HIOZ It Going, Fullerton?
A special meeting of Fullerton’s City Council is taking place tonight. Why? To address the so-called 6th Cycle of the Housing Element of the General Plan and the concomitant Housing Incentive Overlay Zone, or HIOZ, for those who prefer government acronyms.
The City Council has already postponed rubber stamping this twice which is odd, because they usually clean their plates like good little boys and girl.
Friends may recall that City staff proposed the opportunity overlay to construct as many as 30,000 new units with almost zero City control. This, even though the Sacramento houseacrats only demanded 13,000. I say “only” even though this lower number would still add twenty to thirty thousand new residents to Fullerton with new, massive apartment blocks on re-zoned commercial and industrial property.
I previously opined that the 30,000 number was just a dodge, to give the City Council the appearance of having fought a tough fight to “save” Fullerton, while quietly acquiescing on the destructive 13,000 mandate. This would be of particular benefit to the 2026 re-election chances of Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra, both of whom are ardent lefties and both of whom would love to see those 13,000 units without regard for the damage dome to the City’s schools, roads, infrastructure and neighborhood cohesion.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a roll-out of the usual suspects singing hosannas to the Council for acceding to the 13,000 units.
And that hypothesis seems right on. The Council has already directed staff to remove the Chapman and Commonwealth “corridors” from the HIOZ plan where the application would have been the most damaging and controversial. And paring back the scale of the disingenuous plan gives a victory to the Save Fullerton crowd who may have actually believed the 30,000 units was an authentic proposal. That group includes some our friends at the Fullerton Observer who will happily embrace the 13,000 as a wonderful compromise.
Why all these meetings? Maybe it’s a necessary part of this Kabuki to give the façade of public review to something that was always a foregone conclusion – satisfying the knuckle headed legislators and the faceless bureaucrats in Sacramento; and their running buddies in the Southern California Association of Governments, and the California League of Cities.
And why a Special Meeting, other than to instill a sense of Heap Big Emergency about bowing to the diktats of an out-of-control legislature?
Fullerton’s future is frightfully fucked.
Sunaya Thomas makes 180,000K a year for not telling anybody the truth.
Thank you for pointing out Peabody that the state legislature is out of control. Sharon Quirk-Silva has done nothing to maintain quality of life in Fullerton. If it were up to her and her allies, the city would look like San Francisco.
Build it.
Build what? You don’t even know what an erection looks like.
He can dream.
Haha. With the 2 million wasted on the Trail to Nowhere you could have built 4 government subsidized hovels.
Way to go.
Johnny, please…I know you think you’re fine down there, but it’s not good for you. You can’t spend your whole life hiding in that basement. People ask about you, and I don’t know what to say anymore…I made breakfast, your favorite. Please, come upstairs. Just for a little while, for me…
Your mom’s right, this isn’t living. My son….you think all that arguing online means something, but it doesn’t. It’s just noise, a waste of time. You can’t hide in the basement forever. Go upstairs, talk to her, show her you’re still really here. For once, do something that matters.
Hardly anybody showed up. Snore. Fullerton, being Fullerton.
Wasn’t there another classic Ahmad tantrum today? I saw him fleeing the chambers.
He ran across the street to tattletale that CA Penal Code section 00-00 hurting the delicate feelings of the only (doubt it) sitting gay (maybe) Muslim (definitely not) elected official (hopefully not for long), had been grossly violated. Didn’t he do that to Jung. Hurt feelings is a crime in his fiefdom.
He’s a doctor. Maybe it was a life-saving emergency?
Yawn….Fullerton being Fullerton.
In all the flamboyant, emotional, petulant, display of buffoonery he could muster, Ahmad threw the back of his hand to his forehead, like a silent movie actor, and sashayed his way out of the chambers, and with a resounding thud, he slammed the door leading to the conference room. All because he couldn’t follow direction from the mayor to shut his pie hole (my words, not the Mayor) and wait his turn to speak. He stammered, spluttered and belched forth incessant whining in order to interrupt the mayor from interrupting Ahmad, who was telling him nicely to shut the hell up….. Savvy?
Word has it, Mr. twinkle-toes went after the mayor during the break and got no where, as the mayor gave no ground and the other council members chuckled as they looked on at the idiot of the 5th D, take another loss.
Love the description. Can we get a meme of that? They record these meetings and post them?