DHS City Council Study Session, October 14

Marijuana

The assistant city attorney presented options for the city council to consider regarding medical marijuana dispenaries in the city. The city's moratorium expires February 7 next year, and cannot be continued. The city could take any of four courses of action: (1) do nothing which would mean only California laws would regulate the establishments with no local control; (2) amend the zoning ordinance, specifying locational and operational regulations; (3) ban them outright or (4) adopt the "Palm Springs method" which allows non-profit coops and collectives (but no dispensaries), the coops and/or collective to be located in the industrial zone and no closer than a thousand feet to another coop or collective, which I think means Palm Springs can potentially have one marijuana facility.

Councilmember Karl Baker advocated NOT spending any additional funds to have our attorney craft a zoning ordinance, but should simply take Palm Springs' ordinance and revise it for our specific needs. While we do have one industrial zone, Mayor Pro Tem Matas pointed out that two churches are located there (how blessed are our industrial workers!) so if we require any marijuana facility to be in an industrial zone and at least a thousand feet from a church, they'd find no home in DHS. I believe some council members considered this the ideal result. City Manager Daniels reminded them the city would soon be annexing new areas which (one assumes) may contain industrial areas without churches.

The conclusion today on the marijuana issue was to instruct staff come up with both a zoning ordinance AND a banning ordinance, which would then be run through the Planning Commission. The city council will look at this issue again at its next study session on October 28.

Code Enforcement

Then there was a presentation on code enforcement by the Police department, who brought in most of the code enforcement team to be introduced, including Fred Andree, the supervisor. In 2007 there were 1,118 code violation cases, 1,000 of which were cleared. In this fiscal year (beginning July 1) there have been 470 cases, with 77 cleared. Fines and revenue from code enforcement in this fiscal year will exceed $100,000 in the next week or two (something big is coming in).

The graffiti hotline is 760-288-0609. When you call, you may get to talk to someone or leave a voice message. The policy of the police department is to check the voice mail EVERY HOUR. The police are purchasing mobile surveillance equipment which will be used to monitor problem graffiti sites. (One assumes it will be DISCREET mobile surveillance equipment). There is at least one wall in the city that the graffiti truck repaints every two or three days.

They showed a couple of photos of 75 shopping carts that code enforcement had retrieved and that are being stored at the city lot. The four stores in the city that have shopping carts (Save-a-Lot, Stater Bros., Vons and K-Mart) were all invited TWICE to come pick up their carts at no charge and to meet with city staff regarding the regulations about controlling their shopping carts. None of the four businesses responded. Now they have been invited to pay a fine of $500 (per store) to come and get their carts.

Councilmember Baker brought up the issue that Dot Reed has raised a couple of times, that of setting some sort of priority on code violations. For example, trash in the yard is more important than clean trash bins being visible from the street. Police Chief Williams explained that while priorities would be a good thing, that when a citizen called in a complaint about a code violation that the potential violation would get a higher priority, regardless of how it would rank otherwise, while simultaneously code enforcement had to consider whether the complaint might be a matter of one neighbor trying to harass another.

Mayor Parks recounted anecdotal reports from visitors who upon coming into the city after an absence of a year or two would remark on the obvious improvement in code enforcement.

Other

They also discussed changes to the city council meeting guidelines and procedures, but that was when I decided to go evaluate the audio quality of the new speaker system in the men's room, and I failed to pay attention to the subject. The sound quality, however, is freakishly impressive in the restroom.