Respondents’ … Notice of Demurrer Hearing and of Demurrer to Verified Petition
This is what it sounds like, a short document announcing that the City is filing a Demurrer.
Respondents’ … Request for Judicial Notice in Support of the Demurrer
Here the City of Sonoma is asking the Judge to “Notice” aka look at, the exhibits they include. The exhibits are the legislative record of the 1990 amendments to the HAA. When the HAA was initially passed in 1982, it was very simple, it was just section (j). It applied to all proposed housing, and just said, ‘cities, you have to follow your own zoning.’ In 1990, affordable housing developers added sections that apply to subsidized housing. These sections go farther than just requiring cities to follow their own zoning, they also describe circumstances where subsidized housing must be approved even if it doesn’t comply with local zoning. The City of Sonoma is including this because they think it shows that the HAA is a law that is supposed to apply to subsidized housing. In this case however, we are not using any of the sections that were added in 1990. We are using section (j), the original 1982 section that applies to all housing proposals, including market rate.
Respondents City of Sonoma & Sonoma City Council Memo in Support of Demurrer
Here the City of Sonoma tries to convince the court (aka the judge) that the city shouldn’t even have to answer our Petition, because our Petition doesn’t successfully describe a failure on the city’s part to follow the law. See page 6, “Standard of Review”.
Sonoma – 149 Fourth St
In late 2016, a homebuilder began the arduous journey to construct three homes on vacant lots in Sonoma. Each HAA-compliant project was submitted separately, though the City of Sonoma processed all three as a group. This included producing three CEQA reports, which each included special attention to the other projects in the group; the City of Sonoma performed one overarching CEQA study in three comprehensively similar stages as if all three projects were one submission. When the projects finally had their hearings at the Planning Commission, the city recognized that the CEQA studies showed no impact and adopted the reports as such. The study included an analysis of each project individually and with all three projects as a group. Opponents appealed and at the project’s final City Council hearing, the City Council of Sonoma upheld the appeal. They claimed that all three projects should have been submitted and reviewed as one three-home project and as such the CEQA studies were inadequate, resulting in a final denial of all three projects. Not content to stop at CEQA, the City Council made further findings that the projects–despite the Planning Commission’s previous statements to the contrary–did not adhere to subjective standards of aesthetics. […]