Huntington Beach City Council election issue: Senior Center

Based on information taken from a variety of sources, including the H.B. City Council Candidates Forum held on Sept. 18, as well as from Voice news stories, interviews and from campaign literature provided by the candidates.

Q. How would you speed up construction of the new senior center on 5-acres of land in Central Park?

Pacific City present time. Photo by John Earl

Issue background: Makar, the developer that agreed to build the senior center in Central Park in lieu of providing park space in its downtown mixed-use development, Pacific City, is behind schedule in construction of the $22 million structure, according to the city’s interpretation (opa-correspondence1)of the Owner Participation Agreement (OPA). The $22 million construction amount (or fee if the developer backs out) is based on an appraisal of the Fair Market Value the Pacific City site, located downtown at PCH and 1st. The city appraised the land for about twice that amount, but a court ruled that its appraiser was under qualified and Makar’s appraisal technique was more accurate (makar-park-fee-arbitration-award2).

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More Than a Hill of Beans: H.B. City Council gives Shea Homes a pass

By John Earl
OC Voice Editor

What some people call a mere Huntington Beach bean field is actually one of California’s last remaining wetland areas, according to environmentalists and scientists for the California Coastal Commission. In either case, all the beans and much of the wetlands habitat will vanish soon due to a 5-2 city council vote on June 16 that advanced a 6-year-old proposal to build up to 170 homes on the site.

The housing tract will be located on part of a 50-acre section of land on the upper mesa of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, on an historical flood plain adjacent to a county flood control levee, south of Warner Avenue and along the west side of Graham Avenue.

Since 1971 city officials have dreamed of building homes on the site. The project is related to a larger, 30-year-old battle for 1,700-acres of threatened Bolsa Chica wetlands and habitat connected areas, 1,100 of which have been preserved but would have been replaced by now with a 5,700 home marina and other urban sprawl were it not for the efforts of local and state wetlands preservationists.

Councilmember Cathy Green, for one, has been content for years believing that the project would replace only beans, not wetlands, and that the city should keep with its past intentions. “I have always thought of it [the site] as a bean field and always thought that it was going to be developed residential,” she recalled before voting.

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Shea Homes Flood Insurance Promise in Doubt, Letters Show

Editor’s note: The following article is hotly disputed by Shea Homes. Spokesperson Laer Pearce explains Shea’s position in the response the follows directly at the end of this article. The Voice encourages readers to consider the views of all parties involved in this issue.

By John Earl
OC Voice Editor

One of the primary reasons the Huntington Beach City Council accepted the California Coastal Commission’s recommended modifications to the Parkside housing project on the upper mesa of the Bolsa Chica wetlands (June 16) was the developer’s promise to repair the Wintersburg flood control levee up to FEMA standards along the property’s southern border, which Shea vice president Ron Metzler and city staff repeatedly assured the city council would lead to a FEMA certification and the elimination of flood insurance for 7,000 homes located all the way to the 405 freeway and north of Edinger Avenue.

They pointed to a 2002 FEMA letter as proof that the flood map for that area would be changed after Shea’s mandated improvements are made. The letter confirmed that the improvements would lead to lower or zero flood insurance premiums for an unknown number of people.

But Bolsa Chica Land Trust director Flossie Horgan tried to tell the council about a recent request to the city by Shea Homes to “consider a design alternative that would limit the improvement of the levee along the C05 Wintersburg Channel to the developed frontage in lieu of the entire length of the property as originally required under the conditions of approval for the project,” according to a Jan. 23, 2007 letter from City Engineer Travis K. Hopkins to the Coastal Commission.

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Cooking up Campaign Issues in Surf City

Or Joe & Cathy’s Ungodly Patriotism

By John Earl
OC Voice Editor

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Congratulations, you guys down there,” Bakersfield City Councilmember, Jacquie Sullivan, said over the phone when reached by the OC Voice.

She must have been smiling from ear to ear, just like Jan Crouch on Trinity Broadcasting Network, when she rejoiced, in her bouncy Bakersfield country-style voice, “I just heard about it, that’s very exciting news.”

Sullivan is the founder of In God We Trust – America Inc., a non profit 503c3 organization formed in 2002 “To promote patriotism by encouraging elected city officials to display our national motto ‘In God We Trust’ in every city hall in America.”

She was talking about the April 7 vote by the Huntington Beach City Council to make “In God We Trust” the city’s new motto to be hung in the council chambers.

The council debate preceding the vote was a sectarian skirmish, ill-timed for Mayor Debbie Cook, a democrat, who wants to replace republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher next November to represent the 46^th Congressional District,* where God and country are a normal part of political discourse and decision making.

In 2002, during her first one-year term as mayor (councilmembers rotate yearly to fill the position), Cook respected God and Country by keeping the two separate, as many believe that America’s most authoritative guide to law and order-the U.S. Constitution-requires elected officials to do-by not holding city sanctioned invocations.

Since starting her current term as mayor, however, Cook has followed tradition and the invocation is part of the city council’s official routine.

Cook, who told the Voice in a March interview that “I don’t talk about religion,” bristled when asked then if her change of heart had anything to do with her campaign for congress. “No! The Constitution has a prohibition against religious tests…So what was the next question you’re asking me,” she snapped.

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Community Voices

Why I Proposed a Spay and Neuter Ordinance

By Keith Bohr
Mayor Pro-Tem, Huntington Beach, California

I have had a few former elected officials over the past few months advise me that one should not meddle when it comes to people’s children or their animals. Definitely information I could have used a year or more ago!

So why did I propose the City of Huntington Beach adopt a “Mandatory Spay Neuter Chip” Ordinance?

A quick look at the numbers:

Six million cats and dogs in the United States are euthanized each year. In California approximately 800,000 dogs and cats end up in taxpayer-funded shelters every year and more than half are euthanized at a cost of more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

Orange County Animal Care Services, contracting with 21 cities, including Huntington Beach, picked up 29,690 stray animals in 2006. Despite commendable efforts by the county to reunite these animals with their owners, or to adopt them out to new owners, the county still had to euthanize more that 12,000 dogs and cats that year. Huntington Beach, which pays the County approximately $400,000 annually for animal control, accounted for more than 1,500 dogs and cats that were picked up, and 40 percent of those were euthanized.

We are killing too many of our pets!

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Campaign Reform H.B. Style

Isn’t $250,000 Enough?

By John Earl
OC Voice Editor

As a candidate for governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed “I don’t need to take any [campaign contribution] money from anybody else; I have plenty of money myself.”

And he warned that, “Any of those kinds of real, big, powerful special interests, if you take money from them, you owe them something.”

Five years later, Governor Schwarzenegger has collected over $124 million in campaign contributions from special interest groups, the largest chunk, over $20 million, coming from real estate, development and construction concerns, according to ArnoldWatch.org. And critics say he has served the needs of corporations over the needs of the people.

While cynics, who lament the loss of “one person one vote” to “one dollar one vote,” created by corporate donors and PACS, and call for public financing of campaigns as a solution, Huntington Beach Councilmember Don Hansen and some of his colleague’s think they have a better idea: allow unlimited individual campaign contributions to city council candidates.

Last August, Hansen proposed increasing the current $300 limit to $500 retroactively, but removed the latter when skeptics objected that past limit violations could be covered up. A subcommittee was then formed to study the overall issue of campaign regulation reform and to make recommendations to the city council at a later date, which it did at a March 17 study session.

Hansen chaired the committee and councilmembers Cathy Green and Jill Hardy joined him along with several H.B. residents. The committee met 5 times and reviewed campaign regulations for 7 other Orange County cities and the State.

Two main issues remain unsettled: spending limits and whether to redact personal address information from electronic (Internet) filings of candidates’ financial contribution updates.

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H.B. Senior Center Passes: Controversies remain over funding & EIR

By Rashi Kesarwani
OC Voice Staff Writer

The Huntington Beach City Council was greeted by dozens of residents at its Feb. 4 meeting, as it considered an appeal of the Planning Commissions previous approval of a $22 million senior center to be built on a 5-acre expanse of Central Park, across from the Huntington Beach Central Library.

Proponents claim that the new facility is needed to replace the aging Rodger’s Senior Center, located at 17th and Orange streets, and to meet the needs of a growing senior population.

Opponents say they support a new senior center, but they are concerned about its location and environmental impact, as well as its “hidden costs” and how to prioritize use of badly needed but limited park funds.

Ultimately, the council voted to move forward with the project in a 5-2 vote. Councilmember Jill Hardy and Mayor Debbie Cook voted no.

Although Huntington Beach voters initially green lighted the project in an “advisory” ballot initiative known as Measure T in Nov. 2006, opponents of the plan argue voters were not aware of the environmental impact or costs of a state-of-the-art facility in Central Park.

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