Given that this meeting is likely to be the City Council’s only meeting in July, it’d better be good, right? 😅 Let’s dive in.

But first, what’s not on the Agenda:

• The beleaguered inclusionary housing ordinance and its associated in-lieu fees have been punted to August. This item was scheduled to be discussed at this meeting, but it’s nowhere to be found. I’ve heard a rumor that Council Member Andrea Marr will be absent and asked for a continuance of this item until she returns.
• Despite otherwise proceeding in lockstep with the Ketchum-Libolt Park redesign, which is on the Agenda this week, the review of the Shalimar Park redesign is also missing. Hat-tip to my eagle-eyed CMABS colleague, David Martinez, for spotting the possible reason: check out the Closed Session item, which features a conference with real property negotiators regarding 778 Shalimar Drive. This parcel just happens to be adjacent to Shalimar Park. There have been talks about expanding the park within the City’s existing right of way for a long time, and of course the park’s redesign via a state grant has been ongoing. Acquiring the adjacent property would likely disrupt these redesign plans, so perhaps that is why those plans are now on hold.
• An update about Fairview Development Center is also notably absent, though the City recently announced that the public outreach meetings that were supposed to happen in May and June are going to be crammed instead into one week at the end of July. Perhaps the FDC consultants also took the last month off, too.

Despite those notable misses, there is still plenty to watch during this meeting.

First, the City is seeking to apply for an Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) grant to support the City’s Senior Center Senior Taxi Program, which provides free rides to Costa Mesa seniors to medical and other appointments. The grant has to be approved at the Council level because, if successful, the City would be obligated to provide a 20% match (totaling about $57,000). This seems like a great program and, frankly, it’s the absolute least a city could do when it has a significant, non-driving population and it has historically committed itself to a 99% car-dependent transportation system.

That said, I would love to hear more about the little anecdote in the Agenda Report noting that the demand for the program has increased. How much? Over what time period? Is the program sustainable past 2025 even if the grant funding is secured? The Agenda Report seems awfully light.

And speaking of light Agenda Reports, I’m going to skip over what is effectively the second reading of the e-bike ordinances (I’ve written plenty on the subject here and here) and head straight to the Orange County Power Authority (OCPA) feasibility study.

I predicted last week that an OCPA-related item was likely on its way, though I didn’t think it would show up this soon. And moreover, this wasn’t the item I expected. The very short Agenda Report notes that this item isn’t to authorize an internal investigation into OCPA membership, but to consider whether to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with OCPA covering Southern California Edison (SCE) load data for the City of Costa Mesa. OCPA would then use this data to run its own feasibility study, which it will then report back to the City Council.

When is the feasibility study likely to come back? Well, Staff estimates that it will take SCE twelve weeks to provide OCPA with the relevant data, and then six more weeks for OCPA to develop the report. Counting on my fingers and toes, that would put the report’s due date at… oh look the end of November, just after the 2024 election. Isn’t that tidy.

If I wasn’t clear enough in my prior blog post, I think joining the OCPA at this point is a really, really bad idea. Not only am I not convinced of its merits or its financial stability, I don’t even think this furthers the City’s environmental sustainability goals. I’ve had it pointed out to me that the State of California has already mandated 100% renewable and zero-carbon retail energy by 2045 statewide, and that investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison are already busily working towards this mandate. So to the extent community choice aggregation (CCA) programs like OCPA were created to speed up the transition to renewables, that purpose seems well and truly undercut by SB 100.

And further, the City has already verbally committed to (but has been somewhat underwhelming in executing on) the two policies that really matter if greenhouse gas reduction is your thing: reducing vehicle miles traveled and promoting in-fill, walkable development. This is the hard work of local government that the Council majority has spent years winning hearts and minds. In contrast, doing something like joining the OCPA, which is either 5 or 6 years too late (since acceleration towards renewables now matters much less in the wake of SB 100) or 5 or 6 years too early (since OCPA is still in the process of recovering from its very rocky first few years) would just be green window-dressing with a lot of unnecessary financial risks attached. This Council already has a profoundly green agenda. We just need to execute. And OCPA is going to be a distraction from this important work.

But if I had to bet, I’d guess the City Council majority is going to crawl out on the thin reed of “we’re just considering it!” and let the City Manager bring OCPA back for a more serious consideration after the election. Oh well.

Finally, the last big item (other than the review of the Ketchum-Libolt Park plans referenced above) is a loan agreement in favor of Jamboree Housing for the Senior Center parking lot to permit it to vacuum up the project-based vouchers (PBVs) from the County. PBVs are basically Section 8 vouchers tied to units rather than renters, providing for up to 70% of gap funding between the market rate for the unit and the renter’s ability to pay. As one might imagine, having a whole bunch of those in hand helps a great deal when a developer like Jamboree Housing goes to a bank looking for loan financing of its upcoming housing development. But before they can get the PBVs they have to show “site control”, which is where the lease agreement comes in. In a twist that’s only legible to hard-bitten corporate lawyers like myself, the cost of the lease option is… $10, with an annual lease amount of $1 for 99 years.

Heh. I wish I had those kinds of terms on real property in Costa Mesa. Kidding aside, this isn’t a scandal: nominal consideration is par for the course in these kinds of agreements. But I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried to make hay out of it.

Since the Council majority seems to be on board with this project, I’d bet it passes. Then we’ll just have to wait and see how successful Jamboree is at fundraising.