Planning Commission Struggles and Then Votes

We’ve been looking at the June 12 meeting of the Planning Commission at which they discussed whether or not to recommend granting a license to sell beer and wine to two 99 Cents Stores. Four of the Commissioners were having difficulty trying to accommodate a valued business that is seeking to increase their profitability with the knowledge that the result will have negative impacts on the health, safety, and well-being of our residents.

Commissioner Ludden reported several problems with the way 99 Cents Stores does business, including poor lighting, apparent ease of shoplifting, and more telling, repeat violations of alcohol law regulations in the few OC stores that currently sell beer and wine.

Chairman Hamilton looked at the original law and found that the City’s duty was clear. Regulating the sale of alcohol is in the best interests of  “the highest degree the economic, social, and moral well-being and the safety of the State and of all its people” and should be “liberally construed” to protect these interests.

Commissioner Brower worried about the impact of granting new licenses to the dozen small mom and pop businesses that surely would be impacted in 99 Cents Stores began selling beer and wine in 2 locations.

After a long and weary discussion Commissioner VerPlancke made the critical motion to deny the resolution to overturn the Planning Director’s decision (which had been to deny the licenses), and the vote was 4-1 with Fuentes on the outside looking in.

Commissioner Brower made the next critical motion, to bring the whole thing back on July 10 for the PC to make a final decision. Once more, the vote was 4-1.

At this point, the discussion had been specific to the El Toro store, but since 99 Cents Stores had 2 applications, the PC now turned their attention to this store. In theory, one could say “OK” to one store but not the other. While the Towne Center store is even worse than the El Toro store with respect to being oversaturated , and while it has even more mom and pop stores it might drive out of business, and while there are even more discount stores in their area, the one distinct advantage the Towne Center store has is that it’s tract is soon going to get some 6,000 more people as a result of the opening of Shea Baker. This will change the saturation index, down the road, but, with oversaturation already 300%+ more than allowed, 6,000 more people will probably leave the tract still over-saturated.

Once more the Commissioners struggled, though perceivable less this time around.

Once more Fuentes was angry. She accused her colleagues of “voting against the free market” and bemoaned that “government is telling private businesses what they can and can’t do.” Then she went too far, accusing her colleagues of being “anti-business”. Imagine if you snuck into a right wing Republican cabal and accused the founders of being “atheists”. Fuente’s accusation provoked the same visceral reaction. After all, on many occasions this very same Commission has been accused of being “pro-business” and one of their favorite mantras has been “let the free market decide”. To accuse them of being “anti-business” was heretical, to say the least.

(Note to Mrs. Fuentes – IMO you can disagree with your colleagues without bad-mouthing them. It’s not polite. They have their ideas and you have yours. They refrained from painting you as a “doctrinaire twit” so there was no reason for you to turn on them.)

Tomorrow we’ll summarize and try to draw some lessons from what was a long and very interesting meeting.