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HomeMy WebLinkAbout00 - Written CommentsReceived After Agenda Printed July 25, 2023 Written Comments July 25, 2023, 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 III.A. CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATORS This item apparently involves private discussion about a parcel at 145 Industrial Way in Costa Mesa, abutting the City's Corporation Yard. I assume this is not a parcel the City currently owns. But I do not recall any public discussion regarding a need to expand the Yard, or any other need to acquire property outside the City limits. It would seem to me that discussion would need to precede any closed door discussion of the price and terms of payment the City might be willing to accept to purchase any particular new parcel in this area. Item 4. Reimbursement Agreement with the Orange County Water District Related to Groundwater Treatment Facilities I do not completely understand this item. Recommendation "b)" asks the Council to "approve" an agreement between water producers and OCWD, but Newport Beach is not mentioned in the agreement provided as Attachment A (Reimbursement Agreement with Orange County Water District), nor does the City's approval of it appear to be required. Apparently, the Council is being asked to approve exercising Section 10.16 of the Attachment A agreement (on agenda packet page 4-21) to add the City to the list of producers, which the staff report implies would make it eligible for "free" money to build a PFAS treatment facility should the City need one (which the report suggests seems unlikely at present). One suspects the "free" money is not really free, but will be passed on by OCWD through increased water rates. It would have been helpful for the report to indicate how this would work: will the costs of building the PFAS facilities for the producers who need them be passes on to all OCWD producers, or be specific to the one needing them? And is there any possible benefit to notjoining the agreement? Item 6. FY 2022-23 Annual District Discretionary Grant Report and the Grants and Donations Report for the Quarter Ending June 30, 2023 Council members may recall that during the most recent budget hearing, I asked that the District Discretionary Grants be eliminated. In a city where the people, through their Charter, have placed decision -making authority in a Council of seven elected members acting collectively, it does not seem proper that any member should have the power to individually decide where any amount of City money should go. July 25, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 2 of 5 The present report, although not entirely self-explanatory, suggests a further problem resulting from the district grant allocations budget being tied to fiscal years, which do not coincide with the members' terms of office. It appears from the column headings in Attachment A (agenda packet page 6-4), that Council members Grant and Kleiman had not funds to spend since their "district budgets" had been fully expended by their predecessors before they left office. Conversely, it appears Council member Weigand's predecessor had spent nothing, leaving him the full $6,000 to dispense despite being in office for less than seven months. The disparity between the amounts these newly-electeds had to spend does not appear to have any rational basis. Moreover, although the present report says it is being offered pursuant to Council Policy A-12, 1 do not believe it demonstrates compliance. Specifically, Policy A-12 says, in referring to the District Discretionary Grant Accounts: "Any expenditure from these Accounts must have an identifiable public benefit' and "The report will include a brief description and the public benefit associated with each expenditure." Yet, in the "Public Benefit" column of Attachment A, an identifiable benefit (such as "Annual Parade") can be found for only 5 of the 34 recipients. For one other, the Spyglass Hill Association, $3,000 is said to have been donated for "Event Support," but it does indicate what kind of event, or whether it was open to the public. The remaining 28 say only "donation." How is anyone supposed to know what specific public benefit purportedly derived from any of these? Or that they do not overlap with, or even contradict, public support separately granted through the judgement of the Council as a whole via its more normal support programs and actions? (see, most recently, Item 17 from the June 13, 2023, meeting) Regarding the Donations Report, who is the "Cultural Arts Foundation"? The IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search found 13 organizations in California with that phrase in their name. Of those, the only one that appears to have a local connection would be the "Premiere Cultural Arts Foundation" (formerly based in Newport Beach), but their status is listed as having been "auto - revoked" on May 15, 2010. Item 8. Tourism Business Improvement District Annual Report and Fiscal Year 2023-24 Budget I have never thought that operating a network of supplemental bookings and advertising agents for a set of for -profit hotels was a proper governmental function. Yet that seems to be the main, or only thing the TBID does. And the City supports it by collecting a supplemental tax from visitors at the participating hotels and remitting it to Visit Newport Beach. I hope the practice will end when the current authorization for this activity expires in January 2024. As to what I hope is the next to final report, I find it strange to read that the sale of the Fashion Island Hotel would somehow cause it to drop out of the TBID (even though it continues to be July 25, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 3 of 5 listed on page 8-2 of the staff report) and that the new owners would need Council approval to re -join. I would have thought membership went with the property. I am also surprised to see at the top of that list that to be part of the TBID one has to have "100 hotel rooms or more." I thought the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort & Marina consisted mostly of camping spots with a small number (27) of cottages. Item 9. Visit Newport Beach, Inc. FY 2024 Destination Business Plan Supplement and Budget, and FY 2023 Performance Standards Report I have never understood how what Visit Newport Beach does to promote tourism was of any benefit to me as a resident. To me, more visitors do little more than add more traffic and congestion. Apparently I am supposed to be impressed by the figure on page 9-4, indicating that without tourism, each residential household in Newport Beach would have to pay $1,139 more in taxes each year "to keep Newport Beach government services flowing at the same levels." How this figure was arrived at is left to the reader's imagination, but I would guess someone took an estimated total Transient Occupancy Tax revenue of around $28 million and divided it by something like 24,000 households. If so, that completely overlooks the fact that the purpose and justification for collecting the TOT is that is supposed to be necessary to defray the extra expense to the government of coping with the visitors. It is not, as I understand it, supposed to be a profit -making enterprise for residents. And even if a cycle of increased revenue paying increased expenses were desirable, I have seen no proof of the extent to which VNB's efforts are creating a more bustling visitor economy than we would have in their absence. In fact, my understanding is that much of the recent increases in TOT have been generated by short term lodgings, and I see nothing in the report about what VNB has done to specifically promote that activity — or if neighbors would even want it promoted. I assume they have some effect, but I would not know how to quantify it, and do not know if it is any more effective than in the many years when Newport Beach's tourism sector privately did its own promotion without government assistance. It is also troubling that for more than a decade the Council has appointed a representative to the VNB Board to keep an eye on the organization's activities, yet these reports never include any insight or advice from that person. Shouldn't the Council be hearing from its own person? As to the budget, Visit Newport Beach has taken on two quite disparate roles (general "leisure" marketing for the City and private marketing for the TBID hotels) and additionally assumed a rather ill-defined relationship with the later -created Newport Beach & Company that manages additional functions and apparently acts as a service provider to its "subsidiaries." Given these complex overlaps, it is difficult to verify exactly where the TOT revenues are going, and for what. July 25, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 4 of 5 Item 10. Resolution No. 2023-42: Appeal of a Limited Term Permit for the Aeronutronic Ford Soil Vapor Remediation (PA2022-0180) Although the staff report indicates the March 2 Zoning Administrator decision was ultimately upheld by the Planning Commission (after two hearings), one has to look to the Resolution to discover the vote was 4:2, and to the Planning Commission minutes to find that at least two of the four voting to uphold had misgivings about their vote: one (Vice Chair Rosene) feeling better alternatives had not been adequately explored and another (Member Barto) feeling the HOA had dumped the solution for a shared problem on a small set of residents. Regarding the reasons the alternatives were dismissed were not always easy to follow. One of those was a location in the northwest corner of the tract, which was repeatedly shown connected to the extraction wells though a long connection around the south edge of the complex, when a much shorter connection along the north edge looked possible. Part of the confusion arises, at least for me, because at the Zoning Administrator and first Planning Commission hearing, the problem with the northwest alternative was said to be "voltage drop" (loss of power in long transmission lines) while at the final Planning Commission hearing, the applicant's representative indicated site location was decided entirely by "power drop" — which turned out to not be a synonym for "voltage drop," but rather a jargon term referring to locations at which Southern Californian Edison would allow a connection to their power grid. One thing I do not recall ever being mentioned or asked, is how much power the vapor processing equipment requires? Is it like a refrigerator? Or a home air conditioner? Or more? Could the applicant obtain power from an agreeable nearby homeowner? Could it be powered by solar panels with a backup battery? Does it need to run continuously? Item 11. Resolution No. 2023-43: Intent to Override Airport Land Use Commission Finding of Inconsistency for Newport Place Planned Community Amendment (PA2023-0082) Since most of its members clearly do not want to see housing in the Newport Place area, it was a little surprising to me the Airport Land Use Commission found the change from 30% to 15% affordability consistent with the Airport Environs Land Use Plan. The result may well have been different if their attention had been drawn more pointedly to the reason the City was seeking the change, as only hinted at in the ALUC staff report: namely, that the City believes that at 30% little or no housing would be built (an outcome the ALUC favors), but at 15% it would (an outcome the ALUC disfavors). Item 12. Ordinance No. 2023-13: An Amendment to Newport Place Planned Community Development Plan to Revise the Minimum Affordability Housing Percentage of the Residential Overlay (PA2023- 0082) This proposal disturbs me. July 25, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 5 of 5 The recently -adopted General Plan Housing Element promises the City will plan to build some 10,000 new housing units by October 2029 on the assumption that around 30% of them, citywide, will be affordable enough to meet the City's RHNA housing requirement. 10,000 is already problematic, and with a lower affordability assumption, the number required becomes proportionately larger. Yet with this proposal, the Council would be removing the only leverage it has to require the 30% anywhere in the City. I do not accept the Mayor's assurances that the free market will produce the required affordable units without any external requirement. Nor do I accept City staff's assurances that "the City only has to plan for units, it doesn't have to build any." I do not think the free market will create affordable units in Newport Beach, and while the City may not technically have to itself build anything, any promised but unbuilt units will surely carry over into, and be added to, the next RHNA cycle and may well become a "by right" entitlement for builders. Item 13. Resolution Nos. 2023-44 and 2023-45: Collection of Certain Sewer and Recycling Fees and Charges Through the Property Tax Roll I provided written comments when an essentially identical Item 13 was on the Council's July 26, 2022, agenda. There is little change to my thoughts other than to note that the Exhibit A of proposed recycling fees by parcel number now presents the numbers in a single ascending sequence, making it easier for readers to locate a parcel. I have no concern about where the present charges are billed. But as noted last year, and at every opportunity before, I object strongly to any recycling fee being charged. The voter -enacted trash collection code is clear that the basic 1 % property tax is supposed to cover the full cost of collecting and disposing of recyclables placed in curbside residential containers. The recycling charge was instituted as a convenience fee in lieu of the alternative of residents being required to source separate their recyclables. Now that residents are required to source - separate, it has no justification and is inconsistent with voter -enacted ordinance. Even if there were a justification for some part of it, I do not believe it is being properly estimated. As noted last year, see my Item 20 comments from the January 11, 2022, agenda; and my Item 28 comments from November 16, 2021.