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HomeMy WebLinkAbout00 - Written CommentsReceived After Agenda Printed March 28, 2023 Written Comments March 28, 2023, City Council Agenda Comments The following comments on items on the Newport Beach City Council agenda are submitted by: Jim Mosher ( limmosher(@yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949-548-6229) Item SS3. Capital Improvement Program (CIP) Early Look I applaud Public Works staff for providing their PowerPoint slides with the agenda, giving the Council and public time to review what is being proposed prior to the presentation. Unfortunately, they are not numbered for easy reference. Slide 2 is titled "City Council Goals for Allocation to CIP." Setting aside that I am not entirely sure where or when these goals were set, I notice it refers to a "Parks Maintenance Master Plan," yet the following Slide 3 ("How New Projects are Selected for the CIP") lists six City Master Plans, and a "Parks Maintenance Master Plan" is not among them. It is good for the City to have master plans. It would also be good for it to have somewhere on its website a comprehensive master list of master plans, describing what they are, how they were developed and approved, and, if possible, a link to where the public can see what's in them. The "Parks Maintenance Master Plan," in particular, would seem something our Parks, Beaches and Recreation Commission should be aware of and have reviewed. I know they recently expressed interest in the "Playground Refurbishment Program" (mentioned on Slide 13 of 23), which is apparently separate from the master plan On Slide 3, 1 am also not sure of the process by which projects get on the list "as requested by the community." Presumably most of the community requests need ultimately to be approved by the Council before money is spent on them, but is there a formal process for staff to decide which community requests to place on the CIP for Council consideration? Or does it add them all? On Slide 17, 1 do not know what "PRS" stands for. Among the slides in general, I see the Library Lecture Hall listed only as a $10.8 million "re - budget" on Slide 6 with no mention of a possible groundbreaking date on any of the remaining slides, including the 5-year look ahead. With the construction bids all coming in $4 million or more over staff's already high $14 million estimate, this would seem to require an substantial additional capital outlay. Another relatively big ticket item I can't find listed is the General Plan Update effort. That's not something I would personally think of as a capital improvement project, but it has traditionally been found in the "Miscellaneous" category of the CIP, rather than in a departmental budget. In that category, Slide 19 mentions only $200,000 of new AQMD money to be used to study a "Fleet Electrification Program." Yet at the most recent General Plan Advisory Committee meeting, the GPAC heard hiring a consultant to assist them over a two-year effort could easily cost $2 million. Does that need to be in the 2023-2024 CIP? March 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 2 of 4 Item 1. Minutes for the March 14, 2023 City Council Meeting The passages shown in italics below are from the draft minutes with suggested corrections shown in cthikeeu underline format. The page numbers refer to Volume 65. Page 513, first full paragraph: "Russ Doll noted a legal letter of position on November 10, 2021, expressed concern about the turn eve turnover at a neighboring Pacaso property, and stated the need for a mechanism to manage or remedy ongoing behavior." Page 514, paragraph 2 from bottom: "Jim MaleneMoloney, Balboa Island Preservation Association Chair, thought fractional ownership accelerates the rate of homes being torn down and rebuilt into large cubes to maximize the square footage, and noted there will be more sales revenue in the short term but emphasized the disruption in the long term." Item 5. Hillsborough Pump Station Rehabilitation - Award of Contract No. 8758-2 (23W12) Considering the unexpectedly high cost of many of the City's recent construction project awards, it is a pleasant surprise to see seven bidders willing and able to do this work for less than staff's estimate — the winning bidder offering to do it for 0.48 times the estimated cost (or less than half, noting that the staff report describes this as "48 percent below the Engineer's Estimate," when I believe it would normally be described as "48 percent of or "52 percent below." That said, if I am reading the staff report correctly, the current pump, possibly as much as 44 years old(?), is operated only in emergencies. It would be interesting to know how many hours of operation it has logged, and how many hours or years of service is expected from the new pump. Item 7. 2022 Annual General Plan and Housing Element Progress Report The City's view of the status of our General Plan seems an important matter. Since we are embarked on a comprehensive General Plan Update, I have tried to call this item to the attention of the General Plan Advisory Committee members, for how the current plan has fared would certainly seem important to their consideration of how it needs to be changed. It is disappointing they didn't have a chance to review and comment on it. And it is disappointing that, as it does each year, this item appears on the Council agenda just a few days before the April 1 date by which it must be submitted to the state, meaning there is little realistic chance for the Council, or anyone else, to suggest substantial changes to it. As I pointed out to the Planning Commission when they saw the report on March 9, this seems contrary to the spirit of the Office of Planning and Research's 2022 Annual Progress Report Memorandum linked to in the Section 1 (Introduction) on page 7-10 of the current staff report. The memo says "local agencies should make a diligent effort to engage the public when preparing their APRs." Engaging the GPAC would have seemed an expected part of that diligence. March 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 3 of 4 Part of the diligence would also seem to include posting this and previous annual reports in a location where the public can easily access and compare them. However, https://www.newportbeachca.gov/apr currently links only to the state -required Excel spreadsheets regarding housing, and not to the printed narrative being reviewed by the Council. However, in the City's spirit, I have saved this item until the last moment and will offer just a couple of completely random comments before the 5:00 p.m. deadline for submitting them. Staff report page 7-48: Under Program 16.7, typos in paragraph "3." Staff report page 7-50: Under Program 16.10, the description in the third "Status" paragraph is out of date. Staff report page 7-86: Indicates Planning Action 7B is "Complete," but gives no explanation of what was done to complete it. The Pending, In Progress and Ongoing "Status" boxes for many other Housing Element Policy Actions are similarly blank — unlike those in the Implementation Program portion of the report. That makes it hard for the public to know exactly what their status is. Item 8. Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT) Quality Assurance Fee (QAF) Payment It is good to learn this will be the last payment the City will be making under this program. Curiously, however, the only previous reference to it I can find in a quick search of past Council agendas was Item 14 from May 14, 2019, when the Council was asked to approve the first payment, and alerted to the possibility the program might end, as explained in the current staff report, with passage of the then -pending AB 1709. Is there some reason the first and last payments required Council consent while those in the intervening years did not? Or did my search miss the relevant agenda items? Item 9. Authorization to Accept Funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Grant Program to Purchase Software Licenses for an Evacuation Planning Tool The present staff report is not a model of clarity, including three attachments, none of which are referenced in the report. Since the $60,000 expenditure is not one that would normally require Council approval, it is apparently on the consent calendar primarily for the Council to accept the grant, and I'm not sure even that requires Council approval, for Attachment A appears to document that the City Manager already accepted the grant on October 6 (page 9-8). 1 am also not able to find any explanation of what the "Orange County Harbor Region" is — an entity identified in the first line of the Abstract as a co -recipient of the grant. Is it a Joint Powers Agency of which the City is a member? March 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 4 of 4 The "Fiscal Impact" statement on page 9-3 also says "The purchase of 10 software licenses is a one-time grant purchase and the term is nine (9) months to conduct an unlimited amount of disaster and evacuation simulations." Yet on page 9-26 (Attachment 1 to Attachment B), says the agreement is for "10M" simulations. Although a large number, that is not unlimited, and the staff report suggest use of the software could involve "automated modeling across billions of potential starting conditions, so that users can see the most common points of failure and expected evacuation outcomes." I am unable to decipher how many starting conditions are allowed in each of the promised "10M" simulations allowed for the $60,000. The staff report also does not mention that the vendor is offering, on page 9-26, at the conclusion of the trial, a 3-year $490,000 per year contract for 75 licenses, or how that would be funded. All that said, the item is certainly timely, for the draft minutes of the last Council meeting on March 14 (Item 1 on the current agenda), indicate under "XVII. Non -agenda comments" that "Nancy Gardner inquired about Citywide evacuation plans and suggested more evacuation information be provided to residents." It has also been announced that the General Plan Advisory committee's Safety Element review subcommittee will be holding its first meeting on March 30. Apropos of the last part of Ms. Gardner's comment, I notice that in the vendor's home territory of Nevada County, California, the government provides on their website a Ready Nevada County Dashboard, including an Evacuation Route Pre -Planner, apparently from this same vendor, allowing residents to explore the feasibility of their evacuation options under a variety of scenarios they can select. It is unclear if Newport Beach might be considering something like that, or how much it would cost.