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HomeMy WebLinkAbout00 - Written CommentsReceived After Agenda Printed November 28, 2023 Written Comments November 28, 2023, City Council Agenda Comments The following comments on items on the Newport Beach City Council agenda are submitted by: Jim Mosher (jimmosherno_yahoo.com ), 2210 Private Road, Newport Beach 92660 (949-548-6229) Item 1. Minutes for the November 14, 2023 City Council Meeting The passages shown in italics below are from the draft minutes with suggested corrections shown in sWkeeu underline format. The page numbers refer to Volume 65. Page 654, end of paragraph 3 from end: "... and an increased Foundation commitment of up to$5-.2 $11.7 million." [See video. The Foundation's Chair announced their new commitment as the lesser of $11,719,000 or half the cost. While he said "we've upped our commitment by $5.2 million," the increased commitment was the $11.7 million, not the $5.2 million.] Page 654, paragraph 2 from end: "Jill Johnson -Tucker, Beyond Books Capital Campaign Chair and Chair of the Library Lecture Hall Design Committee, provided a project history, ... Page 655, middle of paragraph 1: "..., use of surplus funds and Neighborhood ^d•.......,.....,...` Enhancement Funding, ..." Page 656, paragraph 6: "Councilmember Stapleton recommended rejecting the current bid and immediately FefeFming re-forming the City Council Ad Hoc Library Lecture Hall Committee to create a cultural arts center in Newport Beach." [Adding the hyphen is suggested for consistency with paragraph 9. Omitting it in both cases is acceptable, but less clear as to the intended meaning.] Page 656, paragraph 3 from end: "Councilmember Avery supported having every group using the building contribute to the maintenance costs." Page 663, Item 21, paragraph 7: "In response to Councilmember Weigand's question, Assistant City Manager Jurjis stated that, hypothetically, the interim tennis and pickleball courts can remain until 2032 and noted development agreements afegenerally last for 10 years with one exception for a 15-year development agreement #e for the Airport Village project.." Item 3. Ordinance No. 2023-17: Allowing Short -Term Mooring License Agreements and Establishing Fair Market Value License Fees for Offshore and Onshore Moorings The agenda item title suggests Ordinance No. 2023-17 has something to do with establishing fair market value license fees for offshore and onshore mooring. That is not obvious from the ordinance title or from its content. The Discussion section of the staff report says "NBMC Section 17.60.045, Short -Term Mooring Licenses, was added to the Harbor Code and specifies the requirements for City mooring licenses to be issued by the Harbormaster" (apparently using the past tense "was" to refer to an November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 2 of 11 action taken at the November 14, 2023, City Council meeting). I believe that is in error, and the question of adding Section 17.60.045 is what is before the Council at this meeting. Item 4. Ordinance Nos. 2023-18 and 2023-19: Tennis and Pickleball Club at Newport Beach - 1602 East Coast Highway (PA2021-260) This item proposes adoption of an ordinance amending Planned Community Development Plan PC-47 and a development agreement related to the same. I have not read the details, as I believe approval of either of them would be inconsistent with the City's General Plan. As I pointed out orally at the November 14, 2023, City Council meeting, the Council adopted Resolution No. 2023-70 amending the Land Use tables of the General Plan. In those tables, the property in question is regarded as Anomaly 46. Although the narrative of the resolution refers to a wish "to decrease the number of future tennis courts from seven to four tennis courts, add 14 pickleball courts, increase the number of future hotel rooms from 27 to 41 rooms, increase the gross floor area of ancillary hotel uses by 4, 686 square feet, for a total of 14, 386 square feet, provide three attached condominium units and two single -unit residences in lieu of five single -unit residences, and approve a development agreement for a term of 10 years," Section 2 of the resolution approved only the amendment shown in "Exhibit A." As found on page 14, that amendment allows only 4 tennis courts, 14 pickleball courts, 5 residential units and 3,725 square feet of development. It does not allow the construction of a 41 room hotel. Item 5. Ordinance Nos. 2023-20 and 2023-21: Adopting Housing Element Implementation Noise -Related Amendments (PA2022-0201) I have previously commented on this item, most recently starting on page 8 of my written comments submitted at the November 14, 2023, City Council meeting. At that time, I suggested a number of corrections to the ordinance proposed for introduction, and now for adoption. All of them seem to have been ignored. I find it particularly amusing to see staff continue to ask the Council, on page 5-4, to assert the amendments "are necessary to allow residential use, including mixed -use residential, on housing opportunity sites that are wholly or partially located outside the 65 dBA." Since housing is already allowed outside the 65 dBA CNEL contour, that was surely intended to read: "are necessary to allow residential use, including mixed -use residential, on housing opportunity sites that are wholly or partially located eutside inside the 65 dBA CNEL contour." Beyond that, I continue to believe what "sites" are (as opposed to "parcels") is not defined in the Clty regulations. I would guess it means parcels under common ownership, but I'm not sure. Beyond that, treating either a parcel or a site as if it were wholly outside the 65 CNEL contour simply because some part, however small, is outside it, makes not sense to me. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 3 of 11 Item 6. Ordinance No. 2023-22: Adding, Amending, and Repealing Various Provisions of the Newport Beach Municipal Code I urge the Council to reject this 953-section ordinance, which is the worst and most poorly vetted I have seen a Council consider adopting. I have attempted to express my frustration with it in witten comments submitted when it was first disclosed as Item SS2 at the October 24, 2023, Council study session and again at its first reading as Item 24 on November 14. As noted then and in the proposed ordinance itself, it claims to be the culmination of the work of a Council ad hoc committee that began with Resolution No. 2022-58 and continued with Resolution No. 2023-18. Both of those resolutions limited the committee's task to "reviewing the NBMC and Council Policies and submitting back to the City Council by June 30, 2024, recommendations concerning: (1) deleting or reducing language, and ( 2) the advisability of applying sunset provisions for new and existing code provisions."' Yet, as best I can tell, the committee has not only failed to submit any recommendation regarding sunset provisions, but what it has submitted goes far beyond deleting or reducing language. Instead of simplifying the code to make it more readable, the committee seems to have taken it upon itself to "improve" it, arbitrarily modifying some old regulations and inserting new ones, with scant to no explanation at all of why some passages were chosen and others passed over. Now the committee's private work careens toward adoption with essentially no comment, and probably no review, by the other four Council members, who likely have little idea what they will be voting on. The Opposite Of Transparency And Good Governance In oral comments at the November 14 meeting, I suggested the process by which this matter has come forth was the opposite of transparency and good governance.2 Committee member and Mayor Pro Tern O'Neill, who put forward the original idea in 2022, countered that the proposed revisions had by then been available for public review for the unusually long time of nearly a month. I continue to believe that burying an unknown and undisclosed number of consequential amendments, without explanation or discussion, in 574 pages of mostly inconsequential redlining (see Attachment C starting on gape 501 of Item 24 from November 14) is the opposite of transparency and good governance. Each consequential change to the City's codes deserves ' The committee consisted of three Council members, which allowed all its work to be done privately without public notice or involvement. 2 1 also said my previous comments had been totally ignored. I see now that is not completely true. For example, in an email to the City Attorney dated November 5, 1 suggested NBMC Section 1.06.030 might serve no purpose even though at the October 24 study session it had been proposed to be retained with minor edits. Section 19 of the proposed ordinance repeals it entirely. On the other hand, in the same emaill noted that the definitions consolidated by the ordinance into NBMC Section 1.08.120 are inconsistently written (some phrased as "... means ..." and others as "... shall mean ...") with no rhyme or reason. Yet Section 33 of the proposed ordinance retains that inconsistent format, with no change. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 4 of 11 explanation and discussion before being made, yet these changes — whatever they are — will be made with none. One does not have to look far into the proposed ordinance to see that whatever review it did receive was inadequate. Faulty Preamble Starting on page 1 of the 470-page ordinance (page 6-3 of the present agenda packet), one sees the claim that "on April 11, 2023, the City Council adopted Resolution No. 2023-58, extending the expiration date of the Council Committee from June 2023 to June 30, 2024." Anyone checking the reference to Resolution No. 2023-58 would discover it was adopted on October 10, 2023, and was unrelated to the "Council Committee," having to do, instead, with amending Council Policy F-1. As noted above, the intended reference was to Resolution No. 2023-18. Reducing Readability Turning to the first substantive part of proposed Ordinance No. 2023-22, Section 2 on page 6-7 of the present agenda packet (see also page 501 of the November 14 redlining), one finds the first piece of the NBMC the Council Committee felt desirable to change was Section 1.01.020 (Codification Authority). Among the changes, the committee asks the Council to change the very clear and readable existing "Sections 50022.1 through 50022.10 of the California Government Code" to the much more obscure "Cal. Gov. Code Sections 50022.1 through 50022.10." In fact, some 700 or more of the changes recommended by the committee are of this sort, the only explanation for which is the Committee's goal (as stated on page 3 of 470 of the ordinance) of "Modifying the provisions of the Code so that uniform citations are utilized." It is often the only reason for changing a section, and the great bulk of the 19 pages of revisions to Title 21 (our Local Coastal Program Implementation Plan) which the Council authorized submitting to the Coastal Commission with Resolution No. 2023-76 on November 14 are of this sort. Yet to the best of my knowledge, the Council has received comments on this project from only three citizens (me, Laura Curran and Denys Oberman), and two of the three (Ms. Curran and I) noted that changing "California Government Code" to "Cal. Gov. Code," not only does not reduce word count, it makes the code harder to read and search. So the committee's decision to "standardize" on this citation format, and the Council's continuing insistence on it, is quite baffling. The suggested "standardized" format does not appear anywhere in the current NBMC other than in the codifier's supplemental list of Statutory References For California Cities (which is not part of the Council -adopted code). And even in that, the codifier uses the "correct" abbreviated format dictated for use in parenthetical citations in court opinions in the California Style Manual, in which the "§" symbol is used in place of spelling out "section." No one I can find abbreviates code names followed by "Section" spelled out in full. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 5 of 11 If abbreviating code names were a good idea, and simplifies the reading of laws, you would think others would do it. But I have tried, without success, to find any other California laws in which citations appear with abbreviated code names. I checked the municipal codes of our neighboring cities of Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach, Irvine Huntington Beach and Santa Ana. All spell out in full the names of the California codes they cite. As in the existing NBMC, the only place the abbreviated form appears is in supplemental annotations added by the codifier. I checked the municipal codes of the other large Orange County cities: Anaheim, Garden Grove, Fullerton and Orange. The result was the same: all spell out in full the external codes they cite. I checked the municipal codes of the largest cities in California: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento and Long Beach. All spell out each external code name in full, with extremely rare exceptions, mostly in parenthetical notes. I checked the Orange County Code. It spells out "Government Code" 138 times and never once abbreviates it. I searched the system of California codes, itself, enacted by our State Legislature. In the 29 California codes other than the Government Code, the "Government Code" (spelled out in full) is cited 9,685 times. According to that search engine, there is not a single instance of it being written as "Gov. Code." One has to wonder what the Council Ad Hoc Committee knows that none of these other lawmakers know as to how abbreviating external code references improves the readability of laws. Can they cite a single example of any other California city that does this? And if our municipal code is to include abbreviations, doesn't it need to include a section explaining what they stand for? Creating New Inconsistencies with our City Charter Proceeding to Section 3 of proposed Ordinance No. 2023-22, recommending changes to NBMC Section 1.01.030 (Filing of Copies), immediately points up the folly of making changes to the substantive portions of the NBMC without explanation or Council discussion. According to the notation in the existing NBMC, Section 1.01.030 was copied over from a part of Section 1107 of the 1949 Code.3 It was apparently new to that code. It required, and continues to require, the City Clerk to keep three copies of the NBMC available for inspection in her office, and additional loose-leaf copies as the Council may prescribe. It makes a somewhat obscure reference to California Government Code "Sections" 50022.6 as if it were the source of the requirement, although it actually appears to have imposed a similar requirement on the "uniform 3 Our comprehensive Municipal Code was evidently created by Ordinance No. 583, introduced on October 25, 1948, and adopted on July 11, 1949. Prior to that, the City appears to have operated with a series of uncodified ordinances, such as Ordinance No. 525 establishing separately published zoning regulations (which became Article IX of the new code). It was apparently reorganized into the present titles by Ordinance No. 1170, introduced on July 11, 1966, and adopted on July 25, 1966, copies of which were made available for inspection on July 8. In neither case have I been able to locate copies of the initial code actually adopted. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 6 of 11 codes" cities adopt by reference (such as the California Building Code, Plumbing Code or Electrical Code).' One has to look back to page 501 of the November 14 redlining to see the extensive changes being proposed. The Council Committee wishes to do away with the loose-leaf copies,' and reduce the number to be kept for inspection in the City Clerk's Office to one (whether printed or electronic is unclear). The problem with this is that while Government Code Section 50022.6 has been amended over the years to require, now, only a single copy of the uniform codes to be kept available for inspection (and even allows them to be transferred to the City's enforcement official once adopted), the requirement for the Clerk to maintain three copies of the municipal code is embedded in our City Charter. In its revisions to the preceding NBMC section, the Council Committee recommended changing "Section 415 of the City Charter" to " City Charter Section 415," but they apparently didn't bother to read. If they had, they would know City Charter Section 415 says that the comprehensive municipal code "need not be published in the manner required for other ordinances, but not less than three copies thereof shall be filed for use and examination by the public in the office of the City Clerk prior to the adoption thereof." It also allows the state's uniform codes to be adopted in the same manner, that is, with three copies. In other words Section 3 of Ordinance No. 2023-22 proposes a policy in direct conflict with our City Charter, and is, therefore, beyond the power of the Council to enact.6 Creating New Ambiguities and Leaving Old Ones Unresolved Proceeding to Section 6 of proposed Ordinance No. 2023-22, insteading of "reducing language," the Council Committee seems to have found it desirable to add the phrase "from the date of the prior violation" to subsections A.2 and A.3 of NBMC Section 1.04.010 (Violations, Penalties and Enforcement), a set of provisions that establish escalating penalties for repeat violations. The existing code appears to set up a one year window following the first violation, during which any additional ones are counted as repeats, and after which the fines start over at the starting level. Since no explanation is provided, it is impossible to know what the new wording is attempting to accomplish. While it is clear a second violation has to be within one year of the first, it is unclear what "prior violation" is being referred to in assessing whether a later one is an "additional" violation or a first. The most natural interpretation would be that the immediately preceding violation (rather than the one trigger the second violation level) is the "prior" one, so that once one reaches the "additional violation" level, all subsequent ones remain 4 The original citation would presumably have been to Government Code Section 50022, which was added by Chapter 81 on page 256 of the Statutes of 1949. It allowed cities to adopt the uniform codes without republishing them provided three copies were available for inspection in the City Clerk's office. 5 Among the ironies of this is that within the last few weeks, the Central Library obtained an updated loose-leaf copy of the complete NBMC. If Ordinance No. 2023-22 if adopted, it will presumably cease to be maintained and hence the Library will feel compelled to discard it as "incorrect," s Charter Section 405 limits the powers of the City Council by saying "All powers of the City shall be vested in the City Council except as otherwise provided in this Charter." In this case, the Charter is explicit as to the requirement for providing the public with copies. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 7 of 11 at that level, and only if there is a more than one-year gap do they begin again at the starting level. The problem with this I seem to recall the existing language, with its reset after one year, was debated and is intentional. So the proposed language, if it means what it says, would be a major change of City policy, and not something to be adopted without further discussion. Did the Committee check? Even if a policy change is intended, both the existing and proposed language contain an obvious ambiguity that neither resolves: namely, they both refer to violations "of the same ordinance." What does that mean? Many code sections are the result of revision by many different ordinances, and some ordinances, like the presently proposed ones, touch many unrelated sections of the code. Is someone who has violated any one of the many code sections amended by the is ordinance guilty of a second or additional violation "of the same ordinance" if they violate some completely unrelated code section that was amended by it? The unresolved ambiguities become even more severe in the proposed Section 1.04.010.13, dealing with penalties in the Safety Enhancement Zones. Is this intended to refer to prior violations at any time? Or only prior violations while the Zone is in effect? Undoing Previous Work It is particularly disturbing to me to see previously agreed to code sections altered without explanation. As an example, the cost of living adjustment to campaign contribution limits in existing NBMC Subsection 1.25.030.0 was carefully crafted after 2019, with extensive public input, so that it could be rounded to the nearest $100 yet accurately track CPI changes since 2019. In Section 40 of Ordinance No. 2023-22, the Council Committee quite arbitrarily proposes deleting that and replacing it with a rule that will not correctly track CPI: under the new method, multiple years with CPI of less than 4%, no matter how many, will never cause the campaign limit to increase, while years with more than 6% CPI will bump the limit up $100 each time even though the CPI is less. Why would we do this? Unexplained Additions The same Section 40 of Ordinance No. 2023-22, likewise without explanation or discussion, adds an entirely new Subsection 1.25.030.K regarding recall elections, exempting the sitting Council member from the campaign limits, but subjecting rivals to it. Why would this, and the many other new code provisions, be added without public debate? Unexplained Deletions Skipping ahead to Section 8 of Ordinance No. 2023-22, the Council Committee proposes to completely delete existing NBMC Section 1.04.040 (Violation of Administrative Provisions). That November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 8 of 11 section made city officials and employees responsible for doing what the code said they should do. Surely that concept is not obsolete or superseded by state law, so why is it being deleted? As with so many other proposed deletions, there is no explanation. Similarly, the Committee proposes deleting from NBMC Section 2.08.030 the requirement for the City Manager to submit expense invoices to the Council, and in Subsection 3.34.020.13, the tax imposed on out-of-town charter vessels is being repealed Not to mention whole chapters. Again, why? Similarly, in Chapter 2.12 the Committee recommends deleting the equivalencies between current and former employee designations. While the older ones may have been deleted from the code in the current revision, the equivalencies are still needed to make sense of other City documents, such as the contracts and agreements these deleted sections refer to. How will anyone know without retaining them? Missing and Wrong Words The material to be added by Ordinance No. 2023-22 contains numerous errors, including wrong or missing words. For example proposed new NBMC Section 1.08.105 on Consumer Price Index Adjustments was likely intended to read: "in effect on the date of adjustment." The proposed definition of "Owner" in Section 1.08.120 was probably intended to read "The term "owner" applied to a building or land, means and inelude includes any part owner, joint owner, tenant, tenant in common or joint tenant, of the whole or a part of such building or land," but whether it was intended to define a "tenant" as an "owner" is less clear, especially since "Tenant, Occupant" is defined separately, and occupants are not always owners. Likewise, one assumes the Committee was trying to define "Public parke€or public facility." And proposed Subsection 2.12.080.G was likely meant to read "G. Management of the regulations found in Chapter Title 14; and." Random Comments Subsection 12.44.125.A (Commercial In -Lieu Parking Fees), which allows commercial properties to use spaces in a municipal parking lot to fulfill their off-street parking requirement, provided they pay a fee per space of $150 per year, is proposed to be amended to read "an annual fee of one hundred fifty dollars ($150.00) per parking space or a fee per space as set by resolution adopted by the City Council." This suffers from at least two problems: (1) How are readers supposed to know if such a resolution exists? Does it mean the City's master Schedule of Rents, Fines, and Fees? and (2) as written, if such a resolution exists, it appears compliance with the code can be attained by choosing whichever the reader wants, in which case one would suspect everyone would choose the smaller fee.' ' Alternatively, astute readers of the code may notice Section 20.40.130 allows off-street parking requirements to be met simply by making a one-time payment of $150 per space to the the Citywide November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 9 of 11 Meanwhile, Subsection 12.44.125.B is left untouched even though it grandfathers certain uses existing as of the "effective date of this ordinance," the meaning of which has become quite uncertain since the notations at the end of the section list three different ordinances, from 1972, 1974 and 2013.1 Shouldn't this have been replaced with the actual date intended? Similarly curious, the Council Committee chose to proposed no changes to existing NBMC Section 14.30.015 (Definitions): "Words used in this Chapter in the singular may include the plural and the plural the singular. Use of masculine shall mean feminine and use of feminine shall mean masculine." Following that instruction, when the chapter says "his or her" the reader is instructed to read that as "her or his." As so much about this, one wonders: why? The Rest The preceding comments are based on a cursory examination of about the first 30 pages of the 574 pages of redlining presented on November 14, and a few other pages located at random. Even then, they represent only a fraction of the questions generated by those pages, let alone the questions about the lines of code not redlined. If 30 pages of reading generate 6 or 7 pages of comments, it would follow that a reading of the full ordinance would generate more than 100 pages of questions. That no Council member, and only three members of the public, has publicly questioned any of this seems telling of significant policy changes being slipped through without adequate review. Item 9. Resolution No. 2023-81: Establishing the Library Lecture Hall MOU City Council Ad Hoc Committee While it is only tangentially related to the creation of this committee, I continue to be puzzled by why City staff recommended rejecting the original construction bids when its own internal cost estimate increased from $14 million the first time to $18.5 million the second. Was the second bidding for a more complex project than the first, rather than a "value engineered" version of it? If not, and staff thought it had underestimated the first time, why would it recommend rebidding with a higher estimate? Item 10. Fiscal Year 2023-24 First Quarter Financial Report and Resolution No. 2023-82: Approving a Side Letter Agreement with the Part -Time Employees Association of Newport Beach, Approving a Fourth Amendment to the Key and Management Compensation Plan, and Adopting New Salary Schedules This agenda item is a strange amalgam of two seemingly separate actions, only one of which, the first quarter financial report, would normally be proposed by the Finance Department. Parking Improvement Trust Fund. That seems a much better deal than needing to have a municipal lot nearby and paying $150 each year to use it. a Ordinance No. 2013-11 was part of a previous "comprehensive" code update. It had 215 sections, compared to the 952 in the present ordinance. November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 10 of 11 In the past, agreements with employee groups and associations were the province of the City Manager and the Human Resources Department, as when the previous Resolution No. 2022-10 dealing with the Key & Management Group was approved as a standalone Item 11 on January 25, 2022, and Resolution No. 2022-17 (oddly not clearly referenced in the presently proposed resolution) approving a Memorandum of Understanding with the Part -Time Employees Association, as Item 5 at the March 8, 2022, Council meeting. Moreover, the public (and Council) are asked to look through many pages of schedules without any clear indication of what they mean. Possibly additions are indicated by italics (as on page 10-25), deletions by strikeout (as on page 10-32) and all the rest unchanged? It would take a long time to figure out. Also, when prepared by Human Resources, these resolutions are normally accompanied by a "cost of contract" summary. That seems absent here. Item 13. Fiscal Year 2022-23 Restroom Rehabilitation - Award of Contract No. 8905-2 (23F02) It is surprising the bidding included an addendum to cover installation of automatic locking devices since I thought that direction had been given by the Council very recently, and even then, only informally. Item 15. Lease Agreement with Newport Harbor Lawn Bowling Association for a Portion of San Joaquin Hills Park Located at 1550 Crown Drive North The Abstract portion of the staff report is long on history and short on giving any inkling of what the Council is being asked to approve. Item 16. Annual Reports on Development Impact Fees and Development Agreements What the development agreement public benefit fees were spent on, as reported on the last two pages, is less than clear. What "Parks and Community Centers" was the $4,548,976 from Uptown Newport spent on, and when? Were the "Police Facility" expenditures for the existing or a new one? And what exact projects comprise "Misc. FFP Projects? Item 18. Ordinance No. 2023-23 and Resolution No. 2023-83: Newport Beach Municipal Code and Local Coastal Program Amendments Related to Short Term Lodging (PA2023-0116) The proposed ordinance and resolutions claim that on May 23, 2023, the City Council "effectively" initiated amendments to the City codes. The minutes of that meeting (Volume 65 - Page 554) indicate the only thing that happened as an "A-1" straw vote on bringing back an agenda item to direct the Planning Commission to explore certain things. Specifically, the straw vote was for a future agenda item to "Direct the Planning Commission to identify opportunities to modify Chapters 20 and 21 of the Newport Beach Municipal Code to facilitate new visitor November 28, 2023, City Council agenda comments - Jim Mosher Page 11 of 11 serving accommodation opportunities within the MU-W2 and MU -CV/ 15th Street zones for multi -unit residential developments with 20 or more residential units under common ownership. Consider as part of this review professional management, amenities, and where there are no parking impacts that could reduce the availability of parking in residential neighborhoods." The item never came back for a formal discussion or vote. I don't think code amendments are initiated by non -discussion straw votes, and even if they were, the absence of discussion leaves the Planning Commission uncertain what the Council wants them to consider. To me, the A-1 vote sounded like a request to explore lowering the existing limit for timeshare developments, which are allowed in mixed -use districts, from the present minimum of 100 units to 20 units. Staff seems to have assumed it was to reinstate short term lodgings as an allowable use (as they say it was prior to 2010, and only inadvertently omitted). However, none of their proposals to the Planning Commission followed the limitation to "developments with 20 or more residential units under common ownership," and instead set the inexplicable requirement limiting eligibility to persons who were half or more owners of a total of more than 20 units within a statistical area. Why such persons should be more eligible than any others made no sense to me or to the Planning Commissioners. If it is short term lodgings that the Council wants, to alleviate the pressure on purely residential districts, I would suggest making all residential units in all mixed use districts (not just the two named by the Council) eligible for short term lodging permits, but place their applications at the end of the current waiting list, and have them filled by attrition to stay below the 1,550 overall limit. None of the staff proposals do this. I also don't understand their proposal to not count existing STL permits in mixed -use districts toward the STL permit cap. I don't recall any such exemption for existing STL's elsewhere, and I cannot guess why there would be any exception for these.