City Council - Regular Meeting

So just looking over one of the legislative priorities, I see the NECSD collaboration. I'm not sure if that's legislation. it's not legislation so i would move to remove that but the collaboration so i would look to remove that any objections to removing any csd collaboration and east And the same thing with Orange County public transportation collaboration. I think he was just making a point, but it was written down for some reason. I'm not sure.

So with a couple of these, I think we can combine them, like the designating Crystal Lake as a parkland, including the sanctuary agreement. Can't we combine those?

Well, I'd like to see the sanctuary agreement happen because I know that...

well we're going to vote on them tonight okay and that will establish the hierarchy of priorities council members are really i would i i realized my list was kind of long but i do want to consolidate four of the items because they're related i do think we have assets as a city and we make decisions on how to deploy those assets get rid of those assets use those assets and I think a couple four of these items can go under one umbrella kind of public value standards for how we review the surplus property permit fees for public events pilot policy and license agreement structure and review all th

Surplus property policy review, permit fees for public events, pilot review policy, and license agreement structure review, existing versus new. If we can bundle those into public value standards or call it whatever it's they all relate to how we deal with our public assets and I think I would like to have that be comprehensive.

Yes, I like to look at the. Where was it? Oh, the Complete Streets implementation. I don't think that that's a legislative action because I think the Complete Streets program or initiative was already initiated well over a year ago. Yeah, and that's what's happening on Broadway. Liberty Street. Liberty Street, yeah, so in the business corridor. So I don't think that's a legislative action there.

He called it public value standards. pbs public value standards i think that's good okay hold on one second while we sort these out so yes yeah it was about a year ago yeah that's an alley question yeah it was um something between planning and yeah about a year ago yes i believe so i mean we can get um to add to this is the updating of the master plan right right

The question, Mayor Harvey mentioned complete streets and the question I had because the Department of Planning mentioned that if we adopt the policy, it's part of our plan, but I wasn't sure if we ever adopted the policy, if I could just get confirmation I'm okay to remove it.

I'm okay with removing and dealing with that outside. We'll remove it from the list.

long as we confirmed that it was yeah it was approved as long as we approved it I'm happy to remove it okay Councilmember Stewart thank you um I have something that I wanted to add because I did not have it on my list before uh and it is uh the blight tax I know we have for properties that are have not uh that are sitting dilapidated vacant and not being renovated it's in the charter and i think we need to close the loopholes on some of them uh so i would like to add that too and that was blight the first word okay the blight tax uh because we have a lot of people that are just sitting on thes

Yes, I brought up the guaranteed basic income program. And if that is a legislative project, I would like to add that on to my priorities.

And also traffic enforcement. Did we had that down.

There are. Yes, thank you Jason. The short term rental regulation which deals with air B and B was already legislated. We did that work. I think it was a 3%. Yeah, what was it that we got the tax. Yeah, but didn't we didn't we legislate regulate that.

Yes, we did the hotel. This is last year. Right. so what do we what do we mean by short-term rental regulations what does that mean I thought that was it I think the general idea that has been has had more success in terms of challenges is creating a license

Is there not I Or do we want to amend what is already in existence?

I don't know. Councilman Shakur, I think this might have been your recommendation. I think it was. yeah so i just want some clarity on that oh okay i remember okay thank you I think at one point councilman shakur when you first got on Council, you had pulled the EEOC report which gave us them.

They did a forensic audit law work for us OK that was what 6 years. Yeah, I remember you open a different in the court and it was shown that was. And so this is the same black and Hispanic city hall was 70% white. It was 68% non-residents. Right. And so I was like going forward, not going after people's jobs, but making sure city residents. Right, because they had preferences because, like I said, them numbers should represent our city. That's all.

The parking, accessible parking, I think that we can remove that because I believe, I'm hoping that with, well, maybe not, with the parking study, we'll be able to see how many handicapped parking spaces are needed. Is that?

i would i would like to remove my parking reform i think i would um defer to that study instead of bringing it up as mine i feel the same any objections to removing parking reform okay deleted have a question

Yes, I just wanted to ask, what is the tax assessment reform? So what exactly is that? Who proposed it?

No, that's what my comment was going to be, to remove it. And I heard the assessor's comments the other day and just did a little more digging. We got bigger fish to fry with that.

Mayor Harvey. I do have a comment on that because I think that even though we may wish to remove it but I think it's something that the council has to consistently look at because when you look at 100 percent valuation and you look at how often the city tax assessor does reassessments and right and other municipalities don't do it every year that's something that the council has to really be actively engaged in because we found municipalities neighboring us that hadn't done any reassessments since 1986 and then there were certain municipalities that are neighboring in orange county that hadn't

So I agree that it shouldn't be on this list and we need to take it off, but I definitely believe what you're saying is that that is for a broader conversation and we have to bring in the tax, I'm sorry, the assessor to figure out what we are going to do to try to provide some relief for our homeowners We are taxed very high, and it is, you know, we talk about gentrification. Gentrification also looks very differently when you start taxing people out of their homes, and it's not a good look, so we can leave that for another time.

So Jay, I understand everything and I agree with what has been said. There should be conversation around it, but if it's not a legislative priority, then I would ask for that to be removed.

But can I ask a question Jason. This is about inclusionary zoning. I know it's been here and it's pretty much on this list for the last several years. I isn't inclusionary zoning dependent upon actual project and if we don't have the actual project I just want us to know before we start to rank it so that everybody has an understanding of the importance of it inclusionary zoning is a concept that can be

And this is something that's been ongoing. I know that when Karen Mejia was on council, we also discussed it and met with, I believe it was Ms. Ellie Church. So, you know, this has been ongoing and on here for a very long time. And again, it's It was a discussion so that we could prepare for the hillside eventually, but as I understand it, it is a zoning code change, and I think, you know, I was hoping that we would have started this process.

I don't think we're, I'm asking to overhaul it, Michelle. I was here on planning during that, the zoning change back in 2015. It's just we want to make sure that we're including this and that it is part of.

Being a generation that was affected and impacted by that, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather owned a home. That was four generations ago. And since then, it's three more generations after me. So it's been seven generations. And we're talking about, of course, what this is about is supposed to be reparations for the people who were impacted. Basically, that was the whole gist of what was holding this up and what's been going on. And like I said, it's been seven generations in my family now, and we're still having, and that man is just sitting there We need to make this happen. And so,

thank you um i missed the first couple of minutes um so apologies if i'm repeating this um but i really would like to advocate for the sidewalk repair program um i think that goes hand in hand with the sidewalk repair program um i think it goes hand in hand with um our road paving plan and a lot of constituents have shown a lot of interest in that and I also want to really advocate for some type of constituent management assistance whether it's a software database platform or whether it's adding something to the budget and adding people that we can hire as liaisons which I don't think is the b

Mayor Harvey. yeah i just wanted to um just a point of information for councilman shakur on reparations um i think that um well i a few a couple months ago i sent the council an email because there is a lot of movement on reparations at the state level um not to say that we can't do something at the city level um but there's a lot of traction at the state level i'm in some of those um zoom calls and some of those um meetings online so i know the governor and the state legislature is they they have a whole entire group um looking at what reparations looks like um as it relates to uh african ame

And that's a bacon knot. It's like a hole in the heart of our city. Yeah. We need to fix it.

I wanted to add if this is a legislative priority to legislate some, like a formal youth-led advisory board where the children, not the children, I'm sorry, the young residents, they can have a voice when it comes down to recreation and public space funding. So I would say maybe like a youth and community type commission or something like that.

I just wanted to consolidate another two things. Instead of climate ready, can it actually be called climate smart community implementation so it's clear it's a state program? also a lot of these things that I've mentioned fall under that program tree ordinance can go under climate smart community implementation stretch energy code is also an item under climate smart community so I think it's up to you Ramona stretch energy code is is yours but so stretch energy code and tree ordinance under climate ready which should be renamed climate smart community implementation um any objections to remov

Yes, I had 2 more things I don't want to overload this but I want to put it on here and one of the committee's was just mentioned if we can create an actual committee that becomes a line item a budget I line. This is this becomes legislation if I'm correct if we want to do a an actual advisory committee. Is that legislation.

Perfect. So I have to. I see, Ramona, you have the small business economic development. Can we include in that a probably what could resemble a chamber of like a depository for small business information? gathering. I know we talked about it under urban planning, but now there is nothing. Is that under probably CDBG that they can do something like that and it doesn't have to be?

Yeah, but it's not, it's not done. So we don't know how many businesses we have in the city, where the businesses are, who they are, like that inventory list. um and the other thing is uh the a senior advisory committee this is one of the things that i looked at for ward three but it needs to be expanded for the city all right so any objections to adding senior advisory committee okay councilmember martinez

Just a quick question. The small business economic development, is that the same thing or can they be consolidated with the economic development small business assistance? I think, yeah, they're the same thing.

I agree and I included the bid with that as well.

And then just a question on the sanctuary. I don't know if that one was removed. I just wanted to know. Oh, okay. Are we talking about sanctuary agreement like with the park, Crystal Lake?

I just want to last comment is instead of sound financing policy. I want to be clear. It's to adopt a fund balance policy So we'll change sound financing policy to fund balance a policy fund balance on the policy It's a recommendation from the state comptroller's office. I

Michelle, while we wait, so we do this priority, I mean we do this list and at some point do we figure out what is short term and long term?

So you have seven votes or one vote on. It would be seven votes is a high priority.