The Seal Beach City Council unanimously approved a resolution that added $115,000 in traffic impact fees to the Main Street landscaping project at the agency’s Monday, March 12 meeting.
The decision was no surprise—the council members voted 4-1 to approve the project at the Feb. 27 meeting.
However, Mayor Michael Levitt, who cast the sole dissenting vote against the plan to add 25 ficus trees to Main Street, pulled the item from the consent calendar.
Levitt said that if you looked at the ficus tree outside the frame store on Main Street, you could trace the path of the roots in any direction from their impact on the sidewalk.
“You can never tame a ficus tree,” Levitt said.
“This is going to be one of the biggest mistakes this council has ever made,” Levitt said.
Even so, Levitt acknowledged that he lost the vote when the project came before the council last month.
Levitt voted along with the majority and voted for passage of the resolution that allocated the funding.
Child Safety Zone
The council also approved, as part of the consent calendar, the second reading of the Child Safety Zone ordinance that bans sex offenders from public parks and beaches.
Erin Runnion, of the Joyful Child Foundation, thanked the council for supporting the ordinance. Runnion’s daughter Samantha was 5 years old in 2002, when she was kidnapped from her home, sexually abused and murdered by a convicted sex offender.
Housing Element
During the public comment segment of the meeting, homeless activist and Pastor Shirley Broussard, president and CEO of the SWARM Group and Associates, Inc., commented on the Housing Element of the Seal Beach General Plan. The Planning Commission was scheduled to hold a hearing on the Housing Element on Wednesday, March 14. Details of that meeting were not available when the Sun went to press.
Broussard, who had advocated establishing a homeless shelter in Seal Beach since 2009, reminded the council that the Bible says there will always be poor people among us.
“Fear is a state of mind—it is not a solution to a problem that is a fact,” Broussard said.
She said everyone has an obligation before God to do something about providing shelter for human beings.
“As a person of faith, my concern is that no human being should be without shelter,” Broussard said.
The Housing Element would not, in fact, create a homeless shelter in Seal Beach. By state law, the General Plan must have a Housing Element.
State law also requires that a Housing Element identify potential locations for affordable housing in a community. The land owners of those locations are not legally obligated to actually build affordable housing.
For example, the Shops at Rossmoor is one of seven potential affordable housing sites that a citizens group reccommended be included in the Seal Beach Housing Element—even though the land is zoned for a shopping center and even though the owners have made it clear they do not intend to build affordable housing.
As previously reported in the Sun, the term “affordable housing” in Orange County can apply to someone who makes up to $100,000 a year.
Citizen questions budget
Activist Joyce Parque, a frequent critic of the council, criticized the council’s handling of public money. “Do we really owe him (City Attorney Quinn Barrow) $1.8 million something?” she asked.
Barrow said the $1.8 million referred to projected legal fees over the next 15 years.
Parque said she wanted a map of Seal Beach at the next City Council meeting, including what she called the yacht club. This was apparently a reference to the Sunset Aquatic Park. Parque said she wanted to know how much tax payers are spending on the yacht club.
She asked how the council could have a budget that doesn’t include all the information.
“Why don’t you print something up that the taxpayers can read?” Parque asked.
Parque asked how much the taxpyers owe for city employee health care. She wanted to know how much the city was spending on what she called the “bed and breakfast program” at the city jail.
Parque ran out of time. Members of the public are limited to five minutes during public comment. “Five minutes goes by so fast when we need to talk about the budget,” Parque said.
