By Linda Taaffe
The Los Altos City Council rescinded a pending law that would have essentially eliminated every recreational vehicle in the city if approved, after local RV owners swarmed city hall last week, calling the ordinance a direct assault on their civil liberties.
“The ordinance would result in a Soviet police state style invasion of our private property, all for the enforcement of some idiot’s ideas of what is acceptable use of properties,” Charles Forge told the council.
Other RV enthusiasts said they would take the city to court if police tried to enforce what they called a mean-spirited law.
The city council revamped the city’s Property Blight and Nuisance Ordinance last December to crack down on habitual violators of the city code by providing a broader list and better definition of what the city can abate. The previous code prohibited on-street and front-yard RV storage only.
The updated code, which the council rescinded before approving a final reading last week, banned the storage of RVs, boats, horse trailers, campers and other vehicles taller than eight feet from front-, side- and backyard areas for more than 72 hours.
Vehicles under eight feet or stored in an accessory building or at least five feet from any property line were exempt.
An anonymous call to police would have been enough to force residents to park their vehicles in storage lots elsewhere or face possible removal fees and storage and other costs associated with the abatement process.
The average RV or van with a pop top is about 11 to 13 feet.
Storage spaces are scarce near Los Altos, costly and not always secure against vandalism, the 25-plus speakers told the council.
“This lifestyle change for RV … owners is not acceptable,” said Richard Johnke, who had to move his RV to a storage lot in Redwood City earlier this year after police told his family that the RV was violating the city’s blight code.
Council members admitted that the ordinance was not meant to target such vehicles.
“There have been cases of broken down automobiles in front of houses for years,” said Councilman Lou Becker. “We need an ordinance so we can take care of those problems in our city. I support a strong ordinance that gives us the (teeth) we need to do that. This particular ordinance, however, doesn’t fit Los Altos as well as it ought to, I think, because it didn’t go through our city staff … Our city attorney drafted it.”
This month the council is scheduled to approve the final reading of the ordinance that will restore the former ordinance allowing the storage of recreational vehicles on private property.
Recreational vehicles, including trailers, are permitted on private property under the former law as long as they are stored 25 feet from the front property line or 10 feet from the side- and backyard property lines. The vehicles must be fully operational. Nonresidents’ recreational vehicles cannot be kept on a property for more than 30 days each year. A public complaint is needed to start an abatement process against violators. A code enforcement officer may have vehicles violating city law towed and stored off-site at the expense of the owner if the vehicle is not moved within a certain time period.
The Town Crier is scheduled to publish a portion of the Blight Ordinance pertaining to recreational vehicles when the council approves the law’s final reading.
