Bucking the Rules on the Fourth of July

Long-time readers may recall my crusade over Petaluma’s block party rules, but I’ll recap the background for new readers.  Deep in the Petaluma Municipal Code is a provision that disallows block party permits anywhere except on cul-de-sacs, a prohibition that effectively eliminates many streets and even entire neighborhoods from engaging in an effective way of building neighborhood cohesiveness.

Admittedly, the Police Department generally doesn’t enforce the rule, instead turning a blind eye toward block parties or even giving tacit, unwritten approvals.

Nonetheless, block party organizers, who are trying to do the right thing for their neighborhoods, find themselves uneasy and unsure.

In more than a year of intermittently pushing the issue, I’ve gotten the Police Chief and the entire City Council to acknowledge that they endorse block parties, but that hasn’t translated into Municipal Code edits.   And now another block party season is upon us.

I first became aware of the offending Municipal Code clause when a neighborhood activist contacted me about a block party he hoped to organize for the Fourth of July 2014.  The organizer, who is a regular reader, asked me who at City Hall he should contact for a party approval.

I didn’t know the answer to his question, so asked a few folks at City Hall and managed to find the one City employee who interpreted the Municipal Code provision strictly by the letter.  Neither the organizer nor I knew of the flexibility being shown by others at City Hall so the organizer’s proposed 2014 block party became a driveway party, pleasant but without the camaraderie of neighbors meeting in the shared space of the street.

Over the past year, the organizer read my updates as I became aware that person with whom I’d spoken, although well-intentioned, was the outlier and that Petaluma was generally casual about enforcing the troublesome provision.

So, for 2015, the organizer again planned a Fourth of July party, this time without asking for permission.  And to show that he bore no ill will over my failed intercession of a year before, he invited me to drop by, which I happily did.

It wasn’t the biggest block party in Petaluma, but it was well-organized and well-enjoyed.  Traffic cones blocked the street at the intersections at both ends of the party, shade structures were set up in street for cooking and eating, fathers were pitching wiffle balls to sons, kids were kicking a soccer ball around, and all seemed to be having a fine time.  Also, everything in the street was arranged so that emergency access was continually available if needed.  It was what a Petaluma block party should be.

The organizer, who polled the neighborhood both on-line and door-to-door while planning the party, told me that almost everyone participated and fully everyone was willing to move their cars off the street for the day.

Hearing just that part of the story, some might think that Petaluma block parties are doing just fine and that the Municipal Code needn’t be changed.  But that’s because I haven’t yet shared two elements of the story.

First, up until a few days before the party, some neighbors were uncomfortable about the lack of City sanction and suggested that the party again be limited to the driveways.  The organizer held firm that the City wasn’t an issue and that street as shared space was essential to the success of the party, positions on which he was fully correct.

(As the organizer was recounting this part of his story, the soccer ball bounced loose and bounded down the driveway toward the organizer’s garage.  A young girl, perhaps eight years old, began running to retrieve the ball before recollecting that she was now in someone’s driveway.  She abruptly stopped and asked permission to get the ball, which was of course granted.  And then the organizer and I laughed about even eight year olds understanding the difference between shared and private spaces, validating the organizer’s insistence on the party occupying the street.)

Also, a key element of the party was a bounce house.  But when the bounce house rental folks arrived, they wouldn’t put the bounce house in the street without a copy of the City block party permit, which of course didn’t exist.  A quick negotiation resulted in the bounce house being set up in a neighbor’s driveway, where it was still well enjoyed.  But the party setting would have been more festive with the bounce house in the street.

So the block party culture is alive and well in Petaluma.  But the City’s ill-conceived rule still sends small clouds across the sky on otherwise sunny days.

Before closing, I should note that the block party wasn’t the only event of the day in the organizer’s neighborhood.  The day began with a Fourth of July parade through the entire subdivision, with an estimated 150 children following an antique fire engine in festive garb and on decorated bikes.  (I was invited to watch the parade, but was unfortunately given the wrong start time.  Seeing no one assembling, I departed in puzzled disappointment thirty minutes before the parade started.)

The block party organizer attended the parade, with his children joining the parade.  As he described the event to me, the biggest benefit was the new acquaintances that were made.  He reported there had long been a divide between those whose homes had been built before the recent recession and those whose homes were built afterwards.  It was another version of the frequent old-timers versus newcomers animosity.  Standing on the sidewalk and watching their children parade past gave an opportunity for new introductions to continue healing the breach.

I didn’t ask whether the parade had secured a city permit.  But I have my suspicions.

In my next post, I’ll write about where urbanism falls on the political spectrum.   It’s a more complex question than many seem to grasp.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Block Parties: One More Time Around the Block

When I last wrote about block parties and the unwillingness of the City of Petaluma to permit them in locations where other cities have few concerns, I promised that I was finished with the subject for awhile.  I was wrong.  Righteous indignation led me back for one more post.

For those who are new to the topic, the Petaluma Municipal Code bars block parties except on cul-de-sacs.  As far as my research went, Petaluma is the only North Bay city with this unusual and puzzling restriction.  I decided to become an advocate to change the rule.

The code section hasn’t stopped all Petaluma block parties, although I know of at least one that was canceled when the cul-de-sac rule was cited.  The more common result is the block parties proceed, as I found on a successful tour of Fourth of July block parties, but only after most party organizers spend time working with the Petaluma Police Department to secure a permit, only to often proceed without a permit.

The genesis of this blog post came when I was invited to yet another Petaluma block party.  Unfortunately, it fell during a recent vacation, but I prevailed on a local friend and possible future block party host to attend in my place.  In his report, which included the photos illustrating this post, my replacement included a phrase the caused me to again tackle the block party issue.

In my pre-party communications with the party organizer, she advised me that, although her party site isn’t on a cul-de-sac, she has nonetheless been able to secure approvals from the Petaluma Police Department for past parties.

But apparently the approval was more difficult to secure this year, although she turned in her application weeks in advance.  According to the report from my proxy and confirmed by the organizer, she received verbal approval to proceed only a single day before the party.

Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, but that situation offended me.  Here is a woman who collected over a thousand dollars to fund the party, who secured concurrence from every neighbor, and who we should be praising for her contributions to the community.  Instead, we treated her like a border-line scofflaw by making her seek a last-minute approval on the day before the event, when her focus should have been on the final organizational details for the party.

As I’ve written before, this criticism isn’t directed at the Police Department.  I can appreciate that they’re trapped between common sense of what they feel is the community good and the overly stringent words in the Municipal Code.  No, my criticism is directed toward those who could be trying to implement a change to the Municipal Code, but aren’t.

Consistent with every other Petaluma block party of which I’ve been aware this year, this most recent party

was another success.  My replacement reports that everyone had a fine time and that the past success of the block party has spawned neighborhood parties on other holidays throughout the year.  As good block parties should do, this block party is building community.

At least for this year, I’ve done about as much as I can to advocate for more reasonable block party rules in Petaluma.  I still love block parties as one-day experiments in urbanism, but keep running into dead-ends in my advocacy.

However, it’s possible that you readers can still make a difference.  If you believe that Petaluma should be more encouraging of block parties, I suggest you contact your favorite City Councilmember and ask for a change.

I’m not asking that you put yourself forward as the host of a future block party.  (Personally, I live on a street that probably carries too much traffic to be a good block party location.  It’s more likely that I’ll be the lieutenant for a block party a couple of streets away.)

Instead, I’m asking that your advocacy be based on four points:

One: You want to respect the folks who currently organize block parties by removing the current dichotomy between the strict letter of the Municipal Code and the more common sense approach taken by the Police Department.

Two: You want to encourage more block parties in reasonable locations.

Three: You want your community to be able to make small, incremental, common-sense fixes to problems when they’re noted.

Four: You want your community to build a tradition of problem-solving that can be applied to the bigger civic issues that will arise in future years.

If you agree with four points, and I hope that most readers will, then please undertake some advocacy.  And let me know how it goes.

In my next post, having truly exhausted the block party topic, I’ll turn to a bigger subject, the future of the Sonoma Marin fairgrounds.  I’ll discuss the conversations at the last Petaluma Urban Chat meeting and set the stage for the upcoming meeting.  Of course, Petaluma Urban Chat has no official standing in the ongoing fairgrounds negotiations, but if we can put together common-sense solutions, perhaps we can influence the negotiations.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Advocating for Block Parties

A couple of months back, while fulminating about how cars have pushed other users of public rights-of-way to the periphery, I reported a disappointing fact of which I’d recently learned.  That Petaluma puts a surprising restriction on block parties.

Quoting from Section 13.32.090(K) of the Petaluma Municipal Code, “Block parties must be located in a cul-de-sac to be approved.”

(Note to grammarians: Yes, the sentence incorrectly combines the singular and the plural, but that’s not the disappointing part.  Code-writers sometimes struggle with the simplest rules of English, but don’t let it distract you.)

No, the disappointing part is that, with that one small sentence, much of the town, the neighborhoods built either before or after the cul-de-sac had its brief moment of favor, are barred from hosting block parties.

I found the restriction fundamentally wrong.  I thought that block parties were a fine example of community spirit and should be encouraged, not restricted.  And I thought that someone should undertake the task of changing the municipal code.

But I didn’t think that that someone should be me.  Instead, I concluded, “I’m not going to try to change the Petaluma Municipal Code.  I already have too many crusades and too little time.  But if someone else wants to take on the burden, I’ll happily join the rooting section.”

Then I headed off to Buffalo for CNU 22.  After spending four days surrounded by hundreds of fervent believers in the power of urbanism to change our world, I returned home, motivated to double my commitment.  In my words, “I’ll begin putting more effort into implementing some of the ideas that I offer.”

I know a young man who recently concluded a long career as an NFL kicker.  Coming out of high school, he was considered among the top prep kickers in the west and had his choice of universities, including much of the then Pac-10.  Despite a staid, conservative upbringing, he was drawn to my alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley despite its history of student uprisings and general weirdness.  He described his decision as “proof that God has a sense of humor”.

I understand his reaction.  Upon my return from Buffalo, the first opportunity for increased advocacy came when a new neighbor asked me about the possibility of hosting a block party in our neighborhood.  His query put me back in the swirl of trying to change the Petaluma Municipal Code, the exact task which I'd previously eschewed.  So yes, God does have a sense of humor.

Before writing about how my efforts have fared thus far, let me clarify that block parties are great, but only slightly related to urbanism.  If anything, they’re like a day of urbanism, when the neighbors all convert to walkability for a few hours.  Block parties give a hint of how a more walkable city would be.  But block parties don’t make a city more urban.  Instead, they’re one very small, temporary step in the right direction.  Although every step in the right direction is good.

I’ve now had exchanges with a number of folks in City Hall about the need for a change.  Those exchanges have all been over the board, resulting in my expectations for change veering wildly from day to day.

One contact was enthusiastic about making a change and about doing it as soon as possible.

The next liked the idea, but thought that the tightness of City resources would likely result in the change taking a year or more.

The first, advised of the timeline suggested by the second, proposed an alternative approach so the change could be accomplished with fewer resources.

A third contact sternly requested that I visit his office to discuss further.

A fourth liked the idea of making a change, but thought that many neighborhoods were already inadvertently flaunting the rule through lack of knowledge, so the effect might not be as great as I anticipated.

In the midst of all this, I learned, to my surprise, of a block party to be held a few blocks on my home.  On a street without a cul-de-sac.  I had a couple of conversations with the organizer who had an interesting story to tell.

Early this year, she approached the Police Department.  The officer advised her that block parties were only permitted on cul-de-sacs, but thought that he could ignore that restriction if she got the concurrence of most neighbors and prepared a plan for emergency access during the party.

She readily agreed to both, assembled the paperwork, and delivered it to the Police Department.  And never received a response.  As the date of the party approached, she decided to proceed as she had planned, in the absence of an approval.

The party came off well.  Nicely attended, with evident neighborhood spirit.  And with a well-defined emergency lane, secured by a handful of barricades that could be easily moved if needed.

So now there were three classes of Petalumans who can host block parties.  People who live on cul-de-sacs.  People who don’t know that they’re not allowed to host block parties unless they live on cul-de-sacs.  And people who proceed even when the Police Department fails to act on their application.  It all seemed a bit capricious.

I know that it may seem quixotic to the reader to change an obscure rule of which many are likely ignorant.  Heck, it feels quixotic to me much of the time.  But it’s a symbol of a more urban future, in which we’re more likely to traverse our neighborhoods on foot and in which we’re more likely to have bonds with our neighbors.

And I understand that City resources are constrained, making it difficult to implement changes.  But somehow this proposed change, with its fundamental spirit of the freedom to assemble and community building, seems worthy of being squeezed into the budget.

I’ll even note that people are more likely to support their communities when their ties to the community are stronger.  So a handful of block parties this summer may well lead to a crucial tax measure support in November.

Accordingly, I’ll continue to act like Don Quixote, tilting at the Petaluma Municipal Code windmill.

But I can use help.  First, I already have a trio of Sancho Panzas, folks who don’t live on cul-de-sacs, but are eager to host block parties this summer on through streets if the rule is changed.  But more would be good.  If you’d like to host a block party this summer and are willing to encourage City Hall to make a change, let me know.  I’ll add you to my list.

Also, I suspect that the observation that there are many technically illegal block parties is correct.  And it’s also likely that many of the illicit parties are held on the Fourth of July.  If you know of a block party on this coming Friday, let me know.  (My email address is below.)  I’m not looking for fireworks in the street, but for places where table, sunshades, barbecues, or jumphouses are placed in the street.

I’d like to come by.  Not to bum food or beverage and certainly not to inform the Police Department, but to see how the party is set up.  To see how broad the participation is.  And to see whether adequate provision has been made for emergency access.  If we’re going to change the rule, we should make the change correctly, based on real world observations.

I hope we can make a difference, no matter how small.  Perhaps we can even clean up the grammar of the rule.

Now, I must go find Rocinante.  She has wandered away.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Who Owns Our Streets?

While behind the wheel yesterday, I came across a group of dozen teenagers trying to cross a street between intersections, an action that is generally called jaywalking.  I was driving on an arterial in a Central Valley city, a street with five lanes and a 40 mph speed limit.  It wasn’t a safe place to cross mid-block.

I slowed to let the first half complete their crossing, then came to a complete halt, allowing the other half-dozen, who were huddled in the center turn lane, to also reach the safety of the sidewalk.

Most of the remainder hustled across, but one was so focused on disentangling the cheese on his pizza slice that he came to a near halt in my lane.  One of his friends finally took him by the sleeve and got him moving again.

I was willing to stop for the youths, and not to honk at the wayward one, for several reasons.  I wasn’t sure if my wipers could clean a pizza slice from my windshield.  There was no traffic behind me.  I had a long drive in front of me and wasn’t in a particular hurry.  And perhaps most importantly, I felt empathy for teenagers who must deal with streets filled with speeding cars in the midst of their environment.  It’s a challenge that neither their great-grandparents nor many of their peers in other countries face.

In “Happy City”, Charles Montgomery writes about the rise of drivable suburbia.  Most of the characters he lists are familiar to those who’ve studied the history.  Le Corbusier, Ebenezer Howard, Robert Moses, and others.   But Montgomery added a player about whom less had been written, the American Automobile Association.

Montgomery writes that the AAA blossomed during the 1920s, riding along on the concept of “motordom” as an essential form of freedom and arguing that all other road users should be subordinated, which is an ironic view of freedom.

By the end of the decade, that battle was largely over with the AAA victorious.  Roads were being reconfigured for high-speed travel, free parking subsidized by city coffers was becoming commonplace, and pedestrians were reduced to scurrying across the street at restricted locations, with other crossings now called “jaywalking”, a term coined by the AAA.

Although other countries also made accommodation for motor vehicles in the same era, none were as sweeping as in the U.S.

It was a resounding sea change.  After centuries in which neighbors could shake hands in the middle of the street and chat for a few moments about the proposed British tax on tea or the reports from California about rivers of gold, neighbors were now forced to scurry to the dusty edge of the road before discussing current events, looking all the while for vehicles hurdling toward them.   With little fight, our predecessors gave up rights to a common land that had been essential to community building.

The situation came into focus on a recent situation in Petaluma.  A regular reader contacted me about a block party that he and his neighbors were planning for the Fourth of July.  They hoped to barricade off their street for the day.  His neighborhood was of recent design and construction, with short blocks and multiple alternative routes, specifically designed to promote interaction between neighbors.  Temporarily blocking off one street, especially if all the neighbors concurred, seemed reasonable.

But the reader was unsure whom to contact at City Hall for a permit.  He thought I might be able to help.

I was also unsure of the answer, but at least had an idea where to start.  I fired off an email that bounced among computers in the Public Works and Police Departments.  I was given multiple preliminary responses that were vaguely encouraging or vaguely discouraging, but the final determination remained uncertain.

Finally, someone in the Police Department dug into the Petaluma Municipal Code and found the definitive answer.    Paragraph 13.32.090(K) reads “An application for a special event permit to conduct a block party may be conditioned on notice and approval by fifty percent of the residents of dwellings along the affected street(s).  Block parties must be located in a cul-de-sac to be approved.”

The reader lived in a neighborhood without cul-de-sacs, therefore he and his neighbors, although they easily met the standard for neighborhood approval, were barred from hosting block parties.  A neighborhood that was specifically configured to promote neighborly relations was barred from holding a common area party.

This isn’t meant as a diatribe against Petaluma City Hall or the Petaluma Municipal Code.  I’m guessing that the troublesome paragraph was written decades ago, when it was generally understood that cars deserved primacy over people and when it was expected that every neighborhood would have a cul-de-sac where parties could be held.  The paragraph doesn’t indicate that we’re collectively stupid, only that we have blind spots that can become glaringly apparent.

I also understand that emergency vehicle access is the likely rationale behind the rule.  However, it seems unlikely that neighbors gathered in the street to grill hotdogs would impede an ambulance attempting to reach someone choking on one of the dogs.  Instead, I would expect the neighbors to quickly move barricades and barbecues to allow emergency care to reach their neighbor.

I’m not going to try to change the Petaluma Municipal Code.  I already have too many crusades and too little time.  But if someone else wants to take on the burden, I’ll happily join the rooting section.

And I’m still hopeful of an invitation to the block party, even if we must hang out in driveways and look both ways before crossing the streets.

Lastly, I’ll remain willing to accommodate street crossings by pizza-toting teenagers not using crosswalks.  I won’t encourage those crossings, but neither will I honk or express exasperation.  The teenagers are doing their little bit to reclaim common land and needn’t be condemned.

Schedule Notes

Petaluma Transit: The first of the Petaluma Transit meetings about evening service and a possible fare increase were held on April 23.  I had planned to attend one or both, but other obligations arose.  However, I’ll definitely drop by both outreach sessions on May 6, 10am to noon at the Petaluma Senior Center and 1pm to 7pm at the Petaluma Community Center.  If one or both of the Petaluma Transit issues interest you, I suggest you also stop by.

Parks: My recent posts on park usage elicited a range of comments.  I told several readers that I planned to continue the conversation this week, but other commitments interfered.  I’ll write further about streets to begin next week and then slide back into parks.

Petaluma Urban Chat: The next meeting of Petaluma Urban Chat will be held on Tuesday, May 13. I anticipate another fine conversation about “Happy City.”   If you think you’d enjoy further discussion of the book, I suggest you plan to join us.  I must be away that day and regret my absence, but am sure that the remainder of the group will carry on well.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)