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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPlanning Commission Minutes 2002/04/10 MINUTES OF THE CITY PLANNING COMMISSION OF CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA Council Chambers 6:00 p.m. Public Services Building Wednesday, April 10, 2002 276 Fourth Avenue, Chula Vista ROLL CALL! MOTIONS TO EXCUSE: Present: Chair O'Neill, Commissioners Castaneda, Hall, Cortes, Thomas, Willeltt Absent: McCann Staff Present: Jim Sandoval, Assistant Director of Planning and Building John Schmitz, Principal Planner Luis Hernandez, Principal Planner Marty Chase, Special Project Manager Cathy Burciaga, Fiscal & Management Analyst Elizabeth Hull, Deputy City Attorney II PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE/SILENT PRAYER INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: Read into the record by Chair O'Neill ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: No public input. 1. PUBLIC HEARING: Continued Public Hearing - PCC 01-87; Conditional Use Permit to install, operate and maintain a wireless communications facility consisting of nine panel antennas mounted inside of a new roof to be added to an existing picnic shelter; and an associated 324 sf equipment building within Voyager Park on East J Street. Applicant: Spring PCS. Background: John Schmitz, Principal Planner reported that this item was continued from the March 27"h Planning Commission meeting to give staff the opportunity to review the master lease agreement and to prepare a revised resolution. The revised resolution includes two new conditions (#21 and #22), which deal with restrictions on the provision of electrical power to the facility and specified penalties for violation of the Master Lease Agreement. Elizabeth Hull, stated that although she was not in attendance at the March 27th meeting, _ ........._._ "M'__~__"'_~_~"__'__"'_'__'_ -____._.~,.."".~_.._._.____,__..____~___________"_._______ Planning Commission Minutes - 2 - April 10, 2002 she had reviewed the transcription tape and has a good understanding of the concerns and issues raised by the Commission, which are: 1. A request to put in a liquidated damages provision within the CUP. Liquidated Damages is a contractual issue and the lease itself contains a provision to cover breach of the lease and payment, therefore, liquidated damages would not be an appropriate condition to place within the CUP. 2. Condition the CUP to use the funds generated by the lease and earmark them to a particular park or project. The funds generated by the lease are the equivalent to rental income and to attempt to earmark those funds for a specific use would be inappropriate, however, if the Planning Commission feels there are impacts to the park or public facility, then it would be appropriate to condition the CUP addressing mitigation measures to those impact. 3, The preparation of a master plan identifying potential public owned sites for the location of PCS antenna/facilities. Condition #13 addressing the master plan has been removed because it is a condition more appropriately placed upon the City and not the applicant. If the Commission wishes to pursue that, then it would be appropriate to direct staff to prepare the master plan to be considered as policy. 4. Would a breach of the CUP be grounds for terminating a lease? It would not, however, breaching the lease would be grounds for terminating the CUP. 5. There was a concern with energizing the site prior to sign-off of the permit. A condition has been placed in the CUP stating that the site will not be activated unti I the project management and design staff has signed-off on the final construction. The Commission expressed concern with the latitude this gives the carrier and the predicament it places the City in not being able to control and ensure that all of the conditions are met; a perfect example being the facility at the Country Club, which had so many conditions that were ignored and the facility was aesthetically lacking and the landscape improvements appeared to have been abandoned. "_,'___'0'___ ..". ._.~___ ___,_ .. "'- .__".'.'··'n_ ---- --~_..,._._-, ..- ',.---- ------,.__..__.._-_._-----..~,..,. --,,--- Planning Commission Minutes - 3 - April 10, 2002 Jim Sandoval clarified that although he understands the Commission's frustration, the incident at the Country Club is somewhat unique in that there were various carriers who were responsible for different aspects of the project and due to an unfortunate lack of communication, certain conditions were not adhered to, however, are now being rectified. Public Hearing Opened and Closed 6:25. Mr. Sandoval stated that he understood the Commission's desires to move forward with having a master plan prepared, however, since staff will be submitting the Wireless Ordinance for Commission review in May and most likely various carriers will be in attendance at that meeting, he suggested that perhaps that would be the appropriate time to solicit this information from them to see what their future plans are for locating these facilities within the City. MSC (Thomas/O'Neill) (6-0-1-0) that the Planning Commission adopt Resolution PCC- 01-87 recommending approval of the Sprint wireless communications facility, subject to the conditions of approval contained in the resolution. Motion carried. MSC (O'Neill/Castaneda) (6-0-1-0) minute recommendation from the Planning Commission that any proceeds generated from a lease for utilization of a Parks & Recreation facility be retained within the overall Parks & Recreation Department budget without any offset to the department's General Fund budget. 2. PUBLIC HEARING: PCM 02-19; Consideration of amendments to the Eastlake II General Development Plan, Eastlake Greens and Eastlake Trails Sectional Planning Area (SPA) and adopt a new Sectional Planning Area SPA plan to be known as Eastlake II SPA. Background: Luis Hernandez, Principal Planner reported that the Eastlake Greens SPA was originally adopted in 1992 and consists of 995 acres and has a capacity for 3,443 dwelling units in a variety of residential products and also features a variety of commercial uses open space and other support land uses. The Eastlake Trails consists of 322 acres and contains a total of 1,143 dwelling units and the SPA was originally adopted in 1998. As of January 2002, the Trails has received all necessary entitlements and construction is about 81 % complete. The two SPA's are governed by a common GDP and share other regulatory documents and an Affordable Housing program and agreement and a Community Purpose Facility Master Plan. ---.------...------.---,-,----------------...-- Planning Commission Minutes - 4 - April 10, 2002 The new SPA will not change the established land uses or any other provisions of the current SPA plans, will enable the combined area to be fully developed in a comprehensive manner and will be much more user-friendly, simplifying the maintenance and update of these documents. Staff recommendation: That the Planning Commission adopt Resolution PCM 02-19 recommending that the City Council approve the proposed amendments to the Eastlake II General Development Plan, Eastlake Greens and Eastlake Trails SPA Plans and adopt a new Eastlake II SPA merger in accordance with the findings and subject to the conditions contained therein. Public Hearing Opened and Closed 6:55. MSC (Willett/Thomas) (6-0-1-0) That the Planning Commission adopt Resolution PCM 02-19 recommending that the City Council approve the proposed amendments to the Eastlake II General Development Plan, Eastlake Greens and Eastlake Trails SPA Plans and adopt a new Eastlake II SPA merger in accordance with the findings and subject to the conditions contained therein. Motion carried. 3. PUBLIC HEARING: PCA 02-03, City initiated proposal to amend the Growth Management Ordinance; the Growth Management Program; and the Threshold/Standards and Growth Management Oversight Commission Policy, to enact corrected threshold standards for Police and Fire/Emergency Medical Services. Commissioner Cortes stepped down from the dais. Background: Cathy Burciaga, Fiscal & Management Analyst gave a historical overview of how the thresholds were established in 1988 by a community group concerned about maintaining service levels as the City grew. At the time, the group felt that residents were satisfied with the service levels for fire and police and those levels were set as threshold standards. Staff was then directed to determine what those levels were. For Fire, the threshold standard was set at responding to 85% of emergency calls within 7 minutes. Police emergency calls were to be responded to in 4.5 minutes on average with at least 84% of all emergency calls responded to in 7 minutes or less. For these urgent, but non-life threatening calls the response time threshold was set at 7 minutes on average with 62% of all urgent calls to be responded to within 7 minutes. Council then adopted these standards and at the same time the GMOC was formed to monitor development impacts on the quality of life in Chula Vista using these thresholds as their criteria. Response times were reported annually to the GMOC, but the Police _H.______ --. .--.-.- --,.--._-----,- Planning Commission Minutes - 5 - April 10, 2002 and Fire were concerned about a persistent shortfall in response time averages. An extensive study was conducted which included an examination of 10 years worth of data and one of the findings was that travel time had increased significantly. For Pol ice, the reason was identified immediately; patrol was seriously understaffed and the study subsequently recommended the addition of 16 new officers. For Fire, the main reason was an operational change due to government mandated Fire Fighter training requirements that have significantly increased since 1988, which means that more responses now originate from distant fire stations, which obviously increases travel time. The study also revealed that large numbers of calls were given times of "0" seconds for one of two reasons; either, in error, when times were punched by hand before the CAD system, or they were 911 hang-up calls. Including these calls, made the average response times appear to be much faster than it actually was. An examination of the first full year of 1990 CAD data served as a very good proxy for what was actually happening with dispatch times in 1988 and this data was used to recalculate the threshold standards and recommend the following corrections: · Fire - 80% of calls within 7 minutes · Police (Emergency calls) - 81 % of calls within 7 minutes · Police (Urgent calls) - 57% of calls within 7 minutes While the recommended corrections place the threshold standards where they should be, it needs to be emphasized that they do not reduce performance; in fact, performance, for both Fire and Police, has improved since this study was done in 1999. Staff recommendation: That the Planning Commission recommend to the City Council that they adopt the Ordinance amending Sections 19.09.040A&B of the Municipal Code and amend Sections 3.3.1 and 3.4.1 of the City's Growth Management Program and the amendments to the Threshold/Standards and GMOC Policy, to enact corrected threshold standards for Police and Fire/Emergency Medical Services. Public Hearing Opened 7:05. Art Garcia, 904 Via Verde, Chula Vista, GMOC Chairman stated that initially, the GMOC was unhappy with the requested change, however, through numerous meetings with the Police and Fire Chiefs and upon detailed review of the data, the Commission was convinced that it was a fair request and supported the changes. The GMOC is satisfied with the responses and with the performance at this time. --".. ----.---..- ---"--'--'---'-'--~--- - Planning Commission Minutes - 6 - April 10, 2002 Public Hearing Closed 7:06. Discussion: Chair O'Neill stated that as a former member of GMOC and the Planning Commission's representative to GMOC, he initially was concerned that the perception would be that we are lowering the threshold because it could not be reached, however, he is now convinced that this is not the case. As previously stated, the GMOC was created, in large part through the efforts Wi II Hyde and Frank Scott, and the thresholds were set through no special study or formula, but rather that everyone was comfortable with the level of service then, and they simply tried to quantify response ti meso Cmr. O'Neill also stated that to further gauge the community's satisfaction, is the survey that the Police Chief conducts every three years, which reflects positive feedback from the community in all geographical locations throughout the City. Marty Chase stated that the thresholds can be used as a benchmark, which proved to be of value because this was the impetus that resulted in the City Council approving the addition of 16 new Police Officers to the force. On the other hand, since 1988, there are service enhancements that have been added to Police and Fire (i.e. school resource officers, gang units and street teams, and defibrillators), which are not measured. Commissioner Castaneda indicated that response time alone was an inadequate measure by which to assess the quality of our public safety services and other measures that are not growth-driven should be considered. Furthermore, the current response time threshold is inappropriate since the developer does not have direct control to solve the problem. Lastly, Cmr. Castaneda stated that, in his opinion, there needs to be a comprehensive mechanism, outside of the GMOC process, to measure police and fire performance upon which to base recommendations for improvement. MSC (O'NeillIThomas) (4-1-1-1) that the Planning Commission adopt Resolution PCA 02-03 recommending that the City Council adopt the proposed amendments to the Growth Management Ordinance to enact corrected threshold standards for Police and Fire/Emergency Medical Services. Motion carried, with Commissioner Castaneda voting against it. ADJOURNMENT at 7:45 p.m. to the Planning Commission meeting of April 24, 2002. - Diana Vargas, secretar~in; Commission "---~-_._~--"-_....-