A Defeated Petz Speaks
Mayor Bob Kellar told the audience that Mayor Pro Tem Dante Acosta was waylaid and would be arriving late, so he gave the invocation in his place. Kellar spoke of the attack in Orlando. He said such events are "occurring too often...[we are] in the middle of a strange form of war." After expressing his support for the victims, he invited the audience to observe a moment of silence. Then, he called Steve Petzold forward to give the pledge--it's usually some Boy Scouts.
Petzold was then also the first to speak during public participation. He reflected on Measure E, which recently passed and means a quarter-billion dollars from taxpayers for College of the Canyons. Petzold had staunchly opposed the plan. "I knew that the odds were long against me," he said, and he laid much of the blame on local news outlets. "The media coverage was terrible!" (He did note some exceptions.) He wondered why The Signal hadn't interviewed him and why Leon Worden hadn't presented all the viewpoints on the matter on SCVTV. As Petzold left, he told Kellar (I believe), "Here's a picture of you with a shotgun," while handing the photo to the city clerk. This was presumably a reference to the politically-motivated restraining order that COC's Dianne Van Hook sought against Steve Petzold prior to the Measure E vote. Petzold had made an anti-E video in which he held a pellet gun (brandished against tax increases, not Van Hook) which she apparently found threatening.
Elaine Ballace, another target of one of Van Hook's sensational restraining orders, also mentioned her notoriety rather obliquely. "Maybe you've seen my name in the news lately?" she said. (Ballace's was for remarks that seemed to advocate violence in opposition to Measure E, but Ballace's violence is strictly limited to her often venomous words.) Ballace reiterated her belief that city staff need to change their relationship with mobile home park residents and park owners. She said that the system works against the poor who need help the most but get it the least.
Christian Gadbois, Santa Clarita's most ardent let's-build-a-BMX-track activist, came to the microphone next. He said that he has gotten together most of what's needed for a BMX track and wants a place to store the stuff--or, better yet, a temporary site to build a track. Another parent spoke in support following Gadbois.
The last public speaker was Cam Noltemeyer. She was upset about the city giving perks to developers and she vowed to dig deeper into where Dante Acosta's campaign money has been coming from.
City Manager Ken Striplin responded briefly. He told Noltemeyer that the collection of development impact fees was merely delayed for some developers; they would still be collected eventually. In a change of course, Striplin also said that he would be meeting regarding the BMX track. Up to this point, he's said that it's a possibility in the future but wasn't making efforts to build one before recreational amenities that are already on the schedule.
Parks Active, Parks Passive
The consent calendar was the usual collection of items relating to contracts, maintenance, and bookkeeping. A few items did attract special attention. Gadbois came back to the microphone for Item 5, which proposed spending $70,000 to acquire 14 acres of open space. He re-stated his interest in building a BMX track, and he asked how open spaces were identified for purchase and how land use (passive use or active park) was determined. Obviously, he wants a parcel for a bike track.
Al Ferdman mentioned similar concerns on Item 8, which covered the annual open space assessment and increase--$1/year is allowed. He said that the city has realized cost savings when it comes to the assessment and he felt that an increase was thus unwarranted. He added that up to 10% of purchases can be active use park space, but to date, there is "exactly no acreage for active parkland" from the assessment. Why aren't people getting things like BMX tracks and active use facilities with their money, he wondered.
In response to the speakers, Parks Director Rick Gould said the property proposed for purchase at tonight's meeting served the needs of wildlife better than the needs of BMX enthusiasts. He explained that it was very steep but ideally suited to linking parts of the Angeles National Forest. Darren Hernandez, wearing an interesting tie, spoke next. In answer to a question from Councilmember TimBen Boydston, he said that 10% of open space assessment funds could go to active use and facility development uses per state law. However, he said that the intent of the assessment has always been "purchase and preservation of undeveloped land." Boydston seemed satisfied that active uses could be funded with the assessment (spirit of the assessment or not) and is clearly receptive to the BMX interests. The last word on open space went to City Manager Ken Striplin. He called the open space district "hugely successful," and he defended increases in the assessment to cover ascending debt, increasing maintenance costs, and to give them some cash on hand for unexpected property purchase opportunities.
The consent calendar was approved.
You may have noticed that no awards, recognition, or councilmember updates have been mentioned. Indeed, Mayor Bob Kellar put updates after the consent calendar this evening. It's unclear why this happened, but in any case, updates from the council were relatively brief. Councilmember Marsha McLean mentioned some advice that she gave students at Albert Einstein Academy when speaking before their graduating class. She said that they should never be afraid to ask questions, and she tied this to a more grown-up lesson of asking questions about coverage in the media. She said that she has been incorrectly quoted/portrayed/represented on social media, so she felt it was important to not believe everything one reads but rather dig deeper. McLean often paints herself as a victim of social media coverage, but specific grievances have not been forthcoming.
For his update, Councilmember Boydston asked about the city employee who had been caught embezzling (he made the news a couple weeks ago). City Manager Striplin said that an investigatory report would be coming out in about two weeks with more details.
Hospitality
Patrick Leclair gave a devastatingly drawn-out presentation on a proposal to slightly change the build-out of the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital (HMNH, no longer the palindromic HMNMH as "memorial" is gone). He could have presented the whole thing in about a minute, but it took him that long just to lay out the schedule of his presentation. It seemed like a presentation made in anticipation of community opposition, a suspicion strengthened by the fact that Newhall Hospital's Roger Seaver (CEO) had brought a crowd of supporters and prepared his own tedious remarks about the changes. The proposal was to change the hospital land from being designated as "public/institutional" to "specific plan" and to let the inpatient building be about 30,000 feet bigger than had been originally suggested. The location of the helicopter landing pad would also be shifted a bit north.
Seaver claimed that the changes were made to make sure that the hospital would be in line with new requirements (bigger corridors were required, for example), and there were also some changes to the cafeteria and delivery rooms. He asked supporters to raise their hands in support, be he had graciously requested they not all come to the microphone to voice their support. The only speaker was Cam Noltemeyer. She lives in The Summit and was very concerned about the change in plans. She mentioned a lawsuit was a possibility. Her grievances included the change in land use designation, which she felt could threaten development agreements made to the community. She also noted that the helipad would be closer to homes, and she wondered why an EIR hadn't been required. "This is about campaign contributions!" she concluded.
As for the council, most of the concerns came from Councilmember Boydston. He wondered why an increase of tens of thousands of square feet in hospital space hadn't also included an increase in parking. Leclair explained that parking already exceeded the requirement. Boydston was not satisfied, and eventually Roger Seaver came up to explain that most of the additional space wouldn't actually bring more people--it would be bigger corridors, multiple rooms into which the same patient might be alternately moved, and so on. Boydston asked if Seaver could guarantee that parking would be adequate, and while Seaver said he could reassure Boydston, he added, "I think my guarantee would be worthless." That is, he'd be meeting requirements but couldn't state it would work out perfectly. as for the changes in designation from institutional to special plan, City Attorney Joe Montes explained that the hospital's land use exceeded institutional guidelines, so they'd have to change the guidelines for the whole city or just make HMNH a special case. The latter option seemed more prudent. With these explanations offered, the hospital plan was approved.
The Budget
The second big item of the night was presentation of the 2016-17 budget for Santa Clarita. Insomuch as he is capable of enthusiasm, presenting this item gets Ken Striplin pretty darn excited. He even allows such celebratory excesses as bold fonts and attention-grabbing captions, like in the slide below:
The budget is $219.6M. In terms of expenditures, it's about 47% operations, 23% capital projects, 23% personnel. In terms of revenue, sales tax and property tax together account for two-thirds. After going through the big picture stuff came the much more fun discussion of specific expenditures: $84,000 for river encampment clean-ups (homeless removal), $41,000 increase in the base budget for day camps, $50,000 for the tourism district (have your conference in beautiful Santa Clarita!), $78,000 to upgrade communter WiFi services, $135,000 for Cemex lobbying (nope, it's not over), almost $300,000 for public access television operations and technology, $2.5M for Saugus library design, $200,000 for the Safe Routes to Schools program, and, of course, $15.2M for a parking structure in Old Town Newhall because, well, just because.
There was some discussion. Boydston asked about money for public art (including art for the roundabout, a very sore subject from the past) and spoke scornfully of "stalling techniques" that had been used to effectively veto art that some councilmembers found less than desirable. Boydston also asked about payments for a company that ostensibly helps filter spam out of emails. "Can we fire that company and use a different company?" he asked. Boydston said 47 of 60 emails he had were spam.
The last hearing was on adjustments to fees (technically there was one more, but it was on streetlight maintenance districts so it doesn't really count). The city tries to cover its administrative/staff/material costs from the fees collected for various services. The hearing was on whether these adjustments were acceptable. Al Ferdman came up to speak. He first pointed out that there were different fees for different sorts of groups, such as for-profit vs. non-profit and resident vs. non-resident. He asked how that squared with the fees not being to generate revenue but merely cover costs. His second point was that some fees seemed unreasonable. For example, there's a special events fee of $25/day for each outlet used.
Boydston asked for a response to Ferdman's questions. City Manager Striplin said that while they could only recover costs, there were no laws saying that the city couldn't subsidize some groups (e.g., non-profits) with payments from others (e.g., non-Claritans). Rick Gould explained that the outlet cost came from the fact that there is a labor cost associated with, for example, going to a street light to open the outlet and then return to close it after the event. This seemed to satisfy everyone, and the meeting ended shortly after.
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