As I hoped it has indeed been busy days at City Hall. There’s a fair amount to unpack. Let’s start with City Council.

On Tuesday, the proposed residential development at 3150 Bear Street and the City’s first round of responses to immigration enforcement actions by the Federal government dominated the conversation.

3150 Bear Street approved, though parking concerns loom over Costa Mesa housing initiatives

With respect to the former, the expected large number of neighbors turned out to speak against the project including a pass-through pedestrian gate, which they feared would permit overflow parking from the development to impact their streets. Bowing to these concerns, the City Council removed the gate. The development was then unanimously approved with only small changes. I think a few things came out of this conversation that are worth noting:

• Overall, Costa Mesans are not anti-housing. Most speakers objected to the gate, not the overall housing development. Several noted the site was suitable for housing. Some specifically supported the project because it addressed housing needs. Certainly there were some speakers who would have preferred the project be scrapped all together, but they were in the clear minority even with a less-than-perfect project at stake.
  
• There is no faith in anyone’s ability to police parking. Residents were clearly skeptical that the development’s homeowners’ association could effectively regulate its residents’ parking habits, and even more skeptical that the City could do so through monitoring and/or permits. At the heart of this concern seemed to be the completely understandable, if paradoxical, position that, because current homeowners have liberally converted their code-required off-street spaces into living or storage space and parked their two, three, four or five cars on the street, the homeowners in the new development will inevitably engage in the same policy-frustrating behavior. Their only recourse, it seemed, was to physically cut the new neighborhood off from the existing one, so as to contain the contagion of parking free-riding.
  
  The city clearly needs to come up with a creative and practical solution here. Otherwise, this widely held view bodes poorly for establishing connectivity in and through the the other Measure K sites.
  
• Absent comprehensive rezoning, every piecemeal Measure K project looks shady (even if it’s not). Albeit by a small number of people, there were multiple references on Tuesday to the unsavory appearances of the housing projects pursued under the Righeimer and Mensinger administrations a decade or so ago. Super Resident Cynthia McDonald took to the mics to insinuate Mayor John Stephens and Council Member Loren Gameros (who happens to be this development’s district representative) had less-than-ethical dealings with the developer. As far as I know there is no direct evidence of that. But, as with the Victoria Place development that was also recently approved, I think this shows that it is hard to manage public expectations without public documents that spell out what the is planning for on these parcels.

Responding to ICE: Did the Council majority make-up and enter its YOLO period?

Back before the 2024 election I wrote the following, trying to game out what city politics would look like if Mike Buley prevailed in the District 1 contest, Jeff Pettis defeated incumbent Jeff Harlan for the District 6 seat, and Mayor John Stephens fell to challenger James Peters:

And even if the Republican challengers win their seats, something that should give conservatives or moderates pause is that the resulting remaining Democratic majority is likely to be much more left-progressive than the current majority. Stephens and Harlan are two of the more moderate Democrats within the six-member bloc. Without them on the dais, the center of gravity of the resulting Democratic majority will lurch left, leading to a more polarized Council and one that is likely to take the City in an even more progressive direction for the next two years. If you want a preview of what that could look like, Huntington Beach has had similar 4-3 energy (in a conservative direction) for the past couple of years. And the results have been, well, volatile.

Two of those three conditions came to pass. Since then I’ve been patiently waiting for signs that the remaining termed-out Democrats (Manuel Chavez, Arlis Reynolds, Andrea Marr, and John Stephens) had realized it was time to start swinging for the fences together in a spirit of “you only (politically) live once”.

Instead, they’ve spend the last six months sniping at each other and threatening a full-on break over the ouster of the city manager. So much for my predictive abilities.

Yet fences may be mending thanks to a common enemy in the Trump Administration. Clearly relishing the opportunity to act with an air of solidarity and defiance, Mayor John Stephens burst out of the gate with a motion to not only endorse staff’s recommendation (which included resolutions reaffirming the city’s existing posture to ICE and writing a letter of support for SB 805) but to also go much further: he directed staff to identify $100,000 of city funds to donate to mutual aid organizations, and he directed the city attorney to look into establishing a legal aid fund and the city’s ability to join the Vazquez Perdomo case. This motion was met with essentially across-the-board support and passed late in the evening, 5-0.

Note the vote count: both Jeff Pettis, who had been in attendance but left the meeting early, and Mike Buley, who was on vacation, were absent from the ICE response discussion.

Now, to be clear, both of their absences seem legit: Pettis mentioned to me his reason for leaving and it was a practical (not political) one, and of course Buley has every right to take vacation time. But I think there is some room for conservatives to be frustrated that, when big cultural issues come to play at City Hall, their philosophical representatives — ones who might have asked practical questions like, “Where do we get his money given our budget woes?”, “Where would we get even more money for a legal defense fund?” and “Is it prudent to pay lawyers with city funds to defend claims made by the Federal government?” — are absent.

The good news for those folks is that I think Pettis and Buley may get another bite at this apple. I’m not entirely confident that Mayor Stephens’s motion is as final as the sympathetic press is breathlessly reporting, as neither the funding nor the other actions recommended by the motion were agendized as potential action items (meaning that treating those recommendations as done-deal “actions” might violate the Brown Act). So I suspect these additional actions may come back for a future vote when, hopefully, both of them will be present.

And even if the motion stands on a Brown Act nuance I’m missing, I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this matter.

Several of the public commenters were local activists that stressed that mutual aid was merely “a good start”. So what might be next? If public comment is any indication, in addition for asking the city to devote even more money to mutual aid and legal defense, I heard calls for rent control, rent registries, and non-payment eviction protections. These echoed similar calls a few years ago (from the same Santa Ana-based activists) when evictions were spiking as part of the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back then, these proposals were met with a frosty reception, particularly from conservative Don Harper and the market-friendly Jeff Harlan.

But both Harper and Harlan are off the City Council and, like I said above, I suspect it is “YOLO” time for several on the dais. Council Members Arlis Reynolds and Andrea Marr both gave remarks that implied they were open at least to the idea of rental registries, if not more. So keep and eye on the immigration debate morphing into a fight over renters’ rights.

Meanwhile, at the Arts Commission: unusual appearances, and a big task ahead

I caught up on the meeting last night at the Arts Commission, which was tragically under-attended (not like I’m helping matters — I admit I usually skip it myself, and last night was no exception). However it was an interesting meeting to review, particularly because the Arts Commission dipped its toe into the next round of updates to the Arts & Culture Master Plan (ACMP) The conversation was extremely preliminary so very little of substance came out of it. But I would highlight two observations for your attention:

• Both Planning Commissioner Angely Andrade Vallarta and Council Member Jeff Pettis made appearances in public comment before the Arts Commission, the former encouraging the Arts Commission to find opportunities for art in the upcoming planning of the Fairview Developmental Center site and the latter encouraging the Commission to emphasize public art in the ACMP update. While Pettis disclaimed his position as a member of the City Council and stated he appeared only in his individual capacity, Andrade Vallarta specifically identified herself as a city planning commissioner.
  
  These were, to my knowledge, unprecedented appearances. While neither official’s comments were particularly troubling, they struck me as odd. Andrade Vallarta’s decision to claim the title of planning commissioner could, if her comments had been more specific about policy, have had the effect of sounding like she spoke for the Planning Commission as a whole, a big no-no under the Brown Act. And typically sitting city council members avoid discussing, even in an individual capacity, any commission business, particularly because that business usually ends up in front of the Council down the road.
  
• Arts Commissioner Allison Mann gingerly questioned the prominent inclusion of the buzz words “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the ACMP, a critique that in turn received polite if firm pushback from Commission Chair Alisa Ochoa. I reviewed the ACMP and that language caught my eye as well. Given that the ACMP is as much a platform for grant applications as it is a plan for future art programming, I think Mann is right to wonder if words really do matter here. The brand of DEI (TM) has been pretty irrevocably tarnished, particularly with the Trump Administration. So, as a matter of pure self-interest when asking for federal funds, the Arts Commission should consider getting out the red pen. Told you the ACMP was gearing up to be a big cultural fight.

And finally: the City capped off the week with yet another timely publication of a public meeting agenda, this time for the Planning Commission. Don’t worry: it’s not a big deal. Just a little lot subdivision on Santa Ana Avenue…. and a study session considering zoning code updates that could touch literally every corner of the city.

Phew. And for a minute there, I was worried City Hall had forgotten it’s August.