Citizens 0 for 2 at May 7 Council Meeting
by Dale Tyler

Our esteemed city council failed, once again, on their collective obligation to protect and defend the citizens of Mission Viejo. They agreed to the further destruction of Mission Viejo's business tax base, thus almost ensuring future generations in Mission Viejo will curse the names of these council members, similar to the Butterfield-Withrow-Craycraft council.

What did they do that was so anti-citizen? First, they approved rezoning of four commercial properties to very high-density residential. With a density of more than six times that of the rest of the city, these properties will be developed in such a way to take the maximum money from the rest of Mission Viejo citizens' pockets. This is because housing, especially high-density housing, uses more services than the residents pay in taxes. In the case of the Steadfast/Target property that was recently rezoned by this same council, the net cost to the rest of us is about $5 million over the next 10 years. I would expect this loss to be multiplied for the other four properties, giving us a loss of $2 million-$3 million per year. Yet, this council has now rezoned a total of six properties from commercial to very high-density residential. One must ask why, and the answer seems to be a combination of a lack of courage to stand up to the poverty pimps, a desire for campaign contributions from developers and the BIA (Building Industry Association) and a general misunderstanding of the reasons for the zoning that was done when the city was originally “Master Planned.” Mark my words, this self-serving, short-sighted view will come back to haunt the city in the coming decades. The loss of $20 million-$30 million over 10 years will mean reduced services and possibly higher taxes and fees as the city runs out of money.

You may hear various council members saying “We had to comply with the low-income housing law,” and to some extent this is true, although the so-called law is only a set of guidelines. However, there were ways of complying with the guidelines that would have had much less impact on the city. For example, to meet our current and future needs for low-income housing, we could have rezoned a single area, capable of holding 200 or so low-income units in a secure (walled) area and then placed the Mission Viejo Right to Vote ordinance on the next ballot, thus ensuring that no more housing would be built in Mission Viejo without voter approval. This would ensure that very few low-income units would be needed in the future, since the need for such units comes from building “normal” housing units, at about one low-income unit needed for every seven “normal” units built.

What the council did by their rezoning ordinance is to perpetuate the low-income pyramid scheme by only requiring 15 percent of the zoned units to be built as low income. This ensures that yet more units will be “required” by the guidelines. At the very least, they could have required 25 percent to 50 percent be built as low income to cover future needs. I bet their developer contributors would have hated that.

Also at the May 7 council meeting, Reavis, Ury and MacLean voted to overturn the completely sensible decision to deny a massive addition to 23732 Calle Hogar that would have more than doubled the size of the house. The notice for the May 7 meeting said that the staff suggested deferring the item until the May 21 council meeting, to give the staff time to get neighborhood input on the proposed changes from six bedrooms to four. However, the council went ahead without getting a full sense of what the neighbors thought. The previous plan (six bedrooms) was protested by virtually ever close neighbor who pointed out that it would cause parking and other problems. It turns out that the owner of this property, Lori Ghnouly, wanted to get immediate zoning approval, so she could expand the house and then probably flip it for a profit. While profit is a good thing, leaving her former neighbors with the problems seems somewhat unkind, to say the least. It seems the likely purpose of the addition is to house renters, not her family. What kind of renters would they be? Only time will tell, but it could be used for disabled eldercare or drug rehabilitation or sex offenders. Given the profit motive of the additional space, my guess it would be the highest bidder. The state of California pays top dollar to house sex offenders.

Once again, we lose. Remember this at the next election.