Got Headache?
If not, and if for some perverse reason you want one, I recommend watching the final hour of the September 25th Planning Commission meeting.
The Commission’s job was to make recommendations to the City Council about the City’s plan to placate the State of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development’s demand to plan for the inclusion of 13,000 new housing units in a city that is effectively built out. The housing numbers are ejaculated by the Southern California Association of Governments – an unelected body run by bureaucrats – and adopted by the State. And cities can just sit down up and shut the fuck up. The numbers are appalling and would mean another 25,000 residents with the attendant traffic, parking and burden on schools and infrastructure.
Amazingly, California being California, the environmental impacts are brushed aside with a bureaucratic flick.
The specific agenda of the evening was to review the new Housing Element of the General Plan, and the pertinent Zone Code Amendment that adds a “Housing Incentive Overlay Zone” or (HIOZ) to hundreds of commercial and industrially zoned parcels of land.
I have never seen five people so confused and so fundamentally incapable of dealing with the business in front of them in my life. Motions were made; substitute motions were moved; secondary substitute motions were made. Some were opaque; some were vague; some disappeared altogether; some were retracted. Some blossomed into nonsense. Some issues were bifurcated. Confused discussion was interlarded into motions without seconds. Staff was dragged into the motion process.
The Chairman, poor Peter Gambino lost control of the meeting, try as he might.
One Planning Commissioner, Arnell Dino, seemed particularly adept at muddling everything up; another, Doug Cox, seemed to want to run the meeting, and kept interjecting and interrupting out of order, and kept asking for repetition after repetition of proposed motions; Commissioner Patricia Tutor seemed just as befuddled as the rest, trying to connect motions to the three resolutions proposed by staff. Commissioner Arif Mansouri, who unfortunately oversimplifies his pronouns and drops definite articles at least stuck to his motions, all most to the end; his goal was to removed the Chapman and Commonwealth corridors from the proposed housing overlay incentive zone that could put high density housing up against low density, single family neighborhoods.
An hour of everybody’s time was completely wasted as the sinking Commissioners struggled mightily to grasp a hold of any plausible object that appeared to float.
Ironically, at the end of the meeting a self-exhausted Planning Commission just rubber stamped everything that was put in front of it and passed it along to the City Council for approval.
In the end some of the participants actually seemed to be laughing in a mirthless sort of way. What the audience thought of this clownish death march is best left to the imagination.
Some zoning details were kicked to a Special PC Meeting that was be held last Wednesday. I declined to watch fearing for my sanity.
The issue is coming to the City Council on November 19th and we can be sure of two things. Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles will push hard for the maximum urbanization of Fullerton, and clarity will be the first casualty of the hearing.
Good luck fighting the State. Huntington Beach is trying that. And losing every step of the way. The California legislature is run by boohoo boneheads – people you wouldn’t trust to walk your dog.
It’s funny how they popped out of their mental slumber (finally) when the noise ordinance came back.
And after all the bullshit they just rubber stamped?
The plan identifies sites for not just the minimum Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) number of 13,000 new units for 25,000 new residents of Fullerton, but allows for an astounding 32,000 new units for over 90,000 new residents—-three times the “required” number, and once these sites are approved and upzoned for high density housing as part of the HIOZ, they cannot be downzoned, and be there will effectively be no local control over individual projects because the plan pre-approves setbacks, density, heights, etc.
This is the single largest zoning amendment to Fullerton’s General Plan in the city’s history—-a General Plan that did not include anything like this level of residential increase.
This plan goes before the City council on Nov. 19. Visit https://savefullerton.com/ for more info (and get a yard sign).
Whoa, there, Mr. Leslie. What’s the rationalization for doing 32,000 units instead of the 13,000?
Where is the 32,000 explicitly spelled out?
I foolishly assumed they were going for the bare minimum mandated. Oops.
https://savefullerton.com/data/files/housing/pcitemno.1housingelementupdateattachment1-part1bwithfeirpubliccomments.pdf
First paragraph, above.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12phKQFR6GQehmfFSmnpUmQOj0NNJdxs1/view
Section 2.2 Project Summary
The staff reports present the higher number as a theoretical, but the EIR seems to take the 32,000 number seriously. Once the HIOZ is adopted, it could all happen.
Visit those page for the relevant documents:
https://savefullerton.com/housing
It may be time consuming to peruse them all, but we slumber through it at our peril.
I’m not against new housing, or even new high density housing (realistically, what else will it be?), but this all out rezoning of parcels now zoned for industrial risks not only an overload of giant housing blocks, but the concomitant loss of Fullerton’s industrial property (and local jobs), something the current General Plan opposed.
I heard that somewhere in the reports there is a projected loss of 5,500 local jobs as a result of the HIOZ rezoning from industrial to residential, but I can’t find it at the moment. Maybe someone else can take a look from the link above.
As for why the staff is recommending rezoning that could result in 32,000 units rather than 13,000, I was told the response was that they wouldn’t have to do it next time.
The loss of industrial and commercially zoned problem has always been an issue. Ditto O-P, “Office Professional.”
That horrible Jefferson Commons approved back in the 00s eliminated a hundred office spaces or more. So did its younger monster-brother across the street under construction now.
No one seems too worried about this.
“and once these sites are approved and upzoned for high density housing as part of the HIOZ, they cannot be downzoned,”
Is this an issue? The underlying zone is still there. Anybody can build below a density level, say, if they wanted to build R-3, right?
I suppose so. I’m assuming that a developer is going to want to build higher density than that because it’s more lucrative.
The economic side is hard to say. Right now industrial building rents are far more lucrative than housing per sf. in OC, but I suppose if the density is high enough someone might tie up the property, but on a big property it means a couple years lost for somebody..
In a more recent meeting on Nov. 6 to make the current General Plan consistent with the HIOZ (how bass ackwards is that?), the Planning Commission took the position that they didn’t have any choice but to approve it because they said the state Housing and Community Development Dept. wouldn’t accept the new plan without a buffer for more housing than RHNA requires (based on staff advice). “Embrace the suck,” said Commissioner Cox.
Even when presented with the info that state HCD only needs a buffer of perhaps 10 to 15%, and taking in to account that the city has already approved over 2,000 (or was it 3,000?) new units toward the 13,000 RHNA numbers, the Planning Commission still approved the plan for 32,000.
To summarize, staff told PlannComm they didn’t have a choice and PlannComm went for it.
The old lie. You don’t have a choice, but you have to vote on it.