HomeMy WebLinkAbout7/15/2025 Item 8a, Smith
carolyn smith <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:City Council July 15, 2025 - Agenda Item 8a - Ad Hoc Council Committee re Grand
Jury Report
Mayor Stewart and Council Members:
The Grand Jury investigation was instigated by residents who felt the city was continuing to fail
in their duty to protect their neighborhoods from the dangerous drunken St. Fratty's Day event.
The complaint was filed in June of 2024 after the police chief had announced to the city and the
public that his department's enforcement plan that was used for the St. Fratty's Day event in
March of 2024, the same plan used in prior years, was successful. This announcement was
despite the continued growth of the rowdy drunken crowd rising from 2,000 in 2022 to 7,000+
in 2024, and despite the outcries from residents that it was indeed NOT a “success.” Residents
feared that the St. Fratty's event in 2025 would be even larger and more dangerous since the
chief was not acknowledging that more needed to be done. In fact, the council had insisted that
the party had to end. The chief's announcement of success and denial of residents' pleas for
better enforcement was the impetus that caused desperate fearful residents to file a Grand Jury
Complaint. Fortunately, residents were finally taken seriously and coordinated efforts between
the city and Cal Poly resulted in a positive result in 2025. Hopefully, that cooperation will
continue next year, otherwise the event will recur.
A second Grand Jury complaint was submitted by frustrated residents in the Alta Vista
Neighborhood who have been pleading with the city to enforce its zoning codes to eliminate
illegal fraternity operations in R-1 and R-2 neighborhoods that have been ravaging their lives.
After an extensive investigation by 19 impartial Grand Jurors, they concluded that the city has,
in fact, failed to protect its residents by not enforcing its residential neighborhood zoning laws.
Not only did the jurors perform extensive research, review records, and conduct interviews, but
they also witnessed first hand the extremely disturbing large fraternity parties that occur in
several residential neighborhoods adjacent to Cal Poly each weekend. That's more than anyone
from the city has done. Each council member has been sent videos demonstrating the extreme
disruptions from the unabated fraternity parties in the Alta Vista and Monterey Heights
neighborhoods. Each council member has been invited to visit residents' homes on the weekends
during the academic year to see first-hand what they have to endure but not one has taken up
the invitation. Resident groups have met with council members and code enforcement officials
only to hear the same excuses: insufficient staff and there's no money to hire more code
enforcement personnel. This inaction has caused the problem only to get worse making these
affected neighborhoods nearly unlivable as the Grand Jury concluded.
Staff points out that noise complaints have been reduced since 2010 (a period of over FIFTEEN
years), but what they fail to mention is that those numbers have remained at a nearly stagnant
level for the past 10 years (hovering between 1400 and 1500). Many long-term residents have
given up calling the police when little to nothing is done to stop the parties, resulting in many
taking the drastic measure of moving away from their long-term homes, causing even more
homes in those neighborhoods to turn into student rentals. This could be a contributing factor in
the reduction of noise complaints.
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The city's efforts of having “meetings” with Cal Poly have proven to be futile since nothing ever
comes out of those meetings that resolves the problems. The Civility Report Staff mentions was
an effort completed YEARS ago and the fraternities operating illegally in R-1 and R-2 zones is a
more recent occurrence not even considered in that endeavor.
Staff also mentions the efforts of SCLC as a method of helping to resolve town/gown issues. I
was RQN's representative on SCLC for five years until the pandemic. Unfortunately, since then,
the mission statement of the committee has changed (instigated by Cal Poly with concurrence by
the city), resulting in a chilling effect for residents in bringing up problems in neighborhoods
impacted by student rentals. Thus, there's little to no coordinated effort to actually deal with the
illegal fraternity operations causing neighborhood problems in that committee. It has become an
exchange of information group with little to no conversations on how to solve town/gown
problems.
Additionally, over city staff's objections, Cal Poly is purposely violating AB 524 by erasing
previously provided street addresses where their fraternities are operating while claiming they're
acting within the law. It appears, however, there have been no efforts made by the city to
adjudicate this dispute.
Further, the city should be making Cal Poly accountable for inviting new fraternities without
providing accommodation for them. Cal Poly should not be sanctioning fraternity parties without
Staff or Cal Poly PD doing any on-site monitoring for noise or other infractions to protect
neighborhood residents from the mayhem they've been experiencing from these sanctioned
parties and events.
Therefore, if you feel you must form an ad hoc committee to respond to the Grand Jury Report,
please focus your response on how the city is going to do better to resolve the problem of
fraternities illegally operating in R-1 and R-2 zones. Perhaps your response could include that
(1) the city is going to form a task force comprised of city staff and residents negatively affected
by these illegal operations (with the addition of Cal Poly sometime during the process), in an
attempt to begin actually doing something concrete to address the violation of our zoning codes
by Cal Poly fraternities that are destroying residents' quality of life in neighborhoods; (2) the city
will fund an additional code enforcement official to exclusively deal with the fraternity zoning
code violations and relieve the neighborhoods from these illegal operations; (3) the city intends
to adjudicate the actions of Cal Poly removing street addresses of their fraternity operations
from their reporting required under AB 524. These responses would be effective in
demonstrating a genuine plan of action to help residents negatively affected by the ever-
increasing population of Cal Poly students and fraternity operations in our once peaceful family
neighborhoods.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Carolyn Smith
SLO City Resident
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