LAKE COUNTY— In a continuation of a discussion started last week, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday held a second reading considering the adoption of an enforcement ordinance to provide for “graduated levels of enforcement” of the public health orders through education and training. The ordinance passed by a 3-2 vote with Rob Brown and Bruno Sabatier again casting the dissenting votes making the ordinance effective on September 17.
Third District Supervisor E.J. Crandell said there had been a lot of dialogue after the initial discussion of the ordinance regarding fines. He said the way the ordinance is written, it gives people time for correction and an appeal process before anyone receives any fines. He clarified that there is no provision in the ordinance for code enforcement officials to visit residences enforcing any requirements for masking.
Crandell added that there is a sunset date in the ordinance of October 1, 2021. “If the board chooses to bring it back they would have to come back around this time (next year) in order to keep it going or it just sunsets and goes away.”
“We haven’t even talked about a budget for hiring employees,” said District 5 Supervisor Brown, who has been vocal against enacting enforcement at recent meetings. “Who are they employees going to be, are they going to have arrest and citation power ultimately. There’s been no discussion about that.”
County Counsel Anita Grant said enforcement would be conducted by the Health Services and Community Development directors and their designees or any officials that the board would designate to enforce. She added that the first prong would be the informal enforcement in which officials would try, through training and information, to get a violation corrected. Grant said if the initial informal action is unsuccessful, then the enforcement officer issues a notice of violation giving additional time for parties to correct that violation. She noted that administrative fines are permissive, it’s not a mandate.
“This simply puts the process in place, administrative fines may be charged,” said Grant.
Brown asked if the ordinance would allow the county to go after large private gatherings since Crandell had stated that there was no provision for code enforcement officials to visit residences enforcing requirements. Board Chair Moke Simon said if such gatherings were to happen at an Airbnb rental for example, that would be an opportunity to talk to the business or home owners about what is being done in the community to maintain safety standards.
Second District Supervisor Sabatier said there was nothing in the ordinance delineating between a residential and commercial private property. “I will say I actually don’t understand the conversation because our number one issue with passing the virus is large gatherings and we are saying we are not going to do anything about that.”
Grant said there were changes made to the ordinance previously to clarify that enforcement would not be limited to businesses.
Sabatier asked the board not wait until October 2021 to review how the ordinance is working and asked the board consider a “trigger” instead of cancelling it anytime by the vote of the board. “If we go down 1 percent positivity rate, if we go down to zero percent positivity rate. What is our trigger to say this is no longer necessary, because there is none. Right now it seems very open ended.”
Sabatier reiterated a request he made at the previous meeting for a tiered system whereby if the virus cases look manageable and the county’s data shows people are behaving in a way where it is adequate enough to keep moving forward without enforcement, officials should move in that direction, only taking action if things get worse and if it begins looking like the county could be moving towards getting on the state’s watchlist.
Crandell said he was open to come back and review the ordinance at a later time to see how it was working rather than waiting a full year.
Brown asked if a date could be established to bring back the ordinance for review and the date of December 1 was agreed upon as a possible date for review if any amendments needed to be made to the ordinance. “By then we will know a lot more when it comes to numbers,” said Crandell adding that he was noticing certain outcomes which were not always consistent with the data and numbers presented. “I think those quirks will all hopefully be ironed out by then and we’ll have better numbers.”
As in the previous week, support and opposition during the public comment part of the meeting was mixed with some members of the public vehemently against enforcement while others stating they were in complete support of the board passing the ordinance.
An Upper Lake resident said during public comment she was in support of the graduated enforcement ordinance and added she would have attended in person but last week half the audience was not wearing masks and she did not feel safe. “That statement alone should give you pause.”
Resident Dee Parker said she didn’t see the need for the ordinance. “The amount of people who you are talking about, I don’t think are as much as you think they are. I think that there are too many people talking to you about unrealistic situations and I find that abhorrent. I find it inexcusable in leadership.”
Weekly meetings of the Board of Supervisors can be watched live via zoom, in person at the Lakeport Courthouse and are archived at http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Government/Boards/Board_of_Supervisors/Meetings.htm
