing element policy 16.
It states, 30% of all homes located in new subdivisions shall be 1500 square feet or smaller.
Additionally, 20% of all lots in each subdivision shall include a small second unit rental.
This is a fairly innovative approach to diversifying the housing in Nevada City.
The policy would assure that a new supply market rate 1500 square foot homes and second units are constructed over the years as the city grows.
And there's a statement in the staff report, which I believe was reported in the union.
No one's challenged it yet, but I'll just read it to you.
It is clear that without such requirements for other incentives, it is unlikely that the Nevada City real estate market would generate very much of these housing types, if any.
Consequently, it is likely that this policy would help diversify the housing types to be constructed in the years ahead.
This policy would increase densities across the board because of the requirement for second units.
And based on information that we had gathered for the SPIR report, in the five-year SPIR that we had studied, it would add an approximate 104 new second units at some future build-out if this policy was implemented to its maximum.
And within the existing city, if you took all the vacant land that would be affected by this policy, it probably would result in fewer than 44 second units.
And one of the interesting observations about how these policies work together is that while this policy, policy 16, would increase densities because of the second unit requirement,
policy 15 allows the opportunity for the city council and the rezone to then lower the density, if necessary, if the impact of the extra density would have an effect on city services.
So they kind of work hand in hand in that manner.
And that pretty much summarizes what you have in front of you as far as the staff report.
I'd just like to add something briefly.
You'll see that the language I provided you gave the council some language to think about as to what we would do if we actually implemented these general plan amendments because they'd have to be mostly implemented by some sort of ordinance.
We'd actually specify the details.
So we've provided those to you.
If you have any questions, of course, let me know.
They're just suggestions of ideas of how we might implement it, but you thought the council should at least be aware of that and have any comments if they have any to the staff as we would need to follow up with some ordinances to implement the general plan amendments here tonight.
Also, after looking at my wording on policy number 14, I'd like to just change it slightly.
It says now no individual housing development or adjacent housing development.
I'd like to take out the ore and put in including any adjacent housing development.
I think it just makes it a little clearer than the ore.
But otherwise, at this point, we could open up the public hearing and if you have any questions about any of the implementation or any guidance for the staff, I'd appreciate that.
At this time, we will open the public hearing on this issue.
Anyone that would like to address the council, please come to the microphone, state your name and address for the record.
Karen Connect, my address is 17572 in Nona Court, Grass Valley.
My only question is, where's the public information packet?
I mean, there's copies of the agenda, but there's no packets back there so that we don't have it.
Nobody else can see what you're talking about.
That's information is on file at the City Hall.
So you don't have any available here?
I don't know if we can get it.
Thank you.
Lee Pemberton, 16414, Queen Little Place.
Just a question on, I guess it would be number 16, where you're discussing the second unit criteria.
And Mr. Cogla used the phrase, limited to 1,500 square feet market rate rentals.
And I would just suggest for planning and thinking purposes that to try to continue to address affordable housing issues, you go back to maybe some of the definitions that you can find in the HUD.
HUD Development Report for Nevada County from last year, just basically stating that the median salary range for Nevada County, which is kind of the midpoint range of all salaries, is 49,600.
And if you go through the HUD report and using a four-person family as a guide, you find that a very low-income family using the 30% of salary as the guide for housing costs, very low-income family can pay $620 a month,
a low-income family $992 per month, and a median income family $1,240 per month.
Now I can just imagine what a market rate 1,500 square foot home in Nevada City would bring, and I would suggest it would probably exceed those rental constraints.
So the point of my statement is just try to pull some of the affordable housing needs into the second unit or other housing criteria and thinking.
Thank you.
Lori Oberholzer, 310 Nevada Street, and I'm one of your planning commissioners.
I was involved in the drafting of both of these policies, and so that's why I'm here tonight, just to answer any questions as you're going through your comments and to give you a little bit of background.
The first policy relative to the 35-unit maximum and the 12-unit overlay was really an outgrowth of some concerns that David had about a state law that he heard about at a conference that he went to that takes a lot of our power as a city away from us to adjust projects to make them fit our small town.
So that was one of the concerns.
At the same time the 80-unit apartment project had been proposed, and a lot of people in town were very concerned about the scale of that project going in all at once.
So really this policy kind of grew out of both of those concerns.
What I know there has been a little bit of confusion out there about the 35-unit limit.
It's not a 35-unit per year limit.
It's a 35-unit per project limit, basically, and where do we come up with that number? It came from the fact that that is pretty much the largest project we've approved since the early 70s in Nevada City.
There are a couple of townhome projects that we've approved that were 35 units.
Everything else has been under that.
I think the last project that was over 35 units was the stature tract, which actually took many years to build out, so even though it was approved all at once, 35 units didn't appear all at once.
So we picked a number that we thought was appropriate to what has really been happening over many years in Nevada City.
And the idea was to come up with a limit that made sense for Nevada City and that would address these big city proposals that we're getting in our small town.
Again, the concern was that individual projects of a scale of 80, 100, 200, that sort of magnitude could really overwhelm the character of our town if it all went in at once, and certainly we found from the 80-unit project could overwhelm our sewer, our water system, and our streets.
And I think everybody who worked on this really kind of had the general idea that Nevada City has been very successful by growing slowly and incrementally, and that it's not very Nevada City-ish to grow in big spurts, big housing tracts, big apartment projects, that sort of thing.
So the idea is to ensure a growth rate that will be similar to what we've experienced in the past.
The second proposal, we originally called the Neighborhood Compatible Affordable Housing Proposal, and we actually did up a little sheet that we gave out at the Planning Commission, which I'll ask me.
And it just has some facts and figures on affordable housing in Nevada City.
Again, this was an outgrowth also of the 80-unit project.
People were very concerned about the scale of the project, but they clearly were concerned about the affordable housing problem.
And I think most people really have the idea that the kind of affordable housing we'd like to see in Nevada City is the kind of affordable housing we've always had, which is scattered small houses, second units throughout the neighborhoods, rather than focused all in one location.
And so that's what this proposal is all about.
So as individual subdivisions or apartment projects are proposed, most likely they would be in the sphere of influence, because that's where we have the land, and annexation is being applied for, we would require that 30% of the lots or units in that project have houses of 1,500 square feet or smaller,
which seems to be a size that can be built affordably if somebody chooses to build it affordably.
And then the second unit aspect was intended to address an even lower income group.
And in Nevada City, of course, our second units are held to 640 square feet.
So you get a type of housing that isn't provided in any other way.
The key issue here was why not grow our affordable housing at the rate that our city is growing?
And of course, in recent years we've grown as far as our housing stock anywhere from zero to eight units.
Last year I think we grew zero, and I think the year before it was maybe five units, and the year before it was eight.
So we don't have a very rapid growth rate.
The state only requires us to provide our fair share of affordable housing, which is based on our rate of growth.
It's not a definite number, it's a percentage of what you grow.
And so based on the fair share allocation that was given this city, we didn't calculate it, somebody else calculated it for us.
With the growth rate we've been having, we really only need about a couple of affordable housing units per year.
And this proposal would certainly provide that incrementally over time as we grow.
Probably the way it would work, and most of what we see are subdivisions, not apartment projects.
So a developer would come in, propose a subdivision in the sphere of influence, say it's 30 units.
So 10 of the lots, and we don't normally see housing tracts, so they would most likely be lots.
10 of the lots would have to have a deed restriction on them that would require that a 1,500 square foot house, no larger than that, be built on the site.
And then 20% of the lots would have a deed restriction requiring a second unit rental.
And so it would be the responsibility of whoever purchases the lot to then build a home of that size in a second unit.
Now, I'm not sure if it made it into the staff report or not, but when we were having meetings with staff and they were ironing the bugs out of this proposal,
a couple staff members were very concerned that this wouldn't really provide affordable housing.
They would just be expensive 1,500 square foot houses and expensive second units.
And so it was recommended that maybe the council should consider that the 1,500 square foot homes and the second units have a deed restriction
that also required that they be kept to an affordable rate, affordable to moderate income households and below.
And we didn't suggest that originally to tell you the truth, we didn't have the nerve to do it.
We thought we were asking for a lot here, it's pretty innovative and we would be lucky if we got away with this.
But hearing staff recommend it kind of got my courage up and I think it's a good idea.
And I think if you added that sort of restriction, then you'd really have a guarantee that you would have affordable housing in all of these homes as they're built.
And probably practically the way it would work is Mr. Developer with his 10 lots with the 1,500 square foot deed restriction
and the affordable housing rate deed restriction would probably then sell those to either probably some sort of an operation like Habitat for Humanity
or rural California Housing Corporation or individuals who would promise that they could build that sort of a house.
And I think that that would be a good thing for Nevada City.
That's pretty much it.
I would like to note that this proposal is completely separate from the work that the Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee is doing.
This can go forward without their work going forward at the same time.
And I hope you'll consider it positively.
I think this would be a good thing for Nevada City.
And I think we would be the first in the county to really do something about affordable housing.
Thanks.
Thank you, Laurie.
Good evening.
My name is Dennis Kutch, 475 Spring Street, number 3F.
I have a question.
I have not seen the packet.
I have to plead ignorance on this.
I think it was about three or four years ago a senior housing project was proposed.
It went through the Planning Commission, the time when I sat on the commission, was approved.
I believe it was 70 units on West Broad Street on a piece of the Ericsson property.
Before the project could move ahead, the applicant withdrew it.
I'm wondering with the 35-unit limitation, would that preclude that type of project at that size coming in in the future?
One of the things that we reviewed on the commission was the fact that very few of the people that would reside there would have automobiles.
So the traffic impact would be considerably reduced.
It was literally a senior care type of facility without getting into a heavy medical care aspect.
I think there were something like 10 units that were heavily medical.
So the only question I have is does that preclude that type of a project in the future on a site of that type?
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is G.
B.
Tucker, 629 East Broad.
The comments I'll make are strictly as to the affordable housing.
I'm also a Planning Commissioner for the county.
And we have been wrestling with this affordable housing second unit concept for some time.
I just picked up the staff report which will go to the Board of Supervisors on the 12th.
There's a couple of interesting things that I think I should bring to your attention.
One of them, it appears this ordinance is not going to permit any second unit, so-called affordable housing,
in the rural areas that are classified as extreme high fire danger areas.
And if you've ever looked at the CDF map, you know that's most of the rural areas.
This ordinance would permit the second unit housing to be in the city's sphere of influence.
The city's sphere of influence at the size of 1,000 square feet.
I think that might be significant in your deliberations.
Are within what is called the rural centers.
That is where there's a cluster of businesses, etc.
I think those things are significant.
We've wrestled with the term affordable housing a lot.
And we haven't been able to come up with anything.
This is a pilot program.
It would go for, allow 30 units per year for a period of 33 years.
And then it would probably require an environmental document after that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Connelly Weaver, 237 Boulder Street.
I'm currently chairman of the Planning Commission.
Lori, I think did a very fine job of going through the details in the background of what the commission did to move this forward.
Jim, I did have a question when you mentioned you had a recommendation on changing the wording on the adjacent property.
And I didn't quite understand what your.
.
.
Right now the wording says no individual housing development or adjacent housing development owned by the same applicant shall exceed 35 units.
I felt it would be better to say no individual housing development, including any adjacent housing development owned by the same.
.
.
So it put the original plus adjacent all in the same package.
Okay, thanks for clarifying that.
As I say, Lori pretty much said anything I might have to say except I want to make a specific point that the thing that really draws me to this proposal is this is a chance to accomplish some of the goals we've been trying to reach in providing affordable units and rental units in the area
and still maintain a character of Nevada City by use of this inclusionary zoning will maintain the tradition that we've had through all the years of we've had a very large house right next to a miners' cabin
or we have a miners' cabin between two large houses.
I'll just mix all the neighborhoods, everything blends and there are no.
.
.
This is where all the big folks live and this is where all the little folks live and these were all the in between folks live.
So I think this is just another step forward in that process of maintaining our heritage.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Seeing no one, we'll close the hearing portion.
Can I ask a question?
With the increased second units now, there is nothing to say those have to be rental units.
Well a second unit I think by nature would imply it's usable by somebody.
It does not be rented, your mother can move in or your sister or something like that but it would be a second unit available for somebody to use.
But it could not be sold separately from the first unit.
Right, they have to all go together in one ownership, right?
Well I had a question and maybe I'm getting way down the road here.
I know we're not anywhere near this point but on your attachment B you had some proposed language
and I was curious on 2B where it said 20% of all new lots created as part of approving a parcel or final subdivision map may contain a second dwelling attached or detached.
2A and 2B would just give you something to think about.
We could either have it set up as you shall, that would force the developer to designate the 20% of the lots and that would be real clear to any owner buying this lot that you better be prepared to construct a second unit versus may would be that anybody
wanted to commit and make an application for a second unit as long as it wasn't 20% in that subdivision already into second units they could get a permit.
Okay and then a follow up on a comment that Laurie had made.
It's my understanding that on Perseverance Mine, the little subdivision that they've built over there, there are actual deed restrictions on those properties that say that when this house comes up for sale and it has some kind of a formula based on the CPL or whatever,
that kind of thing could be applied to these second units or even 1500 square foot ones.
You could do something similar.
Now that one was a state grant actually paid for much of the work over there and of course we wouldn't have that here but you can certainly designate for instance the 1500 square foot lots could be designated that they have to be affordable
and put in a certain formula that would apply for the same thing for the 20% second unit you could put some sort of formula in as to what the maximum rental could be.
That's not included here yet but we could certainly follow that up if the council is interested in that.
Thank you.
Well originally when David brought this a little over a year ago I think I wasn't real crazy about the limit of 35 but I've changed my mind.
I think what it did was it started a discussion that's led to a whole lot of broader proposals and ideas for how some lots can be developed and I applaud the Planning Commission and the ARC for the work they did
because I think it does with the exception of perhaps rent control which I just will not ever support.
I think it does bring into the fold a mix that will as best as can in a free market provide affordable housing and the encouragement for people that are going to build on those lots
to build something that, one, the house that they want to have, two, they could perhaps subsidize that by providing some rental unit in the back.
I think it meets a couple of needs at the same time.
So I'm basically supportive of most everything that I see here.
I do on attachment B I do favor 2A as opposed to 2B because it basically does dictate the idea as opposed to making it simply an option.
And if you leave it as an option, I think it's.
.
.
Then it's why you even bought it?
Yeah, thank you.
And I'm sorry, before we move on, Mr. Kutch had a question.
Is there somebody that can address the question?
Yes, that's one of the details that can be worked out at the ordinance level and the same question was raised at the Planning Commission.
If you have a developer who has a good project that meets a need, will there be a provision which means, say, a project comes in that is an affordable housing project,
or they also have to add second units?
Maybe not.
It depends on how the ordinance is crafted.
In that particular case, I remember that project.
It was approved by the Planning Commission about three or four years ago but never built.
I think it involved 70 living units for assisted living all under one roof.
And just that specific project may have been.
.
.
This may not have been applicable to that because that was more of an institutional, quasi-institutional residence than a normal residence.
I'll comment briefly on it and I'm sure it'll be surprisingly brief.
I was in a swing vote at the first go-around of this back in November.
Anyone who reads the minutes is pretty clear I was in a swing vote.
And I supported sending it to the Planning Commission based upon, first of all, this indicated in the minutes that David had been at a League of California Cities conference
and he said that the changes in the law we need to clarify things are that we would lose control.
And I certainly believe in local control as opposed to state control,
and I indicated further that the idea of the city handling this made sense
and I was prepared to send it to the Planning Commission for them to take a look at,
but made it clear at the end of the minutes.
I indicated that the support starting the process because I feel the city needs to protect itself,
but I will not support the number of units, but the process should be started.
And I made it clear also that night that if it returned to the council in the same form it went to the Commission,
I would not be able to support it.
It is returned not only in the same form, but I think even in some cases more restrictive than the concept that was sent to the Commission.
So I would not be able to support it.
Well, I guess as I can say is that the amount of work that went into this for the last 15 months from just an idea,
and thank you Steve for allowing it to go forward and see what kind of ideas could be dredged up.
A lot of things have been flushed out.
It's gone through the Planning Commission, it's gone through an ARC meeting,
it's gone through staff where they formed a little committee on it of just discussing all the legalese
and the catch-22s that maybe popped up and things like that.
They called me and said, Dave, what do you think about this or that?
And I said, it's up to you guys, this is what you do every day.
So I'm really impressed with the depth and length of the work that was done.
These are not the specific ordinances and more details can be worked out with those.
And so far what I see looks really good.
I do feel and it's something that we take a lot of heat in the local newspaper about how Nevada City,
it's always the NIMBY not in my backyard for affordable housing.
This works really good.
As anyone seeing nationwide, the projects don't work, they're being torn down and changed.
And you can study cultural geography or inner city development or any new development.
They'll see that it's planned in a way that keeps things integrated.
And by integrating, it allows everybody to have a more equal say,
both whether in the kind of school they go to as well as the variety of the different layers of income brackets, things like that.
So as Lori pointed out, when I went knocking door to door to run for city council,
I noticed that all the apartments and condos, everything I went to was not much more than 35 units.
35 was just something that came out of the air.
It wasn't a cement number, but it turned out to be a fairly close and accurate number.
As you mentioned, the Stedger track, I don't know, the total number of units was maybe 38, you know?
It was 40 or 48.
40 or 48 that was built out over 20 years.
So that's a different kind of thing.
This, so there was never even in one year where 35 of those homes were built.
So this really has more impact on something where we have a big project coming in that just is way beyond.
Considering things like the, the dentist product, the place where elderly care is being provided,
where just like over by Sierra College in the high school where there's some of those, they're nice looking units.
I don't think that first one they built was much more than 35 or 40 units.
And then now they've started on a second one.
So this project would allow something to phase in and be planned and still be affordable because it would be,
one year they would do first phase of their project and then a couple years down the road could phase in the second one.
So I really think it's been well thought out and it'll continue to be thought out as it goes to the ordinance level.
So I will obviously be supporting this.
And so if anyone else has any other questions.
Well, I'm, I'm just 30%.
Now was that just a number we drew out of the air or did it, could we, I don't see her here.
When you put the 30 and the 20 together, you've got 50.
And that, that is about based on our old house moment, about the mix of the modernity to the modernity that we've had in the town years.
Okay.
So start getting mixed that relates to reality in that city.
Well, you know, I, I'm sure we'll go forward here.
You know, my only concern is with our second unit requirement, you know, as they, if we're going to do an ordinance this way,
I'm sure that'll come, come out.
I just, I just wonder if any one area of having that many second units is good or not.
I'm just throwing up ideas that when I read it, but I think, you know, basically it, you know, those are my two concerns.
The size and the, I would also think that in doing this, if someone's going to come and do a project,
they should be able to have it all in one go around at the, at the planning commission and not have to come back two or three times for different elements.
I just think that would be more conducive to, to everybody.
Jimmy, you mentioned that would come out later.
Is that correct?
Yes, we could.
We're going to have to do an ordinance so we can certainly indicate in the ordinance that you could say get 70 units approved all at one time,
have 35 phasing this year and 35 the following year.
It would be fair to say that the city planner indicated that would affect the affordability of the 70 units.
It probably would have some effect in all likelihood that they would be a little more costly, be my guess.
I would certainly, I would certainly support that sort of direction.
The idea of limiting to 35 per year wasn't to limit them to projects that only encompass 35 units.
It was to allow the city services to keep up with exactly the additions.
So planning, planning can all be applied for once as far as I'm concerned.
I think that makes sense.
It's just we don't want all of them coming online at the same time.
Well, I think that this is a very innovative proposal and possible solution to a problem that has been vexing not only Nevada City and Nevada County,
but most other jurisdictions around the nation.
And I thank staff and the Planning Commission for all the work that they've done.
I think this is a good way to provide a needed housing and yet keep the character, maintain the character in Nevada City.
All right.
Well, then I guess I'll make a motion that we, we would be doing what Jim tonight resolution.
2002-04.
Okay.
With the small wording change I'd requested on the 35 units.
Okay.
So my motion will be that we approve and adopt resolution 202-4 resolution of the City Council of Nevada City,
amending the general housing element with the changes that our city attorney recommended.
Second.
Okay.
On the motion, I mean, I'm going to vote no.
I think Nevada City has been very successful in dealing with projects on a case-by-case basis.
And I think based upon our recent history, which includes the 80 units at the top of the hill and the proposed 90 units on lower Banner Mountain,
that any person who came to Nevada City with large development, 35 or more,
would know they're walking into Hornet's Nest and would be very cautious to begin with.
And I don't think that we really need this ordinance.
I think that we should leave the opportunity for affordable housing or any other housing up to a decision on a case-by-case basis
and not close the door to what might at some future date be a very good project
and find ourselves in a position where we cannot accept it because we've boxed ourselves into a corner.
I think that both the proposed housing element number 15 as well as what we just discussed,
as far as the feasibility of a project coming in that is a larger project and it could be approved in a two-stage process or something,
gives us the safeguards that we would need to be worrying about that.
We've got to take some step towards doing something towards affordable housing and low income as well as the types of projects that fit.
And if I thought every time that we had to go through everything we did with AHDC,
it would just wear this town out, it would divide this town, it would split this town up,
as well as the fact that what the state is requiring that if it hadn't been for steep slope and they're deciding just not to go any further
because of their deadlines that they missed, we could have had something quite easily shoved down our throat
that would not have fit Nevada City or been best for Nevada City.
And the state is requiring us to make sure that if we're going to have something, we've got to have something that's not so general,
that's why we just don't like it, so we're not trying to do that.
We're trying to say, look, we'll put our, we will stand and we will put our words and our actions where they should be
and I think this proposal and every, all the hard work that everything it went through,
no one agreed on any two things all the way through it and yet it made it this far
and the kind of support it got because everyone in their gut feeling knows we've got to do something
and so there was a lot of thought and effort that went into this and that's what made this what we got tonight
and there's still more work that's got to go into it for the ordinances and I know we will hammer those things out,
we will take in all those concerns.
Well, I do think though that Steve has a real good point that we don't want to be boxed in on these situations
and so if we're going to go ahead with it, we need to do it very cautiously.
I just feel that to do it too speedily, if you will, the ordinance could cause a problem
so I'm not going to vote with you Steve, I will support it but I certainly agree with you wholeheartedly
that we have to be extremely careful and in the ordinance.
Any further discussion?
Yeah, Steve sees this as being restrictive, another way to look at it I think is I see it as being guidelines
and yes it's restrictive to a developer but it sets guidelines that we want the city to move forward with.
I've been commenting since I've been on the council this last four years as to how Nevada City has changed
from what it was like the first four years when I was on in 86 and 90 and in those years we were just enjoying
the fruits of the work that was done with the historical ordinance and the popularity and success
that Nevada City had achieved and so forth and in this four years we are still enjoying that
but we are also being challenged with the success and pressures that that sort of thing we strove for has brought us
and so I think it's important that we set guidelines because what has always worked in the past won't necessarily
always work in the future given we've been so darn successful and that's great.
I mean I'm very proud of everything we've done and I think this would be a further step at setting out the guidelines
that we want to keep Nevada City as good as this has always been so I see it as setting guidelines
as opposed to being restrictive.
Okay how about then a simple guideline that says the city encourages innovative housing solutions
and discourages development that overtaxes our city services and then we can forget all of this.
I don't think that sets enough guidelines.
I'd like to call the vote.
Okay.
All those in favor of adopting resolution 2002-04, signified by saying aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
No.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Old Business Discussion, Deirdorf Timber Harvest, Banner Mountain Trail.
Mayor and members of the council have brought to the attention the city was notified because this work would be done
in adjacent to the city property and the city's intake for the water treatment plant
and we are looking at some of the needs of the water treatment plant
and as a result of that one of the things that came to our attention is that they want to cut trees.
But I don't think they can hear you out there.
But they want to cut trees right adjacent to our intake and also along the city's intake ditch
which would be dangerous to the city.
The city manager and Mr. Town and myself went up there with the people and voiced our concerns.
They are now preparing a draft statement that would go to the state in Reading, I believe.
This is in a borough and then they will have a call for a meeting and at that time it would be,
I would think of the city's best interest for somebody from the council to be available
to give staff some direction.
Borough, do you have anything you want to say?
You should be clear that while Bill says the intake, all of the property that is involved
where the logging would take place from the city standpoint would be downstream from those of you who know
where that diversion takes place on a little deer creek as it goes into the rough and ruddy ditch.
We certainly, in walking and voiced concerns, the logging takes place basically from, again,
if you're familiar with the area, it's certainly all in the little deer creek area downstream of that diversion point.
And if you've been up in that area, also there's a very high flume of the DS that crosses a short distance downstream
from where the city diverts its water.
And that's where the major amount of proposed logging takes place.
But it does, some of the logging takes place adjacent to what was the open rough and ruddy ditch now of the city
when it did its water improvements in 1978.
They put that ditch in conduit all the way and we've voiced concerns that some of those trees could break
or cause problems to the conduit.
We were assured that there would be caution on that.
Also, as Bill has pointed out in his memo, if you look at who was, who at that time when we wrote the letter back to him
saying we had this concern, we indicated a further concern from the city standpoint,
more particularly downstream with Pioneer Park because the city's been working with friends of deer creek
and there is a proposed project to improve, particularly in the area of the restrooms,
just mainly below the main picnic grounds, a little deer creek where it is filled up with debris over the years
as it washes down and the voice of concern that the impacts of art directly into our water system
but the impacts downstream so we certainly indicated on the next visit we wanted a number of people to be along
to assure that there would be no downstream damage.
Bill is the, excuse me, I was always under the impression that when it came to timber harvest
there were certain stream set back requirements.
Do those apply to irrigation ditches and reservoirs as well?
And they're conforming to that so you have to go up on the site and see.
It's just that what Burl is trying to indicate to you and I know because he and I have had a conversation,
it's a sensitive area, it's a very steep area and you know the slightest little flub dub will make a difference to our creek
and to our environment or to our pipe and let's assume that you fall a tree and you break the pipe
and the pipe then flows willy nilly into the stream and then the stream you know does damage to your piner park and so on and so forth.
Those are the things that I think the council needs to know about.
I was wondering in Bill of all the, it got carboned to a lot of people and agencies but because of the potential impact
that's why the fishing game is not among the people.
Fishing game will be or they will be in the future.
Absolutely.
Oh yes.
And so will the state division forestry and so will the fire protection district and the NID and who else?
Somebody else they said that.
Anyway, yeah.
And so do they stop it from now?
I mean at this point do they just kind of stop till they check things out?
They haven't done any logging yet.
There's nothing done.
Okay, so this is, we've caught it before starting.
This is an initial proposal.
Okay.
You're looking at, there's no logging going on.
There will not be any until summertime at the earliest.
Okay.
And that is if they can secure the permits.
It could be next year.
So it's a ways down the road but we got in on the ground floor.
You will keep us surprised as things develop.
Should we go up and tour it?
Or.
.
.
That's what, if you want to individually go up, I can take you.
Bill can take you.
That might be a good idea.
If you want to go to council.
Okay.
I'm for that.
Okay.
Either on an individual schedule, whatever.
If you want to come into City Hall, let me know.
We'll take you up there and give you a quick overview on it.
Okay.
It's not a good deal tomorrow.
No.
Bring your sleds.
The last time I walked across that water trussel with burl, I swore it would be the last time
I walked across this.
That may not be true.
I could go up in the general area.
I'll walk below attention in case you're wrong.
There you go.
I have a couple boards we need replaced.
You know, when we were up there the other day, I forget what day it was, but it was just
a beautiful, it was beautiful.
Oh, that was the day burl retired.
Yeah.
It was a beautiful day, wasn't it, Burl?
Yeah.
A little cold.
In many respects, maybe.
I know why he was so happy.
He knew something you didn't know that morning, huh?
Well, he also knew that he didn't fall off and he was unable to enjoy his retirement.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
New business.
City manager selection process.
I included a small packet in your agenda packet.
When we contacted the Western Cities magazine about display ad, we were notified that 5 o'clock
today was the deadline for securing a space, but that we would be able to email the copy
in tomorrow, and that would be acceptable for them.
And so, as I pointed out, I had been meeting with staff and discussing it and looking at
many samples.
We decided to go with the, well, it's four and three quarters by two and a quarter inch
display ad, which they call a one-sixth page.
And I have Xeroxed a copy of the Western Cities magazine showing the two different sizes.
We felt that you can provide all the information that a person needs in the packet should they
request the packet, but just a clean, clean-looking ad would probably be more attention getting.
And so, I happened to just put together some samples, and that's all they are, is just
samples and suggestions that indicates basically the pertinent information, who the manager
answers to, the number of employees, the budget, the full service community, the population,
and geographically where they're located.
Thinking that that would basically, if someone is interested in applying for the position,
that would give them the fundamental information, and any more information they could just call
and get a packet.
I think you cheaped out.
You should have bought a bigger ad.
It wasn't a financial consideration.
Well, whatever.
I don't think it's big enough.
Steve has given a similar idea of what he would like to see in the ad.
Maybe it's a bit where it goes a little far, but I think somewhere a blend between the
two would suit my preferences a little better.
I don't think we can sell short who we are as a city and who we might be looking for
to replace Burl as the city manager's job.
And this is, I understand what you're saying, that you can get address the information as
you're interested, but I think we're a little more of a special community than you can squeeze
into the space available here, albeit I think Steve is perhaps a little bit wordy,
but maybe some combination of the two would be something that I would support.
I didn't know that 5 o'clock today was a deadline for securing the size, but is the size secure?
I thought in our conversation we had Kerry that we were not married to the size, that
we were blocking out space and that you had suggested to them that we'd be getting a 16.
And when I expressed to you that I thought a quarter would be more likely size, I thought
that you indicated we were not married to that size as long as we let them know tomorrow
what we wanted to do.
No, we had to reserve the space.
We did not have to get them the copy by 5 o'clock today, but we did have to reserve the space.
I must have misunderstood that then.
Because that was the point I made twice during that conversation was that I was concerned
that we had frozen the amount of space that would be available to us.
I thought that you had indicated that was not the case and that we could adjust that,
but that we were merely indicating to them that we wanted space and that that would be
the amount of space that we would probably get.
So there are also the fact that there are deadlines and there are drop-dead deadlines.
And almost since they earned their money from ad sales, if you were to call tomorrow morning
and say, gee, instead of a 16th, would you mind a quarter page?
I have a hunch they'd find room for it because there are both deadlines and drop-dead deadlines.
The seldom is to drop-dead deadline the deadline.
So I would hope that we could expand on the job description.
I appreciate Pat's comments that perhaps mine is too long.
But actually, when you look at it in the context of some of the display ads,
somewhere, city manager ads, if I included, perhaps it's somewhere between the city of a Royal Grande
and the city of Malibu in size of those first two on the page, somewhere in between those two.
I think that when we are dealing with professionals, as we're going to be doing,
that we need to give the professionals as much information as we can about not only what Nevada City is,
but what expectations we have of them professionally.
If you go through the 14 ads, and I didn't sure I'd pick these ads.
These are, I think, obviously I didn't include San Jose or large communities.
I have a couple of towns of 40 or 50,000, the rest of them are towns under 13,000.
Very hard to find a dozen towns of 3,000 looking for a city manager.
But I think the language is pretty consistent in all the ads.
What communities are looking for is someone with a degree, at least a bachelor's, preferably a master's,
five years progressive advancement in the profession, five professional letters of reference.
I think that's pretty standard in all of these.
And also, beyond the general description of the basic services of Nevada City,
is that those who really do this professionally and run nice display ads,
also indicate some of the, perhaps some of the abstract values, for instance,
our unique history, our rural lifestyle, our community park and pool, outstanding schools.
I think those are the, that's the kind of phrasing that you see over and over again in ads that appear in professional publications.
And I hope that number one, that we at 8.
01 tomorrow morning could purchase more ad space
than we've indicated to them that we were seeking.
And I certainly would be willing to cut some of the language out of my suggestion.
If you have some suggestions, Pat, the concern, I think when you're dealing with professionals,
and I will use an analogy that only affects me, if you're advertising for a hotel clerk,
you could use a pretty brief description of what you're looking for.
But we're dealing with professionals, and I think they deserve to know as much as possible without calling.
So I think we have two responsibilities.
One is to the potential applicants to provide them with as much basic information we can.
Secondly, to reduce the number of telephone calls the city manager is going to be receiving.
Even if, with all of the requirements that I've suggested, academic and professional,
wouldn't surprise me that we have 100 and 150 applications.
If it is so open that essentially anyone with an interest call,
city manager is going to be fielding unbelievable number of telephone calls.
Hopefully it would not be the city manager.
He doesn't answer the phone.
It's Corey, and then it's.
.
.
If a potential city manager wants to know what the job of the city manager is,
they're going to talk to the city manager.
They're going to want to talk to Burl and say it's only natural.
And even with all of the academic and professional requirements that I'm suggesting,
there will still be calls to Burl.
That's just inevitable.
It's going to happen, and he knows that he's going to spend a lot of time on the telephone.
So I think we have two responsibilities, to be professional in the way we advertise it,
to understand that we're looking for a professional,
and that we need to mitigate the impact on the city manager's time as much as possible.
And I think my ad accomplishes all of those goals.
Well, the other question that I had on your text was establishing the criteria.
I think that there's always the potential and the danger that you can be too rigid in your criteria.
I mean, for example, if we were to apply the criteria that you've used in paragraph 2 of your text,
if they had used the same criteria 37 years ago, Burl wouldn't have gotten an interview.
And Burl is the first person to tell you that the job was not what it is today.
Well, I understand that times change, but I just, I'd hate to see us,
as you had referred earlier on another topic, I'd hate to see us paint ourselves into a corner
and potentially lose out on a very potentially viable candidate
because our criteria is so rigid.
We have painted ourselves into a corner.
I think that's a very normal requirement.
Yeah, and it's language taken from the other 14 ads.
That's why I enclosed them,
so that you wanted to say, well, where'd you come up with this stuff, Steve?
Where I came up with it was from other cities, perhaps not exactly comparable size,
but general law, full service cities looking for a city manager,
and all of that language is drawn from other cities who have gone before us
trying to find a replacement for their city manager, including a couple of them.
You know, one of them was a city manager, been there 30 years,
so we must have known him pretty well.
The size of this ad right now that we have, if in fact there's a possibility that it can't be changed,
is a very good size ad in the sense that right now the type is quite large,
and when I look at all the other ads, both the sample ads that you provided as well as the carry did,
the type is much smaller, so there's still room for this to be an attractive ad
and put a little more into it.
Most people who are going to apply for a city manager's job are people that are well aware of
what the duties are of a city manager.
The California League of Cities has a publication that they put out on city managers.
The International City Managers Association website has a ton of information on that,
so I don't think that we're going to find someone from the roadworks department applying,
although you might.
I mean, I've had people apply for jobs that you wondered if they ever read the ad,
so you're always going to get that.
I'm not against adding to this, and I understand what both sides are saying on this right now.
I do agree with Kerry that we want to keep this door as wide open as possible,
and yet at the same time we don't want just some of this totally not qualified to apply,
but you can't stop that.
I mean, anyone can apply, but you'll weed that out when you get them.
As far as everyone talking to Burrell, I think that his instruction, how much he will or won't do,
I don't know.
I mean, Burrell makes himself very available.
I mean, if he has a hundred people, no matter what we say in the ad,
if people want to talk to Burrell, they're going to say it to him, no matter what's in the ad.
I mean, they're going to, so I don't see a hundred people wanting to talk to Burrell.
Well, the only comment I'd make there if I was looking for a city manager job,
I would call the city manager if he was available and talk to him.
That's just logical.
Regardless of what's in the ad, though, right?
Yeah, that would seem to me to ask where you would come,
because that's the person that will be able to best convey to you
absolutely what they think the job's about.
I agree with you, Burrell, but I think that you would,
there's a reason why all of these communities run the type of job announcements they do,
and that they're trying to set up minimum standards and expectations
in order to find the most qualified person.
And the suggested language from Kerry talks about essentially call city hall
if you want more information about what is required.
Well, who, in fact, the way I think you phrased it in your cover letter is
they can receive, call city hall for more information,
or receive a packet that contain the fine details.
And I guess my question would be who determines what the fine details,
the answers to those fine details?
I think that's a policy matter for the council to establish.
For instance, if someone were to call the city manager,
does the city manager know that unless you have a degree,
a bachelor's and preferably a master's, there's really no need to submit it?
That's not the city manager's job.
That's our policy to set.
And so when you say, well, they can call and get the details,
it's up to us to establish that not the city manager would all do respect.
And I think you would agree with it.
And so that's why I've suggested that we be upfront about it in our job announcement.
And I would hope we'd have more than just this.
You recall the deadline for your city manager's magazine?
Oh, the city manager, that comes out twice a month.
You're going to fit it in there.
I think Tom may have had information.
He asked some questions.
I think he talked to ICMA and also their website.
It has information.
And I'm trying to, lo and behold, a title that I had never heard of,
a range writer, which is a person that is available to cities for a certain area.
And the guy's name is Tom Peterson.
I have not had luck in actually contacting him,
and I have since found out that he has recently come down with Parkinson's disease.
And so his medical is affecting his getting to us.
But it's resources like that that are available to us.
I did download there.
They have a guideline for cities.
And I think it will be good for the council to all take a look at that
as we get farther into the process because they do have some guidelines
or interesting takes on questions.
But that's in time to come.
Right now we're trying to settle the ad.
Well, I appreciate you staying, Steve, that deadlines aren't dropped dead deadlines
and often drop dead deadlines aren't either.
And I really think we should get more space.
And this is an opportunity to sell ourselves from right out of the gate,
and that is make Nevada City sound as special as it is.
No offense to whoever wrote this, Carrie, if that were you,
but it reads like a classified ad for shoes.
There's really no interest there.
And for possibly very talented potential city managers to offer their services
to a city of 3,000 may not be very exciting or interesting,
just very qualified people out there,
unless maybe they know a little bit that we know about Nevada City
that makes it special, which you see in Steve's.
And as far as it being wordy, Steve, if we can get the space,
I would say put every word in there.
If we can't get the space, if this is what we're locked into,
then I don't know exactly what to do.
But I think to attract the kind of individuals that Nevada City attracts,
based on the people that come here for all the various reasons,
we have to present ourselves to the people that don't know anything about us,
maybe as something a little more unique than a city of 3,000
that needs somebody to run the boat.
So I think it's a selling job.
And forgive me by saying perhaps it was too wordy.
My only concept about too wordy was by the time we squeeze it into this space,
you won't be able to read it.
Oh, no, you can't get into that space.
Right.
So if we can get bigger space, that's in my opinion what we've got to do.
I mean, this is out of the gate announcement that Nevada City's looking for somebody new.
And that hasn't come around in an awfully long time,
and we hope it doesn't come around for a long time after this.
We don't want to be just turning over city managers.
So it's about finding the right guy or lady, and it's not going to be easy.
And I think this is our chance to say we're somewhere special
and we're looking for somebody special.
Well, I appreciate your support, Pat.
And if the chair would entertain a motion, I'd put one on the table
and perhaps we could work toward a resolution here.
Well, does the council have any objection to somebody has their hand up?
Oh, absolutely not.
Thank you, Joseph Reisdorf, 12288 Gail Lane.
I've had the opportunity over my career to work with a number of cities around the state
to get to know a lot of city managers and to really spend a lot of time
observing the importance of the dynamic between the city manager and the city council.
And you can almost always tell right away whether that dynamic is working or not.
You can detect dysfunctional relationships right away.
You can kind of see the impact that a wrong match between the city council
and the city manager can have on a city.
Selecting a city manager is probably one of the most important jobs
that the city council has to take on.
And you probably already concluded that this is one of the few jobs that you have to do,
one of the few decisions that you have to make,
where you can't necessarily turn to the staff for advice.
You're kind of out on your own in this one.
This is the one job that you have where you have to rely on your own judgment,
your own guidance to come up with the right decision.
And a wrong decision can have serious consequences.
And one that's maybe made in haste or made without a lot of forethought
can have long-term negative impacts on the city that take many years to correct.
So I really encourage you to take your time to be deliberate
and to be clear about the kind of person that you need for this job.
It's a very important job.
One that's going to have a major impact on the businesses, residents,
and the future of Nevada City.
One of the things that I would suggest is that you invite the business
and the residential community to be part of a process
that would help you develop a common vision for Nevada City
to make sure that there is some consensus on that
and also to develop a fairly clear statement of the challenges
that are facing Nevada City today and the ones that will face it in the future.
And I think you'll find once you get into this process
that having that information is going to be very important.
Number one, it'll help you sorting through the stack of resumes
that you're going to be getting.
And secondly, when you finally do get it down to a short list of people
that you want to interview, they're going to have questions for you.
They're going to ask you, well, what's the head for the city?
What do you see for the city?
And it's going to be important that you really get the right person
that you want to get the most qualified person that you want,
that you come back with a very clear statement to indicate what you all expect
for the city and the future and the kind of person that you needed to take you there.
This information that you could get by working with the business and the residents,
they can help you develop your selection criteria,
help you develop the process that you go through to actually determine
who you want to be the next city manager.
It's been a long time since Nevada City has selected a city manager.
That's why I encourage you to take this job very seriously.
It sounds like you've already begun to take advantage of some of the resources
that the California League of Cities and the ICMA have to offer,
including the opportunity to bring in a circuit rider to maybe fill in on an interim basis
until you actually get through the selection process.
So again, I encourage you to take your time to not rush the process
and not get ahead of yourselves and to really be very deliberate about telegraphing
and communicating your intentions and your needs to potential candidates
and then being very careful about the selection process that you go through afterwards.
Thank you.
I'm Paul Rotenberg, 228 B Street in Nevada City.
I have to yield a great deal of what I have to say to the previous speaker
who said it's probably a great deal more articulately than I can.
It seems that you all are rushing and this is an immensely important decision.
It's a selection that hopefully you'll only have to make once for a while.
As you all know, I think city managers tend to move every three years or so on the average.
Sometimes they move because they're ambitious and they're moving on to bigger cities
with bigger challenges and bigger salaries and bigger retirements.
And sometimes they move because councils change and they fall into disfavor.
And if you want to get the right person, it's going to be a long task.
They're probably not going to just fall in your lap.
And it looks like you're looking for that person on short notice.
And the League of California Cities knows the situation.
They have a great number of immensely qualified people who are in retirement or close to retirement.
They go around, they work on an interim basis for cities just like this
while the city engages in a concerted, long-term, thoughtful search process.
You might get down to a short list, you might get three or four people,
arduously rank them, offer each one of them jobs and have them all say no.
And then you're back to square one.
If you plan to hire an interim manager, start that process now.
Bring them in, they'll spend some time with the current city manager.
Get to know the ins and outs of the city.
You may find that there are certain problems that you want to manage
and you don't want to dump them on the person that you're planning to hire for the long term.
Maybe you want to take some of the tough problems, give them to the interim,
let the interim do some of the hard, difficult, unsavory work that may be here that has to get done.
And then when the person you find who's right for the job is ready, you bring them in,
you let the interim go, there's no hard feelings.
They understood it was a temporary position, that's what they were here for.
A tremendous number of benefits to using an interim city manager.
I would also like to ask that you at least consider employing a human resources consultant.
There are great many immensely qualified and talented consultants who assist cities
in searches for specifically city managers or specifically public works directors
or any number of department head positions.
They're very good at what they do.
They know the personalities, they know the cities,
they know the trends, they understand the compensation packages.
Lastly, I would like to encourage you to please not be cheap.
You may have to spend more money than you ever thought you were going to have to spend,
but that money will be well spent.
You spend a lot of money if you buy quality.
The person you get is going to save the city money.
If you find money for the city that may not have been available or may have been overlooked,
they're going to save money because they're going to come in with fresh perspective,
talent and experience.
I would like to speak lastly, I already said lastly twice,
but final, final, please keep an open mind about this process
and be prepared to take time, spend money, be disappointed
and don't jump on the first person who comes down the pipe because you think you're up against deadlines.
Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
Paul, just so you know where I'm coming from with this, I can speak only for myself,
but the only timeline that we really face is placing a job announcement.
The hiring could take several months.
I don't think anyone at this table anticipates that we will have hired a new city manager by April 30th.
Anyone who thinks that at this table just isn't being realistic.
And I agree with what you have said.
The sole purpose right now is to get the job announcement in just to start the process.
I would agree with you that we probably will have an interim city manager.
I agree with you we should go slow and cautiously.
I agree with you we should not be cheap including the job announcement.
And I really support everything that you've said.
The purpose tonight is merely to start the ball rolling with a job announcement and there's an add deadline.
That is the only sense of urgency, at least from this chair.
And the rest of it, if it takes all through the summer, so be it.
When we're done, I'm confident we'll have the best man or woman who wants the job,
is qualified for the job and works for Nevada City.
One thing I would like to see us avoid however is any sort of professional search company.
Because I think Nevada City is a very unique town and no one understands Nevada City better than the people who represent it.
So I would hope that we do not find ourselves going out looking for a professional search person.
And that we will have the applicants come to us and we as the council and relevant staff in the screening process
will be able to do it, I think, far more efficiently than any sort of professional search.
But beyond that, I support everything you said there, Paul.
Well, since you engaged me, let me just say one more thing.
If you pay the money that the market demands, this is a nice place.
We'll get quality applicants.
I know a lot of city managers.
I know some who, if they weren't working elsewhere, would certainly like to throw an application in here.
I would also say, however, that asking for a master's in public administration and prior experience as a city manager is not unusual.
I don't think anybody in the city manager market right now expects to get a job as a city manager if they don't have an MPA.
If you set your sites lower than an MPA, you're going to be weeding through unqualified people when you could have qualified people.
I agree with you.
In fact, the language in the my suggested language is a bachelor's degree in public business administration
is required, a master's degree preferred, with a minimum of five years progressive municipal management experience.
As a city manager, assistant city manager, our department head with related senior municipal management responsibilities.
As an unofficial spokesperson for Jesuit education, all graduate degrees are not created equal.
So, look closely at the resumes.
Good evening, Chair, and Tobias, and 514 Nursery Street.
Steve, you and I are really agreeing tonight.
The two gentlemen prior to me actually shared my very strong opinion, but I want to reinforce one of the most important avenues as I feel as a former city council person
and for a long time resident of Nevada City is we do need a citizen committee on this.
I understand where you're coming from this evening by getting the ad space available.
My suggestion also is start thinking about an interim city manager.
We have locally Gene Albaugh may be interested in the position short term.
This person would have a chance to be working with Burl and getting his feelings there.
And I'm sure after Burl retires, he will still be available as a consultant.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Are we proposing going outside California for advertising?
Well, the western cities actually covers western cities.
Because there are ads in there for cities outside the state.
Well, I have absolutely no problem with whatever, obviously with whatever the council desires.
I submitted an ad that was just a suggestion.
Steve submitted an ad that was a suggestion.
And whatever the council's pleasure is absolutely fine with me.
We can call western cities tomorrow morning and see if there's a possibility of getting the larger ad.
I don't have a problem with that.
If that were to, if we had a vote of support for that, I have a hunch that if this were faxed to them,
they could determine that size pretty quickly.
It would not take them long to determine what the minimum size would be to fit it in and have the city logo as well.
Would you, there's no other public input if you'd entertain a motion.
Okay, I would move that the language that I submitted tonight be the language that be placed in the city magazine
and any websites or other professional publications that we might use as part of our city manager recruitment.
Could we include the fax number in the advertisement?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Include the fax and the email.
And the email too.
Okay, the fax and the email.
And then just a housekeeping item.
I indicated 24 full-time employees and Kerry had 25.
What would be the right number?
25 plus the city.
Okay, 25.
And I thought the budget, actually I have a tight one.
I thought the budget was about 3.
6 or 7.
I meant to put in 4.
I put in 3.
But 4 rounded off 4 is fair for general.
Yeah, but it's the general fund budget.
The general fund budget.
Yeah, that was just a typo.
And then 25 and include the fax and email.
I had this on a computer here at City Hall so I could come in in the morning and.
.
.
I can't remember how I say that.
Must have the word city manager or something and pull it up and make these changes.
And I don't care if you'd be in City Hall in the morning.
Can you take a look at it before it goes down?
Sure.
Okay.
I'll make a point of being here at 8.
Just a question or a suggestion or something you have that they're coming in
marked confidential to the city manager.
I think that they should come in marked confidential, stay sealed,
and go to the city clerk and then be handed over to the committee.
The other ads they go to that can care of the city clerk.
Normally the applications come in that way.
Well, for instance, City of Arroyo, submit to city manager's office.
City of Malibu, attention city manager recruitment.
Hillsborough says care of city clerk.
So you're suggesting they just be brought in and left unopened
until such time as a screening committee is assembled?
Stamped in.
Like we do everything, they'll be sealed and.
.
.
That makes sense.
When the screening committee is assembled,
then all of them would be just handed over to that committee.
That makes sense.
That seems to make it real.
Yeah, I don't have a problem.
I don't have a problem either way.
I don't have a problem with that.
No, I mean, Kathy's a confidential employee,
so that part's not a problem at all.
They'll be opening them.
They'll just be making sure that they're logged in
and handed over to the committee.
That might be.
Or the full council, whatever happens.
All right.
Sorry, I've lost track here.
Could you put the motion?
There's a motion on the floor.
Kathy, could you repeat it?
The motion was to move that the language
that Councilman Cottrell submitted
be the language that's placed in the ad
with the addition of the facts and the email number
and a change to the budget
and a change to the number of employees
from 24 to 25.
And changing word manager to clerk
in the address portion.
You said you had one other.
.
.
Include the facts number and email number.
Right, I've got that, but you said you had a typo
or something else you were going to correct.
No, the typo is.
.
.
I had three made instead of four million in the budget.
Carried at 3.
9.
I rounded it off to four, but put in three.
That's with the motion.
Yeah.
Okay, any further discussion?
All those in favor?
Opposed?
The motion carries.
I'll be in a date or shortly thereafter in the morning
and then we can massage it,
and make sure you're comfortable with it
before we fax it down.
All right, thank you.
Announcements.
County of Nevada, Carl F.
Bryan,
the second juvenile hall opening
is 11.
45 a.
m.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2002.
That is the day after tomorrow.
And
I believe it's the public
is invited to attend.
And if anyone from the council can attend
to represent the city,
I would greatly appreciate that.
I will not be able to attend.
Um.
.
.
Is there.
.
.
Because there's an executive
session on the
city manager of performance.
The executive session on
Friends of Nevada City versus Nevada City
is not needed.
I'm sure you all read in the paper about the settlement.
But basically,
since the Brown Act requires us
to state the terms of the settlement,
the city agreed to look
at various planning issues
and possibly change those
and those would be considered by the city council.
And the city council
cannot go ahead
and approve those depending
on public input and their own feelings.
And the city also
agreed that it would transfer
a strip of land
along a hollow way to the
developer.
The land is approximately 11 feet
across.
11 feet and some
600 feet in length.
We're going to sell it
to the developer
at the fair market value
to be determined.
I would move that we adjourn to
executive session.
I second that.
I motion carries.
We are adjourned to executive session.
Mayor?
Thank you.
Public comment focused on ongoing Thanksgiving water-quality and odor issues, with residents urging a full investigation and remedies, to be explained by the city engineer; a broader agenda item was anticipated. Correspondence from the California Department of Veterans Affairs addressed creating a Veterans Memorial Registry and a Vietnam memorial project, seeking volunteers to distribute surveys and discuss veteran representation on the council. Housing element Policies 14–16 were presented to guide growth based on city services, proposing a 35-unit per-project cap (including adjacent developments by the same applicant), a 12-unit overlay zone, 20% of subdivision lots with second-unit rentals, and 30% of homes at or below 1,500 sq ft to diversify housing and protect town character. State-law caveats noted the cap is per project (not annual permits) and two-year construction cycles may raise per-unit costs; affordability concerns raised by HUD prompted consideration of deed restrictions or partnerships. Planning Commission feedback highlighted concerns about large upfront projects and ensuring second units contribute to affordability. The council moved to adopt Resolution 202-4 amending the housing element with minor wording tweaks. Other topics included timber harvest/Banner Mountain Trail, city manager recruitment advertising strategy, and budget/administrative items.
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January 28, 2002, the record reflected on the numbers that are present.
I pledge allegiance to the fire of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Before us, the minutes from the January 14 meeting.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it in.
Second.
Page three, I'm going to take it.
Page three, toward the middle of our meeting for the talk.
Since I became United States, because I didn't feel the council should be able to report it, I actually didn't reverse that, because I felt the council should be able to report it.
So it doesn't feel it should be seen.
And then the last sentence would be, that urge me to support you is not welcome to be here with that urge.
That meeting?
I will yield to the city court.
I think I asked for support.
I asked for general support.
I asked for Steve specifically.
It doesn't matter.
And you said that was directed to Steve.
I remember saying it in a general way, but that's okay.
The key one was that we're changing.
It doesn't feel.
It doesn't feel.
And it certainly feels the same, because he feels the council should be able to report it.
Nobody yield to the city court, I'll show you.
Okay, any other corrections?
All those in favor of the Hiking to Ministers amendment?
Aye.
Talking reports.
Council committee reports.
Comments on items not on the agenda are welcome at this time.
However, action for discussion by the council may not occur at this time.
Comments will limit you to three minutes.
Is there anyone that would like to address the council on item not on this evening's agenda?
Hello, I'm Ianna Greenberg, the New York 14 German time drive from the city.
I want to talk about the water.
It was a problem just before Thanksgiving that the water had an awful lot of steam to it, and I've talked to some of you.
And that plea of a phone letter from my dad now, and I still smell it.
It's not the strongest before, but it's still there.
And I was wondering if maybe we could look into what's going on.
I hear it's only in the pockets of the city.
I talk to other people in my neighborhood that have the same problem still too.
It's not as pronounced as it was there, but it's still there.
Especially when you take a shower.
It's to the point where sometimes you start ganking or you're pressuring your team and you're too close to the water.
It's awful.
The water water filled them.
I'm not going to talk about the water, but I'm still getting the same money as everybody else in town.
I think it's maybe a little better water than I think it is.
But I would love for you to look into that.
14 German time?
I'm just a prospector.
Prospector?
I had a complaint from someone who lives just above you.
And it's not all mainly related.
Because when it started a week or so before Thanksgiving there was no rain.
And then there was rain and it smelled the same before and after.
Thanks.
Someone who spoke to me today, and it has to be Steven, and it's a friend of yours right now.
She had noticed the November problem and then said it had gone pretty much gone away.
And I believe sometime maybe from the end of December 1st of January, then it got it again.
And I noticed over the last few days that it happened again.
I did ask her to just give either the City of Paul or the President of Paul that the last time it was reported and now she needed it.
It's the same thing.
I talked to the water plant supervisor today.
We have received some complaints most of them from back into the system.
We tried to get part of the system.
And by the time it reaches other parts of town it was dissipated.
He started correcting the action on Saturday.
It takes a couple of days to notice it and then it's cleared up.
He has already started correcting the action and there is already more improvement in the speech.
At least from my house, it's much better.
We should really have a couple of days.
It's already amazing.
You're on Longstreet.
You're just down the street.
But just our water plant supervisor did say that he is an already working problem.
It's the same thing.
It's been on and off since we were built.
I also talked to Chris about it.
I'm sure we all read that article in the union back when the problem first emerged last fall where he was quoted as saying,
or somebody was quoted as saying that five years ago the state recommended some kind of fix.
I don't remember what the technical description there was that may have helped.
Perhaps this fix would have helped, but that fix was never implemented in the past five years.
I ran into Chris on the street a month or so back and asked him about that.
He said, well, we've got to talk to the city.
He needs to spend the money if we're going to do that.
It may be that there's a solution.
I don't think that the Spyler County just said that the solution is to wait until we notice the problem.
But what's getting really bad?
There is something Chris can do with some additional charcoal for the filters from there.
And yes, it does improve it temporarily, but it's ridiculous that we should have to deal with,
you don't know if you get up in the morning, what the shower's going to smell like,
and then wait several days.
It never gets to normal anyway.
At least at our house.
It hasn't been neutral since last November.
It's just the stench is either really bad or you notice a faint version of it.
Either way, we're being warned that people are in grass valley to get any less.
I really urge you to put this on the agenda and look into it very seriously.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, I was going to suggest that if we put them on the next agenda,
maybe the city engineer and Chris and the city manager and others could maybe give us an idea of what is causing it
and what possible remedies might be and what possible costs might be to remedy it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Anyone else?
We're close to hearing from the public.
Correspondents.
You can see two items of correspondence versus from the State of California Department of Veterans Affairs
and where we're trying to put together a Veterans Memorial Registry
of all the places throughout California that have any type of warm collapse or any type of Tetris.
We have a number around here on the three-way overpasses.
There are flaps for Vietnam.
There's a plus for Vietnam.
We have a memorial road.
Others.
So there's a little survey form asking for us to give them information so we can move on to the registry.
We might want to consider having the journey go to the bedrooms or getting some volunteers to hold them.
Locate all those.
Fill them out.
We may need more swarms if we have a lot of people here.
The next item is from Matt.
We're now asking the council to consider community contact information on us
to see if we can use it to make us serve the studio.
With regard to the first one, I didn't have the form.
It wasn't the task.
It was just the cover letter.
I don't know.
How many veterans do you have in the table here?
I may be the only veteran.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'm talking about the council.
I know about you.
I know about you.
It was a long time ago.
If the mayor would then authorize David and I as the two veterans in the table, take a look at this.
I'd be wrong to hear.
Absolutely.
With regard to Madlix, Chancellor getting great on service based on conversations I had with Arizona,
which makes the decision to serve her and transform her.
But I certainly, it's nice to see the service once in a while,
and remember what we used to have about her.
The folks in Arizona are made out of it.
No interest.
The article she referred to pointed out that you can take a vote on your stage after the facts were not all.
Remember that the prey on this is available.
That's the layer.
It's not.
Wait a minute.
When does that listen to you?
That's the end of that translation.
Yeah, I have a trade ticket.
You can't use it for just shovel purpose.
The transportation commission is one of their goals.
That's great.
I'm not here for people to use the whole country stage to offer any code for their own connections.
Okay.
Thank you, Madlix.
Public hearings.
Proposed amendment to the housing element of the general plan that include policies limiting the number of forms for the project
per year to 35, adding an overlay zone for 12 units, subdivisions, and requirements.
20% of plots and subdivisions contain second units, and that 30% of total homes and subdivisions are to be limited to 1,500 square feet.
Do you want to start us off on this?
Yes.
Council members, the planning commission has recommended these policies be added as part of the housing element of the general plan.
Their genesis was a year ago.
Councilman McKay presented to his fellow council members this sheet in which he was addressing the issue of rapid growth
and the possibility of large projects coming to Nevada City.
And in this sheet he was recommending a policy where the city limit projects to 35 units per year per project.
That was followed up two weeks later by a proposal by the commissioner of the ulcer,
considering the size, diversity of housing, and the requirement in certain subdivisions that houses have seven unit projects.
And what the staff did was take those two proposals and combined them and should they have acted in front of you.
And we've named, we've turned them into three policies, which have been named Housing Element 14, 15, and 16.
And a staff report and mitigated negative declaration was prepared, which has gone through the agency and the planning commission.
I'm sure you're probably familiar with it.
You may have questions.
There's a lot of information in the staff report.
But just to walk you through it briefly, what the staff report did was it took the policies and looked at them in terms of general plan consistency
and identified certain policies and objectives in the existing housing element, which it was consistent with.
These were policies that involved encouraging diversity of homes and encouraging second units, that type of thing.
And then since the policies include a regulation on how much development per year per project, the staff report has a description of Nevada City Services
because in order to justify regulating the rate of growth, the issue was whether the city's services and utilities could keep up with that type of growth.
So there's a section in here mostly taken from the draft SPIR report describing city services.
The most constrained systems seem to be water and wastewater street systems, too, would need to accommodate growth.
And there was a justification for regulating the rate of growth.
And then there's a policy by policy analysis.
First policy, no individual housing development or adjacent housing developments owned by the same applicant shall exceed a maximum of 35 constructed units
or 35 recorded lots in any one year.
The state planning law has several provisions which discourage regulating the rate of growth.
And city attorney Jim Anderson has looked at that policy and determined that the language in question simply limits the number of units that may be built on a particular site on an annual basis.
And does not limit the number of total building permits that can be issued on the city on an annual basis.
So the city, according to the city attorney, the city is in compliance with state law regarding most of those provisions.
There was a question as to whether limiting the amount of units per year would increase the cost of housing development.
Obviously, it takes, for instance, a 70-unit development.
Under this provision, it would be required that it be built under two years, two construction cycles, rather than just one construction cycle, so that would raise the cost per unit.
And because of that fact, the city attorney recommends certain findings when an ordinance, an implementing ordinance, is to be considered, which will be later in the process.
Based on the findings made in Lee v.
the City of Monterey Park, a case where a similar situation in which the City of Monterey Park had a similar policy that the court found.
The findings were where a complaint with state law.
Excuse me, just for my own curiosity, in the scenario that you gave, say, 70 units, they could be able to do the whole thing through the planning commission and have everything approved.
And then this year, bill 35, and next year, bill 35, or would they have to do two trips to the planning commission in a situation like that?
That's one of the specifics of the ordinance would be decided at a later time.
Either approach would be consistent with this policy.
It would be a matter of pragmatic, which is the pragmatic way to go and how the public hearing process goes, I would imagine.
The second policy is Housing Element Policy 15.
On parcel zones with the potential to provide for 12 or more residential lots or housing units, the City Council shall make determinations in the form of a zone change.
The one, ultimate density of the project property, not to exceed the maximum density of the base zoning district.
And two, the number of units to be constructed annually, not to exceed the annual number of units allowed to be constructed.
This policy would be implemented by adding an overlay zoning district on our zoning district map for all residential and planned development zone properties with the potential to provide 12 or more residential lots or housing units.
And what it would mean would be that no development would occur on those parcels.
If, unless it had been rezoned, which would take an ordinance change, which would involve the City Council.
And the memo that was prepared by Commissioner Oberholzer says this rezoning would be discretionary, and the allowable units for each residential property would be different on a property by property basis.
So that the base zoning could be adjusted to a lower density, not to a higher density, but to a lower density based on information that the Council receives and determines, justifies a change in the density.
The third policy is proposed housing element policy 16.
It states, 30% of all homes located in new subdivisions shall be 1500 square feet or smaller.
Additionally, 20% of all lots in each subdivision shall include a small second unit rental.
This is a fairly innovative approach to diversifying the housing in Nevada City.
The policy would assure that a new supply market rate 1500 square foot homes and second units are constructed over the years as the city grows.
And there's a statement in the staff report, which I believe was reported in the union.
No one's challenged it yet, but I'll just read it to you.
It is clear that without such requirements for other incentives, it is unlikely that the Nevada City real estate market would generate very much of these housing types, if any.
Consequently, it is likely that this policy would help diversify the housing types to be constructed in the years ahead.
This policy would increase densities across the board because of the requirement for second units.
And based on information that we had gathered for the SPIR report, in the five-year SPIR that we had studied, it would add an approximate 104 new second units at some future build-out if this policy was implemented to its maximum.
And within the existing city, if you took all the vacant land that would be affected by this policy, it probably would result in fewer than 44 second units.
And one of the interesting observations about how these policies work together is that while this policy, policy 16, would increase densities because of the second unit requirement,
policy 15 allows the opportunity for the city council and the rezone to then lower the density, if necessary, if the impact of the extra density would have an effect on city services.
So they kind of work hand in hand in that manner.
And that pretty much summarizes what you have in front of you as far as the staff report.
I'd just like to add something briefly.
You'll see that the language I provided you gave the council some language to think about as to what we would do if we actually implemented these general plan amendments because they'd have to be mostly implemented by some sort of ordinance.
We'd actually specify the details.
So we've provided those to you.
If you have any questions, of course, let me know.
They're just suggestions of ideas of how we might implement it, but you thought the council should at least be aware of that and have any comments if they have any to the staff as we would need to follow up with some ordinances to implement the general plan amendments here tonight.
Also, after looking at my wording on policy number 14, I'd like to just change it slightly.
It says now no individual housing development or adjacent housing development.
I'd like to take out the ore and put in including any adjacent housing development.
I think it just makes it a little clearer than the ore.
But otherwise, at this point, we could open up the public hearing and if you have any questions about any of the implementation or any guidance for the staff, I'd appreciate that.
At this time, we will open the public hearing on this issue.
Anyone that would like to address the council, please come to the microphone, state your name and address for the record.
Karen Connect, my address is 17572 in Nona Court, Grass Valley.
My only question is, where's the public information packet?
I mean, there's copies of the agenda, but there's no packets back there so that we don't have it.
Nobody else can see what you're talking about.
That's information is on file at the City Hall.
So you don't have any available here?
I don't know if we can get it.
Thank you.
Lee Pemberton, 16414, Queen Little Place.
Just a question on, I guess it would be number 16, where you're discussing the second unit criteria.
And Mr. Cogla used the phrase, limited to 1,500 square feet market rate rentals.
And I would just suggest for planning and thinking purposes that to try to continue to address affordable housing issues, you go back to maybe some of the definitions that you can find in the HUD.
HUD Development Report for Nevada County from last year, just basically stating that the median salary range for Nevada County, which is kind of the midpoint range of all salaries, is 49,600.
And if you go through the HUD report and using a four-person family as a guide, you find that a very low-income family using the 30% of salary as the guide for housing costs, very low-income family can pay $620 a month,
a low-income family $992 per month, and a median income family $1,240 per month.
Now I can just imagine what a market rate 1,500 square foot home in Nevada City would bring, and I would suggest it would probably exceed those rental constraints.
So the point of my statement is just try to pull some of the affordable housing needs into the second unit or other housing criteria and thinking.
Thank you.
Lori Oberholzer, 310 Nevada Street, and I'm one of your planning commissioners.
I was involved in the drafting of both of these policies, and so that's why I'm here tonight, just to answer any questions as you're going through your comments and to give you a little bit of background.
The first policy relative to the 35-unit maximum and the 12-unit overlay was really an outgrowth of some concerns that David had about a state law that he heard about at a conference that he went to that takes a lot of our power as a city away from us to adjust projects to make them fit our small town.
So that was one of the concerns.
At the same time the 80-unit apartment project had been proposed, and a lot of people in town were very concerned about the scale of that project going in all at once.
So really this policy kind of grew out of both of those concerns.
What I know there has been a little bit of confusion out there about the 35-unit limit.
It's not a 35-unit per year limit.
It's a 35-unit per project limit, basically, and where do we come up with that number? It came from the fact that that is pretty much the largest project we've approved since the early 70s in Nevada City.
There are a couple of townhome projects that we've approved that were 35 units.
Everything else has been under that.
I think the last project that was over 35 units was the stature tract, which actually took many years to build out, so even though it was approved all at once, 35 units didn't appear all at once.
So we picked a number that we thought was appropriate to what has really been happening over many years in Nevada City.
And the idea was to come up with a limit that made sense for Nevada City and that would address these big city proposals that we're getting in our small town.
Again, the concern was that individual projects of a scale of 80, 100, 200, that sort of magnitude could really overwhelm the character of our town if it all went in at once, and certainly we found from the 80-unit project could overwhelm our sewer, our water system, and our streets.
And I think everybody who worked on this really kind of had the general idea that Nevada City has been very successful by growing slowly and incrementally, and that it's not very Nevada City-ish to grow in big spurts, big housing tracts, big apartment projects, that sort of thing.
So the idea is to ensure a growth rate that will be similar to what we've experienced in the past.
The second proposal, we originally called the Neighborhood Compatible Affordable Housing Proposal, and we actually did up a little sheet that we gave out at the Planning Commission, which I'll ask me.
And it just has some facts and figures on affordable housing in Nevada City.
Again, this was an outgrowth also of the 80-unit project.
People were very concerned about the scale of the project, but they clearly were concerned about the affordable housing problem.
And I think most people really have the idea that the kind of affordable housing we'd like to see in Nevada City is the kind of affordable housing we've always had, which is scattered small houses, second units throughout the neighborhoods, rather than focused all in one location.
And so that's what this proposal is all about.
So as individual subdivisions or apartment projects are proposed, most likely they would be in the sphere of influence, because that's where we have the land, and annexation is being applied for, we would require that 30% of the lots or units in that project have houses of 1,500 square feet or smaller,
which seems to be a size that can be built affordably if somebody chooses to build it affordably.
And then the second unit aspect was intended to address an even lower income group.
And in Nevada City, of course, our second units are held to 640 square feet.
So you get a type of housing that isn't provided in any other way.
The key issue here was why not grow our affordable housing at the rate that our city is growing?
And of course, in recent years we've grown as far as our housing stock anywhere from zero to eight units.
Last year I think we grew zero, and I think the year before it was maybe five units, and the year before it was eight.
So we don't have a very rapid growth rate.
The state only requires us to provide our fair share of affordable housing, which is based on our rate of growth.
It's not a definite number, it's a percentage of what you grow.
And so based on the fair share allocation that was given this city, we didn't calculate it, somebody else calculated it for us.
With the growth rate we've been having, we really only need about a couple of affordable housing units per year.
And this proposal would certainly provide that incrementally over time as we grow.
Probably the way it would work, and most of what we see are subdivisions, not apartment projects.
So a developer would come in, propose a subdivision in the sphere of influence, say it's 30 units.
So 10 of the lots, and we don't normally see housing tracts, so they would most likely be lots.
10 of the lots would have to have a deed restriction on them that would require that a 1,500 square foot house, no larger than that, be built on the site.
And then 20% of the lots would have a deed restriction requiring a second unit rental.
And so it would be the responsibility of whoever purchases the lot to then build a home of that size in a second unit.
Now, I'm not sure if it made it into the staff report or not, but when we were having meetings with staff and they were ironing the bugs out of this proposal,
a couple staff members were very concerned that this wouldn't really provide affordable housing.
They would just be expensive 1,500 square foot houses and expensive second units.
And so it was recommended that maybe the council should consider that the 1,500 square foot homes and the second units have a deed restriction
that also required that they be kept to an affordable rate, affordable to moderate income households and below.
And we didn't suggest that originally to tell you the truth, we didn't have the nerve to do it.
We thought we were asking for a lot here, it's pretty innovative and we would be lucky if we got away with this.
But hearing staff recommend it kind of got my courage up and I think it's a good idea.
And I think if you added that sort of restriction, then you'd really have a guarantee that you would have affordable housing in all of these homes as they're built.
And probably practically the way it would work is Mr. Developer with his 10 lots with the 1,500 square foot deed restriction
and the affordable housing rate deed restriction would probably then sell those to either probably some sort of an operation like Habitat for Humanity
or rural California Housing Corporation or individuals who would promise that they could build that sort of a house.
And I think that that would be a good thing for Nevada City.
That's pretty much it.
I would like to note that this proposal is completely separate from the work that the Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee is doing.
This can go forward without their work going forward at the same time.
And I hope you'll consider it positively.
I think this would be a good thing for Nevada City.
And I think we would be the first in the county to really do something about affordable housing.
Thanks.
Thank you, Laurie.
Good evening.
My name is Dennis Kutch, 475 Spring Street, number 3F.
I have a question.
I have not seen the packet.
I have to plead ignorance on this.
I think it was about three or four years ago a senior housing project was proposed.
It went through the Planning Commission, the time when I sat on the commission, was approved.
I believe it was 70 units on West Broad Street on a piece of the Ericsson property.
Before the project could move ahead, the applicant withdrew it.
I'm wondering with the 35-unit limitation, would that preclude that type of project at that size coming in in the future?
One of the things that we reviewed on the commission was the fact that very few of the people that would reside there would have automobiles.
So the traffic impact would be considerably reduced.
It was literally a senior care type of facility without getting into a heavy medical care aspect.
I think there were something like 10 units that were heavily medical.
So the only question I have is does that preclude that type of a project in the future on a site of that type?
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is G.
B.
Tucker, 629 East Broad.
The comments I'll make are strictly as to the affordable housing.
I'm also a Planning Commissioner for the county.
And we have been wrestling with this affordable housing second unit concept for some time.
I just picked up the staff report which will go to the Board of Supervisors on the 12th.
There's a couple of interesting things that I think I should bring to your attention.
One of them, it appears this ordinance is not going to permit any second unit, so-called affordable housing,
in the rural areas that are classified as extreme high fire danger areas.
And if you've ever looked at the CDF map, you know that's most of the rural areas.
This ordinance would permit the second unit housing to be in the city's sphere of influence.
The city's sphere of influence at the size of 1,000 square feet.
I think that might be significant in your deliberations.
Are within what is called the rural centers.
That is where there's a cluster of businesses, etc.
I think those things are significant.
We've wrestled with the term affordable housing a lot.
And we haven't been able to come up with anything.
This is a pilot program.
It would go for, allow 30 units per year for a period of 33 years.
And then it would probably require an environmental document after that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Connelly Weaver, 237 Boulder Street.
I'm currently chairman of the Planning Commission.
Lori, I think did a very fine job of going through the details in the background of what the commission did to move this forward.
Jim, I did have a question when you mentioned you had a recommendation on changing the wording on the adjacent property.
And I didn't quite understand what your.
.
.
Right now the wording says no individual housing development or adjacent housing development owned by the same applicant shall exceed 35 units.
I felt it would be better to say no individual housing development, including any adjacent housing development owned by the same.
.
.
So it put the original plus adjacent all in the same package.
Okay, thanks for clarifying that.
As I say, Lori pretty much said anything I might have to say except I want to make a specific point that the thing that really draws me to this proposal is this is a chance to accomplish some of the goals we've been trying to reach in providing affordable units and rental units in the area
and still maintain a character of Nevada City by use of this inclusionary zoning will maintain the tradition that we've had through all the years of we've had a very large house right next to a miners' cabin
or we have a miners' cabin between two large houses.
I'll just mix all the neighborhoods, everything blends and there are no.
.
.
This is where all the big folks live and this is where all the little folks live and these were all the in between folks live.
So I think this is just another step forward in that process of maintaining our heritage.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Seeing no one, we'll close the hearing portion.
Can I ask a question?
With the increased second units now, there is nothing to say those have to be rental units.
Well a second unit I think by nature would imply it's usable by somebody.
It does not be rented, your mother can move in or your sister or something like that but it would be a second unit available for somebody to use.
But it could not be sold separately from the first unit.
Right, they have to all go together in one ownership, right?
Well I had a question and maybe I'm getting way down the road here.
I know we're not anywhere near this point but on your attachment B you had some proposed language
and I was curious on 2B where it said 20% of all new lots created as part of approving a parcel or final subdivision map may contain a second dwelling attached or detached.
2A and 2B would just give you something to think about.
We could either have it set up as you shall, that would force the developer to designate the 20% of the lots and that would be real clear to any owner buying this lot that you better be prepared to construct a second unit versus may would be that anybody
wanted to commit and make an application for a second unit as long as it wasn't 20% in that subdivision already into second units they could get a permit.
Okay and then a follow up on a comment that Laurie had made.
It's my understanding that on Perseverance Mine, the little subdivision that they've built over there, there are actual deed restrictions on those properties that say that when this house comes up for sale and it has some kind of a formula based on the CPL or whatever,
that kind of thing could be applied to these second units or even 1500 square foot ones.
You could do something similar.
Now that one was a state grant actually paid for much of the work over there and of course we wouldn't have that here but you can certainly designate for instance the 1500 square foot lots could be designated that they have to be affordable
and put in a certain formula that would apply for the same thing for the 20% second unit you could put some sort of formula in as to what the maximum rental could be.
That's not included here yet but we could certainly follow that up if the council is interested in that.
Thank you.
Well originally when David brought this a little over a year ago I think I wasn't real crazy about the limit of 35 but I've changed my mind.
I think what it did was it started a discussion that's led to a whole lot of broader proposals and ideas for how some lots can be developed and I applaud the Planning Commission and the ARC for the work they did
because I think it does with the exception of perhaps rent control which I just will not ever support.
I think it does bring into the fold a mix that will as best as can in a free market provide affordable housing and the encouragement for people that are going to build on those lots
to build something that, one, the house that they want to have, two, they could perhaps subsidize that by providing some rental unit in the back.
I think it meets a couple of needs at the same time.
So I'm basically supportive of most everything that I see here.
I do on attachment B I do favor 2A as opposed to 2B because it basically does dictate the idea as opposed to making it simply an option.
And if you leave it as an option, I think it's.
.
.
Then it's why you even bought it?
Yeah, thank you.
And I'm sorry, before we move on, Mr. Kutch had a question.
Is there somebody that can address the question?
Yes, that's one of the details that can be worked out at the ordinance level and the same question was raised at the Planning Commission.
If you have a developer who has a good project that meets a need, will there be a provision which means, say, a project comes in that is an affordable housing project,
or they also have to add second units?
Maybe not.
It depends on how the ordinance is crafted.
In that particular case, I remember that project.
It was approved by the Planning Commission about three or four years ago but never built.
I think it involved 70 living units for assisted living all under one roof.
And just that specific project may have been.
.
.
This may not have been applicable to that because that was more of an institutional, quasi-institutional residence than a normal residence.
I'll comment briefly on it and I'm sure it'll be surprisingly brief.
I was in a swing vote at the first go-around of this back in November.
Anyone who reads the minutes is pretty clear I was in a swing vote.
And I supported sending it to the Planning Commission based upon, first of all, this indicated in the minutes that David had been at a League of California Cities conference
and he said that the changes in the law we need to clarify things are that we would lose control.
And I certainly believe in local control as opposed to state control,
and I indicated further that the idea of the city handling this made sense
and I was prepared to send it to the Planning Commission for them to take a look at,
but made it clear at the end of the minutes.
I indicated that the support starting the process because I feel the city needs to protect itself,
but I will not support the number of units, but the process should be started.
And I made it clear also that night that if it returned to the council in the same form it went to the Commission,
I would not be able to support it.
It is returned not only in the same form, but I think even in some cases more restrictive than the concept that was sent to the Commission.
So I would not be able to support it.
Well, I guess as I can say is that the amount of work that went into this for the last 15 months from just an idea,
and thank you Steve for allowing it to go forward and see what kind of ideas could be dredged up.
A lot of things have been flushed out.
It's gone through the Planning Commission, it's gone through an ARC meeting,
it's gone through staff where they formed a little committee on it of just discussing all the legalese
and the catch-22s that maybe popped up and things like that.
They called me and said, Dave, what do you think about this or that?
And I said, it's up to you guys, this is what you do every day.
So I'm really impressed with the depth and length of the work that was done.
These are not the specific ordinances and more details can be worked out with those.
And so far what I see looks really good.
I do feel and it's something that we take a lot of heat in the local newspaper about how Nevada City,
it's always the NIMBY not in my backyard for affordable housing.
This works really good.
As anyone seeing nationwide, the projects don't work, they're being torn down and changed.
And you can study cultural geography or inner city development or any new development.
They'll see that it's planned in a way that keeps things integrated.
And by integrating, it allows everybody to have a more equal say,
both whether in the kind of school they go to as well as the variety of the different layers of income brackets, things like that.
So as Lori pointed out, when I went knocking door to door to run for city council,
I noticed that all the apartments and condos, everything I went to was not much more than 35 units.
35 was just something that came out of the air.
It wasn't a cement number, but it turned out to be a fairly close and accurate number.
As you mentioned, the Stedger track, I don't know, the total number of units was maybe 38, you know?
It was 40 or 48.
40 or 48 that was built out over 20 years.
So that's a different kind of thing.
This, so there was never even in one year where 35 of those homes were built.
So this really has more impact on something where we have a big project coming in that just is way beyond.
Considering things like the, the dentist product, the place where elderly care is being provided,
where just like over by Sierra College in the high school where there's some of those, they're nice looking units.
I don't think that first one they built was much more than 35 or 40 units.
And then now they've started on a second one.
So this project would allow something to phase in and be planned and still be affordable because it would be,
one year they would do first phase of their project and then a couple years down the road could phase in the second one.
So I really think it's been well thought out and it'll continue to be thought out as it goes to the ordinance level.
So I will obviously be supporting this.
And so if anyone else has any other questions.
Well, I'm, I'm just 30%.
Now was that just a number we drew out of the air or did it, could we, I don't see her here.
When you put the 30 and the 20 together, you've got 50.
And that, that is about based on our old house moment, about the mix of the modernity to the modernity that we've had in the town years.
Okay.
So start getting mixed that relates to reality in that city.
Well, you know, I, I'm sure we'll go forward here.
You know, my only concern is with our second unit requirement, you know, as they, if we're going to do an ordinance this way,
I'm sure that'll come, come out.
I just, I just wonder if any one area of having that many second units is good or not.
I'm just throwing up ideas that when I read it, but I think, you know, basically it, you know, those are my two concerns.
The size and the, I would also think that in doing this, if someone's going to come and do a project,
they should be able to have it all in one go around at the, at the planning commission and not have to come back two or three times for different elements.
I just think that would be more conducive to, to everybody.
Jimmy, you mentioned that would come out later.
Is that correct?
Yes, we could.
We're going to have to do an ordinance so we can certainly indicate in the ordinance that you could say get 70 units approved all at one time,
have 35 phasing this year and 35 the following year.
It would be fair to say that the city planner indicated that would affect the affordability of the 70 units.
It probably would have some effect in all likelihood that they would be a little more costly, be my guess.
I would certainly, I would certainly support that sort of direction.
The idea of limiting to 35 per year wasn't to limit them to projects that only encompass 35 units.
It was to allow the city services to keep up with exactly the additions.
So planning, planning can all be applied for once as far as I'm concerned.
I think that makes sense.
It's just we don't want all of them coming online at the same time.
Well, I think that this is a very innovative proposal and possible solution to a problem that has been vexing not only Nevada City and Nevada County,
but most other jurisdictions around the nation.
And I thank staff and the Planning Commission for all the work that they've done.
I think this is a good way to provide a needed housing and yet keep the character, maintain the character in Nevada City.
All right.
Well, then I guess I'll make a motion that we, we would be doing what Jim tonight resolution.
2002-04.
Okay.
With the small wording change I'd requested on the 35 units.
Okay.
So my motion will be that we approve and adopt resolution 202-4 resolution of the City Council of Nevada City,
amending the general housing element with the changes that our city attorney recommended.
Second.
Okay.
On the motion, I mean, I'm going to vote no.
I think Nevada City has been very successful in dealing with projects on a case-by-case basis.
And I think based upon our recent history, which includes the 80 units at the top of the hill and the proposed 90 units on lower Banner Mountain,
that any person who came to Nevada City with large development, 35 or more,
would know they're walking into Hornet's Nest and would be very cautious to begin with.
And I don't think that we really need this ordinance.
I think that we should leave the opportunity for affordable housing or any other housing up to a decision on a case-by-case basis
and not close the door to what might at some future date be a very good project
and find ourselves in a position where we cannot accept it because we've boxed ourselves into a corner.
I think that both the proposed housing element number 15 as well as what we just discussed,
as far as the feasibility of a project coming in that is a larger project and it could be approved in a two-stage process or something,
gives us the safeguards that we would need to be worrying about that.
We've got to take some step towards doing something towards affordable housing and low income as well as the types of projects that fit.
And if I thought every time that we had to go through everything we did with AHDC,
it would just wear this town out, it would divide this town, it would split this town up,
as well as the fact that what the state is requiring that if it hadn't been for steep slope and they're deciding just not to go any further
because of their deadlines that they missed, we could have had something quite easily shoved down our throat
that would not have fit Nevada City or been best for Nevada City.
And the state is requiring us to make sure that if we're going to have something, we've got to have something that's not so general,
that's why we just don't like it, so we're not trying to do that.
We're trying to say, look, we'll put our, we will stand and we will put our words and our actions where they should be
and I think this proposal and every, all the hard work that everything it went through,
no one agreed on any two things all the way through it and yet it made it this far
and the kind of support it got because everyone in their gut feeling knows we've got to do something
and so there was a lot of thought and effort that went into this and that's what made this what we got tonight
and there's still more work that's got to go into it for the ordinances and I know we will hammer those things out,
we will take in all those concerns.
Well, I do think though that Steve has a real good point that we don't want to be boxed in on these situations
and so if we're going to go ahead with it, we need to do it very cautiously.
I just feel that to do it too speedily, if you will, the ordinance could cause a problem
so I'm not going to vote with you Steve, I will support it but I certainly agree with you wholeheartedly
that we have to be extremely careful and in the ordinance.
Any further discussion?
Yeah, Steve sees this as being restrictive, another way to look at it I think is I see it as being guidelines
and yes it's restrictive to a developer but it sets guidelines that we want the city to move forward with.
I've been commenting since I've been on the council this last four years as to how Nevada City has changed
from what it was like the first four years when I was on in 86 and 90 and in those years we were just enjoying
the fruits of the work that was done with the historical ordinance and the popularity and success
that Nevada City had achieved and so forth and in this four years we are still enjoying that
but we are also being challenged with the success and pressures that that sort of thing we strove for has brought us
and so I think it's important that we set guidelines because what has always worked in the past won't necessarily
always work in the future given we've been so darn successful and that's great.
I mean I'm very proud of everything we've done and I think this would be a further step at setting out the guidelines
that we want to keep Nevada City as good as this has always been so I see it as setting guidelines
as opposed to being restrictive.
Okay how about then a simple guideline that says the city encourages innovative housing solutions
and discourages development that overtaxes our city services and then we can forget all of this.
I don't think that sets enough guidelines.
I'd like to call the vote.
Okay.
All those in favor of adopting resolution 2002-04, signified by saying aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
No.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Old Business Discussion, Deirdorf Timber Harvest, Banner Mountain Trail.
Mayor and members of the council have brought to the attention the city was notified because this work would be done
in adjacent to the city property and the city's intake for the water treatment plant
and we are looking at some of the needs of the water treatment plant
and as a result of that one of the things that came to our attention is that they want to cut trees.
But I don't think they can hear you out there.
But they want to cut trees right adjacent to our intake and also along the city's intake ditch
which would be dangerous to the city.
The city manager and Mr. Town and myself went up there with the people and voiced our concerns.
They are now preparing a draft statement that would go to the state in Reading, I believe.
This is in a borough and then they will have a call for a meeting and at that time it would be,
I would think of the city's best interest for somebody from the council to be available
to give staff some direction.
Borough, do you have anything you want to say?
You should be clear that while Bill says the intake, all of the property that is involved
where the logging would take place from the city standpoint would be downstream from those of you who know
where that diversion takes place on a little deer creek as it goes into the rough and ruddy ditch.
We certainly, in walking and voiced concerns, the logging takes place basically from, again,
if you're familiar with the area, it's certainly all in the little deer creek area downstream of that diversion point.
And if you've been up in that area, also there's a very high flume of the DS that crosses a short distance downstream
from where the city diverts its water.
And that's where the major amount of proposed logging takes place.
But it does, some of the logging takes place adjacent to what was the open rough and ruddy ditch now of the city
when it did its water improvements in 1978.
They put that ditch in conduit all the way and we've voiced concerns that some of those trees could break
or cause problems to the conduit.
We were assured that there would be caution on that.
Also, as Bill has pointed out in his memo, if you look at who was, who at that time when we wrote the letter back to him
saying we had this concern, we indicated a further concern from the city standpoint,
more particularly downstream with Pioneer Park because the city's been working with friends of deer creek
and there is a proposed project to improve, particularly in the area of the restrooms,
just mainly below the main picnic grounds, a little deer creek where it is filled up with debris over the years
as it washes down and the voice of concern that the impacts of art directly into our water system
but the impacts downstream so we certainly indicated on the next visit we wanted a number of people to be along
to assure that there would be no downstream damage.
Bill is the, excuse me, I was always under the impression that when it came to timber harvest
there were certain stream set back requirements.
Do those apply to irrigation ditches and reservoirs as well?
And they're conforming to that so you have to go up on the site and see.
It's just that what Burl is trying to indicate to you and I know because he and I have had a conversation,
it's a sensitive area, it's a very steep area and you know the slightest little flub dub will make a difference to our creek
and to our environment or to our pipe and let's assume that you fall a tree and you break the pipe
and the pipe then flows willy nilly into the stream and then the stream you know does damage to your piner park and so on and so forth.
Those are the things that I think the council needs to know about.
I was wondering in Bill of all the, it got carboned to a lot of people and agencies but because of the potential impact
that's why the fishing game is not among the people.
Fishing game will be or they will be in the future.
Absolutely.
Oh yes.
And so will the state division forestry and so will the fire protection district and the NID and who else?
Somebody else they said that.
Anyway, yeah.
And so do they stop it from now?
I mean at this point do they just kind of stop till they check things out?
They haven't done any logging yet.
There's nothing done.
Okay, so this is, we've caught it before starting.
This is an initial proposal.
Okay.
You're looking at, there's no logging going on.
There will not be any until summertime at the earliest.
Okay.
And that is if they can secure the permits.
It could be next year.
So it's a ways down the road but we got in on the ground floor.
You will keep us surprised as things develop.
Should we go up and tour it?
Or.
.
.
That's what, if you want to individually go up, I can take you.
Bill can take you.
That might be a good idea.
If you want to go to council.
Okay.
I'm for that.
Okay.
Either on an individual schedule, whatever.
If you want to come into City Hall, let me know.
We'll take you up there and give you a quick overview on it.
Okay.
It's not a good deal tomorrow.
No.
Bring your sleds.
The last time I walked across that water trussel with burl, I swore it would be the last time
I walked across this.
That may not be true.
I could go up in the general area.
I'll walk below attention in case you're wrong.
There you go.
I have a couple boards we need replaced.
You know, when we were up there the other day, I forget what day it was, but it was just
a beautiful, it was beautiful.
Oh, that was the day burl retired.
Yeah.
It was a beautiful day, wasn't it, Burl?
Yeah.
A little cold.
In many respects, maybe.
I know why he was so happy.
He knew something you didn't know that morning, huh?
Well, he also knew that he didn't fall off and he was unable to enjoy his retirement.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
New business.
City manager selection process.
I included a small packet in your agenda packet.
When we contacted the Western Cities magazine about display ad, we were notified that 5 o'clock
today was the deadline for securing a space, but that we would be able to email the copy
in tomorrow, and that would be acceptable for them.
And so, as I pointed out, I had been meeting with staff and discussing it and looking at
many samples.
We decided to go with the, well, it's four and three quarters by two and a quarter inch
display ad, which they call a one-sixth page.
And I have Xeroxed a copy of the Western Cities magazine showing the two different sizes.
We felt that you can provide all the information that a person needs in the packet should they
request the packet, but just a clean, clean-looking ad would probably be more attention getting.
And so, I happened to just put together some samples, and that's all they are, is just
samples and suggestions that indicates basically the pertinent information, who the manager
answers to, the number of employees, the budget, the full service community, the population,
and geographically where they're located.
Thinking that that would basically, if someone is interested in applying for the position,
that would give them the fundamental information, and any more information they could just call
and get a packet.
I think you cheaped out.
You should have bought a bigger ad.
It wasn't a financial consideration.
Well, whatever.
I don't think it's big enough.
Steve has given a similar idea of what he would like to see in the ad.
Maybe it's a bit where it goes a little far, but I think somewhere a blend between the
two would suit my preferences a little better.
I don't think we can sell short who we are as a city and who we might be looking for
to replace Burl as the city manager's job.
And this is, I understand what you're saying, that you can get address the information as
you're interested, but I think we're a little more of a special community than you can squeeze
into the space available here, albeit I think Steve is perhaps a little bit wordy,
but maybe some combination of the two would be something that I would support.
I didn't know that 5 o'clock today was a deadline for securing the size, but is the size secure?
I thought in our conversation we had Kerry that we were not married to the size, that
we were blocking out space and that you had suggested to them that we'd be getting a 16.
And when I expressed to you that I thought a quarter would be more likely size, I thought
that you indicated we were not married to that size as long as we let them know tomorrow
what we wanted to do.
No, we had to reserve the space.
We did not have to get them the copy by 5 o'clock today, but we did have to reserve the space.
I must have misunderstood that then.
Because that was the point I made twice during that conversation was that I was concerned
that we had frozen the amount of space that would be available to us.
I thought that you had indicated that was not the case and that we could adjust that,
but that we were merely indicating to them that we wanted space and that that would be
the amount of space that we would probably get.
So there are also the fact that there are deadlines and there are drop-dead deadlines.
And almost since they earned their money from ad sales, if you were to call tomorrow morning
and say, gee, instead of a 16th, would you mind a quarter page?
I have a hunch they'd find room for it because there are both deadlines and drop-dead deadlines.
The seldom is to drop-dead deadline the deadline.
So I would hope that we could expand on the job description.
I appreciate Pat's comments that perhaps mine is too long.
But actually, when you look at it in the context of some of the display ads,
somewhere, city manager ads, if I included, perhaps it's somewhere between the city of a Royal Grande
and the city of Malibu in size of those first two on the page, somewhere in between those two.
I think that when we are dealing with professionals, as we're going to be doing,
that we need to give the professionals as much information as we can about not only what Nevada City is,
but what expectations we have of them professionally.
If you go through the 14 ads, and I didn't sure I'd pick these ads.
These are, I think, obviously I didn't include San Jose or large communities.
I have a couple of towns of 40 or 50,000, the rest of them are towns under 13,000.
Very hard to find a dozen towns of 3,000 looking for a city manager.
But I think the language is pretty consistent in all the ads.
What communities are looking for is someone with a degree, at least a bachelor's, preferably a master's,
five years progressive advancement in the profession, five professional letters of reference.
I think that's pretty standard in all of these.
And also, beyond the general description of the basic services of Nevada City,
is that those who really do this professionally and run nice display ads,
also indicate some of the, perhaps some of the abstract values, for instance,
our unique history, our rural lifestyle, our community park and pool, outstanding schools.
I think those are the, that's the kind of phrasing that you see over and over again in ads that appear in professional publications.
And I hope that number one, that we at 8.
01 tomorrow morning could purchase more ad space
than we've indicated to them that we were seeking.
And I certainly would be willing to cut some of the language out of my suggestion.
If you have some suggestions, Pat, the concern, I think when you're dealing with professionals,
and I will use an analogy that only affects me, if you're advertising for a hotel clerk,
you could use a pretty brief description of what you're looking for.
But we're dealing with professionals, and I think they deserve to know as much as possible without calling.
So I think we have two responsibilities.
One is to the potential applicants to provide them with as much basic information we can.
Secondly, to reduce the number of telephone calls the city manager is going to be receiving.
Even if, with all of the requirements that I've suggested, academic and professional,
wouldn't surprise me that we have 100 and 150 applications.
If it is so open that essentially anyone with an interest call,
city manager is going to be fielding unbelievable number of telephone calls.
Hopefully it would not be the city manager.
He doesn't answer the phone.
It's Corey, and then it's.
.
.
If a potential city manager wants to know what the job of the city manager is,
they're going to talk to the city manager.
They're going to want to talk to Burl and say it's only natural.
And even with all of the academic and professional requirements that I'm suggesting,
there will still be calls to Burl.
That's just inevitable.
It's going to happen, and he knows that he's going to spend a lot of time on the telephone.
So I think we have two responsibilities, to be professional in the way we advertise it,
to understand that we're looking for a professional,
and that we need to mitigate the impact on the city manager's time as much as possible.
And I think my ad accomplishes all of those goals.
Well, the other question that I had on your text was establishing the criteria.
I think that there's always the potential and the danger that you can be too rigid in your criteria.
I mean, for example, if we were to apply the criteria that you've used in paragraph 2 of your text,
if they had used the same criteria 37 years ago, Burl wouldn't have gotten an interview.
And Burl is the first person to tell you that the job was not what it is today.
Well, I understand that times change, but I just, I'd hate to see us,
as you had referred earlier on another topic, I'd hate to see us paint ourselves into a corner
and potentially lose out on a very potentially viable candidate
because our criteria is so rigid.
We have painted ourselves into a corner.
I think that's a very normal requirement.
Yeah, and it's language taken from the other 14 ads.
That's why I enclosed them,
so that you wanted to say, well, where'd you come up with this stuff, Steve?
Where I came up with it was from other cities, perhaps not exactly comparable size,
but general law, full service cities looking for a city manager,
and all of that language is drawn from other cities who have gone before us
trying to find a replacement for their city manager, including a couple of them.
You know, one of them was a city manager, been there 30 years,
so we must have known him pretty well.
The size of this ad right now that we have, if in fact there's a possibility that it can't be changed,
is a very good size ad in the sense that right now the type is quite large,
and when I look at all the other ads, both the sample ads that you provided as well as the carry did,
the type is much smaller, so there's still room for this to be an attractive ad
and put a little more into it.
Most people who are going to apply for a city manager's job are people that are well aware of
what the duties are of a city manager.
The California League of Cities has a publication that they put out on city managers.
The International City Managers Association website has a ton of information on that,
so I don't think that we're going to find someone from the roadworks department applying,
although you might.
I mean, I've had people apply for jobs that you wondered if they ever read the ad,
so you're always going to get that.
I'm not against adding to this, and I understand what both sides are saying on this right now.
I do agree with Kerry that we want to keep this door as wide open as possible,
and yet at the same time we don't want just some of this totally not qualified to apply,
but you can't stop that.
I mean, anyone can apply, but you'll weed that out when you get them.
As far as everyone talking to Burrell, I think that his instruction, how much he will or won't do,
I don't know.
I mean, Burrell makes himself very available.
I mean, if he has a hundred people, no matter what we say in the ad,
if people want to talk to Burrell, they're going to say it to him, no matter what's in the ad.
I mean, they're going to, so I don't see a hundred people wanting to talk to Burrell.
Well, the only comment I'd make there if I was looking for a city manager job,
I would call the city manager if he was available and talk to him.
That's just logical.
Regardless of what's in the ad, though, right?
Yeah, that would seem to me to ask where you would come,
because that's the person that will be able to best convey to you
absolutely what they think the job's about.
I agree with you, Burrell, but I think that you would,
there's a reason why all of these communities run the type of job announcements they do,
and that they're trying to set up minimum standards and expectations
in order to find the most qualified person.
And the suggested language from Kerry talks about essentially call city hall
if you want more information about what is required.
Well, who, in fact, the way I think you phrased it in your cover letter is
they can receive, call city hall for more information,
or receive a packet that contain the fine details.
And I guess my question would be who determines what the fine details,
the answers to those fine details?
I think that's a policy matter for the council to establish.
For instance, if someone were to call the city manager,
does the city manager know that unless you have a degree,
a bachelor's and preferably a master's, there's really no need to submit it?
That's not the city manager's job.
That's our policy to set.
And so when you say, well, they can call and get the details,
it's up to us to establish that not the city manager would all do respect.
And I think you would agree with it.
And so that's why I've suggested that we be upfront about it in our job announcement.
And I would hope we'd have more than just this.
You recall the deadline for your city manager's magazine?
Oh, the city manager, that comes out twice a month.
You're going to fit it in there.
I think Tom may have had information.
He asked some questions.
I think he talked to ICMA and also their website.
It has information.
And I'm trying to, lo and behold, a title that I had never heard of,
a range writer, which is a person that is available to cities for a certain area.
And the guy's name is Tom Peterson.
I have not had luck in actually contacting him,
and I have since found out that he has recently come down with Parkinson's disease.
And so his medical is affecting his getting to us.
But it's resources like that that are available to us.
I did download there.
They have a guideline for cities.
And I think it will be good for the council to all take a look at that
as we get farther into the process because they do have some guidelines
or interesting takes on questions.
But that's in time to come.
Right now we're trying to settle the ad.
Well, I appreciate you staying, Steve, that deadlines aren't dropped dead deadlines
and often drop dead deadlines aren't either.
And I really think we should get more space.
And this is an opportunity to sell ourselves from right out of the gate,
and that is make Nevada City sound as special as it is.
No offense to whoever wrote this, Carrie, if that were you,
but it reads like a classified ad for shoes.
There's really no interest there.
And for possibly very talented potential city managers to offer their services
to a city of 3,000 may not be very exciting or interesting,
just very qualified people out there,
unless maybe they know a little bit that we know about Nevada City
that makes it special, which you see in Steve's.
And as far as it being wordy, Steve, if we can get the space,
I would say put every word in there.
If we can't get the space, if this is what we're locked into,
then I don't know exactly what to do.
But I think to attract the kind of individuals that Nevada City attracts,
based on the people that come here for all the various reasons,
we have to present ourselves to the people that don't know anything about us,
maybe as something a little more unique than a city of 3,000
that needs somebody to run the boat.
So I think it's a selling job.
And forgive me by saying perhaps it was too wordy.
My only concept about too wordy was by the time we squeeze it into this space,
you won't be able to read it.
Oh, no, you can't get into that space.
Right.
So if we can get bigger space, that's in my opinion what we've got to do.
I mean, this is out of the gate announcement that Nevada City's looking for somebody new.
And that hasn't come around in an awfully long time,
and we hope it doesn't come around for a long time after this.
We don't want to be just turning over city managers.
So it's about finding the right guy or lady, and it's not going to be easy.
And I think this is our chance to say we're somewhere special
and we're looking for somebody special.
Well, I appreciate your support, Pat.
And if the chair would entertain a motion, I'd put one on the table
and perhaps we could work toward a resolution here.
Well, does the council have any objection to somebody has their hand up?
Oh, absolutely not.
Thank you, Joseph Reisdorf, 12288 Gail Lane.
I've had the opportunity over my career to work with a number of cities around the state
to get to know a lot of city managers and to really spend a lot of time
observing the importance of the dynamic between the city manager and the city council.
And you can almost always tell right away whether that dynamic is working or not.
You can detect dysfunctional relationships right away.
You can kind of see the impact that a wrong match between the city council
and the city manager can have on a city.
Selecting a city manager is probably one of the most important jobs
that the city council has to take on.
And you probably already concluded that this is one of the few jobs that you have to do,
one of the few decisions that you have to make,
where you can't necessarily turn to the staff for advice.
You're kind of out on your own in this one.
This is the one job that you have where you have to rely on your own judgment,
your own guidance to come up with the right decision.
And a wrong decision can have serious consequences.
And one that's maybe made in haste or made without a lot of forethought
can have long-term negative impacts on the city that take many years to correct.
So I really encourage you to take your time to be deliberate
and to be clear about the kind of person that you need for this job.
It's a very important job.
One that's going to have a major impact on the businesses, residents,
and the future of Nevada City.
One of the things that I would suggest is that you invite the business
and the residential community to be part of a process
that would help you develop a common vision for Nevada City
to make sure that there is some consensus on that
and also to develop a fairly clear statement of the challenges
that are facing Nevada City today and the ones that will face it in the future.
And I think you'll find once you get into this process
that having that information is going to be very important.
Number one, it'll help you sorting through the stack of resumes
that you're going to be getting.
And secondly, when you finally do get it down to a short list of people
that you want to interview, they're going to have questions for you.
They're going to ask you, well, what's the head for the city?
What do you see for the city?
And it's going to be important that you really get the right person
that you want to get the most qualified person that you want,
that you come back with a very clear statement to indicate what you all expect
for the city and the future and the kind of person that you needed to take you there.
This information that you could get by working with the business and the residents,
they can help you develop your selection criteria,
help you develop the process that you go through to actually determine
who you want to be the next city manager.
It's been a long time since Nevada City has selected a city manager.
That's why I encourage you to take this job very seriously.
It sounds like you've already begun to take advantage of some of the resources
that the California League of Cities and the ICMA have to offer,
including the opportunity to bring in a circuit rider to maybe fill in on an interim basis
until you actually get through the selection process.
So again, I encourage you to take your time to not rush the process
and not get ahead of yourselves and to really be very deliberate about telegraphing
and communicating your intentions and your needs to potential candidates
and then being very careful about the selection process that you go through afterwards.
Thank you.
I'm Paul Rotenberg, 228 B Street in Nevada City.
I have to yield a great deal of what I have to say to the previous speaker
who said it's probably a great deal more articulately than I can.
It seems that you all are rushing and this is an immensely important decision.
It's a selection that hopefully you'll only have to make once for a while.
As you all know, I think city managers tend to move every three years or so on the average.
Sometimes they move because they're ambitious and they're moving on to bigger cities
with bigger challenges and bigger salaries and bigger retirements.
And sometimes they move because councils change and they fall into disfavor.
And if you want to get the right person, it's going to be a long task.
They're probably not going to just fall in your lap.
And it looks like you're looking for that person on short notice.
And the League of California Cities knows the situation.
They have a great number of immensely qualified people who are in retirement or close to retirement.
They go around, they work on an interim basis for cities just like this
while the city engages in a concerted, long-term, thoughtful search process.
You might get down to a short list, you might get three or four people,
arduously rank them, offer each one of them jobs and have them all say no.
And then you're back to square one.
If you plan to hire an interim manager, start that process now.
Bring them in, they'll spend some time with the current city manager.
Get to know the ins and outs of the city.
You may find that there are certain problems that you want to manage
and you don't want to dump them on the person that you're planning to hire for the long term.
Maybe you want to take some of the tough problems, give them to the interim,
let the interim do some of the hard, difficult, unsavory work that may be here that has to get done.
And then when the person you find who's right for the job is ready, you bring them in,
you let the interim go, there's no hard feelings.
They understood it was a temporary position, that's what they were here for.
A tremendous number of benefits to using an interim city manager.
I would also like to ask that you at least consider employing a human resources consultant.
There are great many immensely qualified and talented consultants who assist cities
in searches for specifically city managers or specifically public works directors
or any number of department head positions.
They're very good at what they do.
They know the personalities, they know the cities,
they know the trends, they understand the compensation packages.
Lastly, I would like to encourage you to please not be cheap.
You may have to spend more money than you ever thought you were going to have to spend,
but that money will be well spent.
You spend a lot of money if you buy quality.
The person you get is going to save the city money.
If you find money for the city that may not have been available or may have been overlooked,
they're going to save money because they're going to come in with fresh perspective,
talent and experience.
I would like to speak lastly, I already said lastly twice,
but final, final, please keep an open mind about this process
and be prepared to take time, spend money, be disappointed
and don't jump on the first person who comes down the pipe because you think you're up against deadlines.
Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
Paul, just so you know where I'm coming from with this, I can speak only for myself,
but the only timeline that we really face is placing a job announcement.
The hiring could take several months.
I don't think anyone at this table anticipates that we will have hired a new city manager by April 30th.
Anyone who thinks that at this table just isn't being realistic.
And I agree with what you have said.
The sole purpose right now is to get the job announcement in just to start the process.
I would agree with you that we probably will have an interim city manager.
I agree with you we should go slow and cautiously.
I agree with you we should not be cheap including the job announcement.
And I really support everything that you've said.
The purpose tonight is merely to start the ball rolling with a job announcement and there's an add deadline.
That is the only sense of urgency, at least from this chair.
And the rest of it, if it takes all through the summer, so be it.
When we're done, I'm confident we'll have the best man or woman who wants the job,
is qualified for the job and works for Nevada City.
One thing I would like to see us avoid however is any sort of professional search company.
Because I think Nevada City is a very unique town and no one understands Nevada City better than the people who represent it.
So I would hope that we do not find ourselves going out looking for a professional search person.
And that we will have the applicants come to us and we as the council and relevant staff in the screening process
will be able to do it, I think, far more efficiently than any sort of professional search.
But beyond that, I support everything you said there, Paul.
Well, since you engaged me, let me just say one more thing.
If you pay the money that the market demands, this is a nice place.
We'll get quality applicants.
I know a lot of city managers.
I know some who, if they weren't working elsewhere, would certainly like to throw an application in here.
I would also say, however, that asking for a master's in public administration and prior experience as a city manager is not unusual.
I don't think anybody in the city manager market right now expects to get a job as a city manager if they don't have an MPA.
If you set your sites lower than an MPA, you're going to be weeding through unqualified people when you could have qualified people.
I agree with you.
In fact, the language in the my suggested language is a bachelor's degree in public business administration
is required, a master's degree preferred, with a minimum of five years progressive municipal management experience.
As a city manager, assistant city manager, our department head with related senior municipal management responsibilities.
As an unofficial spokesperson for Jesuit education, all graduate degrees are not created equal.
So, look closely at the resumes.
Good evening, Chair, and Tobias, and 514 Nursery Street.
Steve, you and I are really agreeing tonight.
The two gentlemen prior to me actually shared my very strong opinion, but I want to reinforce one of the most important avenues as I feel as a former city council person
and for a long time resident of Nevada City is we do need a citizen committee on this.
I understand where you're coming from this evening by getting the ad space available.
My suggestion also is start thinking about an interim city manager.
We have locally Gene Albaugh may be interested in the position short term.
This person would have a chance to be working with Burl and getting his feelings there.
And I'm sure after Burl retires, he will still be available as a consultant.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Are we proposing going outside California for advertising?
Well, the western cities actually covers western cities.
Because there are ads in there for cities outside the state.
Well, I have absolutely no problem with whatever, obviously with whatever the council desires.
I submitted an ad that was just a suggestion.
Steve submitted an ad that was a suggestion.
And whatever the council's pleasure is absolutely fine with me.
We can call western cities tomorrow morning and see if there's a possibility of getting the larger ad.
I don't have a problem with that.
If that were to, if we had a vote of support for that, I have a hunch that if this were faxed to them,
they could determine that size pretty quickly.
It would not take them long to determine what the minimum size would be to fit it in and have the city logo as well.
Would you, there's no other public input if you'd entertain a motion.
Okay, I would move that the language that I submitted tonight be the language that be placed in the city magazine
and any websites or other professional publications that we might use as part of our city manager recruitment.
Could we include the fax number in the advertisement?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Include the fax and the email.
And the email too.
Okay, the fax and the email.
And then just a housekeeping item.
I indicated 24 full-time employees and Kerry had 25.
What would be the right number?
25 plus the city.
Okay, 25.
And I thought the budget, actually I have a tight one.
I thought the budget was about 3.
6 or 7.
I meant to put in 4.
I put in 3.
But 4 rounded off 4 is fair for general.
Yeah, but it's the general fund budget.
The general fund budget.
Yeah, that was just a typo.
And then 25 and include the fax and email.
I had this on a computer here at City Hall so I could come in in the morning and.
.
.
I can't remember how I say that.
Must have the word city manager or something and pull it up and make these changes.
And I don't care if you'd be in City Hall in the morning.
Can you take a look at it before it goes down?
Sure.
Okay.
I'll make a point of being here at 8.
Just a question or a suggestion or something you have that they're coming in
marked confidential to the city manager.
I think that they should come in marked confidential, stay sealed,
and go to the city clerk and then be handed over to the committee.
The other ads they go to that can care of the city clerk.
Normally the applications come in that way.
Well, for instance, City of Arroyo, submit to city manager's office.
City of Malibu, attention city manager recruitment.
Hillsborough says care of city clerk.
So you're suggesting they just be brought in and left unopened
until such time as a screening committee is assembled?
Stamped in.
Like we do everything, they'll be sealed and.
.
.
That makes sense.
When the screening committee is assembled,
then all of them would be just handed over to that committee.
That makes sense.
That seems to make it real.
Yeah, I don't have a problem.
I don't have a problem either way.
I don't have a problem with that.
No, I mean, Kathy's a confidential employee,
so that part's not a problem at all.
They'll be opening them.
They'll just be making sure that they're logged in
and handed over to the committee.
That might be.
Or the full council, whatever happens.
All right.
Sorry, I've lost track here.
Could you put the motion?
There's a motion on the floor.
Kathy, could you repeat it?
The motion was to move that the language
that Councilman Cottrell submitted
be the language that's placed in the ad
with the addition of the facts and the email number
and a change to the budget
and a change to the number of employees
from 24 to 25.
And changing word manager to clerk
in the address portion.
You said you had one other.
.
.
Include the facts number and email number.
Right, I've got that, but you said you had a typo
or something else you were going to correct.
No, the typo is.
.
.
I had three made instead of four million in the budget.
Carried at 3.
9.
I rounded it off to four, but put in three.
That's with the motion.
Yeah.
Okay, any further discussion?
All those in favor?
Opposed?
The motion carries.
I'll be in a date or shortly thereafter in the morning
and then we can massage it,
and make sure you're comfortable with it
before we fax it down.
All right, thank you.
Announcements.
County of Nevada, Carl F.
Bryan,
the second juvenile hall opening
is 11.
45 a.
m.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2002.
That is the day after tomorrow.
And
I believe it's the public
is invited to attend.
And if anyone from the council can attend
to represent the city,
I would greatly appreciate that.
I will not be able to attend.
Um.
.
.
Is there.
.
.
Because there's an executive
session on the
city manager of performance.
The executive session on
Friends of Nevada City versus Nevada City
is not needed.
I'm sure you all read in the paper about the settlement.
But basically,
since the Brown Act requires us
to state the terms of the settlement,
the city agreed to look
at various planning issues
and possibly change those
and those would be considered by the city council.
And the city council
cannot go ahead
and approve those depending
on public input and their own feelings.
And the city also
agreed that it would transfer
a strip of land
along a hollow way to the
developer.
The land is approximately 11 feet
across.
11 feet and some
600 feet in length.
We're going to sell it
to the developer
at the fair market value
to be determined.
I would move that we adjourn to
executive session.
I second that.
I motion carries.
We are adjourned to executive session.
Mayor?
Thank you.
Please subscribe to this channel, click the bell icon.
January 28, 2002, the record reflected on the numbers that are present.
I pledge allegiance to the fire of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Before us, the minutes from the January 14 meeting.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it in.
Second.
Page three, I'm going to take it.
Page three, toward the middle of our meeting for the talk.
Since I became United States, because I didn't feel the council should be able to report it, I actually didn't reverse that, because I felt the council should be able to report it.
So it doesn't feel it should be seen.
And then the last sentence would be, that urge me to support you is not welcome to be here with that urge.
That meeting?
I will yield to the city court.
I think I asked for support.
I asked for general support.
I asked for Steve specifically.
It doesn't matter.
And you said that was directed to Steve.
I remember saying it in a general way, but that's okay.
The key one was that we're changing.
It doesn't feel.
It doesn't feel.
And it certainly feels the same, because he feels the council should be able to report it.
Nobody yield to the city court, I'll show you.
Okay, any other corrections?
All those in favor of the Hiking to Ministers amendment?
Aye.
Talking reports.
Council committee reports.
Comments on items not on the agenda are welcome at this time.
However, action for discussion by the council may not occur at this time.
Comments will limit you to three minutes.
Is there anyone that would like to address the council on item not on this evening's agenda?
Hello, I'm Ianna Greenberg, the New York 14 German time drive from the city.
I want to talk about the water.
It was a problem just before Thanksgiving that the water had an awful lot of steam to it, and I've talked to some of you.
And that plea of a phone letter from my dad now, and I still smell it.
It's not the strongest before, but it's still there.
And I was wondering if maybe we could look into what's going on.
I hear it's only in the pockets of the city.
I talk to other people in my neighborhood that have the same problem still too.
It's not as pronounced as it was there, but it's still there.
Especially when you take a shower.
It's to the point where sometimes you start ganking or you're pressuring your team and you're too close to the water.
It's awful.
The water water filled them.
I'm not going to talk about the water, but I'm still getting the same money as everybody else in town.
I think it's maybe a little better water than I think it is.
But I would love for you to look into that.
14 German time?
I'm just a prospector.
Prospector?
I had a complaint from someone who lives just above you.
And it's not all mainly related.
Because when it started a week or so before Thanksgiving there was no rain.
And then there was rain and it smelled the same before and after.
Thanks.
Someone who spoke to me today, and it has to be Steven, and it's a friend of yours right now.
She had noticed the November problem and then said it had gone pretty much gone away.
And I believe sometime maybe from the end of December 1st of January, then it got it again.
And I noticed over the last few days that it happened again.
I did ask her to just give either the City of Paul or the President of Paul that the last time it was reported and now she needed it.
It's the same thing.
I talked to the water plant supervisor today.
We have received some complaints most of them from back into the system.
We tried to get part of the system.
And by the time it reaches other parts of town it was dissipated.
He started correcting the action on Saturday.
It takes a couple of days to notice it and then it's cleared up.
He has already started correcting the action and there is already more improvement in the speech.
At least from my house, it's much better.
We should really have a couple of days.
It's already amazing.
You're on Longstreet.
You're just down the street.
But just our water plant supervisor did say that he is an already working problem.
It's the same thing.
It's been on and off since we were built.
I also talked to Chris about it.
I'm sure we all read that article in the union back when the problem first emerged last fall where he was quoted as saying,
or somebody was quoted as saying that five years ago the state recommended some kind of fix.
I don't remember what the technical description there was that may have helped.
Perhaps this fix would have helped, but that fix was never implemented in the past five years.
I ran into Chris on the street a month or so back and asked him about that.
He said, well, we've got to talk to the city.
He needs to spend the money if we're going to do that.
It may be that there's a solution.
I don't think that the Spyler County just said that the solution is to wait until we notice the problem.
But what's getting really bad?
There is something Chris can do with some additional charcoal for the filters from there.
And yes, it does improve it temporarily, but it's ridiculous that we should have to deal with,
you don't know if you get up in the morning, what the shower's going to smell like,
and then wait several days.
It never gets to normal anyway.
At least at our house.
It hasn't been neutral since last November.
It's just the stench is either really bad or you notice a faint version of it.
Either way, we're being warned that people are in grass valley to get any less.
I really urge you to put this on the agenda and look into it very seriously.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, I was going to suggest that if we put them on the next agenda,
maybe the city engineer and Chris and the city manager and others could maybe give us an idea of what is causing it
and what possible remedies might be and what possible costs might be to remedy it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Anyone else?
We're close to hearing from the public.
Correspondents.
You can see two items of correspondence versus from the State of California Department of Veterans Affairs
and where we're trying to put together a Veterans Memorial Registry
of all the places throughout California that have any type of warm collapse or any type of Tetris.
We have a number around here on the three-way overpasses.
There are flaps for Vietnam.
There's a plus for Vietnam.
We have a memorial road.
Others.
So there's a little survey form asking for us to give them information so we can move on to the registry.
We might want to consider having the journey go to the bedrooms or getting some volunteers to hold them.
Locate all those.
Fill them out.
We may need more swarms if we have a lot of people here.
The next item is from Matt.
We're now asking the council to consider community contact information on us
to see if we can use it to make us serve the studio.
With regard to the first one, I didn't have the form.
It wasn't the task.
It was just the cover letter.
I don't know.
How many veterans do you have in the table here?
I may be the only veteran.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'm talking about the council.
I know about you.
I know about you.
It was a long time ago.
If the mayor would then authorize David and I as the two veterans in the table, take a look at this.
I'd be wrong to hear.
Absolutely.
With regard to Madlix, Chancellor getting great on service based on conversations I had with Arizona,
which makes the decision to serve her and transform her.
But I certainly, it's nice to see the service once in a while,
and remember what we used to have about her.
The folks in Arizona are made out of it.
No interest.
The article she referred to pointed out that you can take a vote on your stage after the facts were not all.
Remember that the prey on this is available.
That's the layer.
It's not.
Wait a minute.
When does that listen to you?
That's the end of that translation.
Yeah, I have a trade ticket.
You can't use it for just shovel purpose.
The transportation commission is one of their goals.
That's great.
I'm not here for people to use the whole country stage to offer any code for their own connections.
Okay.
Thank you, Madlix.
Public hearings.
Proposed amendment to the housing element of the general plan that include policies limiting the number of forms for the project
per year to 35, adding an overlay zone for 12 units, subdivisions, and requirements.
20% of plots and subdivisions contain second units, and that 30% of total homes and subdivisions are to be limited to 1,500 square feet.
Do you want to start us off on this?
Yes.
Council members, the planning commission has recommended these policies be added as part of the housing element of the general plan.
Their genesis was a year ago.
Councilman McKay presented to his fellow council members this sheet in which he was addressing the issue of rapid growth
and the possibility of large projects coming to Nevada City.
And in this sheet he was recommending a policy where the city limit projects to 35 units per year per project.
That was followed up two weeks later by a proposal by the commissioner of the ulcer,
considering the size, diversity of housing, and the requirement in certain subdivisions that houses have seven unit projects.
And what the staff did was take those two proposals and combined them and should they have acted in front of you.
And we've named, we've turned them into three policies, which have been named Housing Element 14, 15, and 16.
And a staff report and mitigated negative declaration was prepared, which has gone through the agency and the planning commission.
I'm sure you're probably familiar with it.
You may have questions.
There's a lot of information in the staff report.
But just to walk you through it briefly, what the staff report did was it took the policies and looked at them in terms of general plan consistency
and identified certain policies and objectives in the existing housing element, which it was consistent with.
These were policies that involved encouraging diversity of homes and encouraging second units, that type of thing.
And then since the policies include a regulation on how much development per year per project, the staff report has a description of Nevada City Services
because in order to justify regulating the rate of growth, the issue was whether the city's services and utilities could keep up with that type of growth.
So there's a section in here mostly taken from the draft SPIR report describing city services.
The most constrained systems seem to be water and wastewater street systems, too, would need to accommodate growth.
And there was a justification for regulating the rate of growth.
And then there's a policy by policy analysis.
First policy, no individual housing development or adjacent housing developments owned by the same applicant shall exceed a maximum of 35 constructed units
or 35 recorded lots in any one year.
The state planning law has several provisions which discourage regulating the rate of growth.
And city attorney Jim Anderson has looked at that policy and determined that the language in question simply limits the number of units that may be built on a particular site on an annual basis.
And does not limit the number of total building permits that can be issued on the city on an annual basis.
So the city, according to the city attorney, the city is in compliance with state law regarding most of those provisions.
There was a question as to whether limiting the amount of units per year would increase the cost of housing development.
Obviously, it takes, for instance, a 70-unit development.
Under this provision, it would be required that it be built under two years, two construction cycles, rather than just one construction cycle, so that would raise the cost per unit.
And because of that fact, the city attorney recommends certain findings when an ordinance, an implementing ordinance, is to be considered, which will be later in the process.
Based on the findings made in Lee v.
the City of Monterey Park, a case where a similar situation in which the City of Monterey Park had a similar policy that the court found.
The findings were where a complaint with state law.
Excuse me, just for my own curiosity, in the scenario that you gave, say, 70 units, they could be able to do the whole thing through the planning commission and have everything approved.
And then this year, bill 35, and next year, bill 35, or would they have to do two trips to the planning commission in a situation like that?
That's one of the specifics of the ordinance would be decided at a later time.
Either approach would be consistent with this policy.
It would be a matter of pragmatic, which is the pragmatic way to go and how the public hearing process goes, I would imagine.
The second policy is Housing Element Policy 15.
On parcel zones with the potential to provide for 12 or more residential lots or housing units, the City Council shall make determinations in the form of a zone change.
The one, ultimate density of the project property, not to exceed the maximum density of the base zoning district.
And two, the number of units to be constructed annually, not to exceed the annual number of units allowed to be constructed.
This policy would be implemented by adding an overlay zoning district on our zoning district map for all residential and planned development zone properties with the potential to provide 12 or more residential lots or housing units.
And what it would mean would be that no development would occur on those parcels.
If, unless it had been rezoned, which would take an ordinance change, which would involve the City Council.
And the memo that was prepared by Commissioner Oberholzer says this rezoning would be discretionary, and the allowable units for each residential property would be different on a property by property basis.
So that the base zoning could be adjusted to a lower density, not to a higher density, but to a lower density based on information that the Council receives and determines, justifies a change in the density.
The third policy is proposed housing element policy 16.
It states, 30% of all homes located in new subdivisions shall be 1500 square feet or smaller.
Additionally, 20% of all lots in each subdivision shall include a small second unit rental.
This is a fairly innovative approach to diversifying the housing in Nevada City.
The policy would assure that a new supply market rate 1500 square foot homes and second units are constructed over the years as the city grows.
And there's a statement in the staff report, which I believe was reported in the union.
No one's challenged it yet, but I'll just read it to you.
It is clear that without such requirements for other incentives, it is unlikely that the Nevada City real estate market would generate very much of these housing types, if any.
Consequently, it is likely that this policy would help diversify the housing types to be constructed in the years ahead.
This policy would increase densities across the board because of the requirement for second units.
And based on information that we had gathered for the SPIR report, in the five-year SPIR that we had studied, it would add an approximate 104 new second units at some future build-out if this policy was implemented to its maximum.
And within the existing city, if you took all the vacant land that would be affected by this policy, it probably would result in fewer than 44 second units.
And one of the interesting observations about how these policies work together is that while this policy, policy 16, would increase densities because of the second unit requirement,
policy 15 allows the opportunity for the city council and the rezone to then lower the density, if necessary, if the impact of the extra density would have an effect on city services.
So they kind of work hand in hand in that manner.
And that pretty much summarizes what you have in front of you as far as the staff report.
I'd just like to add something briefly.
You'll see that the language I provided you gave the council some language to think about as to what we would do if we actually implemented these general plan amendments because they'd have to be mostly implemented by some sort of ordinance.
We'd actually specify the details.
So we've provided those to you.
If you have any questions, of course, let me know.
They're just suggestions of ideas of how we might implement it, but you thought the council should at least be aware of that and have any comments if they have any to the staff as we would need to follow up with some ordinances to implement the general plan amendments here tonight.
Also, after looking at my wording on policy number 14, I'd like to just change it slightly.
It says now no individual housing development or adjacent housing development.
I'd like to take out the ore and put in including any adjacent housing development.
I think it just makes it a little clearer than the ore.
But otherwise, at this point, we could open up the public hearing and if you have any questions about any of the implementation or any guidance for the staff, I'd appreciate that.
At this time, we will open the public hearing on this issue.
Anyone that would like to address the council, please come to the microphone, state your name and address for the record.
Karen Connect, my address is 17572 in Nona Court, Grass Valley.
My only question is, where's the public information packet?
I mean, there's copies of the agenda, but there's no packets back there so that we don't have it.
Nobody else can see what you're talking about.
That's information is on file at the City Hall.
So you don't have any available here?
I don't know if we can get it.
Thank you.
Lee Pemberton, 16414, Queen Little Place.
Just a question on, I guess it would be number 16, where you're discussing the second unit criteria.
And Mr. Cogla used the phrase, limited to 1,500 square feet market rate rentals.
And I would just suggest for planning and thinking purposes that to try to continue to address affordable housing issues, you go back to maybe some of the definitions that you can find in the HUD.
HUD Development Report for Nevada County from last year, just basically stating that the median salary range for Nevada County, which is kind of the midpoint range of all salaries, is 49,600.
And if you go through the HUD report and using a four-person family as a guide, you find that a very low-income family using the 30% of salary as the guide for housing costs, very low-income family can pay $620 a month,
a low-income family $992 per month, and a median income family $1,240 per month.
Now I can just imagine what a market rate 1,500 square foot home in Nevada City would bring, and I would suggest it would probably exceed those rental constraints.
So the point of my statement is just try to pull some of the affordable housing needs into the second unit or other housing criteria and thinking.
Thank you.
Lori Oberholzer, 310 Nevada Street, and I'm one of your planning commissioners.
I was involved in the drafting of both of these policies, and so that's why I'm here tonight, just to answer any questions as you're going through your comments and to give you a little bit of background.
The first policy relative to the 35-unit maximum and the 12-unit overlay was really an outgrowth of some concerns that David had about a state law that he heard about at a conference that he went to that takes a lot of our power as a city away from us to adjust projects to make them fit our small town.
So that was one of the concerns.
At the same time the 80-unit apartment project had been proposed, and a lot of people in town were very concerned about the scale of that project going in all at once.
So really this policy kind of grew out of both of those concerns.
What I know there has been a little bit of confusion out there about the 35-unit limit.
It's not a 35-unit per year limit.
It's a 35-unit per project limit, basically, and where do we come up with that number? It came from the fact that that is pretty much the largest project we've approved since the early 70s in Nevada City.
There are a couple of townhome projects that we've approved that were 35 units.
Everything else has been under that.
I think the last project that was over 35 units was the stature tract, which actually took many years to build out, so even though it was approved all at once, 35 units didn't appear all at once.
So we picked a number that we thought was appropriate to what has really been happening over many years in Nevada City.
And the idea was to come up with a limit that made sense for Nevada City and that would address these big city proposals that we're getting in our small town.
Again, the concern was that individual projects of a scale of 80, 100, 200, that sort of magnitude could really overwhelm the character of our town if it all went in at once, and certainly we found from the 80-unit project could overwhelm our sewer, our water system, and our streets.
And I think everybody who worked on this really kind of had the general idea that Nevada City has been very successful by growing slowly and incrementally, and that it's not very Nevada City-ish to grow in big spurts, big housing tracts, big apartment projects, that sort of thing.
So the idea is to ensure a growth rate that will be similar to what we've experienced in the past.
The second proposal, we originally called the Neighborhood Compatible Affordable Housing Proposal, and we actually did up a little sheet that we gave out at the Planning Commission, which I'll ask me.
And it just has some facts and figures on affordable housing in Nevada City.
Again, this was an outgrowth also of the 80-unit project.
People were very concerned about the scale of the project, but they clearly were concerned about the affordable housing problem.
And I think most people really have the idea that the kind of affordable housing we'd like to see in Nevada City is the kind of affordable housing we've always had, which is scattered small houses, second units throughout the neighborhoods, rather than focused all in one location.
And so that's what this proposal is all about.
So as individual subdivisions or apartment projects are proposed, most likely they would be in the sphere of influence, because that's where we have the land, and annexation is being applied for, we would require that 30% of the lots or units in that project have houses of 1,500 square feet or smaller,
which seems to be a size that can be built affordably if somebody chooses to build it affordably.
And then the second unit aspect was intended to address an even lower income group.
And in Nevada City, of course, our second units are held to 640 square feet.
So you get a type of housing that isn't provided in any other way.
The key issue here was why not grow our affordable housing at the rate that our city is growing?
And of course, in recent years we've grown as far as our housing stock anywhere from zero to eight units.
Last year I think we grew zero, and I think the year before it was maybe five units, and the year before it was eight.
So we don't have a very rapid growth rate.
The state only requires us to provide our fair share of affordable housing, which is based on our rate of growth.
It's not a definite number, it's a percentage of what you grow.
And so based on the fair share allocation that was given this city, we didn't calculate it, somebody else calculated it for us.
With the growth rate we've been having, we really only need about a couple of affordable housing units per year.
And this proposal would certainly provide that incrementally over time as we grow.
Probably the way it would work, and most of what we see are subdivisions, not apartment projects.
So a developer would come in, propose a subdivision in the sphere of influence, say it's 30 units.
So 10 of the lots, and we don't normally see housing tracts, so they would most likely be lots.
10 of the lots would have to have a deed restriction on them that would require that a 1,500 square foot house, no larger than that, be built on the site.
And then 20% of the lots would have a deed restriction requiring a second unit rental.
And so it would be the responsibility of whoever purchases the lot to then build a home of that size in a second unit.
Now, I'm not sure if it made it into the staff report or not, but when we were having meetings with staff and they were ironing the bugs out of this proposal,
a couple staff members were very concerned that this wouldn't really provide affordable housing.
They would just be expensive 1,500 square foot houses and expensive second units.
And so it was recommended that maybe the council should consider that the 1,500 square foot homes and the second units have a deed restriction
that also required that they be kept to an affordable rate, affordable to moderate income households and below.
And we didn't suggest that originally to tell you the truth, we didn't have the nerve to do it.
We thought we were asking for a lot here, it's pretty innovative and we would be lucky if we got away with this.
But hearing staff recommend it kind of got my courage up and I think it's a good idea.
And I think if you added that sort of restriction, then you'd really have a guarantee that you would have affordable housing in all of these homes as they're built.
And probably practically the way it would work is Mr. Developer with his 10 lots with the 1,500 square foot deed restriction
and the affordable housing rate deed restriction would probably then sell those to either probably some sort of an operation like Habitat for Humanity
or rural California Housing Corporation or individuals who would promise that they could build that sort of a house.
And I think that that would be a good thing for Nevada City.
That's pretty much it.
I would like to note that this proposal is completely separate from the work that the Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee is doing.
This can go forward without their work going forward at the same time.
And I hope you'll consider it positively.
I think this would be a good thing for Nevada City.
And I think we would be the first in the county to really do something about affordable housing.
Thanks.
Thank you, Laurie.
Good evening.
My name is Dennis Kutch, 475 Spring Street, number 3F.
I have a question.
I have not seen the packet.
I have to plead ignorance on this.
I think it was about three or four years ago a senior housing project was proposed.
It went through the Planning Commission, the time when I sat on the commission, was approved.
I believe it was 70 units on West Broad Street on a piece of the Ericsson property.
Before the project could move ahead, the applicant withdrew it.
I'm wondering with the 35-unit limitation, would that preclude that type of project at that size coming in in the future?
One of the things that we reviewed on the commission was the fact that very few of the people that would reside there would have automobiles.
So the traffic impact would be considerably reduced.
It was literally a senior care type of facility without getting into a heavy medical care aspect.
I think there were something like 10 units that were heavily medical.
So the only question I have is does that preclude that type of a project in the future on a site of that type?
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is G.
B.
Tucker, 629 East Broad.
The comments I'll make are strictly as to the affordable housing.
I'm also a Planning Commissioner for the county.
And we have been wrestling with this affordable housing second unit concept for some time.
I just picked up the staff report which will go to the Board of Supervisors on the 12th.
There's a couple of interesting things that I think I should bring to your attention.
One of them, it appears this ordinance is not going to permit any second unit, so-called affordable housing,
in the rural areas that are classified as extreme high fire danger areas.
And if you've ever looked at the CDF map, you know that's most of the rural areas.
This ordinance would permit the second unit housing to be in the city's sphere of influence.
The city's sphere of influence at the size of 1,000 square feet.
I think that might be significant in your deliberations.
Are within what is called the rural centers.
That is where there's a cluster of businesses, etc.
I think those things are significant.
We've wrestled with the term affordable housing a lot.
And we haven't been able to come up with anything.
This is a pilot program.
It would go for, allow 30 units per year for a period of 33 years.
And then it would probably require an environmental document after that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Connelly Weaver, 237 Boulder Street.
I'm currently chairman of the Planning Commission.
Lori, I think did a very fine job of going through the details in the background of what the commission did to move this forward.
Jim, I did have a question when you mentioned you had a recommendation on changing the wording on the adjacent property.
And I didn't quite understand what your.
.
.
Right now the wording says no individual housing development or adjacent housing development owned by the same applicant shall exceed 35 units.
I felt it would be better to say no individual housing development, including any adjacent housing development owned by the same.
.
.
So it put the original plus adjacent all in the same package.
Okay, thanks for clarifying that.
As I say, Lori pretty much said anything I might have to say except I want to make a specific point that the thing that really draws me to this proposal is this is a chance to accomplish some of the goals we've been trying to reach in providing affordable units and rental units in the area
and still maintain a character of Nevada City by use of this inclusionary zoning will maintain the tradition that we've had through all the years of we've had a very large house right next to a miners' cabin
or we have a miners' cabin between two large houses.
I'll just mix all the neighborhoods, everything blends and there are no.
.
.
This is where all the big folks live and this is where all the little folks live and these were all the in between folks live.
So I think this is just another step forward in that process of maintaining our heritage.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Seeing no one, we'll close the hearing portion.
Can I ask a question?
With the increased second units now, there is nothing to say those have to be rental units.
Well a second unit I think by nature would imply it's usable by somebody.
It does not be rented, your mother can move in or your sister or something like that but it would be a second unit available for somebody to use.
But it could not be sold separately from the first unit.
Right, they have to all go together in one ownership, right?
Well I had a question and maybe I'm getting way down the road here.
I know we're not anywhere near this point but on your attachment B you had some proposed language
and I was curious on 2B where it said 20% of all new lots created as part of approving a parcel or final subdivision map may contain a second dwelling attached or detached.
2A and 2B would just give you something to think about.
We could either have it set up as you shall, that would force the developer to designate the 20% of the lots and that would be real clear to any owner buying this lot that you better be prepared to construct a second unit versus may would be that anybody
wanted to commit and make an application for a second unit as long as it wasn't 20% in that subdivision already into second units they could get a permit.
Okay and then a follow up on a comment that Laurie had made.
It's my understanding that on Perseverance Mine, the little subdivision that they've built over there, there are actual deed restrictions on those properties that say that when this house comes up for sale and it has some kind of a formula based on the CPL or whatever,
that kind of thing could be applied to these second units or even 1500 square foot ones.
You could do something similar.
Now that one was a state grant actually paid for much of the work over there and of course we wouldn't have that here but you can certainly designate for instance the 1500 square foot lots could be designated that they have to be affordable
and put in a certain formula that would apply for the same thing for the 20% second unit you could put some sort of formula in as to what the maximum rental could be.
That's not included here yet but we could certainly follow that up if the council is interested in that.
Thank you.
Well originally when David brought this a little over a year ago I think I wasn't real crazy about the limit of 35 but I've changed my mind.
I think what it did was it started a discussion that's led to a whole lot of broader proposals and ideas for how some lots can be developed and I applaud the Planning Commission and the ARC for the work they did
because I think it does with the exception of perhaps rent control which I just will not ever support.
I think it does bring into the fold a mix that will as best as can in a free market provide affordable housing and the encouragement for people that are going to build on those lots
to build something that, one, the house that they want to have, two, they could perhaps subsidize that by providing some rental unit in the back.
I think it meets a couple of needs at the same time.
So I'm basically supportive of most everything that I see here.
I do on attachment B I do favor 2A as opposed to 2B because it basically does dictate the idea as opposed to making it simply an option.
And if you leave it as an option, I think it's.
.
.
Then it's why you even bought it?
Yeah, thank you.
And I'm sorry, before we move on, Mr. Kutch had a question.
Is there somebody that can address the question?
Yes, that's one of the details that can be worked out at the ordinance level and the same question was raised at the Planning Commission.
If you have a developer who has a good project that meets a need, will there be a provision which means, say, a project comes in that is an affordable housing project,
or they also have to add second units?
Maybe not.
It depends on how the ordinance is crafted.
In that particular case, I remember that project.
It was approved by the Planning Commission about three or four years ago but never built.
I think it involved 70 living units for assisted living all under one roof.
And just that specific project may have been.
.
.
This may not have been applicable to that because that was more of an institutional, quasi-institutional residence than a normal residence.
I'll comment briefly on it and I'm sure it'll be surprisingly brief.
I was in a swing vote at the first go-around of this back in November.
Anyone who reads the minutes is pretty clear I was in a swing vote.
And I supported sending it to the Planning Commission based upon, first of all, this indicated in the minutes that David had been at a League of California Cities conference
and he said that the changes in the law we need to clarify things are that we would lose control.
And I certainly believe in local control as opposed to state control,
and I indicated further that the idea of the city handling this made sense
and I was prepared to send it to the Planning Commission for them to take a look at,
but made it clear at the end of the minutes.
I indicated that the support starting the process because I feel the city needs to protect itself,
but I will not support the number of units, but the process should be started.
And I made it clear also that night that if it returned to the council in the same form it went to the Commission,
I would not be able to support it.
It is returned not only in the same form, but I think even in some cases more restrictive than the concept that was sent to the Commission.
So I would not be able to support it.
Well, I guess as I can say is that the amount of work that went into this for the last 15 months from just an idea,
and thank you Steve for allowing it to go forward and see what kind of ideas could be dredged up.
A lot of things have been flushed out.
It's gone through the Planning Commission, it's gone through an ARC meeting,
it's gone through staff where they formed a little committee on it of just discussing all the legalese
and the catch-22s that maybe popped up and things like that.
They called me and said, Dave, what do you think about this or that?
And I said, it's up to you guys, this is what you do every day.
So I'm really impressed with the depth and length of the work that was done.
These are not the specific ordinances and more details can be worked out with those.
And so far what I see looks really good.
I do feel and it's something that we take a lot of heat in the local newspaper about how Nevada City,
it's always the NIMBY not in my backyard for affordable housing.
This works really good.
As anyone seeing nationwide, the projects don't work, they're being torn down and changed.
And you can study cultural geography or inner city development or any new development.
They'll see that it's planned in a way that keeps things integrated.
And by integrating, it allows everybody to have a more equal say,
both whether in the kind of school they go to as well as the variety of the different layers of income brackets, things like that.
So as Lori pointed out, when I went knocking door to door to run for city council,
I noticed that all the apartments and condos, everything I went to was not much more than 35 units.
35 was just something that came out of the air.
It wasn't a cement number, but it turned out to be a fairly close and accurate number.
As you mentioned, the Stedger track, I don't know, the total number of units was maybe 38, you know?
It was 40 or 48.
40 or 48 that was built out over 20 years.
So that's a different kind of thing.
This, so there was never even in one year where 35 of those homes were built.
So this really has more impact on something where we have a big project coming in that just is way beyond.
Considering things like the, the dentist product, the place where elderly care is being provided,
where just like over by Sierra College in the high school where there's some of those, they're nice looking units.
I don't think that first one they built was much more than 35 or 40 units.
And then now they've started on a second one.
So this project would allow something to phase in and be planned and still be affordable because it would be,
one year they would do first phase of their project and then a couple years down the road could phase in the second one.
So I really think it's been well thought out and it'll continue to be thought out as it goes to the ordinance level.
So I will obviously be supporting this.
And so if anyone else has any other questions.
Well, I'm, I'm just 30%.
Now was that just a number we drew out of the air or did it, could we, I don't see her here.
When you put the 30 and the 20 together, you've got 50.
And that, that is about based on our old house moment, about the mix of the modernity to the modernity that we've had in the town years.
Okay.
So start getting mixed that relates to reality in that city.
Well, you know, I, I'm sure we'll go forward here.
You know, my only concern is with our second unit requirement, you know, as they, if we're going to do an ordinance this way,
I'm sure that'll come, come out.
I just, I just wonder if any one area of having that many second units is good or not.
I'm just throwing up ideas that when I read it, but I think, you know, basically it, you know, those are my two concerns.
The size and the, I would also think that in doing this, if someone's going to come and do a project,
they should be able to have it all in one go around at the, at the planning commission and not have to come back two or three times for different elements.
I just think that would be more conducive to, to everybody.
Jimmy, you mentioned that would come out later.
Is that correct?
Yes, we could.
We're going to have to do an ordinance so we can certainly indicate in the ordinance that you could say get 70 units approved all at one time,
have 35 phasing this year and 35 the following year.
It would be fair to say that the city planner indicated that would affect the affordability of the 70 units.
It probably would have some effect in all likelihood that they would be a little more costly, be my guess.
I would certainly, I would certainly support that sort of direction.
The idea of limiting to 35 per year wasn't to limit them to projects that only encompass 35 units.
It was to allow the city services to keep up with exactly the additions.
So planning, planning can all be applied for once as far as I'm concerned.
I think that makes sense.
It's just we don't want all of them coming online at the same time.
Well, I think that this is a very innovative proposal and possible solution to a problem that has been vexing not only Nevada City and Nevada County,
but most other jurisdictions around the nation.
And I thank staff and the Planning Commission for all the work that they've done.
I think this is a good way to provide a needed housing and yet keep the character, maintain the character in Nevada City.
All right.
Well, then I guess I'll make a motion that we, we would be doing what Jim tonight resolution.
2002-04.
Okay.
With the small wording change I'd requested on the 35 units.
Okay.
So my motion will be that we approve and adopt resolution 202-4 resolution of the City Council of Nevada City,
amending the general housing element with the changes that our city attorney recommended.
Second.
Okay.
On the motion, I mean, I'm going to vote no.
I think Nevada City has been very successful in dealing with projects on a case-by-case basis.
And I think based upon our recent history, which includes the 80 units at the top of the hill and the proposed 90 units on lower Banner Mountain,
that any person who came to Nevada City with large development, 35 or more,
would know they're walking into Hornet's Nest and would be very cautious to begin with.
And I don't think that we really need this ordinance.
I think that we should leave the opportunity for affordable housing or any other housing up to a decision on a case-by-case basis
and not close the door to what might at some future date be a very good project
and find ourselves in a position where we cannot accept it because we've boxed ourselves into a corner.
I think that both the proposed housing element number 15 as well as what we just discussed,
as far as the feasibility of a project coming in that is a larger project and it could be approved in a two-stage process or something,
gives us the safeguards that we would need to be worrying about that.
We've got to take some step towards doing something towards affordable housing and low income as well as the types of projects that fit.
And if I thought every time that we had to go through everything we did with AHDC,
it would just wear this town out, it would divide this town, it would split this town up,
as well as the fact that what the state is requiring that if it hadn't been for steep slope and they're deciding just not to go any further
because of their deadlines that they missed, we could have had something quite easily shoved down our throat
that would not have fit Nevada City or been best for Nevada City.
And the state is requiring us to make sure that if we're going to have something, we've got to have something that's not so general,
that's why we just don't like it, so we're not trying to do that.
We're trying to say, look, we'll put our, we will stand and we will put our words and our actions where they should be
and I think this proposal and every, all the hard work that everything it went through,
no one agreed on any two things all the way through it and yet it made it this far
and the kind of support it got because everyone in their gut feeling knows we've got to do something
and so there was a lot of thought and effort that went into this and that's what made this what we got tonight
and there's still more work that's got to go into it for the ordinances and I know we will hammer those things out,
we will take in all those concerns.
Well, I do think though that Steve has a real good point that we don't want to be boxed in on these situations
and so if we're going to go ahead with it, we need to do it very cautiously.
I just feel that to do it too speedily, if you will, the ordinance could cause a problem
so I'm not going to vote with you Steve, I will support it but I certainly agree with you wholeheartedly
that we have to be extremely careful and in the ordinance.
Any further discussion?
Yeah, Steve sees this as being restrictive, another way to look at it I think is I see it as being guidelines
and yes it's restrictive to a developer but it sets guidelines that we want the city to move forward with.
I've been commenting since I've been on the council this last four years as to how Nevada City has changed
from what it was like the first four years when I was on in 86 and 90 and in those years we were just enjoying
the fruits of the work that was done with the historical ordinance and the popularity and success
that Nevada City had achieved and so forth and in this four years we are still enjoying that
but we are also being challenged with the success and pressures that that sort of thing we strove for has brought us
and so I think it's important that we set guidelines because what has always worked in the past won't necessarily
always work in the future given we've been so darn successful and that's great.
I mean I'm very proud of everything we've done and I think this would be a further step at setting out the guidelines
that we want to keep Nevada City as good as this has always been so I see it as setting guidelines
as opposed to being restrictive.
Okay how about then a simple guideline that says the city encourages innovative housing solutions
and discourages development that overtaxes our city services and then we can forget all of this.
I don't think that sets enough guidelines.
I'd like to call the vote.
Okay.
All those in favor of adopting resolution 2002-04, signified by saying aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
No.
Motion carries.
Thank you.
Old Business Discussion, Deirdorf Timber Harvest, Banner Mountain Trail.
Mayor and members of the council have brought to the attention the city was notified because this work would be done
in adjacent to the city property and the city's intake for the water treatment plant
and we are looking at some of the needs of the water treatment plant
and as a result of that one of the things that came to our attention is that they want to cut trees.
But I don't think they can hear you out there.
But they want to cut trees right adjacent to our intake and also along the city's intake ditch
which would be dangerous to the city.
The city manager and Mr. Town and myself went up there with the people and voiced our concerns.
They are now preparing a draft statement that would go to the state in Reading, I believe.
This is in a borough and then they will have a call for a meeting and at that time it would be,
I would think of the city's best interest for somebody from the council to be available
to give staff some direction.
Borough, do you have anything you want to say?
You should be clear that while Bill says the intake, all of the property that is involved
where the logging would take place from the city standpoint would be downstream from those of you who know
where that diversion takes place on a little deer creek as it goes into the rough and ruddy ditch.
We certainly, in walking and voiced concerns, the logging takes place basically from, again,
if you're familiar with the area, it's certainly all in the little deer creek area downstream of that diversion point.
And if you've been up in that area, also there's a very high flume of the DS that crosses a short distance downstream
from where the city diverts its water.
And that's where the major amount of proposed logging takes place.
But it does, some of the logging takes place adjacent to what was the open rough and ruddy ditch now of the city
when it did its water improvements in 1978.
They put that ditch in conduit all the way and we've voiced concerns that some of those trees could break
or cause problems to the conduit.
We were assured that there would be caution on that.
Also, as Bill has pointed out in his memo, if you look at who was, who at that time when we wrote the letter back to him
saying we had this concern, we indicated a further concern from the city standpoint,
more particularly downstream with Pioneer Park because the city's been working with friends of deer creek
and there is a proposed project to improve, particularly in the area of the restrooms,
just mainly below the main picnic grounds, a little deer creek where it is filled up with debris over the years
as it washes down and the voice of concern that the impacts of art directly into our water system
but the impacts downstream so we certainly indicated on the next visit we wanted a number of people to be along
to assure that there would be no downstream damage.
Bill is the, excuse me, I was always under the impression that when it came to timber harvest
there were certain stream set back requirements.
Do those apply to irrigation ditches and reservoirs as well?
And they're conforming to that so you have to go up on the site and see.
It's just that what Burl is trying to indicate to you and I know because he and I have had a conversation,
it's a sensitive area, it's a very steep area and you know the slightest little flub dub will make a difference to our creek
and to our environment or to our pipe and let's assume that you fall a tree and you break the pipe
and the pipe then flows willy nilly into the stream and then the stream you know does damage to your piner park and so on and so forth.
Those are the things that I think the council needs to know about.
I was wondering in Bill of all the, it got carboned to a lot of people and agencies but because of the potential impact
that's why the fishing game is not among the people.
Fishing game will be or they will be in the future.
Absolutely.
Oh yes.
And so will the state division forestry and so will the fire protection district and the NID and who else?
Somebody else they said that.
Anyway, yeah.
And so do they stop it from now?
I mean at this point do they just kind of stop till they check things out?
They haven't done any logging yet.
There's nothing done.
Okay, so this is, we've caught it before starting.
This is an initial proposal.
Okay.
You're looking at, there's no logging going on.
There will not be any until summertime at the earliest.
Okay.
And that is if they can secure the permits.
It could be next year.
So it's a ways down the road but we got in on the ground floor.
You will keep us surprised as things develop.
Should we go up and tour it?
Or.
.
.
That's what, if you want to individually go up, I can take you.
Bill can take you.
That might be a good idea.
If you want to go to council.
Okay.
I'm for that.
Okay.
Either on an individual schedule, whatever.
If you want to come into City Hall, let me know.
We'll take you up there and give you a quick overview on it.
Okay.
It's not a good deal tomorrow.
No.
Bring your sleds.
The last time I walked across that water trussel with burl, I swore it would be the last time
I walked across this.
That may not be true.
I could go up in the general area.
I'll walk below attention in case you're wrong.
There you go.
I have a couple boards we need replaced.
You know, when we were up there the other day, I forget what day it was, but it was just
a beautiful, it was beautiful.
Oh, that was the day burl retired.
Yeah.
It was a beautiful day, wasn't it, Burl?
Yeah.
A little cold.
In many respects, maybe.
I know why he was so happy.
He knew something you didn't know that morning, huh?
Well, he also knew that he didn't fall off and he was unable to enjoy his retirement.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
New business.
City manager selection process.
I included a small packet in your agenda packet.
When we contacted the Western Cities magazine about display ad, we were notified that 5 o'clock
today was the deadline for securing a space, but that we would be able to email the copy
in tomorrow, and that would be acceptable for them.
And so, as I pointed out, I had been meeting with staff and discussing it and looking at
many samples.
We decided to go with the, well, it's four and three quarters by two and a quarter inch
display ad, which they call a one-sixth page.
And I have Xeroxed a copy of the Western Cities magazine showing the two different sizes.
We felt that you can provide all the information that a person needs in the packet should they
request the packet, but just a clean, clean-looking ad would probably be more attention getting.
And so, I happened to just put together some samples, and that's all they are, is just
samples and suggestions that indicates basically the pertinent information, who the manager
answers to, the number of employees, the budget, the full service community, the population,
and geographically where they're located.
Thinking that that would basically, if someone is interested in applying for the position,
that would give them the fundamental information, and any more information they could just call
and get a packet.
I think you cheaped out.
You should have bought a bigger ad.
It wasn't a financial consideration.
Well, whatever.
I don't think it's big enough.
Steve has given a similar idea of what he would like to see in the ad.
Maybe it's a bit where it goes a little far, but I think somewhere a blend between the
two would suit my preferences a little better.
I don't think we can sell short who we are as a city and who we might be looking for
to replace Burl as the city manager's job.
And this is, I understand what you're saying, that you can get address the information as
you're interested, but I think we're a little more of a special community than you can squeeze
into the space available here, albeit I think Steve is perhaps a little bit wordy,
but maybe some combination of the two would be something that I would support.
I didn't know that 5 o'clock today was a deadline for securing the size, but is the size secure?
I thought in our conversation we had Kerry that we were not married to the size, that
we were blocking out space and that you had suggested to them that we'd be getting a 16.
And when I expressed to you that I thought a quarter would be more likely size, I thought
that you indicated we were not married to that size as long as we let them know tomorrow
what we wanted to do.
No, we had to reserve the space.
We did not have to get them the copy by 5 o'clock today, but we did have to reserve the space.
I must have misunderstood that then.
Because that was the point I made twice during that conversation was that I was concerned
that we had frozen the amount of space that would be available to us.
I thought that you had indicated that was not the case and that we could adjust that,
but that we were merely indicating to them that we wanted space and that that would be
the amount of space that we would probably get.
So there are also the fact that there are deadlines and there are drop-dead deadlines.
And almost since they earned their money from ad sales, if you were to call tomorrow morning
and say, gee, instead of a 16th, would you mind a quarter page?
I have a hunch they'd find room for it because there are both deadlines and drop-dead deadlines.
The seldom is to drop-dead deadline the deadline.
So I would hope that we could expand on the job description.
I appreciate Pat's comments that perhaps mine is too long.
But actually, when you look at it in the context of some of the display ads,
somewhere, city manager ads, if I included, perhaps it's somewhere between the city of a Royal Grande
and the city of Malibu in size of those first two on the page, somewhere in between those two.
I think that when we are dealing with professionals, as we're going to be doing,
that we need to give the professionals as much information as we can about not only what Nevada City is,
but what expectations we have of them professionally.
If you go through the 14 ads, and I didn't sure I'd pick these ads.
These are, I think, obviously I didn't include San Jose or large communities.
I have a couple of towns of 40 or 50,000, the rest of them are towns under 13,000.
Very hard to find a dozen towns of 3,000 looking for a city manager.
But I think the language is pretty consistent in all the ads.
What communities are looking for is someone with a degree, at least a bachelor's, preferably a master's,
five years progressive advancement in the profession, five professional letters of reference.
I think that's pretty standard in all of these.
And also, beyond the general description of the basic services of Nevada City,
is that those who really do this professionally and run nice display ads,
also indicate some of the, perhaps some of the abstract values, for instance,
our unique history, our rural lifestyle, our community park and pool, outstanding schools.
I think those are the, that's the kind of phrasing that you see over and over again in ads that appear in professional publications.
And I hope that number one, that we at 8.
01 tomorrow morning could purchase more ad space
than we've indicated to them that we were seeking.
And I certainly would be willing to cut some of the language out of my suggestion.
If you have some suggestions, Pat, the concern, I think when you're dealing with professionals,
and I will use an analogy that only affects me, if you're advertising for a hotel clerk,
you could use a pretty brief description of what you're looking for.
But we're dealing with professionals, and I think they deserve to know as much as possible without calling.
So I think we have two responsibilities.
One is to the potential applicants to provide them with as much basic information we can.
Secondly, to reduce the number of telephone calls the city manager is going to be receiving.
Even if, with all of the requirements that I've suggested, academic and professional,
wouldn't surprise me that we have 100 and 150 applications.
If it is so open that essentially anyone with an interest call,
city manager is going to be fielding unbelievable number of telephone calls.
Hopefully it would not be the city manager.
He doesn't answer the phone.
It's Corey, and then it's.
.
.
If a potential city manager wants to know what the job of the city manager is,
they're going to talk to the city manager.
They're going to want to talk to Burl and say it's only natural.
And even with all of the academic and professional requirements that I'm suggesting,
there will still be calls to Burl.
That's just inevitable.
It's going to happen, and he knows that he's going to spend a lot of time on the telephone.
So I think we have two responsibilities, to be professional in the way we advertise it,
to understand that we're looking for a professional,
and that we need to mitigate the impact on the city manager's time as much as possible.
And I think my ad accomplishes all of those goals.
Well, the other question that I had on your text was establishing the criteria.
I think that there's always the potential and the danger that you can be too rigid in your criteria.
I mean, for example, if we were to apply the criteria that you've used in paragraph 2 of your text,
if they had used the same criteria 37 years ago, Burl wouldn't have gotten an interview.
And Burl is the first person to tell you that the job was not what it is today.
Well, I understand that times change, but I just, I'd hate to see us,
as you had referred earlier on another topic, I'd hate to see us paint ourselves into a corner
and potentially lose out on a very potentially viable candidate
because our criteria is so rigid.
We have painted ourselves into a corner.
I think that's a very normal requirement.
Yeah, and it's language taken from the other 14 ads.
That's why I enclosed them,
so that you wanted to say, well, where'd you come up with this stuff, Steve?
Where I came up with it was from other cities, perhaps not exactly comparable size,
but general law, full service cities looking for a city manager,
and all of that language is drawn from other cities who have gone before us
trying to find a replacement for their city manager, including a couple of them.
You know, one of them was a city manager, been there 30 years,
so we must have known him pretty well.
The size of this ad right now that we have, if in fact there's a possibility that it can't be changed,
is a very good size ad in the sense that right now the type is quite large,
and when I look at all the other ads, both the sample ads that you provided as well as the carry did,
the type is much smaller, so there's still room for this to be an attractive ad
and put a little more into it.
Most people who are going to apply for a city manager's job are people that are well aware of
what the duties are of a city manager.
The California League of Cities has a publication that they put out on city managers.
The International City Managers Association website has a ton of information on that,
so I don't think that we're going to find someone from the roadworks department applying,
although you might.
I mean, I've had people apply for jobs that you wondered if they ever read the ad,
so you're always going to get that.
I'm not against adding to this, and I understand what both sides are saying on this right now.
I do agree with Kerry that we want to keep this door as wide open as possible,
and yet at the same time we don't want just some of this totally not qualified to apply,
but you can't stop that.
I mean, anyone can apply, but you'll weed that out when you get them.
As far as everyone talking to Burrell, I think that his instruction, how much he will or won't do,
I don't know.
I mean, Burrell makes himself very available.
I mean, if he has a hundred people, no matter what we say in the ad,
if people want to talk to Burrell, they're going to say it to him, no matter what's in the ad.
I mean, they're going to, so I don't see a hundred people wanting to talk to Burrell.
Well, the only comment I'd make there if I was looking for a city manager job,
I would call the city manager if he was available and talk to him.
That's just logical.
Regardless of what's in the ad, though, right?
Yeah, that would seem to me to ask where you would come,
because that's the person that will be able to best convey to you
absolutely what they think the job's about.
I agree with you, Burrell, but I think that you would,
there's a reason why all of these communities run the type of job announcements they do,
and that they're trying to set up minimum standards and expectations
in order to find the most qualified person.
And the suggested language from Kerry talks about essentially call city hall
if you want more information about what is required.
Well, who, in fact, the way I think you phrased it in your cover letter is
they can receive, call city hall for more information,
or receive a packet that contain the fine details.
And I guess my question would be who determines what the fine details,
the answers to those fine details?
I think that's a policy matter for the council to establish.
For instance, if someone were to call the city manager,
does the city manager know that unless you have a degree,
a bachelor's and preferably a master's, there's really no need to submit it?
That's not the city manager's job.
That's our policy to set.
And so when you say, well, they can call and get the details,
it's up to us to establish that not the city manager would all do respect.
And I think you would agree with it.
And so that's why I've suggested that we be upfront about it in our job announcement.
And I would hope we'd have more than just this.
You recall the deadline for your city manager's magazine?
Oh, the city manager, that comes out twice a month.
You're going to fit it in there.
I think Tom may have had information.
He asked some questions.
I think he talked to ICMA and also their website.
It has information.
And I'm trying to, lo and behold, a title that I had never heard of,
a range writer, which is a person that is available to cities for a certain area.
And the guy's name is Tom Peterson.
I have not had luck in actually contacting him,
and I have since found out that he has recently come down with Parkinson's disease.
And so his medical is affecting his getting to us.
But it's resources like that that are available to us.
I did download there.
They have a guideline for cities.
And I think it will be good for the council to all take a look at that
as we get farther into the process because they do have some guidelines
or interesting takes on questions.
But that's in time to come.
Right now we're trying to settle the ad.
Well, I appreciate you staying, Steve, that deadlines aren't dropped dead deadlines
and often drop dead deadlines aren't either.
And I really think we should get more space.
And this is an opportunity to sell ourselves from right out of the gate,
and that is make Nevada City sound as special as it is.
No offense to whoever wrote this, Carrie, if that were you,
but it reads like a classified ad for shoes.
There's really no interest there.
And for possibly very talented potential city managers to offer their services
to a city of 3,000 may not be very exciting or interesting,
just very qualified people out there,
unless maybe they know a little bit that we know about Nevada City
that makes it special, which you see in Steve's.
And as far as it being wordy, Steve, if we can get the space,
I would say put every word in there.
If we can't get the space, if this is what we're locked into,
then I don't know exactly what to do.
But I think to attract the kind of individuals that Nevada City attracts,
based on the people that come here for all the various reasons,
we have to present ourselves to the people that don't know anything about us,
maybe as something a little more unique than a city of 3,000
that needs somebody to run the boat.
So I think it's a selling job.
And forgive me by saying perhaps it was too wordy.
My only concept about too wordy was by the time we squeeze it into this space,
you won't be able to read it.
Oh, no, you can't get into that space.
Right.
So if we can get bigger space, that's in my opinion what we've got to do.
I mean, this is out of the gate announcement that Nevada City's looking for somebody new.
And that hasn't come around in an awfully long time,
and we hope it doesn't come around for a long time after this.
We don't want to be just turning over city managers.
So it's about finding the right guy or lady, and it's not going to be easy.
And I think this is our chance to say we're somewhere special
and we're looking for somebody special.
Well, I appreciate your support, Pat.
And if the chair would entertain a motion, I'd put one on the table
and perhaps we could work toward a resolution here.
Well, does the council have any objection to somebody has their hand up?
Oh, absolutely not.
Thank you, Joseph Reisdorf, 12288 Gail Lane.
I've had the opportunity over my career to work with a number of cities around the state
to get to know a lot of city managers and to really spend a lot of time
observing the importance of the dynamic between the city manager and the city council.
And you can almost always tell right away whether that dynamic is working or not.
You can detect dysfunctional relationships right away.
You can kind of see the impact that a wrong match between the city council
and the city manager can have on a city.
Selecting a city manager is probably one of the most important jobs
that the city council has to take on.
And you probably already concluded that this is one of the few jobs that you have to do,
one of the few decisions that you have to make,
where you can't necessarily turn to the staff for advice.
You're kind of out on your own in this one.
This is the one job that you have where you have to rely on your own judgment,
your own guidance to come up with the right decision.
And a wrong decision can have serious consequences.
And one that's maybe made in haste or made without a lot of forethought
can have long-term negative impacts on the city that take many years to correct.
So I really encourage you to take your time to be deliberate
and to be clear about the kind of person that you need for this job.
It's a very important job.
One that's going to have a major impact on the businesses, residents,
and the future of Nevada City.
One of the things that I would suggest is that you invite the business
and the residential community to be part of a process
that would help you develop a common vision for Nevada City
to make sure that there is some consensus on that
and also to develop a fairly clear statement of the challenges
that are facing Nevada City today and the ones that will face it in the future.
And I think you'll find once you get into this process
that having that information is going to be very important.
Number one, it'll help you sorting through the stack of resumes
that you're going to be getting.
And secondly, when you finally do get it down to a short list of people
that you want to interview, they're going to have questions for you.
They're going to ask you, well, what's the head for the city?
What do you see for the city?
And it's going to be important that you really get the right person
that you want to get the most qualified person that you want,
that you come back with a very clear statement to indicate what you all expect
for the city and the future and the kind of person that you needed to take you there.
This information that you could get by working with the business and the residents,
they can help you develop your selection criteria,
help you develop the process that you go through to actually determine
who you want to be the next city manager.
It's been a long time since Nevada City has selected a city manager.
That's why I encourage you to take this job very seriously.
It sounds like you've already begun to take advantage of some of the resources
that the California League of Cities and the ICMA have to offer,
including the opportunity to bring in a circuit rider to maybe fill in on an interim basis
until you actually get through the selection process.
So again, I encourage you to take your time to not rush the process
and not get ahead of yourselves and to really be very deliberate about telegraphing
and communicating your intentions and your needs to potential candidates
and then being very careful about the selection process that you go through afterwards.
Thank you.
I'm Paul Rotenberg, 228 B Street in Nevada City.
I have to yield a great deal of what I have to say to the previous speaker
who said it's probably a great deal more articulately than I can.
It seems that you all are rushing and this is an immensely important decision.
It's a selection that hopefully you'll only have to make once for a while.
As you all know, I think city managers tend to move every three years or so on the average.
Sometimes they move because they're ambitious and they're moving on to bigger cities
with bigger challenges and bigger salaries and bigger retirements.
And sometimes they move because councils change and they fall into disfavor.
And if you want to get the right person, it's going to be a long task.
They're probably not going to just fall in your lap.
And it looks like you're looking for that person on short notice.
And the League of California Cities knows the situation.
They have a great number of immensely qualified people who are in retirement or close to retirement.
They go around, they work on an interim basis for cities just like this
while the city engages in a concerted, long-term, thoughtful search process.
You might get down to a short list, you might get three or four people,
arduously rank them, offer each one of them jobs and have them all say no.
And then you're back to square one.
If you plan to hire an interim manager, start that process now.
Bring them in, they'll spend some time with the current city manager.
Get to know the ins and outs of the city.
You may find that there are certain problems that you want to manage
and you don't want to dump them on the person that you're planning to hire for the long term.
Maybe you want to take some of the tough problems, give them to the interim,
let the interim do some of the hard, difficult, unsavory work that may be here that has to get done.
And then when the person you find who's right for the job is ready, you bring them in,
you let the interim go, there's no hard feelings.
They understood it was a temporary position, that's what they were here for.
A tremendous number of benefits to using an interim city manager.
I would also like to ask that you at least consider employing a human resources consultant.
There are great many immensely qualified and talented consultants who assist cities
in searches for specifically city managers or specifically public works directors
or any number of department head positions.
They're very good at what they do.
They know the personalities, they know the cities,
they know the trends, they understand the compensation packages.
Lastly, I would like to encourage you to please not be cheap.
You may have to spend more money than you ever thought you were going to have to spend,
but that money will be well spent.
You spend a lot of money if you buy quality.
The person you get is going to save the city money.
If you find money for the city that may not have been available or may have been overlooked,
they're going to save money because they're going to come in with fresh perspective,
talent and experience.
I would like to speak lastly, I already said lastly twice,
but final, final, please keep an open mind about this process
and be prepared to take time, spend money, be disappointed
and don't jump on the first person who comes down the pipe because you think you're up against deadlines.
Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
Paul, just so you know where I'm coming from with this, I can speak only for myself,
but the only timeline that we really face is placing a job announcement.
The hiring could take several months.
I don't think anyone at this table anticipates that we will have hired a new city manager by April 30th.
Anyone who thinks that at this table just isn't being realistic.
And I agree with what you have said.
The sole purpose right now is to get the job announcement in just to start the process.
I would agree with you that we probably will have an interim city manager.
I agree with you we should go slow and cautiously.
I agree with you we should not be cheap including the job announcement.
And I really support everything that you've said.
The purpose tonight is merely to start the ball rolling with a job announcement and there's an add deadline.
That is the only sense of urgency, at least from this chair.
And the rest of it, if it takes all through the summer, so be it.
When we're done, I'm confident we'll have the best man or woman who wants the job,
is qualified for the job and works for Nevada City.
One thing I would like to see us avoid however is any sort of professional search company.
Because I think Nevada City is a very unique town and no one understands Nevada City better than the people who represent it.
So I would hope that we do not find ourselves going out looking for a professional search person.
And that we will have the applicants come to us and we as the council and relevant staff in the screening process
will be able to do it, I think, far more efficiently than any sort of professional search.
But beyond that, I support everything you said there, Paul.
Well, since you engaged me, let me just say one more thing.
If you pay the money that the market demands, this is a nice place.
We'll get quality applicants.
I know a lot of city managers.
I know some who, if they weren't working elsewhere, would certainly like to throw an application in here.
I would also say, however, that asking for a master's in public administration and prior experience as a city manager is not unusual.
I don't think anybody in the city manager market right now expects to get a job as a city manager if they don't have an MPA.
If you set your sites lower than an MPA, you're going to be weeding through unqualified people when you could have qualified people.
I agree with you.
In fact, the language in the my suggested language is a bachelor's degree in public business administration
is required, a master's degree preferred, with a minimum of five years progressive municipal management experience.
As a city manager, assistant city manager, our department head with related senior municipal management responsibilities.
As an unofficial spokesperson for Jesuit education, all graduate degrees are not created equal.
So, look closely at the resumes.
Good evening, Chair, and Tobias, and 514 Nursery Street.
Steve, you and I are really agreeing tonight.
The two gentlemen prior to me actually shared my very strong opinion, but I want to reinforce one of the most important avenues as I feel as a former city council person
and for a long time resident of Nevada City is we do need a citizen committee on this.
I understand where you're coming from this evening by getting the ad space available.
My suggestion also is start thinking about an interim city manager.
We have locally Gene Albaugh may be interested in the position short term.
This person would have a chance to be working with Burl and getting his feelings there.
And I'm sure after Burl retires, he will still be available as a consultant.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Are we proposing going outside California for advertising?
Well, the western cities actually covers western cities.
Because there are ads in there for cities outside the state.
Well, I have absolutely no problem with whatever, obviously with whatever the council desires.
I submitted an ad that was just a suggestion.
Steve submitted an ad that was a suggestion.
And whatever the council's pleasure is absolutely fine with me.
We can call western cities tomorrow morning and see if there's a possibility of getting the larger ad.
I don't have a problem with that.
If that were to, if we had a vote of support for that, I have a hunch that if this were faxed to them,
they could determine that size pretty quickly.
It would not take them long to determine what the minimum size would be to fit it in and have the city logo as well.
Would you, there's no other public input if you'd entertain a motion.
Okay, I would move that the language that I submitted tonight be the language that be placed in the city magazine
and any websites or other professional publications that we might use as part of our city manager recruitment.
Could we include the fax number in the advertisement?
Absolutely, absolutely.
Include the fax and the email.
And the email too.
Okay, the fax and the email.
And then just a housekeeping item.
I indicated 24 full-time employees and Kerry had 25.
What would be the right number?
25 plus the city.
Okay, 25.
And I thought the budget, actually I have a tight one.
I thought the budget was about 3.
6 or 7.
I meant to put in 4.
I put in 3.
But 4 rounded off 4 is fair for general.
Yeah, but it's the general fund budget.
The general fund budget.
Yeah, that was just a typo.
And then 25 and include the fax and email.
I had this on a computer here at City Hall so I could come in in the morning and.
.
.
I can't remember how I say that.
Must have the word city manager or something and pull it up and make these changes.
And I don't care if you'd be in City Hall in the morning.
Can you take a look at it before it goes down?
Sure.
Okay.
I'll make a point of being here at 8.
Just a question or a suggestion or something you have that they're coming in
marked confidential to the city manager.
I think that they should come in marked confidential, stay sealed,
and go to the city clerk and then be handed over to the committee.
The other ads they go to that can care of the city clerk.
Normally the applications come in that way.
Well, for instance, City of Arroyo, submit to city manager's office.
City of Malibu, attention city manager recruitment.
Hillsborough says care of city clerk.
So you're suggesting they just be brought in and left unopened
until such time as a screening committee is assembled?
Stamped in.
Like we do everything, they'll be sealed and.
.
.
That makes sense.
When the screening committee is assembled,
then all of them would be just handed over to that committee.
That makes sense.
That seems to make it real.
Yeah, I don't have a problem.
I don't have a problem either way.
I don't have a problem with that.
No, I mean, Kathy's a confidential employee,
so that part's not a problem at all.
They'll be opening them.
They'll just be making sure that they're logged in
and handed over to the committee.
That might be.
Or the full council, whatever happens.
All right.
Sorry, I've lost track here.
Could you put the motion?
There's a motion on the floor.
Kathy, could you repeat it?
The motion was to move that the language
that Councilman Cottrell submitted
be the language that's placed in the ad
with the addition of the facts and the email number
and a change to the budget
and a change to the number of employees
from 24 to 25.
And changing word manager to clerk
in the address portion.
You said you had one other.
.
.
Include the facts number and email number.
Right, I've got that, but you said you had a typo
or something else you were going to correct.
No, the typo is.
.
.
I had three made instead of four million in the budget.
Carried at 3.
9.
I rounded it off to four, but put in three.
That's with the motion.
Yeah.
Okay, any further discussion?
All those in favor?
Opposed?
The motion carries.
I'll be in a date or shortly thereafter in the morning
and then we can massage it,
and make sure you're comfortable with it
before we fax it down.
All right, thank you.
Announcements.
County of Nevada, Carl F.
Bryan,
the second juvenile hall opening
is 11.
45 a.
m.
Wednesday, January 30th, 2002.
That is the day after tomorrow.
And
I believe it's the public
is invited to attend.
And if anyone from the council can attend
to represent the city,
I would greatly appreciate that.
I will not be able to attend.
Um.
.
.
Is there.
.
.
Because there's an executive
session on the
city manager of performance.
The executive session on
Friends of Nevada City versus Nevada City
is not needed.
I'm sure you all read in the paper about the settlement.
But basically,
since the Brown Act requires us
to state the terms of the settlement,
the city agreed to look
at various planning issues
and possibly change those
and those would be considered by the city council.
And the city council
cannot go ahead
and approve those depending
on public input and their own feelings.
And the city also
agreed that it would transfer
a strip of land
along a hollow way to the
developer.
The land is approximately 11 feet
across.
11 feet and some
600 feet in length.
We're going to sell it
to the developer
at the fair market value
to be determined.
I would move that we adjourn to
executive session.
I second that.
I motion carries.
We are adjourned to executive session.
Mayor?
Thank you.