Applause broke out during the Oct. 25 Solvang City Council meeting after the city decided it wanted to change its rules governing backyard sheds.
Many of the meeting’s attendees were residents of Solvang’s Skytt Mesa neighborhood. In July, a homeowner in the neighborhood came under fire for constructing a shed in their backyard that violated the city’s setback rules. In an attempt to defend their shed, the homeowner wrote a letter to the city listing 20 additional homes in the neighborhood with sheds that violated similar rules.
Although no formal complaints were filed against these 20 homeowners, they, too, became subject to code enforcement thanks to the letter.
Acting as a spokesperson for the individuals involved, Skytt Mesa resident Chris Horn proposed that revisions be made to Solvang’s municipal code, while claiming that current regulations on backyard sheds have already been violated by hundreds of homeowners throughout Solvang.
Horn spoke during the Oct. 25 meeting, saying that punishing the 20 homeowners named in the letter would be arbitrary and unfair, and that the writer’s intention was never to cause trouble for these individuals.
“The defending neighbor actually stated in their letter that they did not want to file a complaint against their neighbors,” Horn said during the meeting. “Their intent was to justify keeping their very large shed, not to make the rest of their neighbors lose their sheds.”
Horn said that City Council should take steps to ensure that the municipal code is more accommodating to not only residents in the Skytt Mesa neighborhood, but all residents in Solvang with garden sheds in their backyards.
“With some minor adjustments to the code or your interpretation of it, we’re confident we can allow Solvang residents to have small garden sheds in sensible locations while avoiding aesthetic and public safety issues,” Horn said. “In this case, the current municipal code and processes that you’ve inherited isn’t serving us well as Solvang residents.”
After Horn’s presentation, City Council members moved the issue forward by voting to ask the Planning Commission to recommend possible revisions to the city’s municipal code.
“I want the city to do what it takes to make this go away,” Councilmember Robert Clarke said, which prompted cheers from some attendees at the meeting. “At the most minimal effort and cost, I want us to assist this group to make this go away.”
One concern raised, however, was whether or not any revisions would retroactively save the original 21 homeowners from scrutiny. City Attorney Dave Fleishman said that would be determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the details of the new regulations.
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2021.