City leaders rejected a developer’s plan to build 73 homes in the largest subdivision under construction in Santa Rosa, calling the proposal a ‘bait-and-switch’ that would leave the city without the low-income housing it was promised.

An appellate court has ruled that Santa Rosa must pay more than $240,000 in legal fees to the attorneys who successfully challenged the constitutionality of a city law imposing a special tax on new developments.

Santa Rosa is keeping secret the names and application information about people seeking appointment to the City Council until after the application deadline passes. The council’s goal for the policy it adopted Tuesday is to preserve the integrity of the process and to encourage as large and diverse a group of applicants as possible, Mayor Scott Bartley said.

On the day that Susan Gorin will be sworn in as the new Sonoma County 1st District supervisor, her former colleagues on the Santa Rosa City Council will begin the politically delicate task of replacing her. Several key questions facing the council Tuesday will determine how they’ll go about filling the vacancy.

Santa Rosa was within its rights to consider the opinions of tenants when it rejected a plan for a condominium-style conversion of a mobile home park, a court has ruled. The city in 2010 blocked plans by the owner of the 178-unit Country Mobile Home Park on Fulton Road to convert from one where tenants rented their spaces to one where they could own them.

Santa Rosa is being sued over the taxing structure underlying plans to intensify development around the future rail station near Coddingtown mall.

Critics of the Santa Rosa Police Department called for a full accounting of the city’s legal defense in the fatal shooting of Richard DeSantis and said the officer involved should be fired.
A small group of activists addressed the City Council on Tuesday, five days after a federal jury found a Santa Rosa police sergeant violated the civil rights of DeSantis when he fatally shot the unarmed man outside his Roseland home in 2007.
They urged the city not to continue spending money to appeal the case, which is five years old and has already been petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A federal jury in San Francisco on Thursday found that a Santa Rosa police sergeant violated the civil rights of an unarmed man when he shot him to death outside the man’s home in 2007. The eight-member jury concluded that the shooting of Richard DeSantis did not have a ‘legitimate law enforcement purpose’ and awarded his family more than $500,000 in damages, plus attorneys’ fees. The verdict was a blow to city officials, who fully backed the actions of all six officers who responded to the 911 call and spent nearly five years trying to get the lawsuit thrown out.

Santa Rosa is being sued for allowing an asphalt plant to add three massive storage silos without requiring a report analyzing the environmental impacts. Citizens for Safe Neighborhoods filed its suit in Sonoma County Superior Court last month challenging the City Council’s approval June 19 of a permit for the Bodean Company project. The group, made up mostly of residents who live in the West End neighborhood near the Maxwell Drive plant, claims the city twisted local zoning and environmental rules to approve the project.

Santa Rosa and the board of a local condominium complex have reached a settlement with the federal government over allegations they violated laws designed to prevent age discrimination in housing. The deal, if approved by a federal judge, resolves a lawsuit filed in November by the U.S. Department of Justice accusing the city and La Esplanada Unit 1 Owners Association of violating the federal Fair Housing Act. The government claimed the city and the association discriminated against people based on their age when they tried to prevent the developer of a senior housing project from renting to non-seniors.