Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Table 41-1C of Chapter 21.41, relating to Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
So Councilman, thank you for for helping guide this project. Please cast your votes. Councilman. The motion carries. Thank you. And I know we have a second hearing. That's a short one as well. So. Madam Clerk. Report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record to conclude the public hearing and accept categorical exemptions and statutory exemption. Declared ordinances amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to alcoholic beverage manufacturing definitions and accessory dwelling units. Read the first time and lead over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and adopt a resolution directing the Director of Development Services to submit the ordinance amendment to the California Coastal Commission citywide. Mr. Modica presentation will be given by Linda Tatum and Christopher Koontz. Okay, actually I'm going to introduce Alexis again, who will do the honors of making this presentation. Good evening again. The item before you tonight consists of a handful of zone text amendments resulting from the California Coastal Commission's review of several ordinances adopted over the last couple of years and were submitted to the Coastal Commission as part of a local Coastal Program Amendment. The ordinances that were included were the Alcohol Beverage Manufacturing Ordinance Zone tax changes to reflect changes in the building code, as well as state water efficiency regulations and the accessory dwelling unit ordinance. The California Coastal Commission considered these changes at their October meeting of last year and certified the LCP amendments with changes in the following slides. I will briefly recap those changes and which must be adopted and recertified and resubmitted to the Coastal Commission for Certification. The first of these changes relates to the Alcohol Beverage Manufacturing Ordinance, which was reviewed in 2016 and adopted changes. The Coastal Commission's action on this item simply provides clarification for parking related to office areas that are equal to 25% of the gross floor area. In response to the triennial building code update and state water efficiency standards, a number of zoning changes were made to create consistency between zoning, building code and state law. The California Coastal Commission, in their review, made a number of modifications to clarify code and eliminate references to code sections outside of Title 21. In the case of the definition of rebuild and demolish and a unique definition for within the coastal zone was adopted here. Staff is recommending that a single definition of rebuild and remodel be used throughout the city. The purpose of this is to create clarity for developers, contractors and homeowners. In 2016, the state legislature made sweeping changes to address the state's housing crisis, which effectively reduced the city's abilities to regulate accessory dwelling units in an effort to tailor some local standards. An ordinance was adopted in December of 2017, providing minimum lot size, basic design standards and parking for 80 to use. At that time, the city council requested an update a year following the adoption of the ordinance, and then this slide briefly will provide a snapshot of where we are today. Since January of 2017, 146 building permits for 80 use have been issued. We have currently approximately 9982 planned trucks in various stages of review. The majority of those that have been permitted are resulting from conversions of existing structures, and we have seen the legalization of approximately 10% of unpermitted structures through these 80 permits. The Coastal Commission. Reviewed the accessory dwelling unit ordinance and made changes, specifically changing the minimum lot size to 4800 square feet to reflect the state law. In addition, they revised the parking standard so that parking is exempt. All Excuse me, so that once parking spaces is required, except when the location meets the exemption criteria prescribed in state law. The amendments made by the California Coastal Commission to the minimum size and parking standard for ADAS were made to be consistent with the state law for the purpose of creating parity of standards between lots where 80 use can be constructed. A modification mirroring the state's change is proposed throughout the city by staff. Having the same minimum lot size and parking standards will help to reduce uncertainty in the standards for architects, contractors and homeowners as they negotiate the code. With regards to the parking. State law prohibits cities from requiring parking when an ADU is in. Any of the following is any of five locations, including when it's within a half mile of a public transit. As the City Council may recall, nearly the entire city falls within this category. So parking would effectively be eliminated in this case. But it is. These changes are consistent with the state law, which is why the Coastal Commission made the action. Public noticing. Public notices were published in the Press Telegram on February 15th, and additional notices were sent to persons who had submitted written communication on the draft edu ordinance. No comments have been received to date in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act. These changes are all either categorically or statutorily statutorily exempt. Staff recommends that the City Council adopt the zoning code amendments as presented and direct staff to submit the changes to the California Post. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward. You just want I'm going to close public to the public speaker's list for answer. Thank you. My name is Brian Wolf. I live at 5015 East Third Street in Long Beach. I'm speaking as a private citizen. Homeowner. Appreciate the opportunity to provide comment for the accessory dwelling unit ordinance amendment. Just briefly, ensuring quality and affordable housing in our diverse populations. Important goal for the city in the general plan. A well-crafted 80 U ordinance utilizing form based practices will contribute strongly to the school while maintaining neighborhood character. Further, the scale of it's kind of a grassroots level as opposed to larger affordable housing opportunities and encouraging individual owners occupants to invest in their communities. For me, I've been a proud homeowner in the Belmont Heights neighborhood for over 15 years. My wife and I love our neighborhood. It's zoned r one and along with a lot of area in the city and where we're moving into retirement, we very much want to be able to stay in the neighborhood and constructing a native view on our property will allow us to age in place, supplement our fixed income, and provide additional affordable housing in a great location. We really love it. Others, you know. You know, it's a great form of additional density for us, you know, able to provide housing for surviving elderly parents, students, mixed family, extended family accommodation. And, you know, we broadly have an aging demographics. So making those provisions for people to stay in their homes and downsize is really important. As a practicing architect here in the city, I've looked closely at the requirements and believe the current ordinance as well. Well-considered with a couple of following exceptions, I was very happy to see the amendment for reduced lot size to be broadly applied to the city beyond the coastal zone. So that was great to see. I would argue, you know, the established form based controls and what I mean by that height limits, setbacks, lot coverage, open space for area ratio and unit size range are fairly extensive in the ordinance and the lot size limitation I would argue, should be removed entirely because it's not necessary and discourages innovation. I definitely reverting to the 4800 square foot size recommended by staff for all areas in the city is a move in the right direction and I would support that strongly. Parking I I've a little district in agreement we really ought to keep the. Thank you some. Thank you so much, sir. Oh, time's up. Sorry about. That. Really? 3 minutes. I thought it was 2 minutes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Good. Could I have just 15 seconds? Sir, we have to keep the time. But if you want to conclude your thought, go ahead. I would just add the parking. We have a mobility plan strategy in the city. And and keeping the. The parking, as stated currently in the ordinance would be better. Thank you. Supportive to those strategies. Thank you very much, sir. Let me go ahead and go to Captain Richardson. Support. Councilor Pearce. I want to thank staff for their hard work on this. I support the recommendation, the changes that you guys have outlined in this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. So my residents were the ones who were big advocates for the 5000 square foot lot. And I appreciate that staff are looking for consistency across the city. Would you be able to remind us on what date we we adopted the initial. Requirements. When to say it was? I want to say it was in November of 2017. And have there been many individuals who are somewhere between 40 805,000 square feet where they were eliminated because of the ordinance, the way it was written with community input? So there have been a handful of cases. I don't remember any of them being in your district council member, but certainly we've received calls from folks living in council districts two, three and four that are in that situation. There's approximately 5000 impacted properties in that range, between 4850, 200. You see the number of properties again, I'm sorry, there's a lot of numbers and. There's approximately 5000 across the entire city. So if there is a 1% chance of an EDU being constructed in a ten year period, we're talking about, you know, in the 50 to 100 additional ideas. So I guess my concern is this ordinance hasn't even been in place for a year yet, and we're already coming back to the table with a note. Respectfully, that was 2017 that this ordinance of November 2017. And we we've seen fewer than anticipated 80 years constructed in that time. And Councilwoman, I would also. Indicate that the initial recommendation that we're coming to city council tonight was based upon the the feedback from the Coastal Commission. There. Their feedback for the coastal zone is one thing, but you're asking us to apply it to the whole city. That's correct. Because we are as as Alexis stated, the idea is. That. We would have two different standards in the city and in the interest of parity and lack of confusion. Staff's suggestion is that we think that it makes more sense to have one standard rather than a couple of different standards. Would. I'd be open to this ordinance if we could just maintain the original 5000 for the rest of the city. I just feel as though there was so much community input and residents in the fifth District felt so strongly of a number significantly higher than 5000 that to make such a change. On an item that really appeared to be around some other types of municipal changes, I think was just a little. I could have done a better job informing the community had I known and understood that this was the breadth of it. So, Councilmember Richardson, would you be open to a friendly to maintain the 5000 for the rest of the city? So I don't feel strongly one way or the other on this. I'll be clear, but I do want to hear from staff the intent of doing this with a streamline it in the middle consistent with other well with other codes. So can can we hear from the city attorney or whoever is working on this was the implication? I just want to add that for clarity, the number is actually 5200 square feet, not 5000. Right. So Alexis explained it very well. The Coastal Commission made this suggestion because they're interested in promoting a to use as a means in the coastal zone to have more people have the ability to be in that area. City wants to do it to keep it consistent citywide. You couldn't keep it. There's no legal requirement that you reduce it to 4800 citywide. But I think stats made clear that they feel that that's the better course. And so of those 50, how many units, how many parcels did you mention, Mr. Cook? There's approximately 5000 impacted parcels. And how many of those parcels are in District five? I don't have that information at my fingertips. I would be confident that it's a large share of those. I can name 1400 of them that were all built by SNF properties that are almost all on properties that are 5064 feet or 5000 to 5100 feet. So that is a huge impact of a particular group. I don't see that they're very aggressively looking to put it to you then, but I think that some outreach or some information to those neighborhoods I would have done a better job of had I recognized that that component of the recommendation was coming. And so I appreciate that we had ten days on this, but this is a huge implication in potential items. So it is a policy decision for the council to make. We did notify everyone that participated in the process the first time around on the ADA ordinance and whatever decision the council makes tonight. If you could just orally explain the basis of that decision. Every time we touch the ADA ordinance, we have to send it to the state, to HPD, and to the degree that we place restrictions on ADA use, those restrictions need to be based in sometimes some compelling citywide goal and not meant to deter the construction of needed housing. So it is a policy decision for the Council to make, and you can go either way. If you could just we'll have to have that discussion with our friends in Sacramento. So anything you can give us to help defend that decision, we appreciate that. I appreciate that. I would have to go back and watch the meeting. When you talk about informing anyone who participated the first time, does that include people who came to public comment or emailed in public comment to the city? If they had emailed, we have their emails. When folks come to the dais at a council meeting, we don't have speaker cards, so we don't necessarily have contact information for them. So it's the folks that we do have contact information for. So again, it sounds like we need a compelling reason. I'm comfortable making staff's recommendation. I didn't anticipate jumping into a policy discussion. If you want to sub me out, that's fine, but I think I'm going to stand on. My intent was to support the staff recommendations. Is there a a compelling reason why there's a timeliness to approving this tonight? No. No. Would we be open to continuing this item until. I'm open to that. Absolutely. I would be really more comfortable and I'm happy to reach out to the neighborhood associations because I really want to know and understand what their point was. They actually had asked me for a much higher number. We settled on 5200. But I would like to go back to that research and look at it and talk about it and maybe even have one. I mean. I think that's fair. So a month. 30 days would be great. Lay it over 30 days. So if we can hear that item in April, we do need to provide an update to the Coastal Commission within six months, which will be at the end of April. So if we continue with. The. First week of April would be. That. Any time during the month of April will be acceptable. Great. I'll leave that to the city manager. Thank you. Kay, there's a motion to extend that. Is that is that the council which is new change that. Okay. That's that's an that's an emotion. There's a motion and a second on that. We will take a vote when you do public comment again on that on that piece. Mr. Mays. No. Okay. So, members, please cast your votes on an extended. Thank you.