City Council: Residents Sound Off on Rent Control; Mr. Kebab Gets a Take-Out Window

The turnout at City Hall's council chambers was decent on Thursday night for May's final Capitola City Council meeting. While agenda items suggested a tame session, local mobile home park residents stretched the affair into a three-hour event with a rebuttal to the city's decision on rent control and assistance.

In case you weren't in the room, here were the meeting's five most important moments:

1. Representatives of Santa Cruz METRO made a presentation to the council outlining how the 12 percent reduction is bus services in the county will potentially affect Capitola. Schedule Analyst Carolyn Derwing explained that routes 54 and 55 would remain unchanged with the exception of the elimination of the Mar Vista Loop.

2. In the Public Comments section of Oral Communications, more than a dozen members of the local mobile home park community addressed the council, some quite angrily, regarding the petition with more than 800 local signatures fighting against Ordinance 953, which helped keep rental rates higher than residents could afford. 

Resident Salvatore Leonardi: "By this ordinance, you are actually doing what [Park Owner Ron Reed] was trying to accomplish, because you're disenfranchising people. They're going to be out in the street. Apparently, Capitola doesn't have enough ... homeless under the bridges or something. I just want to say that if you continue with this ordinance the way it is, you will have a lot more homeless people under the bridges." 

The petition was initially rejected, because it was thought to be administered incorrectly. It was meant to repeal the ordinance or take it to a public vote. Mobile home park residents maintain that petitioning was done correctly. Mayor Dennis Norton reminded residents that it was not the council but the state that rejected the petition.

Norton: "I would like to make a statement back to the people here regarding the petition. This City Council did not make that decision. The state government made that call. It is the responsibility of the city to enforce those laws. That's where we stand. This council did not make the decision on the petition. This is the law in the state of California."

3. A resident of the soon-to-be-closed Pacific Cove Mobile Home park addressed the council, reminding members that residents are still waiting to hear when and how they will be relocated from their homes. The resident said the people of the park "feel like orphans."

4. Mayor Norton expressed a desire to see the Village ramp up its Christmas season celebration this winter, with businesses open later, a possible ice skating rink and a snowman on the beach.

5. A public hearing was held regarding the appeal of a rejected application for a conditional use permit for a sidewalk take-out window at Mr. Kebab at 201 Esplanade. The Capitola Planning Commission argued that the window would congest the sidewalk and increase trash on the beach area. Co-owner Amjad Al Asud rebutted that the window would redistribute the already-congested sidewalk and that trash would not increase. He also said his business would not survive without the window.

Amjad Al Asud: "The way it is right now, is that we're really hurting financially, because we can't make our numbers. We are really struggling, because the take-out window was something that had been in mind when we acquired the business. Because we don't have it today, I find it very hard [to believe] that we can stay in business very long." 

After deliberations, on a 4/5 vote, the council voted to allow the take-out window on the conditions that no glass or plastic bags be used and that the owners pay a $2,ooo annual fee to garbage clean-up associated with the additional waste on the beach from the restaurant. Councilman Sam Storey was the only vote against the window.