An Interesting Council Meeting Tonight

FINAL MEETING OF THE YEAR
Tonight the Costa Mesa City Council will meet for their first meeting of the month and their LAST meeting of the year.  The next full City Council meeting will be on Tuesday, January 5, 2016!  The meeting tonight begins at 5:45 in City Council Chambers at City Hall.  You can read the agenda HERE.

CONSENT CALENDAR
This one just might be a short one, but we never know.  There are only two Public Hearings and one item of New Business, but let's start at the beginning with the good old Consent Calendar - items considered routine so they CAN be considered in one vote unless someone - a council member, staff member or member of the public - pulls an item for separate discussion and vote.  I won't address all of them, but will comment on a couple that are fascinating.

SPENDING YOUR BUCKS
Item #3, HERE, is Warrant 2547 - the items recently paid by the city.  Scrolling down through this list is always interesting and informative.  Here are a few items that caught my eye:

• Costa Mesa Conference & Visitor Bureau - $182,811.54 - BIA Receipts for Sept 2015
• Liebert Cassidy Whitmore - $31,900.16 - Legal Services
• Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth - $27,183.00 - Legal Services
• CSG Consultants, Inc. - $11,520.00 - Bldg Inspector Svs, 8/29-9/25/15
• Civil Source - $8,787.50 - Resident Engineer Svs -Sept 15
• FTOG Inc - $3,587.50 - Procurement Consulting
• Apple One Employment Services - $4,478.59 - Temp Svcs, Various
• G4S Secure Solutions Inc. - $65,069.63 - Jail Services
• Accountemps - $2,179.20 - Temp Svs, Treasury
• Civil Source - $12,600.00 - Construction Mgr, Sept. 15
• Kabbara Engineering - $5,457.00 - On-Call Traffic Engr, Oct 15
• Scientia Consulting Group, Inc. - $13,760.00 - Prof Svc Agreement, Oct 2015

CONSULTANTS FILLING STAFFING GAPS
As has been the case for a few years, we continue to rack up legal service AND, of even greater concern, we continue to pay expensive consulting/temporary services to fill holes in the organization because we simply cannot keep up with the hemorrhaging of experienced staffers throughout City Hall.  There are a couple items further down the Consent Calendar that provide exclamation points to that problem.  We had more than 50 open positions in the city at the start of this week.

Item #4, HERE, is a professional services agreement with Lilley Planning Group for $93,000 (plus extensions) to backfill vacancies in the Planning Division.

Item #9, HERE, is a professional services agreement for $906,218.00 for construction management services for various projects - Fire Station #1, City Council Chambers and related projects.

TRAFFIC IMPACT FEES
Public Hearing #1, HERE, is a no-brainer.  It's the annual review of the citywide traffic impact fee program and the staff recommendation - again - is to leave it alone and continue the same charge of $181 per Average Daily Trip.

MANDATORY COMMERCIAL ORGANICS RECYCLING
Public Hearing #2, HERE, is VERY interesting.  This is a new ordinance to require Mandatory Commercial Waste Recycling and new requirements of Mandatory Organics Recycling required by the State of California.  You may recall that the Costa Mesa Sanitary District has imposed an Organics Recycling program on those of us who are in its service area.  This is a BIG deal for commercial trash haulers serving businesses in Costa Mesa.  Perhaps the most telling sentence in the staff report appears under the Fiscal Review section:

"The City’s authorized waste haulers set their charges based upon the competitive market (a benefit to clients of the non-exclusive franchise system), and therefore their costs of compliance with the program will likely be passed on to their clients."

MORE DEVELOPMENT WITH DEVIATIONS
New Business #1, HERE, is the screening request for a 10-unit detached residential development at 522 and 526 Bernard Street.  This was approved by the Planning Commission in October with a load of deviations:
1) Lot size (one acre required, 0.53-acre proposed); 
2) Garage size standard (20’ x 20’ required; 19’- 4” x 19’ proposed); 
3) Open space requirement (40 percent required, 22.4 percent proposed); 
4) Front setback requirement (20 feet required, 10’- 5” proposed); 
5) Side yard setback for corner lots (10 feet required, 8’ - 3” proposed); 
6) Interior side setback (10 feet required abutting residential, 6 feet proposed); 
7) Minimum distance between buildings (10 feet required, 7 feet proposed); 
8) Privacy wall setback on Charle Street (5 feet required, 3 feet proposed)

 This is the City Council's first cut at this project.  The discussion should be VERY interesting.

HOPING FOR CIVILITY
Fingers tightly crossed for a short, collegial council meeting.  Let's hope there are no more public displays of arrogant, vindictive stupidity as was displayed by the Mayor Pro Tem last time.  What are the odds?  70/30 against... I actually expect the mayor to break the gavel presented to him by the mayor pro tem as he demands order and calls for a break.  Of course, he's yelling at the wrong person most of the time.