Committees, evictions, cannabis, oh my: this could be a late one.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend this one as I’ll be across the Fairgrounds at Orange Coast College doing an event with Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns (a perfectly valid excuse to skip this meeting IMHO). But it’s a packed agenda and worth diving into a bit.

Setting aside the consent calendar, which has some eye-raising grants that will be worth circling back to for a later post, the first big item is the appointments to city committees. Usually a humdrum affair, the committee selection process is now a bit more political thanks to some well-meaning (but frankly misguided) structural reforms. I’ll be curious to see how the Staff intends to handle the issue of getting equal representation for all the city’s districts on each committee while maintaining continuity with some of the committees’ most dedicated members.

The original agenda had two items related to cannabis: one for a Planning Commission appeal for a proposed shop near Mesa Verde, and one regarding a potential moratorium on new applications. Frankly I find the entitlement process for these shops to be deeply uninteresting except to the extent they seem to be crowding out the rest of the city’s planning business. So I was relieved to see the city staff bowing to reality and considering a moratorium… except this item’s now been pulled to be considered for a later date. So we’re too busy to even talk about making ourselves a little less busy. Makes sense.

There is also an update on the proposed Office of Emergency Services project at Fairview Development Center. The City is pretty hostile to this project, and you really can’t blame them: it makes very little sense to site an emergency operations hub in the center of a dense urban city with only congested arterial road access to major airports and highways. The Staff has produced a “kitchen sink” objection letter to the draft EIR for the project, which should sail through without too much discussion.

But the biggie of the night certainly will be the proposed eviction ordinance. This one is so meaty it deserves its own post, so keep an eye out for that.