How to resolve AdBlock issue? Council approves agreements for visitor center, general plan document; agrees to adjust city hall hours
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – On Thursday the Clearlake City Council approved proposed agreements to support a new city visitor center and a new general plan, and gave the OK to changes to city hall hours in order to better serve the public.
Mayor Joey Luiz and Councilmember Judy Thein both were absent for the Thursday night meeting.
During the meeting, which ran just over an hour, the council approved the agreement with the Clearlake Chamber of Commerce for use of a building at 14295 Lakeshore Drive, next to Highland Park, as a visitors’ center, with the lease at $1 a year.
While some community members questioned the arrangement, most of the comments were in favor of the new visitor center.
Supervisor Jeff Smith, in response to some residents’ input, said he is always surprised at how a positive conversation can go negative.
“This is a huge step for the city,” said Smith, adding that there have been visions for improving the town’s center for a long time.
City resident Carl Webb also supported the proposal. “The only way that we’re going to be able to turn this city around is one stop at a time,” he said.
Some will be baby steps, others will be giant steps. “I happen to think this one is a big step,” in transforming Lakeshore Drive into what they wanted it to be, said Webb.
Councilmember Joyce Overton said it was a positive step and Vice Mayor Jeri Spittler agreed. “I have always loved that house,” said Spittler, who also noted in the discussion that it was a “very exciting” development.
Overton moved to approve the agreement, which the council approved 3-0.
Also on the agenda was a proposal to work with the Cal Poly Corp. of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for the preparation of a general plan circulation document and, potentially, a new general plan for the city, whose current general plan is about 30 years old.
“We’ve had numerous discussions in the short time that I’ve been here about the need to update our general plan document,” City Manager Joan Phillipe told the council.
Phillipe said the corporation is a research group that includes second year graduate students who are excited about working on the project.
While the contract is for the circulation element, Phillipe said the students will complete the general plan as part of their research.
The city has received a Lake County/City Area Planning Council grant of $45,000 to cover the document’s preparation, which is estimated to cost $40,000, Phillipe said.
“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for us,” she said, adding, “If at the end we don’t have a full-fledged general plan, it’s certainly better than what we have today.”
A city manager in another area who worked with the students told Phillipe that they saved between $120,000 and $150,000 by using Cal Poly’s corporation to prepare a general plan.
Phillipe said the Area Planning Council has been involved in the discussions with Cal Poly and likes the idea of working with the students on the plan preparation.
She said the students prepare all media and public notices and, in some areas, go door to door to encourage people to be involved with the general plan process.
They’ve helped significantly increased meeting attendance in the cities where they’ve worked and also make followup calls to call those who participate in planning meetings, Phillipe said.
During public comment, Webb – who sat on the city planning commission – said it was a good way to save money and to get a modern document.
“I think this is a fabulous thing,” said Overton, who moved to approve the agreement, which passed the council with a 3-0 vote. The vote received a round of applause from the audience.
The last business item presented at the Thursday meeting was a change in city hall hours.
Phillipe asked for – and received – the council’s approval of her proposed changes to city office hours, which now are 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. She wanted the city’s hours to change to Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“I think we’ll be much more available to our citizens, our residents, our business owners,” she said.
Phillipe didn’t include a fiscal implication of the change in her report, noting that she expects a reduction in energy costs but didn’t have a history of similar usage in order to project the potential savings.
“That’s not the overriding reason to do this, it’s to provide service,” she said.
Former city staffer Nathalie Antus suggested the city allow people to make appointments to meet with city staff on Fridays and offer a brochure kiosk outside the building. She also offered to help record new voice mail messages.
Near the meeting’s end, during council members’ reports, Overton publicly apologized to volunteers at TV8, the cable access station based in city hall, for comments she made at a Board of Supervisors’ meeting earlier this month.
At that time, she suggested that the station needed professional staff because the volunteers didn’t know what they were doing. She said she hadn’t meant to insult them. “They do work very, very hard for us.”
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Supervisors approve covering Middle Creek property purchases while waiting for state funding
LAKEPORT, Calif. – At the suggestion of the county’s Public Works director, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided to use reserve funds to complete four property purchases in the Middle Creek Restoration Project area while the county waits for reimbursement from the state.
In an extra item placed on the agenda Tuesday morning, Scott De Leon asked the board – acting as the board of directors for the Lake County Watershed Protection District – for its approval of the plan to help close the sales on the four properties.
The county is purchasing the properties as part of its effort to restore wetlands in the 1,650-acre restoration project area, which will improve the health of Clear Lake.
De Leon said the funds, which come through the Flood Protection Corridor Program Grant, should have been made available within four weeks. The program grant funds 100 percent of the property acquisition and relocation costs.
Five purchase offers were made and four owners accepted. The board approved purchasing three of the properties on July 24 and the fourth on Aug. 28, De Leon reported. The properties the county is purchasing include:
- 7998 Reclamation Road, Upper Lake, 0.65 acres, owned by Kevin and Esther Morrill; $140,000 purchase price; $2,000 moving expenses, $4,000 title costs.
- 8230 Sailor Ave., Upper Lake, 4.5 acres, owned by Robert and Kelly Sterling; $240,000 purchase price, $10,000 for replacement housing, $20,000 in moving expenses; $4,000 in title costs.
- 8050 Reclamation Road, Upper Lake, 11 acres, owned by Philip and Marcia Rooney; $250,000 purchase price, $102,500 for replacement housing, $15,000 in moving expenses, $4,000 in title costs.
- 8230 Sailor Ave., Upper Lake, 4.77 acres, owned by Ruth E. Embry; $115,855 purchase price; $2,000 in moving expenses; $4,000 in title costs.
With the funds delayed De Leon said not only are the county’s purchases in danger of falling through but the sellers’ new property purchases were in jeopardy.
“The state’s creating a lot of problems for us here and a lot of problems for these folks,” he said.
De Leon said his department was made aware last week that the state wanted additional review of the properties, including reviews of every title encumbrance to see how it may potentially impact the project and environmental reviews that are less than six months old. He said the department emailed the state about the encumbrances and couldn’t get a response.
The alternative to waiting and endangering the sales was to use reserve funds to cover the $913,355 needed for all four properties, with De Leon anticipating the state would reimburse the county in eight to 10 weeks.
Board Chair Rob Brown was concerned about the possibility that the state might pull the plug on the program and not reimburse the county. De Leon said having the county front the money for the sales is allowed in the state grant program’s process. He said the county also had an agreement with the state to cover the purchases.
De Leon said the only potential risk was if during an environmental review the county discovered an issue on one of the properties that it would be required to clean up. However, he felt the risk was low, adding that county and state staff have been on the properties within the last six months.
Supervisor Denise Rushing said the project is just too important to make the process more complicated.
Supervisor Jeff Smith said the restoration project was a No. 1 project for the county, suggesting they wouldn’t be losing a lot if the reimbursement didn’t came through.
Some of the affected property owners spoke about their concerns about the process, which has proved to be stressful.
“This process needs to be streamlined somehow,” said Robert Sterling, who said he’s now paying for two mortgages while he waits for the money to come through.
Kevin Morrill said he and his wife – whose parents owned the property before them – are trying to move to Nebraska to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
As they’re waiting for the escrow to close on their new home in Nebraska, the potential for the sale falling through is causing difficulties for the seller, who is trying to purchase another home, Morrill said.
Morrill said he appreciated that the board was doing, and that it made he and his wife feel like they mattered. “Nobody cares. It’s a piece of property to everybody else.”
The board unanimously voted to cover the purchases, with De Leon saying he was going back to work immediately to get the paperwork to the auditor’s office by day’s end in order to complete the sales.
De Leon told Lake County News after the meeting that the county had made a number of property purchases several years ago before the state funding was frozen.
In March 2011, after a levee in the restoration area was breached, the county received assistance from Assemblyman Wes Chesbro’s office in addressing the funding freeze.
Later that month, the California Department of Water Resources released $7 million to purchase properties in the area, as Lake County News has reported.
De Leon said that while the funds recently became unfrozen, the state added new requirements.
He estimated there are still about 80 properties the county needs to purchase for the wetland restoration area.
“It is taking quite a bit of time,” he said.
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Judge throws out two causes of action, upholds third in medical marijuana lawsuit against county
LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Monday a Lake County Superior Court judge upheld a cause of action but threw out two others filed by a group of plaintiffs who sued the county over its interim urgency medical marijuana cultivation ordinance.
Retired Lake County Superior Court Judge Arthur Mann on Monday heard the demurrer in the case that Don Merrill and several anonymous co-plaintiffs filed against the county.
County Counsel Anita Grant said the county pursued the demurrer, which she explained tests the legal sufficiency of a complaint or cause of action.
Merrill and his three co-plaintiffs – one of whom Merrill said has since died – sued the county in early July following the Board of Supervisors’ 4-1 approval of the ordinance, which set plant limits and setback requirements, and prevented cultivation on undeveloped parcels.
In August, Judge David Herrick granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction that protected qualified growers – who had planted their crops before July 9 and who were in compliance with state law – through the end of 2012.
At the same time, Herrick did not find that the county’s ordinance was an amendment to the 1996 voter-approved California Compassionate Use Act and that it did not set restrictions that violated state law.
Grant said the demurrer went before Mann on Monday morning, with Senior County Counsel Bob Bridges and Merrill’s attorney, Joseph Elford, presenting their arguments. Mann’s decision came down that afternoon.
In Merrill’s first cause of action, Elford contended that the ordinance unconstitutionally amended the Compassionate Use Act. In the second cause, Elford argued that the ordinance set restrictions on medical marijuana cultivation that was incompatible with state law, and that state law preempted the urgency ordinance.
Grant said Mann granted the demurrer on both of those causes, essentially throwing them out.
However, Grant said Mann, like Herrick, upheld the third action in the case, in which Elford argued that the ordinance violated due process by divesting the plaintiffs of their right to cultivate marijuana after having spent considerable money to plant and grow the crop.
Mann’s ruling doesn’t mean the cause is right, only that it’s a triable issue, said Grant.
She said that the two sides can now focus in on the main cause that may become go to a permanent injunction trial.
When preparing for trial, “You want to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff and get down to the legitimate triable issues,” Grant said, explaining that the demurrer helps streamline the process.
Herrick’s August ruling had implemented protections through the end of the year, to ensure that the cultivation season was over.
Grant said that the next steps are up to the plaintiffs to pursue. A trial on the final cause could still be held, but by that time cultivation for the year likely would be over.
She said the county had received no word of any potential further action by Merrill and his fellow plaintiffs.
When contacted by Lake County News on Tuesday, Elford said in an email, “I will have to talk with my clients about the next steps in this litigation.”
With the two causes of action thrown out, and the deadline on the third cause that was upheld set to expire at the end of December, the county is set to enter the next cultivation season with rules in place.
At its Aug. 21 meeting, the Board of Supervisors extended the interim urgency ordinance. The ordinance will now be in effect until July 6, 2014, while county staff finishes crafting a permanent ordinance to govern medical marijuana cultivation in the county.
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Clearlake City Council to discuss visitors’ center, new general plan, city hall hours
CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The Clearlake City Council this week will discuss an agreement for a visitors’ center, a proposed contract for a new general plan and changes to city hall’s hours of operation.
The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27, in the council chambers at Clearlake City Hall, 14050 Olympic Drive.
The council will consider an agreement with the Clearlake Chamber of Commerce for use of the Highland Park building as a visitors’ center.
The proposed lease would be for $1 a year, with the city to construct improvements like curb, sidewalk and gutter. The chamber will provide Saturday office hours during the peak tourism season, according to City Manager Joan Phillipe’s report.
In other business, in a separate report to the council, Phillipe said discussions were under way with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo regarding the preparation by second year graduate students of a general plan document for the city.
“As has been discussed for many years, the city’s General Plan is in desperate need of updating given that it is 30 years old,” Phillipe reported.
While there is no mandated time period for general plans, the state has twice notified the city that it is time to update the document, according to Phillipe. However, funding has made updating the plan a challenge.
The proposed agreement would have the city pay $40,000 for the document, which would be under the direction of Dr. Cornelius Nuworsoo of the college’s city and regional planning department.
Also on Thursday, Phillipe will propose changing city hall office hours from 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, to Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Phillipe’s report to the council explained that the change is meant to provide the public better access to city hall and to realize some utility cost savings.
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Kelseyville BMX Park nears completion; fundraiser to take place Sept. 29
KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – As work continues on a new BMX park in Kelseyville, supporters of the project are planning a weekend event to raise funds to complete the park.
The fundraiser will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at the Kelseyville BMX Park, located at the Kelseyville County Park, 5270 State St.
Taking place that same day will be the Kelseyville Pear Festival in downtown.
The community is invited to visit the BMX park and watch some of the county’s talented young riders in action. There also will be a hot dog barbecue.
Organizer Valarie Sullivan said the creation of the new park became a necessity last December after local riders were asked to vacate a piece of property where they had developed their own riding course during the past decade.
At its March 27 meeting, the Board of Supervisors approved the concept of locating the new BMX park at the county park and directed staff to work with the Kelseyville BMX Park Project Group.
Since then, the group has put on shows at the Lakeport and Ukiah speedways and the Lake County Fair, and they also will be riding in the Kelseyville Pear Festival Parade on Saturday morning, before the barbecue.
Sullivan said construction began in May, including putting up chain link to separate the BMX course from the rest of the park.
The park now is nearly complete, said Sullivan.
Currently, park supporters are needing a total of about $2,000 to cover outstanding costs, erosion control, and reserves for maintenance and repairs, according to Sullivan.
Sullivan is seeking donations for the Saturday fundraiser, including hot dogs, buns, water, soda and baked goods.
To donate or for more information contact Sullivan at 707-533-3051 or
To learn about the BMX park, visit the Kelseyville BMX Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/268740103187339/?ref=ts .
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