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The following is an Open Letter from Parks-&-Rec board member Barry Levinson to all Sunny Hills (Fullerton) residents, and all parents of children now or in the future attending Laguna Road School, concerning the proposed Melia Homes 40-unit townhouse development on 3.3 acres:
This is what all 6* Planning Commissioners ignored while speaking at the end of the Planning Commission meeting on March 14, 2016 as follows:
1. They ignored our 4 to 5 five-year in the making updated General Plan for Fullerton that was completed I believe in 2012, less than 4 years ago. It was Commissioner Gambino I believe who said that the General Plan is already obsolete. This is what they do. They have a bunch of rules and use them for their advantage when the situation is right and trash the rules when they want to pass something else. If I believed as a commissioner that the General Plan was obsolete and did not meet the needs of the city (which I do not) I would be speaking out loudly on how the city wasted over a million dollars and over 4 years putting together a plan that is not worth the paper it is printed on. But again they would never do that.
In fact as I mentioned at the podium it was none other than Mayor Fitzgerald who voted against the Lark Ellen townhouse proposal’s first iteration because it did not follow the General Plan to keep the neighborhoods intact. In fact that neighborhood has homes on 7,000 and 8,000 thousand sq. ft. lots and not the 20,000 sq. ft. lots and greater in Sunny Hills. So one day the city is making decisions based on the General Plan and then a month or two later they are trashing the same plan. All one usualy has to do to fight city hall is to use their own contradictory words and thoughts against them. I find it to be one of the most effective tools we have as citizens to get their attention.
2. As I stated at the podium, Planning Consultant Heather Allen’s presentation was totally biased in favor of the developer. It is the same reason police and firemen get such large raises and outsized benefits. The city and the unions are on the same side and no one looks out for the taxpayers. In this case it is obvious once again that the city and the developer are on the same side. No one on the dais agreed with my comments that the presentation by the city left a lot to be desired. It was so, so obvious but commissioners will not go there (except me at Parks and Recreation).
3. No one asked for any proof that there is no demand for a new office/medical building at the site of the proposed Melia Homes. We heard from the developer, one or more commissioners and Marty Burbank that the Towers office buildings on Harbor and Brea Boulevards are half vacant. Before accepting that as fact, documentation about the vacancy percentage in those two buildings should have been presented to the committee. Until such evidence is provided it was just an unconfirmed statement, nothing more and nothing less. Even if it is true they are comparing apples to oranges. First, the Melia homes location being so close to St. Jude Hospital and medical offices makes that property a good fit for another medical related building including the ever growing need for more extended senior care facilities. Second, a brand new office building can’t be compared to a 40 year old building over a mile away.
4. No one on the dais stated that Melia Homes should strongly consider bringing forth a plan of single family homes with lots at or near 20,000 sq. ft. as to fit in with the neighborhood. All they talked about was reducing the 40 town-home units to somewhat smaller town-home development.
5. Commissioner Larry Bennett talked about how he is a strong advocate for private property rights. I am also a strong advocate of the same. But buying property zoned as office/medical, which sets the value of that property and now asking that they change it 180% degrees to high density multi-unit residential (no matter what the city labels it) is not property rights. The reality is that it violates the adjoining property owner rights, privacy and valuations, while at the same time making the developer’s property values much higher due to the zoning change. This is crony capitalism at its worst.
6. Finally, based on the majority of the commissioners professions and/or organizations they belong to suggests a real bias for more medium and high density development.
I wish I could have had 8 to 10 minutes at the podium, for I would have demonstrated point by point how bad this project is and how the commissioners are ignoring the major issues before them. I thought to some extent they were getting lost in the weeds hoping that by throwing the neighbors a bone it would become acceptable. This is also a tactic they use over and over again.
Together we are much stronger than just each of us speaking out individually. Sunny Hills residents, please do not be fooled by future city attempts to placate you with the same development on a slightly smaller scale. The city seems to care more about collecting the $11,700 a unit fee/tax, called the Park Dwelling Fee required of the developer for each of the 40 units, which would total $468,000.
Barry Levinson.
* Kevin Pendergraft appointed by Council member Whitaker missed this extremely important meeting. He also missed the vote on the Downtown Core And Corridor Special Project Proposal several months ago as well.
“Commissioner Larry Bennett talked about how he is a strong advocate for private property rights. I am also a strong advocate of the same. But buying property zoned as office/medical, which sets the value of that property and now asking that they change it 180% degrees to high density multi-unit residential (no matter what the city labels it) is not property rights.”
Bravo.
To summarize and further clarify the points I made above, I want to add the following:
The current zoning is commercial offices/medical offices. It is my understanding that the current owner of the property bought it with this zoning. As you probably know the market value of any property is based in large part on what it is zoned for. Now without any proof that they can’t sell the property as it is currently zoned, the owner and the developer want the city to approve a zoning change that will automatically increase the value of that property by a great deal, probably millions of dollars. What is in it for the city you may ask? I already informed you that the city gets an $11,700 a unit Park Dwelling fee/tax or $468,000.
This is not private property rights, but rather the city working with the owner and developer, against the interests of the surrounding neighbors, i.e. crony capitalism. The owner of the commercially zoned office building/medical property is asking for preferential treatment over the hundreds of residents who have mostly lived there for decades. To accept a zoning change requirement will create for the landowner an immediate very large financial gain, which smacks of preferential treatment and crony capitalism, rather than property rights. I know that if I wanted to convert my single family home to develop and build 7 or 8 town-homes (the approximate density requested by Melia Homes), my chances of it being approved would be nil. Why do or should large developers get better treatment from the city?
If the property is proven to not be sellable as it is currently zoned, which I greatly doubt, the zoning change that should be considered is the R1-20 (20,000 sq. ft. residential lots) that is the zoning for homes in the surrounding neighborhood. This makes so much sense to me that I can only wonder why the 6 commissioners present did not consider this at the committee meeting.
With a R1-20 residential zoning, the most homes that could be built on 3.3 acres is 6 homes not the 40 proposed. But of course the owner, who bought the property for commercial office not residential, can make much more money converting it the 40 units they have proposed. The representative for the builder was actually unintentionally funny when he stated that he listened and tried to address each and every concern of all the neighbors. Since the biggest issue was the density of the original project and since the developer made the great sacrifice to reduce the original plan from 41 units to 40 units, his statement was farcical on its face. It indeed rendered a loud negative response from the many neighbors who attended the meeting when the developer made this very self-serving statement to the committee.
If council members and in this case Planning Committee members can make decisions based on totally unsubstantiated information, then in my humble opinion they are not doing their jobs adequately.
Oversight means that one person or group oversees what another person or group is doing. If you take the word of the group you are supposed to be overseeing without any supporting documentation, you as a committee or as a council are no more than just a rubber stamp.
Oversight to have any real value must include documenting that the information received to make a good decision is in fact accurate and complete. Or in other words, the committee can rely on it.
I have received a lot of criticism from some of my fellow committee members within the Park and Recreation Committee for simply asking for documentation supporting the information presented to us as committee members. Any council member worth his/her salt should make it very clear to their appointees that ongoing criticism of a fellow committee member based on their request for verification of information presented as facts by the city should cease and desist immediately.
Now do not hold your breath that this will ever happen for if it were done it would then put the spotlight back onto the council members themselves and how they arrive at their binding decisions on the dais.
You are quite correct. Change of entitlement, per se, is not a property right.
BTW, what was the result of the vote?
David the committee voted 6 to 0 to indefinitely continue the agenda item. Many committee members suggested that the developer come back to the committee when they were ready to present a scaled down version of the same project. They could have easily voted to reject the zoning change and thereby rejected the project outright.
Before they came to this decision, no committee member asked for proof that the property could not be sold in a reasonable amount of time as it is currently zoned and no committee member suggested that the best alternative to the current zoning would be a single family project zoned R1-20, just like the surrounding neighborhoods.
I have seen this happen before in Fullerton, that when the Planning committee and/or the Fullerton council gets strong and loud opposition from the people of Fullerton, they will frequently not deal directly with the many issues at hand but rather ask the developer to reduce the scale of the project. I am certainly not suggesting that similar maneuverings does not take place in other cities. However as as long time resident of Fullerton, this is the city that I continue to hope for better from our elected officials.
My definition of better would be to follow existing plans, i.e. the General Plan and to listen to the very strong arguments given by the citizens of Fullerton over the wants of the special interests.
What the city has done so far is not an objective approach in my humble opinion since it continues to ignore our million dollar plus Fullerton General Plan and does not provide a compelling reason why they would agree to so drastically change the current zoning.
As I stated above, if I or one of my neighbors (without any connections to the city hierarchy) wanted to convert a single family 1/2 acre lot to a multi-unit townhouse development, the chances of this getting city approval is next to nil, yet they want to accommodate these large developers. This does not strike me as fair and consistent treatment by the city. Who you are should not dictate the response from the city but rather the city should always be consistent in its approach to everyone.
Of course you’ve seen it in Fullerton before, it’s practically SOP.
Coyote Hills is an example of a similar tactic; its value zoned as a (depleted?) oil and gas field is a fraction of its value if zoned for residential development, so the council illegally approves development rights so Chevron can slap a stratospheric valuation on it, making acquisition for parkland (and by parkland I mean real open space, not a Fitzgeraldian greenish belt between hundreds of houses) virtually impossible.
^^^ exactly.
I don’t even think it is depleted. Chevron will never give up their mineral rights.
The fundamental problem (as I see it) is the bestowal of added wealth (defined by decision makers as a species of “property right”) without any concomitant benefit to the community; in fact the community gets the the added burden to the infrastructure, particularly traffic burdens that are almost always dismissed into non-existence by consultants using CEQA as a facade.
Not to mention tax evasion.
Sure, let us pay taxes in the cheapest zone possible, but when we want to sell, POOF, free money.
Change a few people and place names and this piece could be about any number of towns where the government is too close to developers.
And why is that?
1) In many places (Fullerton has always been one of them) growth – of any kind – is seen as an unalloyed good thing. This Nineteenth Century mindset still exists in the minds of the gerontocratic types that are still around.
2) Planning Departments harvest huge developer fees for the General Fund and get employment out of it.
3) Developers give money to pliant candidates, particularly the somnolent, incumbent sort (see also Nineteenth Century mindset, above).
4) There is a regnant, tacit belief that development, any development is a given; and by the time it reaches the “deciders” implausible projects become shrouded in an inevitability that makes the decision makers actually appear to be working for passage (they are).
I appreciate Barry Levinson’s comments, particularly as a property owner. Having said that, I was opposed to any development in Coyote Hills, and fought along with Save Coyote Hills for many years. A majority of Fullertonians (61%) voted against any development with Measure W, and the City and Chevron/Developers let the clock run out while they made the plans we are now discussing.
While I find fault with the City for their egregious disregard of the people’s wishes, I also understood the land had to first be purchased from Chevron. If the City had honored the vote, they could have done much more to raise the needed funds to purchase the land, e.g., donation on water bill, grants, etc. but I also feel that Save Coyote Hills was taken in by working with a City government who were not only deceptive, but doing everything they could to abuse their power and go against the vote on it.
At this point, I find all of this repugnant as there is no integrity in the process or our city government or so called leaders and beyond Melia homes, high density properties are springing up all over town. The only hope left for citizens having a say in their city is the November elections, and we all know that is no guarantee either.
I live in hope for maintaining the intrinsic historic character of Fullerton alongside reasonable new additions with both height and size building restrictions, not the monolithic and overdone plans represented by Melia Homes/Coyote Hills, the Downtown Corridor, College Town and most recently and overdone remodel of our beloved Hillcrest Park.
There are vast differences between restoration and remodeling, progress and building haphazardly without regard to the existing community by all of this is falling on the deaf ears of a city government committed the agenda they currently are.