Glen Ellen neighborhood gets exclusion zone permit, but cost is high

The application process for getting a vacation-rental exclusion zone can add up as staff time increases the cost. Just ask the residents of Morningside Mountain Road.|

Buried in the list of items in the Board of Supervisors agenda this past Tuesday was “item 29,” from the the county permit department: “Zone Change to add the Vacation Rental Exclusion (X) Combining Zone to 32 parcels in Glen Ellen.”

With perfunctory passage by the board, it meant the end of a long struggle for the residents of Morningside Mountain, Oso Trail and Vigilante Road, south of Glen Ellen, to bar vacation rentals from their neighborhoods.

But it was more of a struggle than anyone bargained for. And even as the board went on to other business, questions about the way the process was carried out – and the eventual price tag the applicants have to pay – all but obscured the accomplishment of gaining exclusion from future vacation rental permits in their neighborhood.

It was a struggle that started over a year ago, when 17 households in the Morningside area petitioned the county to add their neighborhood – wooded, linked by narrow, often one-lane roads, accessible by a locked gate at the intersection of Arnold and Madrone – to the residential areas that ban vacation rental permits.

A similar application was approved a couple months ago, without much controversy, for the Slattery Lane residents off Warm Springs Road. That was the first so-called X-zone added by the application process; Morningside Mountain would be the second.

The permit application was filed on June 16 of last year, along with a fee of $5,498. The fee was divided among the 17 residents of the three Glen Ellen-area streets, according to Barry Swain who filed the application – about $325 each.

Such applications are then processed by Permit Sonoma, PRMD, in preparation for presentation to relevant county oversight committees, such as the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. It can be time-consuming, and it’s not free.

“The project is billed at cost to cover staff time to process the application,” said Maggie Fleming, Permit Sonoma’s communications manager. “This amount would vary depending on the amount of time required for the application.” The additional fees are identified as “planning at-cost billing,” which Permit Sonoma bills at $140 an hour.

However, as the exclusion zone application was processed, the Permit Sonoma staff heeded the suggestions of the Board of Supervisors to consider adding additional exclusion zones in the wake of the October fires, and tacked on another 39 lots to the application.

Those 39 lots, explained Fleming, are between the proposed Morningside exclusion zone and an existing exclusion zone along Sobre Vista Road. With the characterisics of the neighborhoods being so similar, said Fleming, they simply added the 39 lots to the proposal to unify the neighborhoods in a single, vacation-rental-free area of Glen Ellen.

That proactive inclusion can be seen as PRMD fulfilling direction from the Board of Supervisors, whether formal or informal. 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin, in whose district Morningside is found, explained the reasoning in a February discussion with the Index-Tribune.

“We are asking for greater efficiencies from all departments to reduce overhead and minimize charges to the public for permitting,” Gorin said then. “This is why I’m pushing for a departmental effort to expand/create exclusion zones all at once – to increase efficiencies, reduce costs and not pass those on to the neighborhoods.”

The additional lots created a continuous exclusion zone linking Morningside with the Sobre Vista exclusion zone, which was originally created by the Board of Supervisors when it approved vacation rental exclusion zones last year.

The combined 71-lot exclusion zone was approved by the Planning Commission in February – at about the same time the bills for county staff time started coming in the mail to applicant Swain.

“It was really odd that someone at PRMD decided to add the other properties – we didn’t ask for that,” said Swain. “Everyone was concerned, are we paying for PMRD’s time for these other properties? They tell us no, no, that’s not on you.”

But the first bill Swain received for staff time from the county was for $1,816, then several more totaling about $7,000 in the first few months of the year. So far, according to recent county records, the applicants have paid $7,398 in fees (including the application), and still owe almost that much – another $7,153. (Swain said last week they had now paid a total of about $10,750.)

It adds up to almost $15,000, and Swain expects additional inovices might push the total close to $16,000. Given that there are only 17 signees on the X-zone application who agreed to split coast, that’s now roughly $940 each – almost three times what they had originally signed up for.

By comparison, the base fee for a homeowner to apply for a vacation rental permit is $615, plus an annual monitoring fee of $216.

The skyrocketing application fees were only one of several issues raised when the Board of Supervisors considered the Morningside Mountain application last month, which included the original 32 lots and the additional 39 lots presented as “Area B.”

During discussion, the fact that Area B was added by PRMD during the application process, despite a lack of interest from the residents of Area B in excluding vacation rentals, caused some consternation.

“It unnerves me to have this not coming from the community, but rather coming from the government,” said Supervisor Lynda Hopkins at the April 10 board meeting.

Supervisor Shirlee Zane noted that somehow 17 applicant homeowners had turned into a potential exclusion zone of 71 lots – far short of a majority, or even a consensus.

“This fails the democracy test, horribly,” Zane said.

During the public comment portion, Gerry Brinton, who with her husband Bill own property at the top of Morningside, was likewise critical of the mathematics. “That 17 (out of 71 homeowners) approved means that many of us didn’t (approve),” she said, arguing that the application itself “created animosity and unrest of what was a calm and quiet road.”

“This is what was disruptive to our neighborhood,” said Brinton. “Not a couple of vacation rentals.”

“I want to be supportive of the neighbors who want to exclude their properties, I have no problem with that,” said Supervisor David Rabbitt. “I do have a problem understanding the additional expansion area.”

It all led Gorin to move that the board sever the added Area B from the application, and approve the original Morningside Mountain X-zone, a vote which narrowly passed, 3-2, giving Morningside its exclusion.

But concerns about the high processing fees were unanimously criticized, concerns that reached into the director’s office at Permit Sonoma.

Permit Sonoma officials insisted the hours for processing the Area B properties were not included in the amount billed to Swain and his group, but come from a separate budget.

“Tennis?(Wick, director of Permit Sonoma) recognizes that this project wasn’t handled well at the staff level and he?is taking actions to address this,” said Fleming, following the board meeting. “He (said he) has personally spoken with several of the owners involved in the application, and he is currently reviewing the billing.”

She added, “As director of the agency,?Tennis takes full responsibility for what happened with this project and he?is doing his best to correct the situation.”

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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