THE WEDNESDAY CITY COUNCIL AFTERMATH!!!! Thank you to everyone who came to the meetings on Wednesday it was a wonderful crowd. I know the Council took note!! For those who didn’t make it here is a brief update. The meeting went well predominantly! Two story homes in one story neighborhoods will be take on a case by case basis as will metal roofs, Neighbors of 865 spoke out against a very noisy fountain that runs from 1am to 10pm. Note you need to have Design Review permission to put in a fountain in the front of your home. The drive thru restaurant idea was nixed, which I think pleased a lot of people. The Stoneman School ‘project’ has been put on hold for six months pending anyone in the city actually being interested in the project. In the meantime there will be some general maintenance done on the building up to $140,000 so as not to trigger ADA. The Parklet is still on the books after the second bid came in at $30,000 over budget! Instead of Government style bids the City will now look for General Contractors to bid as long as they have $2,000,000 in insurance! An approval of a letter suggesting interest in a company called San Marino Venture Group because was no approved. No one could understand what they were offering the city and why they needed the letter anyway! I think they will be back with a proper presentation does anyone know either Robert Sweeney or Eric Miller both of San Marino? Financially the City seems to be fine due to higher than expected Property Tax revenue. Although some of the money is already earmarked for projects that should be done either the end of this year or early next. I think one of the projects is the $3 million on new streetlights! By 11.00pm when the EMERGENCY SHELTERS came up most of the remaining residents that had stayed to discuss this FIRST READING of the code change were tired as were the Council Member who had been in meetings starting at 4.30pm. The code amendment was voted on and passed unanimously............ The code amendment basically has allowed for EMERGENCY HOMELESS SHELTERS on ANY C-1 LOT. There is no requirement for them to be away from schools, private homes or other commercial enterprises. I have attached a copy of the Agenda item it is 26 pages long BUT should be read. I will also attach La Canada’s (in another post) Overlay system which has much more specific areas actually designated for these shelters. There is an assumption that any property value in San Marino is too expensive for a project like a Homeless Shelter. May I just remind you how close we came to having Condominiums in San Marino? The Housing Element had noted properties for ‘affordable housing’ and the City put our minds at ease after designating these properties saying that property values in San Marino were too expensive to purchase for that type of housing. A developer read our codes and realized that he could build 9 condominiums on a commercial lot NOT the ‘affordable housing’ that was supposed to have gone there but his plan was to build nine $3 million condos on a private road without the required set backs needed by the rest of us BECAUSE building on a commercial lots has less stringent requirement to build than we do in our private homes. Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Now we are not even talking ‘affordable housing’ we are talking Homeless Shelters and we don’t even have any homeless in our city! I believe any good real estate attorney could poke holes in our code and utilize it for profit as nearly happened with the ‘affordable housing’ mess. Just so you know there are other options available, the overlay system, or rezoning a particular area, even requiring a CUP after the first Homeless Shelter is built (a homeless shelter has to be able to be build without any special variances or conditional use permit for the first one). We can even contact adjacent cities and ask if we may assist in financing their shelters in lieu of zoning for one of our own. Anyway please read the information regarding Homeless Shelters so you are aware of what can be allowed in our city. It is important that we are all educated on this matter.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 19:52:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015