Tuesday night the City Council meeting achieved the following –
SENIOR MOBILITY
The City awarded bus and taxi transportation services for seniors. AgeWell got a 3-year $147,000 contract for bus services and California Yellow Cab got a $128,000 3-year contract. Taxi services are mostly funded by the County with the City paying 20%.
OCSD CONTRACT
Orange County Sheriff’s Dept. (OCSD) contract was $16,134,298, an increase of $1,264,577 or + 8.5% (Click Here). Of this $1.2 million in extra costs, $172,000 was for an additional Parking Enforcement Officer, the only change in our services. This large increase in contract costs follows a similar $1,000,000+ increase last year. These large increases are necessitated to fill the gap in the unfunded pension liabilities for OCSD.
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To confront the increasing costs, Mayor Voigts agreed to create an informal ad hoc committee with me and to talk with Irvine's Mayor Wagner about possibilities of Irvine expanding their Police services to our City. If not successful, or if too expensive, Voigts and I will speak with Council members from adjoining cities to talk about the prospects of a joint venture. Our goal is to keep (or exceed) the good quality we get but to do it at a less expensive price. This may not be possible, but we agreed it’s something we should explore.
RESIDENTIAL ALTERNATIVES
The City passed a new ordinance to regulate the types of homes that can operate in residential areas.
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Our new ordinance makes explicit some of the issues that were not specifically dealt with by our previous legislation. This is partly due to the emergence of other types of alternative uses for single family residences.
You can view the ordinance online (Click Here). Basically it says that most alternative uses for single family homes are not permitted, including uses such as “birthing homes”, "Airbnb”, boarding homes, alcohol/drug abuse recovery or treatment homes, etc.
Family day care will continue to be allowed.
For those people who operate a business from their home, the legislation limits the number of customers to no more than 2 at any one time, and limits the size of the business portion to no greater than 20% of the overall floor area.
Home owners will have the right to rent their homes no more than 3 times a year, and in each case, for no more than 30 days.
If you believe that someone is operating illegally in your neighborhood, you should report this to the City using the city website (Click Here) or call 949 461 3465.
GRANNY UNITS
The City already has legislation covering granny units. Our new legislation provides for granny units to be permitted
- in detached single-family residential areas
- where the lot is 4,000 square feet or more
- with no more than 1,200 square feet of space
- where at least 1 additional off-street parking space is created for each additional bedroom
- with cooking and sanitary facilities
Granny units can be a small step in solving the affordable housing crisis in California. I’m especially pleased that we are requiring the off street parking for each bedroom, because we also have a parking problem in our City.
ADDITIONAL BUDGET ITEMS
The Council agreed to
- lower the fines for late fees for dog licenses
- lower the senior discount from 65 to 60 years of age
- create a City entrance sign for Lake Forest Drive
After some discussion, the Council voted against giving individual Council members the discretion of allocating up to $5,000 to local non-profits. I suggested that instead we create a nonprofit Community Foundation and will raise this topic at the strategic planning sessions next month.
GENERAL PLAN
We discussed the General Plan earlier this week (Click Here). The topic didn’t come up until 10:30 pm and the Council decided the topic was too important to try to squeeze it in. It will be discussed at the next meeting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. 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 mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on June 10 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.
