CITY OF CARSON
REGULAR MEETING OF THE PROJECT AREA COMMITTEE
MINUTES
CARSON COMMUNITY CENTER
801 E. CARSON STREET; ROOM 209
CARSON, CALIFORNIA 90745
6:00 P.M.
AGENDA POSTED: APRIL 22, 2002
CALL TO ORDER: The meeting was called to order at 6:15 P.M. by Chair Robles Dewitt at the Carson Hilton, 2 Civic Plaza Drive, Carson, California.
ROLL CALL:
Present: Robles DeWitt, Acosta, J., Acosta, P., Calkins, Everett, Ferguson, Narez, Palicte, Perrett
Absent: Rogers, Pearl
Also Present: Margarita Cruz, Redevelopment Manager
Steve Masura, Redevelopment Project Manager
John Perfitt, Redevelopment Project Analyst
Robin Harris, Legal Counsel
Ernest Glover, GRC Redevelopment Consultants
Belinda Hayes, Redevelopment Secretary
Chair Robles Dewitt called the meeting to order at 6:15 p.m. It was noted that Committee Members Pearl and Rogers were not present and their absences were excused. Committee Member Everett moved, seconded by Committee Member Acosta, that Item (3) Reports – General Plan and General Plan update be moved up on the Agenda to Item (2). Motion carried unanimously.
Ann Marie Gallant, Director of Development Services for the City of Carson made a presentation on the General Plan and addressed questions and concerns from the committee and community. The following presentation has been recorded verbatim:
Gallant: Good evening. I’m going to actually address the commission so I apologize for turning my backs to you all. My name is Ann Marie Gallant, I’m the General Manager for Development Services for the City of Carson. Development Services is a workgroup that includes the Planning Department, the Public Works Department, Engineering, Transportation, Environmental…a variety of things that process developments throughout the city; developments, that is residential, commercial, and industrial. One of our main charges is to proceed with a state requirement for general law cities, which is the General Plan. The General Plan is a document that includes several elements, which has to do with the zoning, land use, transportation, and recreation elements; all that goes along with the physical development in your city. So I’m going to address the committee who I am sure is going to have some questions, but if they’d like me to address anything that you all might have, I would be happy to do that and I apologize for turning my back to you, but I think this would be the most efficient way to do this this evening.
Let me begin by mentioning to you that approximately two years or so ago the City of Carson’s Planning Department initiated a major General Plan update for the City of Carson. This update including employing an outside consultant who spent approximately a year and a half working on this, not only with staff but also with the community and a group called the General Plan Advisory Committee which worked on updating the physical element of the city. These development elements include the land use, which has to do with zoning: residential, commercial, industrial; and within those three land use categories if it’s high density or low density; a transportation element that has to do with the circulation on the streets; a recreation and open space element which has to do with standards in terms of recreation and green belts for the city; an environmental element; and several other additional things such as air quality and transportation light paths, those kinds of things. The city and the community worked approximately a year and a half for this General Plan update. It has been completed and drafts were submitted about a year ago to the Planning Department for final review. At the same time this was occurring the City was reorganizing into the work groups and at that time myself and Ron Winkler, whom I’m sure you know, went forward and we began to reorganize the department and so this process in terms of moving forward with the final approval of the General Plan as recommended by (inaudible) various boards and commissions was delayed by approximately nine months. About six months ago, and given the fact the we were under certain state mandates to approve this General Plan update, we began to implement it on an element by element basis, which means instead of taking the nine or ten elements that we had studied and moving them forward through boards and commissions, we decided to do one element at a time. It’s easier, I think, on the boards and commissions. It’s certainly easier on the City Council in terms of being able to digest all of this material. And also I think it’s easier as we go forward with updating the General Plan which was really designed and crafted by the community more than two and a half years ago.
Last fall we moved forward with updating one of the most prevalent, important elements, and one that I think you all will be most interested in, which is the housing element. This element has gone through the process. It has been approved by the State of California. We have actually just received our comments back last week in terms of making some minor changes to it and the housing element basically, in conjunction with the housing strategies report which I’m sure the Redevelopment and Economic Development staff has talked to you about, is in a sense the City’s policy and strategy statement with respect to how it wants to go about developing affordable housing as well as a whole housing plan for the city. That document, as I mentioned, has been adopted and because I wasn’t sure how much paper you have already, I thought we’d go through this presentation and then we could certainly make available to you any of the elements that you want if in fact you don’t have them. The housing element has been adopted and subject to some minor changes by HCD, which is the state agency that regulates it, we have one of our elements done. This evening our planning director is working with our recreation and parks commission to review and draft the final version of the recreation and parks element. We anticipate that it will go through our boards and commissions and will appear on a Council agenda some time in June. After that we will follow up with the open space element, which defines exactly how much green belt we have and where our parks and programs are. The air quality element, the circulation and transportation element, the environmental, and then last, probably then toward Halloween and the fall, we will move forward with the land use element. Now those probably are the three elements that receive the most community input. The housing element which has already gone through it’s process; the traffic and circulation element, which I anticipate in this particular community will receive a lot of attention in light of the major influence of truck traffic and air quality; and of course the last one, which is why we waiting until the end, is the land use element.
The General Plan update process was initiated in advance of the Redevelopment Project Area Plan process, and in talking with Ron, we wanted to make sure they did not conflict. So a strategy of going element by element, I think, was a good one so that we can, if necessary, reference any recommendations or amendments or alterations to the Draft Land Use element that was drafted by the GPAC about two and a half years ago. Certainly, the process you are going through with Redevelopment and Economic Development staff may in fact revisit some of those things that were done. All of these documents are available in various stages of draft form as well as the original document. Whenever you start General Plan update you always compile a very large document called the Existing Conditions Report and it basically pulls together all of these elements as it relates to where the city is right now at the time the plan is updated. It is important to know that that the Existing Conditions Report is significantly different from perhaps the General Plan Update that the city did ten to twelve years ago, because life does change, development does change, densities change, zoning ordinances change, discretionary permits change. So basically the city does an Existing Conditions Report before it initiates the General Plan Update, and again it’s a very large document but it may be helpful for you to review that and it is certainly available to you if you would like it. That’s where we are with the process and I would be happy to address any individual questions from the PAC as it relates to the process you are going through now and it’s interface with the General Plan Update, or if you have any concerns about the methodology we have used up to this point.
Chair Robles Dewitt: Are there any questions from the committee?
Perrett: (inaudible)
Chair Robles Dewitt: The question is where is the Plan?
Gallant: The Plan is in individual books. If you would like to see a copy of the existing General plan, we would be happy to make that available to you. If you would like to have a copy of the Existing General Plan Conditions we could provided that. All of these other plan elements are in draft and they will be available to you as we go through the process. So just indicate to me what you would like and I would be happy to provide it.
Chair Robles Dewitt: Ann, I believe that we as committee members received a copy of the General Plan.
Gallant: The existing General Plan.
Chair Robles Dewitt: Existing General Plan, and now you’ve indicated that there is another document, which is the Exiting Conditions Report.
Gallant: Correct, and I think that is one that would be most helpful to you because it is certainly far more current than the current General Plan, which is very old. You would have to look at them in conjunction, but it has is a far more detailed and technical information document, and we can certainly make the copy available to Ron and he could distribute them to you if you would like to see it.
Perrett: It says in the draft of the Redevelopment Plan for Project Area 4 it references the General Plan quite a bit so it would be helpful to have…
Gallant: Existing conditions, right. That would be fine.
Glover: Let me interject there. The plan is drafted so that it would be consistent with the existing General Plan because there is no future General Plan.
Chair Robles Dewitt: I guess the committee member is referencing the draft Redevelopment Plan for Project Area 4 that we received as committee members, and it does reference the General Plan, but what you’re telling us is that the General Plan is one that was done ten to twelve years ago, and we did receive that document at one of our previous meetings but instead we need the Existing Conditions Report.
Gallant: Not instead, but in addition to. I think if you look at the existing General Plan which is the document that’s adopted, the existing conditions will only augment that information by providing specific detail as to what the conditions are in those particular areas right now. It’s basically a current update. It doesn’t change the General Plan, it is a dated document that defines specific conditions.
Chair Robles Dewitt: I guess we go back to the question, and I don’t want to speak for you Mr. Perrett. The question is whether or not you’re now working on updating the General Plan, and are we going to be asked to recommend to the City Council Project Area 4 with whatever concerns we have, and we won’t have the updated General Plan so we’ll going on the existing.
Gallant: Correct, because that is the existing valid General Plan for the city up until the time it is legally amended and all of the elements are adopted.
Cruz: As the General Plan is legally amended that is the plan that applies to our Redevelopment Plan. So basically by making reference to the General Plan it allows any amendments to take place to the General Plan and we are automatically in conformance to the General Plan because the General Plan will be modified over time.
Gallant: Despite this major General Plan update, although it is not particularly common in this city, the General Plan is a dynamic document. Applications to the Planning Commission can recommend amendments to the General Plan, General Plan amendments, at any given point in time and once that amendment is approved then that General Plan with all of it’s updates and amendments continues to become the valid General Plan. It is a dynamic document.
Chair Robles Dewitt: Any other questions from the committee?
Perrett: Are we gonna allow bicycles on the sidewalks?
Chair Robles Dewitt: We’re gonna stay…Do you want to answer that?
Gallant: Actually it’s kind of interesting, because today we were in discussion. We have decided we were going to augment the recreation and parks element and open space element to include a bike lane path element subdivision. So we will be addressing bicycles as part of traffic and circulation, recreation. We did decide today that we were going to have a program for that.
Perrett: What about the…
Unkown: Can you repeat the question?
Gallant: The gentlemen asked how we were going to deal with bicycles in the plan, and I mentioned that today, interestingly enough, we had agreed to augment the recreation and parks element to include a bicycle element and bike path as part of the recreation and open space element. And then the second question I didn’t quite hear.
Perrett: I asked about the segue.
Chair Robles Dewitt: What segue Mr. Perrett?
Perrett: (inaudible) the two-wheel scooter that moves people down the street at about 10 miles per hour.
Chair Robles Dewitt: Actually the question is more appropriate when we do the General Plan update on recreation and transportation. I’m not sure anything we do as a Project Area Committee is germane to that issue at this time. So maybe we can let him know when the recreation part and the transportation part of the General Plan is going to be updated that’s when the comments should be. (end presentation)
Chair Robles Dewitt called for a motion to move Item No. 2 until after the Item No. 5 Public Comments. Vice Chair Acosta moved, seconded by Member Narez, that the committee move up Agenda Item No. 5. Motion passed unanimously.
ITEM NO. (5) NEW BUSINESS – PAC Member Vacancies
Potential PAC Members were allowed the opportunity to address the Committee as to why they would like to serve on the PAC. Diane Thomas, Eileen Knox, and Isaac Canales were candidates for the Community Organization vacancies. Diane Thomas was selected with eight confirmed votes. Isaac Canales was selected with 6 confirmed votes. Eileen Knox received four votes.
Tracy Rodriguez was the only candidate for the Resident Owner opening, and as such, was appointed to the PAC. Sal Duarte was appointed to the Resident Tenant opening by receiving 8 votes. His competitor, Jesus (last name omitted), received one vote. All four PAC vacancies were filled.
ITEM NO. (4) OLD BUSINESS
The community was allowed the opportunity to address the PAC and Staff in regard to their various concerns.
ITEM NO. (6) PAC MEMBER COMMENTS
PAC Member Everett requested to know the significance of the zoning of the west side of Shearer Street. Staff member Cruz advised PAC Member Everett that it was zoned residential, and that is important to note that the General Plan regulates how land uses will be used in the future.
ITEM NO. (7) STAFF COMMENTS
John Perfitt informed the PAC Members that a walking tour of successful and significant redevelopment areas discussed at the last meeting was contained in the PAC members’ packets. He also stated that also included was an article given to him by PAC Member Perrett.
ITEM NO. (8) ADJOURNMENT
Chair Robles Dewitt adjourned the meeting at 8:15 p.m.