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Home My WebLink About00 - Insiders GuideInsiders Guide July 8, 2014 Brown, Leilani From: Kiff, Dave Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2014 7:44 PM Subject: Insider's Guide - NB City Council Meeting of July 8, 2014 Happy Independence Day weekend to you. This version of the Insider's Guide has information about the upcoming Council meeting set for Tuesday, July 8th, 2014 as well as some community items of interest. The City Council meeting is held on the 2nd and 4`" Tuesdays of most months. This time around, we have no study session planned, but the regular session starts at 7:00 p.m. The Council meets at 100 Civic Center Drive, but you can also watch on N (Channels 3/31) or on your computer. WHAT'S ON THE AGENDA? I will start with one citywide item that will generate the most interest at this meeting — it's the proposed update to the Land Use Element (LUE) of the General Plan. Before you skip down further because I just wrote in planning- speak, it's worth learning more about. Remember that a community's General Plan is the "30,000 foot" look at what a community should look like and be over time. There are several "elements" within each plan —we have ten elements. They are Land Use, Harbor and Bay, Housing, Historical Resources, Circulation, Recreation, Arts and Cultural, Natural Resources, Safety, and Noise. The elements that get the most attention ten to be the Land Use Element, the Circulation Element, and the Housing Element (the latter by the State). So the big deal on Tuesday night is consideration of an amendment to the Land Use Element — specifically, whether to accept the amendment as the Planning Commission recommended (or to amend it) and then decide whether to place the amendment on the ballot for you to vote upon. As I noted, the LUE gets a lot of interest — it speaks to important things, like which areas of town are commercial, residential, industrial, public facilities, or mixed uses. Within those categories, it sets forth development limits, such as how X number of hotel rooms can be in one specific land use designation. Or X number of residential units, or X hundred square feet of office or retail. The amount of retail, residential, hotel rooms, and more drives another important number —the estimate of "average daily trips" or ADTs associated with a property or neighborhood. The proposed amendment to the LUE, among other things, removes some units and square footages from some areas and adds it to others. Primarily, the additions are proposed for the Newport Center area and the Airport area. The deletions come from the Newport Coast and individual shopping areas across town, generally. The Council action on Tuesday would adopt the proposed amendment (or a variation of it), adopt the EIR associated with the amendment, and move the amendment to the November 2104 ballot. Again, this is all subject to the Council's consideration and approval on Tuesday. If you want to know more about any of this, please start at this link: http://www.newportbeachca.gov/index.aspx?page=2289 But also be sure to read the staff report about it, including the attachments. Other citywide items: • Consideration of a proposal by Steve Rosansky of the Chamber of Commerce and Jean Watt of SPON to start setting aside a percentage of contributions from development- related fees for environmental restoration and /or sustainability efforts in town. Actually, this item asks the Council if they want staff to spend more time fleshing this idea out, as it was just brought to the Council at public comment time last meeting. A proposed labor agreement with the 180- member Police Association. The proposed agreement is for a 3 -year term and offers a 2.5% raise each year, but also asks for another 0.5% per year in contributions to pension costs (for Safety employees) — among other things. Civilian PD employees would get the same raise but pay between 4.35% more and 6.25% more for pensions. This MOU will bring the paycheck deductions for pensions to: 0 13.6% of salary for police officers (so if a police officer is earning $95K, then about $13K is being deducted from his or her paycheck for pension costs); and 0 12.35% of salary for civilian staff. These will be among the highest pension deductions from pay for any agency in the region. Yes, there are raises in the mix — but the raises are geared to keep up with inflation (the net 2% increase each year is a tad below the 2.1% CPI jump noted May 2013 to May 2014). I'm going to spend a little time with you about labor negotiations and labor costs. Some residents e-mail and write to express concern over what people make and how much pensions cost. I get that, as does the City Council. Employees here are not the highest paid nor the lowest. Indeed, the City Council's philosophy dating back to 2011 is that salaries and benefits here should place employees at median with our it comparison cities (Carlsbad, Chula Vista, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Oceanside, Orange, Santa Ana, Santa Monica, and Torrance). Our employees are contributing among the highest percentage of pay towards pension costs in the region - and a dollar amount that will equal $7.4 million this year, and one that will grow higher each year. The terms of any new labor agreement are the result of several competing factors: • The desire of the Council to adhere to the 2011 Policy to keep salary growth low, and to secure higher pension contributions from employees. • The desire of labor to earn a decent wage and not slip backwards given changes in the cost of living. • The desire of both management and labor to keep quality employees here versus losing them to our competitor agencies, and having quality new hires want to come here. • The laws of the State of California, which (to me) benefit labor more than management (admittedly my bias is showing). • Past history— past benefits locked in and not yet funded, or whose funding was impacted by the recession. For Newport Beach, about 70% of our total unfunded pension liability is for persons already retired. Today, current employees end up paying for a chunk of their own pension costs PLUS paying for past employees' pension costs. Labor negotiations are among the most challenging processes that any City Council has to address. The process is highly regulated. Cities deal with negotiations differently. Some are highly contentious, others less so. Our history has been one of less contentious negotiations, even while achieving quality services, generally good morale with our employees, nearly layoff -free downsizing, more pension contributions, and less generous pension tiers for new hires. You play a part in that (helping us recruit and keep good staff, I mean) in your own interaction with us - from police officers to paramedics to planners and parks crews. A kind word makes a big difference. Continuing on, here are some agenda items that might affect your neighborhood: • In Corona del Mar. For those of you following the Aerie Project (a 7 -unit condo project on Carnation in CdM), the Council will consider a resolution adopting the final tract map. This is a fairly routine item, but the project itself got its share of attention. • Also in Corona del Mar. Council member Gardner asked the Council to see if they wanted to spend staff time and effort (as well as that of the Parks, Beaches, and Recreation Commission) to designate the Goldenrod Footbridge as a historical structure. To see these items and the rest of the City Council's agenda, click here: htt p: //n ew po rt beachca.gov /mod u les /S howDocu me nt. as px ?d ocu m e nt i d =4414 UPCOMING HAPPENINGS The second of the 2014 Summer Concerts on the Green is tomorrow - Sunday, July 6th from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Join us in a patriotic conclusion to the weekend with the All American Boys Chorus. Bring a picnic dinner, a blanket, and chairs here at the Civic Center. • Time for a reminder to stay in even better touch with the community via Nixle.com. This is an application from our Police Department. You'll be the first on your street to know about a local road closure, or a sneaky person nearby. Also consider becoming a fan of our Facebook page. I recommend signing up for Nixie — it's easy and fast, and gives you a lot of great benefits. SOME NOTES Now that July 4, 2014 is in the books, I will note that I think we passed another good milestone yesterday. This was our first July 4 that fell on a Friday since we've opened up more streets in West Newport. And it was a warm one, with warm ocean waters. While we had a good number of arrests and more crowds (the latter an anecdotal observation so far), I think we survived pretty well. The parades and festivals were great fun, the fireworks quite good, and traffic kept moving in most places. Thanks to everyone - especially our residents who coordinated the events - who helped keep the fun levels high but the craziness low. Our PD, Recreation staff, Operations, and Public Works staff all were working hard to make sure things went well. One more note about fireworks. There was a private (but permitted) show at 9:30 p.m. last night offshore near the Wedge. If you got to see it, you know that it was pretty amazing. I watched it from Ocean Boulevard in CdM, and the neighbors were surprised but oohing and ahhing. The folks around me all wanted it done again next year. I can't promise that (hmm - but I suppose I can ask). I hope it didn't scare your pets nor cause any other problems - it really was great fun to see. If you have a moment, tell me about your July 4 experience if you spent it in town - good, bad, better, whatever. As always, thanks for reading the Insider's Guide. Please pass it along to others in the neighborhood, especially if you represent a homeowners' or community association. Feel free to share your thoughts about this with me, or to ask me any question about city operations. Thanks again, Dave Kiff City Manager 949 - 644 -3001