City Council Preview - August 7 (Part 2)

Yesterday we discussed some recommendations from staff, many of which appeared ill thought out and wasteful. Today I’ll cover some more issues coming up Tuesday night.

PERMIT PARKING (Item 11)

Three permit parking projects are coming to the Council. Staff is recommending one to be approved and two not.

FARTHING - The one to be approved is around Farthing. It borders an apartment complex and, as is true in many parts of the city, the overflow from apartment complexes disproportionately fills the neighborhood streets. The reason for this is historical. Apartment complexes were not built with enough parking spaces to accommodate the current demands for parking. On average, apartment complexes have about 2 spaces for each unit, but each unit has 3 to 4 cars in today’s environment. Single family homes, however, have on average 4 off-street parking spaces (2 in the garage and 2 in the driveway), but many single family home owners use their garages for other purposes, so the reality is that they too have only 2 off-street parking spaces, and also have 3 to 4 cars per unit. Problems are inevitable.

The City has a policy developed a few years ago, which is far superior to the process previously used, but still isn’t perfect nor can it accommodate every unique situation. Basically it

• Requires that at least thirty (30) homes or 1,000-feet of street frontage must be significantly impacted before parking restrictions may be considered.
• 75% of the frontage on a residential street available for parking must be occupied during any consecutive 6-hour period by vehicles generated from nearby development.
• 67% of the impacted affected residents must be in favor of the proposed permit parking restrictions.

There is nothing magical in these numbers. Over the years 35 streets achieved the requirements. In recent years, the City had 16 requests and approved 5. But for every street that was permitted, nearby streets not permitted have almost inevitably experienced problems.

For Farthing and adjacent streets, a 2016 study found the impact ranged from 20% to 86% with an aggregate of 71%. A 2018 study found the range increased to 50% to 87% (from 20% to 86%) and for 3 of the 4 streets the aggregate exceeded 75% with an average of 83%.

Moving forward, the City found that approval from residents ranged from 83% to 100% for a 92% average approval, exceeding the 67% requirement.

On this basis, staff recommends the permits for the 3 streets. Per policy, each house will get 2 permits.

BENNETT RANCH - Bennett Ranch has long had problems and over the years various streets did get permits (e.g., Springwater, Ashfield, Ashwood, Ashbrook, Buckwood, Spring Glen), but some did not (Cherry Avenue, Brookhaven, Greenhill, Greenbank, Glenhurst, Hazelwood, Fernbank, Cedarspring, Glen Acres, Briarcroft, Broadleaf). According to staff the ones who failed to get permits did not get close to the 75% impact requirement.

Staff previously evaluated the current applicant and they did not meet the requirement. Last year and again in July they did an additional study. Unfortunately it’s difficult to tell what exactly the City found. We’re told -

“The results indicate that there are, at the most, about 10 vehicles on each of these two streets that may be from outside the neighborhood. This is about the same (or slightly less) then when the City surveyed these same streets more than a year ago.”

For some reason staff do not give us the percentages, as they do in other reports. Since the criteria are based on percentages, it makes no sense to talk about 10 cars. 10 cars could be a big deal if the total area is 15 cars, but inconsequential if there are 100 spaces. 10 cars can be a problem if they’re all parked in front of your house, but no big deal if evenly distributed. The staff report tells us nothing useful.

The residents also submitted a petition from the 14 streets involved. According to staff there are a total of 237 homes in this area, and petitioners were submitted from 96 of the homes – that’s 41% which is well below the 67% criteria. Of the 14 streets, 2 streets did meet the requirement (Glen Acres, Glenhurst), but as noted previously, we don’t know if these streets met the 75% criterion.

The Bennett Ranch homes do not meet the criteria on both counts, and in both studies. Staff recommends against a permit.

SKY DRIVE/STELLA COURT - Two small streets adjacent to Saddleback Apartments (SA) also requested permits. These streets were impacted by a policy change by SA to start charging their residents for parking spaces, causing many of them to seek alternative parking. This move by SA also impacted Bennett Ranch homes, and many residents from SA can be seen crossing the creek to get to their homes.

Studies were done for these streets in May. Staff reported

“In May, about 56% of the parking spaces on the two streets were occupied by vehicles registered to other areas. In July, about 36% were occupied by vehicles registered to other areas.”

BALLOT MEASURES (Item 12)

The City Council approved 3 ballot measures

• Term limits for Council members (8 years)
• Binding measure regarding district elections
• Non-binding measure regarding district elections

Tuesday night the Council has the chance to appoint a Council member to write the arguments for or against each of these measures. Otherwise the authorship is open to the public.

CITY MANAGER CONTRACT (Item 13)

The City Council recently completed its annual performance evaluation of City Manager Debra Rose and voted to provide $9,200 in deferred compensation annually to Ms. Rose at the beginning of each fiscal year, effective July 1, 2018. Mr. Rose’s salary and benefits remain the same, as do the contract’s description of duties, term and other conditions of employment.

For comparison purposes, the prior City Manager got a $25,000 increase in compensation approved by everyone except me.

ANIMAL CARE SERVICES (Item 14)

Staff are finally getting around to doing what the Council requested months ago –

• · Try to partner with neighboring cities in animal care services
• · Try to establish an oversight committee.

In fairness to staff, we have a lot on our plates, and there has been some preliminary work to get us to this point.

As a first step I asked staff to get us performance data on how the County shelter is functioning. As you probably know, a new shelter has been in operation since March. According to the staff data, which I haven’t had the chance to confirm yet, the intake during April-May-June shows

• · -15% dogs
• · +74% cats
• · -16% other (birds, raccoons, snakes, etc.)
• · -1% overall

These data are undoubtedly influenced by the cat hoarding case, so I think it’s safe to say that the number of animals impounded by the County continues to decline, as it has been doing for the past several years.

In terms of “live outcomes” the data is –

• · -13% dogs
• · +182% cats
• · -22% other (birds, raccoons, snakes, etc.)
• · 8 % overall

Once again the cat data is distorted, but the disturbing trend of decreased live outcomes is worrisome. One would have expected an increase in live outcomes with the new shelter, enhanced environment increased staffing, etc.

In terms of “died/lost” in care the numbers are up 57%, from 7 in 2017 to 11 in 2018. Another disturbing trend. It’s also worrisome that they combine died with lost. Even the best shelters have animals that “die” when they’re in the shelter, but losing an animal is unacceptable.

Thankfully shelter euthanasia is down by 19% and there were no dogs killed in 2017 or 2018.

“Owner-requested euthanasia” was up 33%. For dogs, 4 vs. 7 (2017 vs 2018), cats 2 vs 1.

The staff report doesn’t give us any percentages, simply raw numbers. For example, in 2017 23 cats were admitted and 6 were euthanized – that’s 26%. In 2018, intake was 40 and 2 were euthanized – that’s only 5% which is impressive.

Live outcomes for dogs was 83% in 2017 and 85% in 2018. Live outcomes for cats was only 48% in 2017 and 76% in 2018.

These data are substantially better than the 20% euthanasia rates for dogs and the 40% rate for cats.

WATCH IT LIVE

Don't forget, you can watch the Council meeting live and also participate. Click here to learn more. According to staff we are the only city to offer this service to their residents.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest where he serves as Mayor. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a town hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be Oct 18 at 7 pm at the Lake 1 Clubhouse (Ridge Route).