Council Meeting Alert

The Mission Viejo City Council will meet on Mon., Aug. 20. The open session starts at 6:00 p.m. The following information was forwarded to this blog as an alert to community members.

Several items of importance are on the agenda that have long-term negative impacts on the community.

The first is Item #10 on the Consent Calendar. This is the second reading of an ordinance that greatly increases the size of commercial real estate signage. This ordinance will bring visual clutter to neighborhood shopping centers, and commercial real estate signs will draw attention away from the store merchants’ signs.

Item #20 is an appeal of the Planning and Transportation Commission's approval of a 7-Eleven Store at the site of a Union 76 gas station on the corner of Marguerite and Trabuco.

Under Old Business is Item #21 - the second reading approving fire maps. The title is very misleading. The council majority (with a 4-1 vote: Ury, Kelley, Leckness and Reardon approved; Schlicht dissented) repackaged the fire maps and renamed them Special Fire Protection Areas. This is a combination of the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps, along with the two optional Ember Zone Maps that the council rejected on numerous occasions. With new wording, the council created a zone called Special Fire Protection Areas, which encompasses the same footprint of ALL the rejected maps. This is government at its worst – putting 15,000 homes - half the housing stock in Mission Viejo - into this zone without residents’ knowledge or consent.

Not only will this new fire zone designation have a negative impact on property values, it will place new legal liabilities on the homeowners.

Neither the council nor the fire authority has the power or ability to state that insurance rates will not be affected; additionally, the Civil Code requires real estate disclosures on any material facts that impact the value or desirability of the property.

For background information, refer to research entered into the public record by Councilwoman Cathy Schlicht, http://www.missionviejoca.org/html/article123.html

An article that lists streets within the fire zone districts can be found at http://www.missionviejoca.org/html/article125.html

Please attend the council meeting on Aug. 20 and share your opinions and input with the council. Those who cannot attend the meeting but want their comments to become part of the public record may email City Clerk Karen Hamman, asking for inclusion in the public record: KHamman@cityofmissionviejo.org. Please state the agenda item in your correspondence.