Remarks by Jon Zich
83 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 4
- Play at 1:29:26
“So it'd be a fairly simple process for them to go through to do that. Okay. So, um, My question is about the sound study. And the staff report indicates that you were the one that had to hire the sound consultant, MD Acoustics, is that correct? Correct. Okay. And I'm assuming because you hired them, MD Acoustics understands the difference between paddle tennis and pickleball in terms of the noise that kind of activity would generate?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:39:29
“Yeah. I'll torture this a little bit more. Just as Commissioner, go ahead.”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:39:49
“Okay. Just as Commissioner Martinez was asking for you to describe or define a tournament, at the time he was doing that I thought, okay, so now tell me what a special event is. And I think in your answer you basically did that by talking about the numbers of people that would not normally be there if there was some kind of event, greater number of people. I'm leading to a question. I'm not there yet. And then I thought, well, OK, if there's more people than normal, what's the big deal? They're hanging around. They parked in the parking lot. And then I thought, well, if there's a whole bunch,…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:42:44
“Okay. And then if they were to have a special event, anticipated a bunch of additional people and knew the most practical way to accommodate them would be to open up the back gate to allow people to come in that way as well as the front parking lot. You wouldn't be opposed to them doing that, correct?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:47:09
“Would the maker yield for a moment? Yes. So on the screen is in green the proposed language for condition number six, that the operation shall comply with the conditions and requirements of the applicable special event permit for the City of Costa Mesa when they expect more than 50 participants. Right. I suggest that to you as a way to describe conditional approval number six. All right. Thank you for the interruption.”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 1:51:52
“SURE PEOPLE COULD TAKE THE BUS THERE. I NEVER SAID THEY COULDN'T. whether they will or not. I'm enthusiastically in support of your plan, your business plan, and this particular use. I'm glad we were able to accommodate your concerns about the several conditions of approval. It seems fairly simple. What isn't so simple, and we're going to be paying a lot of attention to this, and it's not specific to you, in the future, We talked about the adjacency to residential uses. We got one public commenter who was an adjacent residential user, I guess, that was concerned about noise. You know, when we…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 4:03:28
“Yeah. I think what Commissioner Dixon is proposing is a minimum of what my level of interest is continuing this to the next meeting to me is insufficient in terms of what's needed for true public engagement THE SUGGESTION FROM MS. MCDONALD THAT WHAT WE ADVANCE ARE THE LEGALLY REQUIRED ELEMENTS OF THIS THOUSAND, ACTUALLY 1100 PAGE DOCUMENT, THAT WE ADVANCE THE LEGALLY REQUIRED PORTIONS OF THAT. THE THINGS THAT WE THINK STAND BETWEEN US AND HCD CERTIFICATION AND THE REST OF IT we keep working on. We got five people, well, we have more than five people here. We have three public speakers,…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Sep 14, 2026
- Play at 24:23
“might have a couple things mixed up. When you indicated that the draft housing element went out for review on June 8th to the 15th, did that version of the housing element have the total planned sites of 17,042? In other words, the various sites that have since been pulled, were they part of that draft version in June?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 25:50
“OKAY. AND THEN YOU INDICATED YOU SENT THE HOUSING ELEMENT TO HCD ON JUNE 24TH. HAD COUNCIL TAKEN ACTION TO on the housing element prior to that being sent to HCD, did they approve it or?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 26:26
“Okay. So has the housing element, has there been any action taken by council to date?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 26:39
“GOT IT. AND IN THAT MARCH, NOTHING HAS BEEN REZONED YET IN THE HOUSING ELEMENT. IS THAT A TRUE STATEMENT?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 26:58
“GOT IT. OKAY. THANK YOU FOR ALL OF THAT. I'm not sure I really saw in the presentation, and I didn't find it in our package if it existed, a map that showed the sites that were removed and the sites were added. I know in your staff report on page 8 or page 32, you list the sites. So I certainly could go to Google Maps and look them up individually.”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 27:51
“OK. And then a related question. IN THE SECOND BUNDLE OF DOCUMENTS THAT WE RECEIVED, STARTING ON PAGE 365 AND GOING THROUGH PAGE 400, THERE IS A SPREADSHEET. LET ME TURN TO ONE PAGE IN THERE. a spreadsheet that looks like this, I don't expect you to be able to read it from there. I would expect I would be able to read it from here, and I can't. So I would like to have a legible copy of that made available. And the other thing related to that, and this was a problem in the very first version of it, and I really can't tell from this size font anyway, but is there a grand total at the bottom…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 29:51
“Would you know what page number that is in our package? 325. 325? Okay. I'll look at that later. Thank you for that.”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 30:31
“AND I APPRECIATE THAT. SINCE WE'RE BEING ASKED TO MAKE A RECOMMENDATION TO COUNCIL TONIGHT, KIND OF FELT AN OBLIGATION TO KNOW WHAT I'M RECOMMENDING. OK. Page 65. So that's in the housing element page 65 there is a table. That shows the population growth 2010 to 2040. Are 20 20. Well, actually, the 2010, I guess that's the only actual in the table, 109,000. And the 2040 projection is 116,000. That's 5,000 higher, 7,000 higher. A growth rate of what it says here is 2.2%. Could you reconcile that growth rate to what we are LIKELY TO HAVE IF WE BUILD 12,000 UNITS IN THE CITY OCCUPIED AT A 2.6…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 32:22
“OKAY. SO THAT INFORMATION CAME FROM SCAG? And arena allocation, didn't that also come from SCAG? Correct. Interesting, okay. My next question relates to page 74. And on that page, there is a breakdown of the number of households by income category. So we have a total of 40,000 households in the city and it breaks it down. And if I add up the extremely low, very low, and low, comes to about 19,155 to be precise. If I look at the RHNA allocation for those exact same categories, so the subset of the 11760, that number is 6801. If somehow, by some miracle, we built all the affordable units that…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 34:44
“So maybe seeing it another way, this table on page 74 seems to indicate what the need is in Costa Mesa. The RENA allocation, again, if by some miracle we built everything, only meets 36% of the need. And I have my personal doubts that we'll build 11,760 units in the next three years or the next 13 years. So I just wonder what our plan or strategy is, or are we just really trying to answer the mail on the reallocation and the planned zone for that?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 37:10
“All right, my next question. When I look at the table, and this is a very minor one, on page 45, the table of contents for the housing element, I'm on page 45, and I'm looking under number three, and do you see open space under number three? And do you see where it says page 3-14? See what I'm looking at? OK, so when I turn to that page, I don't find it. What I do find is that the discussion of open space begins on page 3-9, and that's the table. And then the actual description or definition of open space is on page 3-11. So either way, it precedes 3-14. And that might be something that…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 39:07
“But I'll get to that. I'm looking at the fresh, latest housing element. This is it, okay, says 40%, okay. On page 114, where it describes what open space is, I'll kind of say maybe it defines open space, one of the things that it specifically says that is not open space, driveways, parking lots, surfaces designed for vehicular access, upper floor decks, balconies, and areas under projection which are less than eight feet above ground are not open space. So to be clear, balconies are not considered open space. I'm just reading it straight out of this document”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 40:41
“It'll be amended for the non-housing element sites that are part of Measure K?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 40:59
“And you're saying that in that amendment, it'll then say balconies are included? Correct. Now, back in 2018... The city's policy was that balconies were not included, but could be included by discretion of Planning Commission. So if it's being changed in the mood, who made the decision that that discretion no longer lies with Planning Commission? Who made that decision? That was updated in March. Who made, the council made that decision? It was an overt decision by them, or was something in a 400-page package that maybe they missed?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 43:50
“Okay. Page 165. Now I'm not sure what I can rely on or what I can't in this document, but I'll try this one. Page 165. Here is a table that discusses the feedback from the community on the implementation of the urban plans. That's the title on that table. The second item down talks about limited open space. That is the concern, the concern expressed by residents. The remedial action indicates that in 2015 there was an amendment that required a minimum of 30% open space. Now I happen to know from the April version of the mood that in that table, don't know if I can rely on this either, it says…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 1:09:49
“Yeah, two quick ones. I just wanna make sure I got an agreement, commitment to provide a legible version of this table. And if it comes in our next Planning Commission meeting package, just as a informational item, that'd be awesome. A PRINTED VERSION?”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 1:10:12
“MAYBE 11 BY 17 BUT I'LL LEAVE IT UP TO YOU.”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026
- Play at 1:10:19
“THE SECOND THING I WOULD You mentioned notification letters that went to property owners and to Commissioner Martinez's questioning, some of those property owners didn't request to be added to the housing element. I would like to have a copy of one of those letters. You can black out who you sent it to. I'm not interested in that. I want to see what was actually communicated to them in writing. Um, and specifically what I'm interested in, I don't, I'm not asking you to change the letter. What I want to see and understand from the letter is if they understand that being added to this list…”
PLANNING COMMISSION · Aug 17, 2026