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HomeMy WebLinkAbout00 - Written CommentsReceived After Agenda Printed November 24, 2020 Written Comments November 24, 2020, City Council Agenda Comments The following comments on items on the Newport Beach City Council agenda are submitted by: Jim Mosher ( jimmosher[a@yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949-548-6229) Item 1. Minutes for the November 10, 2020 City Council Regular Meeting Suggested corrections: The passages shown in italics below are from the draft minutes with suggested corrections indicated in strikeout underline format. The page numbers refer to Volume 64. Page 560, Item SS2, paragraph 4, last sentence: "Mayor O'Neill added that an Uptown Newport project cannot be built in areas like Balboa Islas Island, and at most, another unit could be built on a Balboa Island parcel." Page 561, partial paragraph at top: "Mayor O'Neill added that he signed a letter to the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) requesting they form a litigation subcommittee to justi#SF challenge the 1.3 million units as suggested by SCA G, ..." Page 561, complete paragraph 3: "In response to Mayor Pro Tem Avery's questions, Community Development Director Jurjis advised that development is controlled by private markets and property ^%�s owners' feedback is needed. Mayor Pro Tem Avery noted, considering recent concerns regarding growth, circulation, and traffic, ..." Item 12. Amendment No. Two to the Professional Services Agreement with Turbo Data Systems, Inc. for Parking Permit Management and Citation Processing Services The Abstract is not clear as to what is proposed to be changed about this contract, while the Recommendation implies only the not -to -exceed amount is increases. Yet the proposed amendment shown in Attachment A (page 12-4), says that it additionally amends "the Schedule of Billing Rates" and "Insurance requirements." While the Discussion on page 12-2 explains the need to increase the not -to -exceed amount, I can find no explanation of what is being changed about the billing rates, or why. In my view, the original contract, C-8027-1, set agreed -to rates which should have been binding on the vendor for the duration of the contract (that is, through March 31, 2022). Are new services being added? Or are the rates for existing ones being increased? Item 14. Community Programs Grants and Special Events Grants Updates for Fiscal Year 2020-21 While the Orange County Coastkeeper proposal to educate the public about the value of dune habitat near the Santa River is welcome, I suspect this is a problem that could be more effectively addressed through signage and uniformed code enforcement. November 24, 2020, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 2 of 6 Regarding this organization, I was puzzled to note that on December 9, as Item W14c on their agenda, the California Coastal Commission will be considering a matter involving unpermitted expansion of a dock at 221 Via Lido Soud. The proposal (from well-known local lobbyist Shawna Schafner) "includes a donation of $3,747 to Orange County Coastkeeper to mitigate for the amount of time that the unpermitted development was installed." I am having trouble understanding why compensation for unpermitted use of City -administered state tidelands would be paid to a private organization rather than to the City's tideland fund. I have similar difficulty understanding the present staff recommendation to "Award $10,000 in grant funds to NOSA" when page 14-3 of the staff report says of NOSA, "Their FY 2019-20 event was cancelled after they received the $10,000 grant. Staff allocated last year's payment to this upcoming fiscal year's event." Despite the chart on page 14-6 showing $0 currently allocated, they already seem to have received full funding for the first race to occur. Is the recommendation to pay them twice (a total of $20,000) for the FY2020-2021 event? The Letter from NOSA ("Attachment C") suggests the $10,000 from FY2019-2020 should not have been carried forward, but should have been used to pay expenses from the cancelled event (for which no clear accounting is provided) I did not think the purpose of City grants was to help organizations pay debt, or for non-events, so I would suggest that if any funding was due to NOSA from the City for FY2019-2020, it should be significantly less than the normal $10,000, and hence that the total allocated for FY2020-2021 should be significantly less than the $20,000 being proposed. Similar questions might be asked of other "Signature Events" that happened in reduced form this year. For example, wasn't the Newport Beach Film Festival held in much reduced, and presumably less costly, virtual format? Should some of the $150,000 granted for the FY2019- 2020 event in April 2020 (but held in August 2020) be carried forward and used reduce the amount for FY2020-2021? The remainder of the report on the status of the FY2020-2021 special event grants seems confusing and incomplete, at best. For example, page 14-3 says "The Lobsterfest is the only event in this category that has taken place this fiscal year," yet multiple sources indicate the Fall 2020 Lobsterfest was cancelled. And "Date Pending" no longer applies to the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade, so why is the "FY 20-21 Remaining" column for all these Signature Events set to $0, implying the money has already been well spent? Item 16. Ordinance No. 2020-28: Residential Design Standards Amendments to Title 20 and Title 21 of the Newport Beach Municipal Code I fully support the effort to strengthen design standards in Newport Beach, but I believe the proposals in their current form have some technical difficulties. November 24, 2020, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 3 of 6 Misleading Titles For starters, the titles of the proposed ordinance and resolution are misleading as they imply they are making changes only to "Residential Design Standards," when, in fact, the redline' of the proposed changes to NBMC Sec. 20.70.020 (on page 16-53) and Sec. 21.70.020 (on page 16-59) show they were change the critical definition of "gross floor area" for mixed-use, and nonresidential structures, as well. Likely Non -Compliance with SB 330 Second, despite assurances in the staff report and in the letter from HCD (Attachment 1), it seems doubtful to me that during the five-year life of the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 (SB 330, Government Code Secs. 66300 - 66301), this would survive challenge as to compliance with it. This is in part because although the staff report says the objective of new standards is to ensure articulation of walls, the standards are inexplicably established as required new setbacks from the property line, rather than from the wall below, which the Act appears to prohibit. As such, they do nothing to require articulation and would allow the construction of an unrelieved three- story vertical wall provided only that the entire wall meets the new third -floor setback standard. While the questions posed by City staff are quite carefully and clearly stated, the responses from HCD are so cryptic and craftily phrased as to cast doubt on whether those reviewing the measures at their end understood what they were reviewing or what they were being asked about it. Subdivision 66300 (b)(1)(A) very clearly prohibits changing the zoning "of parcels of property to a less intensive use OR reducing the intensity of land use," goes on to define the first of those by saying ""less intensive use" includes, but is not limited to, reductions to height, density, or floor area ratio, new or increased open space or lot size requirements, or new or increased setback requirements, minimum frontage requirements, or maximum lot coverage limitations, or anything that would lessen the intensity of housing." The HCD respondent focuses solely on "density" (generally understood to mean dwelling units per acre of land), and possibly without reading the measures but relying on City staff's assurances they don't alter residential densities, concludes "HCD understands the revisions do not impact the ability to achieve maximum densities independently or cumulatively in combination with all other development standards. For this reason, the pending revisions do not trigger the Housing Crisis Act "less intensive use" provisions under Government Code section 66300, subdivision (b)(1)(A)." Once again, the redline, disturbingly, does not seem to be a reliable guide to the actual changes. For example, on page 16-49, the redline shows insertion of the erroneous phrase "as provided as provided below." but the clean version on page 16-27 does not contain the error. Such inconsistencies mean that a review of the redline cannot be counted on to reveal what is actually being proposed for adoption. November 24, 2020, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 4 of 6 This conclusion, relying on no change in density, completely ignores the fact that the ""less intensive use provision" includes, by definition, "new or increased setback requirements" of which the proposed new third floor "step backs" surely all in all but name.2 Inconsistent Treatment of 30 -foot Wide Lots According to the staff report, there are many areas of the City with 30 -foot wide lots. And there are two places in the proposed ordinance where 30 feet marks the transition from one standard to another, perhaps most easily seen on page 16-50. First, in proposed Subsection 20.48.180.A.2.a, 30 feet marks the transition from a 20% (for narrower lots) to a 15% (for wider lots) third floor area limit. Then in proposed Subsection 20.48.180.A.2.c at the bottom of the same page, it marks the transition from 0 (for narrower lots) to a 2 -foot (for wider lots) third floor step back. As presently written, in both cases, a lot exactly 30 feet wide gets the narrower lot standard. As explained on staff report pages 16-6 and 16-7, staff wants to put 30 -foot wide lots in the wider lot category for third floor step backs. But no change is proposed to the floor area categories, where they continue to fall in the narrower lot category, which creates an inconsistency in their treatment. If Council wants to restore consistency, it could consider placing 30 -foot wide lots in the "wider lot" category in both cases: that is, requiring 2 -foot side step backs and a 15% floor area limit. Staff may have hesitated to do this for fear that lowering a floor area limit would conflict with SB 330.But if one buys staff's arguments that the only thing that counts is whether the regulation is reducing the total possible floor area of the structure as a whole, the examples provided to HCD on pages 16-66 and 16-67 would suggest this is not a problem: in both those cases, the "total possible" is still well over the "total allowed" even if the third floor limit were reduced from 20% to 15%.3 Suggested Corrections Page 16-18, second line from end: "... less in the R-2 (Two -Unit Residential) and singe single - and two -unit dwellings in the RM..." Page 16-26: "Section 1. Table 2-3 of Section 20.18.020 (Residential Zoning Districts Land Uses and Permit Regulations) of Chapter 20.18 (Residential Zoning Districts (R -A, R-1, R-81, R- 2, RM, RMD)) of Title 20 (Planning and Zoning) of the NBMC,revisin the "Open Space" re and adding , "Re idea :aley .,. ent Standards" Mw shall be amended as follows, revisin_p the "Open Space" row and adding a "Residential Development Standards" row:" 2 As explained earlier, the "step backs" are described in the proposed measures as an additional required distance from the normal setback line, which is simply another way of expressing a required minimum distance from the property line — in other words, a required setback for the third floor construction. They might be something different if they were defined in architectural terms — for example, a minimum required offset from a lower wall — but they are not. 3 It would have been good to see an example from an R-1 or R-2 lot on the Peninsula, where the "allowed" is based on a Floor Area Limit of 2.0 rather than the 1.5 in Corona del Mar and Balboa Island. November 24, 2020, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 5 of 6 Page 16-26, in Table 2-3 (also on page 16-37): "Private: for each unit, 5% of the its gross floor area for each u ." [As written, it seems to require each unit to have open space equal to 5% of the area of the total structure. With 20 units, that would require 100% open space. I assume it was meant to be read as revised, but don't know.] Page 16-27, in subsection A.1: "b. Limited Application. This subsection shall be limited in its application belew as follows:" [Alternatively, "as provided below or "as indicated below'] Item 17. Resolution No. 2020-103: Intent to Override the Airport Land Use Commission Finding of Inconsistency for the Residences at 4400 Von Karman Project Newport Beach seems to have adopted a new policy of preemptively announcing its intent to override decisions of the Airport Land Use Commission prior to the ALUC making a decision. In this case, the ALUC found the project consistent and the present item was withdrawn from the agenda. While it is probably legal to make these preemptive announcements, I think it is disrespectful and in the end likely to be counterproductive by creating a certain distaste for Newport Beach in the eyes of a sister agency. Item 20. Residential Solid Waste and Recycling Franchise Update to Comply with State Organics Recycling Mandates - Request for Council Action on Franchise Extension Options The staff report references the study session presentation for details, but since that has not been posted, it is a bit difficult to comment on this item. The staff report could further have clarified that when it refers to "residents" and "residential waste hauling contracts" it is not referring to all residents and all residential waste hauling. In particular, I believe the "City Contract," C-5649, is tied to the "additional cost free" trash collection service mandated by voter -enacted Municipal Code Section 6.04.140, whose scope was limited to dwelling units that received curbside container refuse collection service from the City as of November 1, 1996. That excludes the many residences (such as apartments) that did not receive curbside service at that time, as well as the many areas annexed since then, with the exception of Newport Coast, which has its separate C-3942 as a result of its annexation agreement. The remaining parts of the city, and the residents who don't receive curbside service, do not seem to be part of the present discussion. One of the other providers is the Costa Mesa Sanitary District, which contracts with CR&R for curbside service in Santa Ana Heights and the tract west of mine, on the border with Costa Mesa near the Back Bay, at a basic cost of $20.05 per month. This causes some confusion in my mind, since CMSD was an early adopter of an organics program, and gets by, throughout its service area, with two carts: one for organics and one for mixed waste (which, like that in the November 24, 2020, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 6 of 6 mixed carts in Newport Beach, is separated for recyclables at the CR&R Materials Recovery Facility in Stanton). So I am not understanding why Newport Beach staff would recommend forcing a mandatory "recycling" cart on residents, especially when there is increasing doubt that most of the recyclables are actually being recycled. Source reduction prompted by fewer carts would seem a better strategy for the environment.