The San Luis Obispo City Council appointed Mayor Erica Stewart and City Councilmember Jan Marx to an ad hoc committee to oversee the response to a county grand jury report alleging mismanagement of illegal college parties.
“It’s my understanding that 20 percent of the Cal Poly students are in a fraternity or sorority,” Marx said at the July 15 City Council meeting. “Cuesta students don’t have any sororities or fraternities at all. What we’re talking about is a really small minority of students who are causing an outsized problem.”
In 2022, continued disturbance from student neighbors compelled Marx to relocate to a quieter neighborhood in SLO. Now, Alta Vista neighborhood resident Kathie Walker is packing up to move to another area of the city, too.
“Since fall 2021, I’ve sent you videos documenting violations and raging parties at known illegal fraternity houses in R1 and R2 zones,” Walker wrote in a letter to the City Council after the grand jury published its findings. “SLOPD cleared most as ‘negative violation’ or ‘unable to locate.’ I’ve invited you, the council, to come see for yourselves. No one has taken me up on my invitation.”
For years, Walker and several other neighborhood residents have been asking the city for stricter enforcement and separating Greek life from low-density areas with family homes. They’ve also asked Cal Poly to publish the addresses of all known fraternity houses.
Repeated complaints from Alta Vista residents caught the attention of the grand jury. In June, the grand jury released a report called “Round and Round with Town and Gown,” alleging that the city failed to effectively control unsanctioned fraternity parties. The report came with six recommendations for the City Council, City Manager Whitney McDonald, and the city Planning Commission. They must respond by Sept. 19.
Prior to the report’s publication, the city responded with a 27-page list of alleged clarifications and factual inaccuracies.
“It is legally debatable whether the addresses should be published and/or disclosed or not, but it is true that since Cal Poly now declines to provide specific address information regarding locations of all fraternity/sorority sponsored events, this does impede the city’s enforcement efforts,” one such city response read.
The city’s July 15 staff report claimed that noise-related calls for service dropped by 45 percent since 2010 through a combination of efforts like amending the fine structure and frequency of warnings in the noise ordinance, providing Cal Poly Police with administrative citation powers a mile off campus, and giving city police more time to enforce unruly behavior.
“What they fail to mention is that those numbers have remained at a nearly stagnant level for the past 10 years (hovering between 1,400 and 1,500),” SLO resident Carolyn Smith wrote in a letter to the City Council. “Many long-term residents have given up calling the police when little to nothing is done to stop the parties, resulting in many taking the drastic measure of moving away from their long-term homes, causing even more homes in those neighborhoods to turn into student rentals.”
The ad-hoc committee, typically a subcommittee of the City Council, is usually limited to council members, according to city spokesperson Whitney Szentesi. Members of the public and subject matter experts can be appointed to task forces, which are used to gather broader input.
“Since the grand jury report requires a response from the city within a very short timeframe (90 days), forming an ad hoc committee of the City Council made the most sense in this situation,” she said via email.
Community members can comment on the grand jury report and the city’s response through upcoming Student Community Liaison, Planning Commission, and City Council meetings. Find the updated schedule under “Community Input Opportunities” on slocity.org/living/neighborhood/town-gown.
Stewart and Marx will work with city staff on the responses required from the City Council. City Manager McDonald will prepare her response to the recommendations directed to her. She will provide them as part of the agenda report for the Sept. 2 City Council meeting. Staff will also draft responses to the recommendations directed to the Planning Commission, which will discuss it before the Sept. 19 deadline. Δ
This article appears in 55 Fiction 2025.