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Lack of a plan jeopardizes city The state collects local tax dollars and returns a portion back – no surprise there. Mission Viejo was developed through the efforts of local citizens to gain more direct control over local infrastructure instead of depending on state politicians to delegate tax funds for local projects. Norman P. Murray, Mission Viejo’s first mayor, is one of our city’s founding fathers. I had the privilege of working with Norm and such others as Jack Anderson, Dr. Michael Kennedy and Dorothy Wedel on the Planning Commission. Along with transportation issues, the Planning Commission also presides over preliminary plans for housing, including low-income housing. When our city’s founders drafted the city zoning plan years ago, it incorporated a state-required adult entertainment district. For the solution of the requirement to zone such a district, our current zoning map allows such use only in limited areas, and those areas have landlords that do not have adult entertainment businesses as tenants. That pretty much solved citizens’ concerns over that use and complied with the state’s requirement. The state is not threatening a lawsuit because we have a zoning plan in effect for adult entertainment despite not having such businesses. That makes sense to me, and I believe it is a good way to handle low-income housing in our built-out city. The state requires a plan that includes additional provisions not offered to other landowners unless low-income housing is built. These extra mandated incentives should be all that our city offers and not more. The state does not require overriding the General Plan concerns in approving low-income projects. Why not comply with the law and not give away everything else? Recently, certain projects have been rejected over those related issues. Some housing projects have been approved, and the city is now being challenged in court. The very basis of this lawsuit is that Mission Viejo did not complete a plan for low-income housing, as it did with the adult entertainment plan. Therefore, we are out of compliance by not having a plan – a plan does not exist. The Planning Commission I worked on was very close to presenting a plan two years ago. I think the plan likely would have complied with state law, but decisions still would have been up to the property owner regarding whether or not to build such housing. To date, even with new planning commissioners and an ad hoc committee of Councilmen Frank Ury and Lance MacLean, such a plan is still not developed. My feeling on the subject is that the state has not reasonably funded nor analyzed the true possibility that Mission Viejo can actually build massive affordable housing without detrimental effect on other elements of the General Plan. If this is true, I believe the solution would be to propose an affordable housing plan based on only the minimum “perks” the state requires and allow the landowner to decide whether or not to build such housing. This approach would be similar to the situation with adult entertainment districts and, to date, none have been built nor proposed due to financial concerns and impacts. The current council’s approach is absurd. They’ve provided giveaways to two developers far beyond the average property owner’s privileges so that wealthy landowners can capitalize on the city’s lack of an approved low-income housing plan. The situation has evolved to a point this city is not now in a position to defend in court the lack of a plan. Instead of the current approach – which clearly has not worked – we should be vigorously defending a submitted plan that is designed to minimize low-income housing in accordance with actual state compliance requirements and not saturated with developer leniency. We formed this city to have control of its own destiny, and state laws require a city to do just that. Yet, some current city officials have tossed that responsibility aside. The city is now being sued, which jeopardizes the future of Mission Viejo. Bo Klein |
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