Santa Rosa delays discussion of ban on natural gas in new homes

As Santa Rosa prepared for another of PG&E’s planned ?anti-wildfire outages and responded to a shooting at a local high school Tuesday, officials decided to delay by three weeks a public discussion on banning natural gas in new homes.

The City Council’s planned hearing, on prohibiting natural gas appliances in most new residential development up to three stories as part of a larger update to comply with state building and fire codes, has been pushed back from Tuesday to Nov. 12. That will include a hearing open to members of the public starting no earlier than 5 p.m.

The likelihood of PG&E shutting off the power Wednesday to about 189,000 customers including 27,824 in Sonoma County has taken up a good deal of Santa Rosa’s bandwidth, prompting the city to activate its emergency operations center. Also Tuesday, city police and officials were responding to and monitoring a shooting at Ridgway High School that injured one boy and led to the arrest of a 17-year-old student.

Those two events - plus the city’s need to make sure that City Council members didn’t run into conflicts of interest related to codes affecting outlying city areas - prompted the hearing’s delay, said David Guhin, an assistant city manager who oversees planning and economic development matters.

“We needed more time to make sure we have it figured out,” Guhin said in a text message. “And today with the (outage preparation), shooting and everything else we needed to bump it.”

Guhin noted that the date the council is expected to vote on the building codes has not changed despite the hearing’s delay and remains Nov. 19. Most codes will go into effect Jan. 1, but the natural gas ban is subject to additional review by the California Energy Commission, which may require a further month or so.

Windsor, Menlo Park, San Luis Obispo and San Jose already have adopted some form of the code, according to a recent city staff presentation in Healdsburg, which is considering a similar version of the natural gas ban that would allow residents in new homes to opt out by paying a fee that existing homeowners could tap for electric appliance upgrades.

Windsor last week became the first North Bay municipality to pass a natural gas ban for new residential construction up to three stories, including ?single-family homes, which will take effect in January.

The Windsor Town Council delayed a vote in September over the threat of a legal challenge to the code update without study of the possible environmental impacts of the action.

On behalf of Sonoma County developer Bill Gallaher, Walnut Creek-based attorney Matt Henderson questioned Windsor’s position that the all-electric code is exempt from the state’s stringent environmental review requirements in a Sept. 16 letter to Town Manager Ken MacNab.

A follow-up letter Oct. 15, one day before Windsor adopted its natural gas ban, called it “curious” that the town would pass an all-electric requirement in the week after parts of Windsor lost power in PG&E’s biggest outage yet, which cut power to more than 2 million Californians in early October.

Vice Mayor Deb Fudge said she thought Gallaher authorized the lawyer’s letters to Windsor because the town was the first in Sonoma County to bring the matter up for a vote, and he didn’t want to see the setting of a local precedent.

“They’re just trying to scare us,” she said. “I think it’s a bully tactic.”

Guhin said he believed he had received a similar letter from an attorney for Gallaher during Santa Rosa’s meeting Tuesday but had not had time to look at it. He said Santa Rosa did not intend to change its plan regarding an all-electric requirement.

“We’re confident in our environmental analysis,” he said.

Henderson on Tuesday declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. Gallaher did not appear to have filed any lawsuit challenging Windsor’s all-electric rule as of Tuesday.

You can reach Staff Writer Will Schmitt at 707-521-5207 or will.schmitt@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @wsreports. You can reach Staff Writer Kevin Fixler at 707-521-5336 or kevin.fixler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @kfixler.