WITHDRAWN Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by amending Table 21.32 in Chapter 21.32, and Table 34-1 in Chapter 21.34; and by adding Sections 21.15.3155 and 21.51.294, all related to unattended storage boxes, read and adopted as read. (Citywide)
Thanks again to the Assistance League for recognizing Children's Mental Health Month. So we're move along with the agenda. Let's go ahead and here have our have our hearing. I don't want to, number one. Report from Development Services. Recommendation to receive supporting documentation under the record. Conclude the public hearing. Declare ordinance amending various sections of Title 21 of the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to unattended donation boxes read for the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and adopt a resolution to submit a request to the California Coastal Commission to certify an amendment to the certified a local coastal program citywide. Thank you. And no oath is required, so I'll hand it over to two staff. Thank you, Vice Mayor. We have Linda Tatum, planning manager, planning bureau manager, and Carrie Tai, current planning officer. We're going to be conducting the presentation tonight for us. And we also have the project planner, Anita Gold's Garcia as a part of the presentation team. Kerri to I will start off the presentation. Good evening, Vice Mayor Richardson and members of the city council. Before you tonight is a zoning code amendment for unattended donation boxes. Thank you for the clicker. Sorry about that. So I'm going to start out by explaining what is an unattended donation box. And so you may have seen these around town. There's a picture of one up on the on the screen there, but it's basically a nonpermanent container that typically accepts donations. Most often they're textiles, you know, used clothing, shoes and books and the like to be used for resale, recycling or distribution for a variety of purposes because they can be run by different kinds of organizations. So the background is why do why why all of a sudden is this being presented as a new ordinance? And over the past couple of years, our code enforcement department has reported public nuisance related to issues like trash, graffiti, loitering and general blight. As a result of these boxes, basically the unpermitted and unregulated placement of these boxes results in something to attract a destination to drop things off. And as a result, the there's been occasions around town where this has become a code enforcement issue. So in April of 2017, the City Council established a one year moratorium for the use of unattended donation boxes for the purpose of creating regulations and amending the municipal code in order to responsibly permit this. So the proposed zoning code amendments are necessary because these boxes are not specifically addressed in the Long Beach zoning code, and therefore right now there are not a permitted use. As a result, we have no way to permit them and so we're on the way to fixing that. One of the elements that's part of the discussion is that these unattended donation boxes are actually entitled to First Amendment protection, and that's because they represent a way for the public to express in part through donations what their beliefs are, what their belief system is. And so therefore, they they are a little bit different from just a your everyday land use. They do have some First Amendment component. The purpose of the zoning code amendment is to recognize unattended donation boxes as a permitted accessory use. And I'll talk about that in a bit with specific development standards and criteria to minimize any potential impacts because of their First Amendment protection and the need to somehow permit them responsibly. Or what staff is proposing is what's called ministerial review. Ministerial review is contrasted with the discretionary review in that there is the level of certainty that something can be permitted once it is consistent with established criteria. So the first component of the proposed zoning code amendment is the actual definition that staff is proposing. The introduction of a definition that describes generally what these boxes are, and it's meant to be general. So that encompasses a variety of, you know, configurations that they could have, but they would be they're unstaffed and there are drop off boxes, containers, receptacles or a similar device that's used for soliciting or collecting donations of clothing or other salvageable personal property. And we also included in the definition a language that differentiates these from the beverage container recycling operations, because those are separately regulated by the state. And we wanted to minimize any confusion between the two. These would be permitted as accessory uses in commercial zones as well as institutional zones. They would not be permitted in any residential areas or industrial areas, for example. And the proposed development standards include having to obtain a land use permit for the box, and that will allow the city to verify the proposed development standards that are in the in the draft ordinance. One is that the there can only be one unattended donation box every 1000 feet, and that is to prevent the proliferation of these boxes. They also cannot be placed on any vacant lots. And that's why they have to be an accessory use. They have to be in addition to something that is already on that property. They also cannot be placed in areas required for parking spaces and landscape areas, dry bills, loading zones, etc., or walkways. And lastly, they do have they will have minimum set back in visibility. So they can't block corners, cannot. Create blind areas and also must have a light source nearby so that they are not placed in dark areas. The the development standards also cover. That. The container themselves. In other words, they must be constructed of durable, waterproof materials. There are size limits, so the maximum height would be six feet with a maximum size of 25 square feet, and that's generally five by five. Also, there has to be a locking mechanism and there are maintenance requirements to ensure that the area around the box isn't is maintained. Signage is also required to be posted on the box in case the a member of the public or any any kind of enforcement official needs to contact the operator or agent or a property owner or agent of that box. So just to go through the background, the planning commission at their January 4th meeting forwarded a recommendation that the City Council adopt this ordinance along with a negative declaration. Both the negative declaration and the public hearing for the Planning Commission were circulated for separate public review periods, and staff did not receive any comments with regard to the negative declaration or the Planning Commission hearing. The City Council hearing subsequently, subsequently was also separately public notice. We did receive one comment from a person who commented that the property owner information should not be required to be posted on the box, and with that the Planning Commission should go back to the Planning Commission did forward a recommendation to the Council and so tonight the recommendation is to enact the Planning Commission's recommendation to adopt the negative declaration and approve the zoning ordinance amendment for regulations for unattended donation boxes. This is also accompanied by a local coastal program amendment for these regulations to be implemented in the city's coastal zone as well . That concludes staff present presentation and I can address any questions you have. Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor. Just for clarification, this item would require two votes one to adopt the negative declaration and approve the ordinance, and the second one to adopt a resolution forwarding it to the Coastal Commission for its consideration. Thank you. Thank you. So that concludes your presentation. We'll go to the public before council deliberation. Is there any public comment on this item on this hearing? Seeing none. We will take it back behind the rail. So we'll start with Council Hooper now. Thank you and thank you for that staff report. Great job. Just as a point of clarification, I think the public perception is that these boxes are for donations to the needy. And the problem here is that a for profit organization can set up one of these boxes. So it's a double whammy. Not only do do the folks donating here, it's not going to the source they think it is. You're actually taking items from goodwill and others who would collect them otherwise. So I'd like to ask our assistant city attorney, Mike Mayes. This is the best we can do in terms of regulating this, in your opinion? Casselman Supervisor Yes. And what we did is, as Steph alluded to, as Kerry alluded to, there was a case in 2015 from the state of Michigan where they struck down an ordinance that basically banned these types of boxes because they discriminated as but the ordinance discriminated on its face as between charitable and nontraditional solicitations. Then subsequent to that, in 2017, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, which governs California, upheld an ordinance that was adopted by the city of Oakland to regulate these boxes. So to the best of our ability, we use the Oakland ordinance as a model, but drafted it in a way that it was a little bit more protective. I thought of Long Beach interests, so I think from a nuisance standpoint. So I think we've done the best we can. Okay. Thank you for that. That's all I am. Thank you. Councilman Price. Thank you for the staff report. I think these changes are very welcome. My question is, in regards to enforcement, what are we doing about the blighted containers that are there? Who who is going around and identifying how we can get rid of those? Councilwoman, there is not a proactive effort to go after those that are in the right of way. However, as with any code enforcement action, whenever there is a report of a project or a a particular box location that has blight graffiti overflowing, that is an appropriate activity for our code enforcement staff to pursue. And we will pursue them as we have in the past with any that have come to our attention. We have proceeded pursue those aggressively and do is it possible to add this is one of the features on the Go Along Beach app? I we can certainly pursue that because I know we have graffiti and I know we have dumped items. So there are categories that are, you know, collaterally related to this. I wonder if we could just have this and then those, those notices would go to code enforcement as opposed to public works. We will actively pursue that option. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. I had a lot of the same comments as my colleagues. I was going to ask, do we have a logo or I mean a sticker where we could advertise our Go Beach app on trash cans or on these stand alone so that somebody, if they were overflowing or had graffiti, you could say report to go beach. Staff is not aware that there is a decal or sticker that you can slap on, but we can certainly investigate that as well. I've been in conversation with Public Works about a couple of our locked Ben ideas that we're rolling around with some of our areas and that is one of the things that we'd like to ask for. So and moving forward, if there's any way where we can publicize our Go Beach app on these items would be fantastic and perhaps I missed it. Are there fines associated with them not picking them up and and emptying them? They they would be the standard fines that are identified on the code for any land use or code enforcement violation. So there wouldn't be fines that are specific to this particular type of activity. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. So at the thousand feet, I think people often forget how close 1000 feet is. And so I have a question related to how many could be within one shopping center, because that is a big concern to us. The regulation is based strictly on the distance requirement. It's not based upon a shopping center property because as you know, a shopping center can be any any size. There's no limit on the size of a shopping center. The strict criteria is 1000 feet a distance from an another bin. But if this council chose, we could state that if a shopping center is less than this size, they can only have one. Certainly because I have concerns, the Long Beach Town Center was specifically designed to make it difficult for traffic to leave quickly as a safety measure so that it would be less of a target for criminals to break into cars and a very difficult escape route and so on and so forth. And it's worked very effectively. However, if the town center were to say put in for or the shopping center off of Spring Street and put in two or three their large shopping centers. And so my concern is that the aggregating of them and the traffic flow in and out of these centers, are there any regulations related to their distance from a driveway? Right now there is no distance regulation. However, there are some very specific standards that discuss where they can't be in relation to other required components of a project such as they can't be in a required parking space, they can't be in a required setback area. So again, the location is determined through the permit process. Staff examines the location and determines that there are no safety or visibility issues before issuing a permit for a specific location. That would certainly be taken into consideration. Well, I would feel more comfortable if we were able to take another week and bring this back again, where we would put in some kind of regulations that would limit the number per shopping center and or the distance required between a driveway or an inlet or an outlet. And so those would be my recommendations. But I'm open to hearing from my colleagues. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. My question was regarding the 1000 feet and permit limit within for the unmanned donation boxes. Quick. I just just was curious to know how the 1000 feet would be enforced and and if if and how would would unpermitted YouTubes be be dealt with 1000 feet? Sure. Councilmember Austin. So in terms of the enforcement, if I understand the question properly, it's that if a member of the public or somebody were to report a box that did not was not he either was either permitted by this ordinance and not complying with the terms. In other words, they move it or they're not collecting the donations in a regular enough manner that is resulting in in a mess. Basically, they would contact planning and code enforcement. They would contact development services, and then we would send out the traditional without the notice of of violation. It's like a warning for us. We don't cite them because we give people the ability to rectify the situation first, and then it would go down the regular channel whereby if it wasn't cleaned up within a certain time and then citations would begin and then the citations increase and eventually it ends up at the city prosecutor's office . And that's the standard enforcement tool. But it is it is by complaint. And then if it were a box that is out there that was not permitted and then somebody called in, they could possibly come in and permitted under the new ordinance if they met the location and setback criteria. But if not, they would certainly have to remove it. And again, it would go back into the same corrective action pathway that the city has. And Councilwoman Mungo, just to clarify there, we already currently have a provision in the draft ordinance that I think would address your concern in regard to driveways. There's a specific section that says that you DBS shall have a minimum setback of 20 feet from the public right of way and five feet from any property line or meet the setback requirements of the underlying zone which ever is greater. And in addition, it requires that no UDP be within any landscape, parking space, driveway or walkway, handicapped accessibility, route building and grocery, egress, easements, trash enclosure or waste disposal areas or the public right of way. So they clearly would have to be set back at a minimum of 20 feet from a driveway area which typically traverses the public right of way. So we do have that in there. And if the will of the council was to bring this back with additional changes, we probably wouldn't be able to bring it back next week , but perhaps the week following that, to give us a little bit more time to to clarify it. And as Carrie pointed out, the moratorium would remain in effect till April 11th. So we do have time. Well, I really appreciate you making the mention. I guess I only think and this is my quick hand drawing on the back of our mayor speaker's list. But while the entrance to any area might be maybe only the 20 feet area, there's really a circulation of traffic that goes in and out of this area. Same with the facility that has Grounds Bakery. Same with the facility. There's so many parking I'm sorry, there's so many shopping centers that have a natural flow of traffic. And if they were even to put somewhere way back here off the main street, but in this like circle flow and people are getting in and out of their cars to put things in, I just worry there's already cases of. Issues related to traffic flow. And while we would hope that each different shopping center would want to not put it there, I think that sometimes there's only certain areas that would even be available. So I'll leave the friendly to Councilmember Superman. I see that he's queued up to speak as well. Thank you, Councilmember Sabrina. Okay, Councilman Ralston. So, yes, I defer to a little bit of my time to Councilmember Mongo. Thank you very much. I did have a question regarding the permit fees. I'm not sure that was addressed here. And what would those be for these of these receptacles? I'm sorry. Permit has the permit fees of that permit fee. We are still in the process of determining that, but it will be a fairly meaningful I'm sorry, minimal, probably within a couple of hundred dollars. We're still looking at the actual approval fee for this effort. And so is it our discretion to set such fees or is there very legal kind of guideline for that? Well, there is essentially any fees that we establish in the department. They're generally cost recovery. And after having looked at the process for review of the applications, we think that it's going to be equivalent to the review of the same permit or some other equivalent ministerial review, which would be a an hour or so of a staff time. So we're looking at something around a couple of hundred dollars for this this fee. So don't we want to factor in graffiti removal and code enforcement and all of those other services that may be impacted by proliferation of under the man? I think that in considering the fee that we're considering, it's actually the fee for the review and the approval. All of the code enforcement activities would be covered by a citation that would actually cover the costs of cleanup or other fees. So we truly are only looking at the fee for us to process the applications that staff reviews. All right. Thank you so. Much. All right. And if I may, Vice Chair and the concern regarding Councilwoman Mango's request for this to come back in a couple of weeks, she had recommended next week and we would need additional time to prepare a staff report and get it through the process. And I just wanted to point out that we don't have a meeting on that February 28th, and we have a firm agenda on March six for the land use element. So the soonest that we could come back with this item would be March 13th. So just a question. Is there a mechanism? I mean, can we insert this language? I mean, how many times is this ordinance need to come back to the city council anyway? First reading and second reading. So after this hearing, we would already have those. Does this count as the first reading or we still have two additional reading? Mr.. RICE Mario, this would not count as first. Reading, so it already needs to we make a change here and then just make sure is reflected in the first reading. No, because this type of a change is not an easy kind of change to make. We need the very precise language to insert and think it over and see how it would actually work and bring back a recommendation. But so even if we brought it back in March, we would still bring it back well in advance of the expiration. So the next question is, was there no evaluation of like traffic or some approve some sort of a provisional or conditional approval that that we have as a city council to approve, say, multiple in one site? Do we not have that mechanism already built in to the ordinance? He was the proposed ordinance does build in the ability for an applicant to request a second burn at a site. Okay. So that's already in there. I understood the request from Councilman Mango would be to consider. I'm not clear. She can probably articulate. The goal was to get less correct. Right. Less than more so which. Would be a greater. Distance separation that she's ask us to consider. And I think we're still waiting for a specific direction in that regard. Can we give it some more specific direction now? Yes. So from from my point of view, I'm not trying to have less of them per se. But what I don't want to have is multiple locations on a single site site. So if, for instance, the shopping center wants to have two different competing bins, I actually don't even mind if they're next to each other instead of having them at two different locations, blocking traffic in two different places on the same site. My bigger concern is not a thousand feet apart. My bigger concern is having four locations or two locations on a single property that both have potential for blight, potential for trash. Fake issues. I would rather have them all consolidated. And so I think what Vice Mayor Richardson was asking is, as they come up one at a time, will there be an opportunity for the expertize of the district to have a little say in that, whether it's the expertize from the traffic engineer or the expertize from whomever knows that area similar to a copy. And I let me just explain kind of the thought process for our staff in recommending or at least considering the additional or the second been at one site. The idea there is if the volume of activity at any one bean is overwhelming just based upon its convenience and people just like it, we wanted to make sure that there was less of a potential for blight by having two bins. Right. And if if you're comfortable with the recommendation, I think what staff could do is to limit it to no more than two bins per site at a maximum, regardless of a combination of no more than two bins per site or the 1000 square feet, whichever is less. So that we kind of cover the bases, if what I'm hearing you express is that you don't want more than two bins per site. And I think your concern regarding, I guess, traffic concerns or the like, we think that the current regulations that are specified in the ordinance that the city attorney read out will address any concerns about traffic. We don't think that this has the potential to affect traffic because again, the staff review will take care of that. And looking at this very detailed list, and I think we would also just as a matter of course, make sure that it doesn't have any visibility issues or traffic traffic conflict issues. So I do like your recommendation. I'm very comfortable with that. I also like the staff process and I hope that in the first few that are approved or reviewed in our area, that we have the ability to at least learn what types of locations and accesses and positioning they're looking for. Because in my experience with these, I have seen some terrible things and once they receive a permit, going backwards is is very difficult in some cities. And I know that we're. A very. Large city and I don't want our communities to have to be facing these issues for an ongoing basis. So thank you for the recommendation. I appreciate it. If Councilmember Soup and other make of the motion is open to it, then I think that that would be a great step. Thank you. Mr. Boehner. Okay. I just want to make sure where we are on the friendly, are we coming back some time with this or. My understanding is that with the the revised motion or the language to limit it to no more than two bins on any site, that there's not a need to come back, that this could proceed to a second reading at whatever the next council meeting is. Yeah, I'm just not comfortable with that motion. And to your point, Ms.. Tatum, if one is very popular, we'd locate a second. I would argue if one's very popular, then that's not the right vehicle for that spot. It shouldn't be an unattended bean if it's if it's going to have to be emptied every hour or something like that. So I think the spirit of the ordinance was we were trying to prevent over proliferation. And if we put in the ordinance, we allow to per location, guess what? They're going to max. That out is my fear at every single location. So I'm perfectly open to bringing this back sometime in March if we want to get this out a little more. We have time. Mr. Mays, I think you said we don't have to actually have the final reading until April, so I'm good with that. And Councilman Super on the ordinance as it's currently drafted would clearly allow an applicant to apply for more than one per site. So if that is something that the council wants to remove, we certainly can remove that. We could also impose a restriction for a large mall, for instance, that let's say the expanse of the mall exceeded a thousand feet. We could say that. And assuming it only has one property address or one opinion, we could limit it to one per apprehend so that for the large malls you'd still only end up with one rather than two. Okay, that sounds perfect. So if council by mango is fine with that, then good. We can do this tonight. Okay. Thank you. So, just to be clear. Are we going to come back with another hearing? Yes. Linda saying no city attorney's and. Deferring to the city. Attorney. We'd have to bring it back because that's not the kind of language we can insert or nothing. We can tweak tonight. It's we have to do an actual. Yep, we'd have to bring it back. Trust me, I'd rather do it. Council members. And you accept. That motion. Just want to be crystal clear. Yes. Okay. So so there's no further comment here. Members, please cast your vote. So one.