EXTRAORDINARY BUSINESS

Orange County Housing
Finance Trust (OCHFT) Update
 

George Weiss:  Manager of the Trust, Adam Eliason, gave an update on this organization and their work. The City is a member along with 21 Orange County municipalities. The trust provides gap funding for housing projects meeting its criteria, (up to $2M per project).  The Trust (OCHFT) was formed in 2019 as a Joint Power Authority between the County of Orange and the cities throughout the county. OCHFT was created to fund housing, specifically assisting the homeless population and persons and families of very low and extremely low income. I will be delving into how Laguna Beach can take advantage of this group’s funding and will report back in a future recap.
 

For more information, visit: https://ochft.org/

 

 

 

CONSENT CALENDAR

(Items Discussed By Council Members Or The Public)
 

Dee Perry Being Recognized By Laguna Beach Woman’s Club As 2022 Woman Of The Year
 

George Weiss: Dee Perry taught in the Laguna Beach School District for 37 years. She is serving a second term on the Laguna Beach School Board and is an advocate for students, parents, and citizens, so their views can be heard School Board decisions are aligned with these view.
 

On June 17, Dee will be honored at a luncheon hosted by the Women’s Club. Tickets for the event are available at this site: https://ochft.org/  Please consider joining this organization as well. I am told that men can also join as members.

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Proposed Sale Of Ti Amo Property
Sponsored By Councilwoman Iseman
 

George Weiss: Last year, the City purchased the Ti Amo property for $2.7M as a site for a new fire station. A study which the City paid $100,000 for showed that the site could be used as a fire station, but it would need underground parking and special reinforcement of the ground floor to hold the weight of fire trucks and is too small to also fit an ambulance. Parties have agreed that it is not a suitable site.
 

Although I voted to buy the property, I later expressed my doubts about the suitability of the site and proposed we decline the purchase. The purchase was a bit rushed. The City Manager, acting as the head real estate negotiator, did not get an appraisal – so now we do not know if the property is worth the purchase price. The Council was not informed of fire department’s plans to install in-house ambulance service at the time the purchase was being considered.  
 

Council Member Iseman proposed getting an appraisal and placing the property up for sale. We compromised by deferring this action until a more suitable site was found for the fire station.
 

It turns out that selling a City-owned property is not easy. First the property must be declared as “surplus” (no longer needed). Then it must be offered for sale as an affordable housing site. One must wait 90-120 days after this to place the property up for sale. Exchanging the property for another requires going through this same process. Yikes! The City Council did not know this going into deliberations to purchase the property, which is unfortunate.
 

Parking Master Plan
Subcommittee Update
 

George Weiss: The Staff report says a purchase order  has been issued to 2022 transportation planning and engineering consultants Fehr And Peers who will assist the subcommittee with technical tasks and financing options for a parking master plan. Since the subcommittee was formed in January. Council members Bob Whalen and Sue Kempf, who comprise the subcommittee, have been meeting monthly. Except for one public listening session, the meetings are not open to the public.
 

A second public listening meeting was promised but has not materialized. There was an assumption by the public that an overall plan would be proposed – not a series of one-off solutions.

Presbyterian Church Parking Structure: It is odd that weeks after the listening session a MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) was passed by the Council on a 3-2 vote to build a parking structure 33 feet high and hundreds of feet long across the street from the Suzi Q Senior Center on Third Street. The MOU states that the City must pay off the mortgage for one of the parking site properties at a cost of $1.9M.
 

Here is a summary of the costs including financing:

$9.8M construction + $2M entitlement and design + $2M cash payment to pay off the mortgage + $ 8.6M land rent = $22.4. According to appraisals, the three church properties the City is leasing for $8.6M are worth $7M.

Debt Service (principal and interest) = $17M

 

Total: $22.4M + $17M = $39.4M

 

Considering the record high inflation, we are experiencing, the final cost of the project will be much higher. See my previous City Council Recap of May 10 or go to my website for details on this project.

Financing options for future parking structures include increasing the sales tax, increasing business license fees (Laguna’s are among the lowest in the State) to forming a business improvement district. The first two options require approval by voters and the third option must be approved by landlords who would tax themselves to provide revenue for the improvement district.

 

Also of concern: one City Councilman who helped draft the long-term lease agreement for the proposed new parking lot has a close personal relationship with the landowners’ representative, while another Councilman has a nearby business location that will stand to benefit from this parking lot. While not a true financial conflict of interest, even the appearance of a conflict of interest should be avoided or at least stated for the public record.
 

My guess is that the subcommittee will find a need for parking structures along Coast Highway in the Hip District and other areas. This will help the Coast Inn, as the developer is waiting for this to be approved before renovation of the site, which could proceed now if the developer chose to. That project was approved without requiring ANY additional parking for the twenty-eight guest rooms, hotel staff or the Bear Flag restaurant, which will occupy the former site of the Boom Boom Room.

 

 

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