Housing question needs answers by candidates
Too often many key issues affecting Yorba Linda don’t get the in-depth attention they deserve as candidates cast wide nets for votes in City Council elections, including this fall’s 24th council ballot to fill two seats at the dais.
Contenders run generic campaigns, always identifying themselves as fiscal conservatives and promising to protect the city’s low-density, semi-rural heritage. But they’re never too specific about how they’ll address aspects of the more challenging problems.
The 200-word statements mailed with sample ballot materials, the two-to-three minute answers permitted at candidate night events and the bullet-point mailers listing dozens of endorsements don’t provide the city’s 43,149 registered voters with sufficient detail.
Beginning this week, I’ll present a few of this city’s durable issues, hoping candidates will provide more depth to their usual “I’ll do what’s best for Yorba Linda” platforms.
First up is low-cost housing and what the state expects the city to achieve in this area the next few years. Frankly, council is boxed into a corner on the matter and only promising to fight “unreasonable” state mandates isn’t an answer that will fly anymore.
Council last year voted 5-0 to identify 13 specific sites for potential rezoning to multi-family residential at 10, 20 and 30 units per acre—11 on the west side and two at Savi Ranch—to provide up to 1,087 units for low- and moderate-income households.
A Savi Ranch location is already on the Nov. 2 ballot, as Measure Z. Measure B, approved by a 299-vote margin in 2006, requires a favorable public vote to allow residential projects greater than 10 units per acre and heights exceeding 35 feet.
The cost for putting Measure Z on the ballot will be paid by the project applicant, National Community Renaissance, which plans affordable housing on the former Mitsubishi site.
Council members often note the more controversial west side sites, some of which are now vacant or eventually will be vacant, such as the St. Joseph medical facility, won’t necessarily be developed with low-cost housing at the maximum densities identified.
But the state takes a different position on the matter. In a document delivered to city officials last year, the state said the city’s strategy “assumes development will occur on these parcels at the proposed maximum densities.”
And a Measure B vote against higher densities on identified sites or other possible locations won’t end the matter. As the state has told city leaders:
“Measure B represents a unique constraint to multi-family and high-density housing,” and since “the city is required to address and mitigate or remove constraints,” council “must also include programs to address the constraint of Measure B.”
This issue and others I’ll outline in coming weeks need more than campaign-style sound-bite answers from candidates.
Contenders run generic campaigns, always identifying themselves as fiscal conservatives and promising to protect the city’s low-density, semi-rural heritage. But they’re never too specific about how they’ll address aspects of the more challenging problems.
The 200-word statements mailed with sample ballot materials, the two-to-three minute answers permitted at candidate night events and the bullet-point mailers listing dozens of endorsements don’t provide the city’s 43,149 registered voters with sufficient detail.
Beginning this week, I’ll present a few of this city’s durable issues, hoping candidates will provide more depth to their usual “I’ll do what’s best for Yorba Linda” platforms.
First up is low-cost housing and what the state expects the city to achieve in this area the next few years. Frankly, council is boxed into a corner on the matter and only promising to fight “unreasonable” state mandates isn’t an answer that will fly anymore.
Council last year voted 5-0 to identify 13 specific sites for potential rezoning to multi-family residential at 10, 20 and 30 units per acre—11 on the west side and two at Savi Ranch—to provide up to 1,087 units for low- and moderate-income households.
A Savi Ranch location is already on the Nov. 2 ballot, as Measure Z. Measure B, approved by a 299-vote margin in 2006, requires a favorable public vote to allow residential projects greater than 10 units per acre and heights exceeding 35 feet.
The cost for putting Measure Z on the ballot will be paid by the project applicant, National Community Renaissance, which plans affordable housing on the former Mitsubishi site.
Council members often note the more controversial west side sites, some of which are now vacant or eventually will be vacant, such as the St. Joseph medical facility, won’t necessarily be developed with low-cost housing at the maximum densities identified.
But the state takes a different position on the matter. In a document delivered to city officials last year, the state said the city’s strategy “assumes development will occur on these parcels at the proposed maximum densities.”
And a Measure B vote against higher densities on identified sites or other possible locations won’t end the matter. As the state has told city leaders:
“Measure B represents a unique constraint to multi-family and high-density housing,” and since “the city is required to address and mitigate or remove constraints,” council “must also include programs to address the constraint of Measure B.”
This issue and others I’ll outline in coming weeks need more than campaign-style sound-bite answers from candidates.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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