FORT BRAGG, CA., 10/14/26 — The Fort Bragg City Council on Tuesday backed away from banning the fastest e-bikes on the Coastal Trail. Council members said they’d rather set a 15 mph speed limit for everyone.
There was no vote on the e-bike rules. The council gave direction to Marie Jones, the city’s contract planner, who will rewrite the ordinance, and voted 5-0 to carry the public hearing over to its Oct. 26 meeting at 6 p.m.
Jones summed up what she heard: a 15 mph limit with signs, “share the trail” painted on the path, more education, drones allowed with a special permit, “and basically eliminating all the prohibitions around Class 3 bicycles.”
“So I can certainly do that if people feel like that’s the gist,” Jones said.
The draft ordinance would have barred Class 3 e-bikes, which assist riders up to 28 mph, from the trail and every city park. Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes, whose motors quit helping at 20 mph, would have stayed legal. The city’s Community Development Committee recommended the ban in September.
Council member Tess Albin-Smith questioned naming vehicles in the ordinance at all.
“Why are we listing which vehicles? Because I think we’re going to date ourselves,” she said. “We didn’t have e-bikes when this original ordinance was passed, and now we do, and there might be something in the future.”
She asked whether the rules would carry penalties “for people that mow other people down or that are just being too fast,” and asked for signs giving pedestrians the right of way. Breaking park rules is a misdemeanor, Jones answered, so a police officer could write a ticket.
Not everyone on the council was ready to drop the ban. Council member Lindy Peters said a phone app can make Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes go faster, and backed banning Class 3 bikes “for now,” because the city could lean on what the state has done. But council member Scott Hockett called a Class 3 ban “an enforcement nightmare.”
Asked whether police have much trouble with scooters and e-bikes in town, Police Chief Eric Swift said, “No, we don’t get a lot of complaints of any of those.”
About a dozen people spoke during public comment. Several said they ride e-bikes, scooters or electric boards on the trail. Several backed a speed limit, and some opposed banning one class of bike.
Emergency water line
The council voted 5-0 to declare an emergency so the city can hire contractors without competitive bidding to replace the water line under the Noyo River.
The line broke in September. Kevin McDannold, a city engineering technician, said the break was in a 12-inch ductile iron pipe, put in around 1986 and buried about 2 feet under the riverbed. Water now crosses the river on what he called “a very temporary” bypass. The water conservation notice the city issued after the break has been lifted, he said.
The plan is to drill a new pipe under the riverbed from the banks. That avoids diverting or draining the river, McDannold said. The new pipe will be 10-inch plastic, the same as the city’s larger water line replacement project, he said.
He cautioned the council against anything that would make it look like this isn’t an emergency.
“We’re very, very much right at the edge of permitting windows for doing work in this area,” he said. “So if we don’t proceed with emergency repairs, then this probably isn’t going to happen this season, and we’ll likely lose our water supply.”
Nobody gave a price. The staff report says the cost “is not yet known,” and staff will come back with costs, a funding plan and contracts. Peters made the motion and Mayor Jason Godeke seconded it. No one from the public spoke.
Coastal ADU rules
The council gave final approval, 5-0, to new rules for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in the city’s coastal zone. An ADU is a second home on a lot, like a backyard cottage. The rules were on the consent calendar, passed in one vote with other routine items, and no council member asked to talk about them.
The rules include changes the California Coastal Commission required in May. They take effect once the commission’s executive director signs off. Jones said that can take up to six months, but “usually it happens more quickly than that.”
The rules also ban renting ADUs and junior ADUs, or JADUs, small units built inside a house, for less than 31 days.
In 2024, the state housing department told the city that state law gave no basis for a minimum rental term on junior ADUs. But since Jan. 1, state law has required cities to limit junior ADU rentals to terms longer than 30 days.
“We no longer have a concern about Fort Bragg prohibiting short-term rental of JADUs due to the change in state law,” the department told the Voice in an email before the meeting. The department said it hasn’t reviewed the city’s 2026 changes to its ADU rules.
In an email before the meeting, Jones told the Voice the state housing department “has accepted the ADU ordinance as the City submitted it to the Coastal Commission.”
The only public comment came from Mary Rose Kaczorowski, a candidate for City Council. She said the ordinance’s wording on owner occupancy of junior ADUs is “grammatically incorrect or incomplete.”
The ordinance says most ADUs over 750 square feet pay part of the city’s capacity and impact fees. The city’s fee schedule says it won’t charge water or sewer capacity fees for any ADU. Jones said the fee schedule applies, because “the City Council decided not to require any capacity fees for any sized ADU.” The ordinance the council adopted Tuesday kept that language.