City Council Special Meeting Highlights 
from January 31, 2023

Read a proclamation in honor of  Winifred Pifer Great Kindness Challenge

Read a proclamation in honor of AARP Andrus Award Recipient

Received a presentation from the Small Business Administration regarding federal assistance that is available to property owners within the City that experienced damages due to the recent storm events. 

Received a presentation from Paso Robles Fire Chief Jonathan Stornetta (YouTube) regarding proposed state changes to Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ) that will likely result in increased property insurance costs for certain property owners within the City if the new map is adopted. As part of the state’s consideration of the new map, CAL FIRE is accepting public comment on the proposed map between now and April 4, 2023. The public may submit written comment at the address below or through email at FHSZcomments@fire.ca.gov. 

Written comments may be submitted by U.S. mail to the following address:

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
Office of the State Fire Marshal
C/O: Scott Witt
California Natural Resources Building
715 P Street, 9th floor
Sacramento, CA 95818 

To determine the FHSZ of a property, the public can search an address using a new FHSZ Viewer at osfm.fire.ca.gov/FHSZ.  

Approved a resolution that allows the City to participate in a regional study regarding desalination. It is unlikely that a regional desalination project could cost-effectively provide desalinated water directly to Paso Robles due to the City’s distance from the coast. However, future use of desalination by other water suppliers in the County could reduce demand for shared water supplies like surface water from the Nacimiento Water Project, which could provide indirect benefits to the City’s water supplies and long-term reliability. The study does not require any financial commitment from the City.

Tabled a discussion regarding the implementation of certain changes to the Downtown On-street Parking Program to the February 21, 2023 City Council meeting. The changes that were being considered included acquiring a new mobile app to conduct paid parking transactions, finalizing a resident parking program, and updating the downtown business parking validation program. Until the City Council considers the additional updates to the parking program at future meetings, the City Council’s decision on December 20, 2022 remains effective. That decision raised parking rates to $2 per hour and eliminated the two hours of free parking.  However, based on Council’s deadlock last night, the City is unable to renew its contracts with parking management partners that support parking kiosks and mobile parking applications.  The City will continue to operate as normal until the vendors discontinue access to parking management systems. 

This is a subset of the items approved on January 31, 2023, the complete agenda and YouTube recording can be found here.

The regular City Council meeting scheduled for February 7th has been cancelled. The next regular City Council meeting is on Tuesday, February 21, 2023 at 6:30 PM, in person and via livestream at www.prcity.com/youtube.  Public comment can be made during the meeting in person or by calling 805-865-PASO (7276) or provided prior to the meeting by emailing cityclerk@prcity.com, after the agenda posts and prior to noon the day of the meeting.