Ousted planning commissioners sue city

<p>Three Petaluma planning commissioners who were not named to new versions of their former jobs this summer have sued the city, claiming the decision to dissolve the commission violated city codes.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>Former Planning Commission chair Kathleen Miller and members Spence F. Burton and Jack Rittenhouse filed a lawsuit in Superior Court Monday, seeking to overturn the City Council’s June 15 decision to merge the Planning Commission and SPARC, the city’s design review committee.</p><p>In combining the two bodies and requiring sitting members to apply for the new commission in the middle of their terms, the council violated a clause in the municipal code that prevents the removal of planning commissioners unless five council members agree, the suit alleges.</p><p>The council on June 15 voted 4-3 to combine the committees, failing to garner the needed five votes, the former commissioners said in their suit.</p><p>The council members who voted in favor “simply ignored” the municipal code’s requirement for a five-vote threshold, the suit claims.</p><p>“To get around that, they came up with a very creative way to get rid of all the commissioners,” said James V. Sansone, a Santa Rosa attorney who is representing Burton, Miller and Rittenhouse.</p><p>Sansone said his clients are asking the court to find that the council “overstepped its authority” in canceling their terms.</p><p>The city’s position is that the consolidation of the two bodies was a legislative act allowed by the council, and the five-vote threshold for removal is intended to apply to individual commissioners, not the dissolution of the entire commission.</p><p>In addition to the claim of improper removal, the lawsuit says changes to the city’s zoning ordinance prompted by the merger should have been reviewed by the existing Planning Commission first. The council ruled that requirement did not apply to procedural changes, such as the merger, that did not affect zoning laws.</p><p>City Manager John Brown declined comment on the suit, which was delivered to City Hall Monday. He said the city hasn’t yet decided whether the new commission’s first meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, will go on as planned.</p><p>A fourth commissioner whose term had not expired, Christopher Arras, was named to the new Planning Commission at the council’s July 6 meeting. Burton, Miller and Rittenhouse, who had applied for the new commission as well, were not appointed, nor was a SPARC member whose term had not expired.</p><p>The former commissioners’ suit also charges that by extending the application period for the new commission once the merger was approved, the council majority was able to “recruit applicants more ‘in sync’ with (its) political agenda.” Critics of the merger had charged the decision was politically motivated, with one member of the council minority, Mike Healy, calling it a “power grab” by the majority.</p><p>The members of the majority — Mayor Pamela Torliatt, Vice Mayor Teresa Barrett and council members David Glass and Tiffany Renée — denied those allegations, saying the merger would improve and expedite the city’s planning process.</p><p>In addition to Arras, the council named five other applicants to the new commission. Barrett, as the council’s liaison, is the seventh member, and two representatives of local history groups will join the commission for discussions involving historic sites.</p><p>(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier. com)</p>