Due to COVID-19 social-distancing requirements, members of the Signal Hill City Council met virtually by video conference for their regularly scheduled April 28 meeting.
Though the public viewing system went down about 45 minutes into the meeting, the council continued covering its agenda, City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn told the Signal Tribune the next day.
“Unfortunately, our internet went out right in the midst of the meeting and, unfortunately, our recording also got canceled,” Shin-Heydorn said. “Hopefully we won’t have any technical difficulties the next time around.”
During the meeting, council received a coronavirus update, agreed to proceed with Well 8 reconstruction, postponed hiring a financial consultant to assess the potential financial impact of cannabis businesses, but did award a consulting contract to plan new housing.
COVID-19 update
Signal Hill has seven confirmed cases of coronavirus as of April 28, Shin-Heydorn told the council. She encouraged the community to continue maintaining social distancing.
“Health officials have confirmed physical distancing is working and LA County is seeing a slowing of transmission,” she said. “Every day, fewer people are being infected than earlier in the course of this pandemic.”
As to when those restrictions will lift, Shin-Heydorn cited Governor Gavin Newsom’s April 28 four-stage outline for reopening the economy. Shin-Heydorn noted that we are currently in Stage 1– ensuring workplace safety and hospital preparedness.
Stage 2 will include opening more public spaces and lower-risk workplaces adapted to minimize virus spread. Those including schools and childcare centers, retail stores with curbside pickup, manufacturing facilities and offices for which “telework” is not an option.
Moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2 depends on when the number of hospitalizations stabilizes and when the state can meet its needs for coronavirus testing and contact-tracing.
“The transition to Stage 2 will occur through a statewide modification to the stay-at-home order,” Shin-Heydorn said.
Eventually, Stage 3 will see the reopening of higher-risk workplaces, such as hair and nail salons, gyms, movie theaters, sports arenas without live audiences and religious institutions, Shin-Heydorn said.
Stage 4 will mark the end of the stay-at-home order, reopening all workplaces and conventions centers and allowing live-audience sport and concert events.
In the meantime, the City offers free coronavirus testing for residents showing symptoms, Shin-Heydorn said. And she announced a new Signal Hill COVID-19 hotline– (562) 989-7392– that residents can call any time for recorded information updates.
Shin-Heydorn also encouraged residents to use the City’s website to sign up for its electronic newsletter. She said the City sent postcards this week to residents and businesses informing them of safer-at-home policies in case they don’t access electronic sources.
“Our goal is to try and reach all of our residents,” she said.
Well 8
After conducting a public hearing and receiving no objection, the council approved another step toward reconstructing Well 8 by authorizing the community-development director to file a notice of exemption with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.
Since the State categorizes the project as repair-and-maintenance of an existing facility, the project is exempt from California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines, City Attorney Dave Aleshire said.
Technically, the council did not even need to conduct a public hearing because of the project’s exempt status, but wanted to do so for full transparency, Shin-Heydorn noted.
Public Works Director Kelli Tunnicliff said that Well 8 is actually in Long Beach, at 6065 Cherry Ave., but that Long Beach did not object to its reconstruction.
Property owners within a 300-foot radius of the site also did not object after the City informed them of the project, Tunnicliff said.
Rehabilitating Well 8 will start in October and continue for almost a year, Tunnicliff said. The council had approved contracts for project management and plan design earlier this year, according to the staff report.
The project entails deconstructing the old well and drilling a new 1,000-gallon-per-minute, stainless-steel, 18-inch wide well, the same size and capacity as the former well. The new well will use existing pipe connections and have a backup generator, Tunnicliff said.
The project’s budget is $3.5 million, according to a Jan. 28 staff report, with $1.5 million funded by a zero-interest loan from Southern California’s Water Replenishment District, the state’s largest groundwater-management agency.
Once complete, Well 8 will join Wells 7 and 9 in supplying Signal Hill’s 11,800 residents with groundwater, to which the City owns extraction rights, avoiding the need to purchase higher-cost water from the Southern California Metropolitan Water District.
Council members expressed appreciation that the project is moving forward. Repairing the well was part of the impetus behind the council raising water rates earlier this year, as previously reported in the Signal Tribune.
Cannabis analyst
The council agreed to postpone a decision on hiring a consultant to analyze the potential fiscal impact of cannabis businesses on Signal Hill. The City currently bans all cannabis-related businesses, including use for medical purposes, though such businesses are legal in California.
Shin-Heydorn reminded the council that the City conducted a formal survey of residents earlier this year with results showing that most support allowing cannabis businesses as a way to boost city revenue, as reported in the Signal Tribune.
After the council considered those results during its March 10 meeting, it asked staff to estimate the fiscal impact on the city of the different types of such businesses, including medical-retail dispensaries, research-and-testing sites, manufacturing facilities for edibles and other products, recreational retail-stores and indoor commercial cultivation on private property, Shin-Heydorn said.
The City solicited bids from consultants for that work and received cost estimates ranging from $10,500 to $39,000.
Given the wide variation in cost along with other factors, Shin-Heydorn suggested that the council defer making a decision to hire a consultant until its scheduled fiscal-year 2020-2022 budget workshop on May 28.
“As there is currently no dedicated funding source for this project, and in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the anticipated decline in revenues to the City’s General Fund, staff is recommending that the project be considered as a decision package for the fiscal year 2020-2022,” Shin-Heydorn said.
The council meeting went offline to the public at this point, but Shin-Heydorn confirmed with the Signal Tribune the next day that the council approved the recommendation to defer.
Housing planning
Shin-Heydorn also told the Signal Tribune that though the public could no longer view the meeting, the council approved a three-year contract with consultants Castañeda & Associates for $93,200.
The City had applied for and received a $160,000 Senate Bill 2 grant at the end of last year for just this purpose– to help plan how to meet the State’s next cycle of new housing requirements between 2021 and 2029, as previously reported in the Signal Tribune.
Castañeda & Associates will conduct an inventory of potential sites for new housing, prepare affordable-housing zoning standards and assist with community outreach and accessory-dwelling unit and density-bonus ordinances, according to the staff report.
The City must submit its new-housing plan to the State by October 15, 2021.
The State’s new 6th-Cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) requirement calls for 1.3 million additional dwelling units regionally, according to the staff report. Signal Hill’s share of that is 516 units– more than three times the previous cycle’s allocation of 169 new units across four income levels.
Since 2014, in accordance with the RHNA’s 5th Cycle, the City has built 120 new units but still needs to complete eight more in the “moderate” income level and 41 in the “above-moderate” income category by 2021.
Shin-Heydorn told the Signal Tribune that during its discussion Tuesday, the council did not express any particular concerns about housing, only clarification about one of the firms that submitted a bid.
“There was [also] a clarification regarding which of the current RHNA goals we have met,” she said. “Everything else was approved quickly, with no questions.”
The next Signal Hill City Council meeting will take place virtually on Tuesday, May 12 at 7pm. For information on accessing and participating in the meeting, visit the council’s webpage at www.cityofsignalhill.org/79/City-Council
