CLEARLAKE – The Clearlake City Council put off considering the rezone for the Provinsalia project at its March 12 meeting, with the council agreeing to seek a legal opinion on whether or not a previous hearing adhered to the Brown Act.

That decision came the same day as a grand jury complaint was filed that alleged the council violated the Brown Act.

The Provinsalia project, proposed by Lake County Resort Partners Inc., would be located at 17012, 17055 and 17065 Dam Road. The plans call for 665 housing units – 565 single family homes and 100 condominiums – and a nine-hole golf course on 292 acres along Cache Creek.

The council, which gave approval to the project at its Feb. 26 meeting – following two council hearings on the matter – had been scheduled at the March 12 meeting to conduct a second reading on an ordinance to rezone the Provinsalia property from “resource protection” to “specific plan.”

Vice Mayor Judy Thein said there have been complaints about the process and how it was handled, and she asked the council to delay a decision in order for the city to seek a legal opinion from its attorney, Malathy Subramanian, on whether or not it was handled correctly.

The complaints voiced at the Feb. 26 meeting and since then by community members were based on the limiting of public comment.

“Thank you, Judy, for doing that, because that was exactly what I was going to say,” said Council member Joyce Overton, who was not at the Feb. 26 meeting due to back problems.

Overton said the concern was that some members of the public felt they would be able to speak on Feb. 26 following the lengthy public hearing on Feb. 12.

Councilman Roy Simons pointed out that the gallery at the meeting was empty, and he wanted to see the people brought back so the council could listen to their concerns.

Thein said she wanted a written legal opinion. “If we were wrong we need to right the wrong.”

Councilman Curt Giambruno asked how the council could right the wrong. City Administrator Dale Neiman suggested it could involve starting the public hearing process over and sending out new meeting notices.

Giambruno asked if they would have to hold both hearings again. “Probably so. Maybe not,” said Neiman.

Neiman added that the Provinsalia project has been the second-longest public hearing process with which he's been involved, with nine meetings amounting to 18 hours of public presentations and testimony.

Thein said they can determine how to proceed at the next meeting, and asked Neiman if Subramanian could attend.

Neiman noted that the city had brought in a Riverside attorney who is an expert on the California Environmental Quality Act for the hearings. During the meeting it was reported that the attorney cost the city $8,000 for two meetings, which is being paid for by the developer. Subramanian costs the city $2,500 for every meeting she attends.

City resident Rick Mayo told the council that people who haven't been heard in the process need to get their chance. He said when he was a planning commissioner they did 100 meetings on the Wal-Mart store.

“I think it would be a good idea if you opened it back up to the public,” Mayor said. “What you're about to do here is a major undertaking.”

He pointed out that the general plan amendment required for the project will change the plan's direction.

Mayo said he was concerned that archaeologist Dr. John Parker wasn't heard at the Feb. 26 meeting. He added that when a previous incarnation of Provinsalia came up 20 years ago it had many issues, and it still does.

Neiman responded that most of Parker's recommendations were adopted into the project's documents. Mayo replied that they still needed to let Parker speak before the council.

The council agreed, by consensus, to continue the item in order to ask Subramanian for a legal opinion.

Mayor Chuck Leonard explained at the meeting that when they reopened the public hearing on Feb. 26, it was for the purpose of allowing people to speak on specific, new information.

PEG TV Manager Allen Markowski said the meeting can be viewed at the http://laketv8.pegcentral.com/index.php. He said it was Councilman Roy Simons who suggested just after the meeting's three-and-a-half-hour mark that the next person should be the last speaker. A lot of people thought the hearing would be continued, Markowski said.

A review of the meeting confirms that it was Simons who called for wrapping up the public hearing at the Feb. 12 meeting, saying it was getting late and the council still had its own discussion. However, the council did not discuss the project at that meeting, which ended a short time afterward.

Joshua Borba, a Carlé High School student who was assisting with filming the meeting as part of the school's Pegasus Productions, told the council Thursday that he and fellow Carlé students felt the public was cut off from speaking. He added that Provinsalia will affect younger people more than it will many older community members.

Grand jury complaint faults council's handling of hearing

The council's action to seek a legal opinion came the same day as Victoria Brandon, chair of the Sierra Club Lake Group, filed a complaint with the Lake County Grand Jury, alleging that the council “unreasonably restricted the public's right to comment on a duly noticed agenda item, thus preventing effective public participation in public affairs, in contravention of the Brown Act.”

Brandon wrote in her four-page complaint that the council's behavior “was profoundly damaging to the democratic process,” and she is seeking that the vote on Provinsalia taken at that Feb. 26 meeting be invalidated.

She said the council made no attempt at the Feb. 12 meeting to find out if everyone who wished to speak had done so before they closed the public hearing.

Brandon stated that at the Feb. 26 meeting the council considered a 78-page staff report that had new information, but that public comment was limited to a new letter from Caltrans, outlining its concerns about the project, and discrepancies regarding climate change impacts outlined in the environmental impact reports of Provinsalia and Valley Oaks, both of which were prepared by the same consultants.

Thein told Lake County News on Saturday that she knew about Brandon's allegations about the Feb. 26 meeting being handled incorrectly but she had only received a copy of Brandon's grand jury complaint on Friday. Thein declined to comment specifically on Brandon's complaint.

However, Thein said council members acted in good faith on Feb. 26 “in accordance with the direction of the legal counsel that was representing us that evening and the prior meeting.”

The Riverside attorney was even questioned during the break if the process of the meeting was being handled correctly, “and we were advised that correct procedures were being followed,” Thein said.

“I feel it is very important that if the legal counsel that was present that evening made a mistake in judgment of the procedures of conducting the hearing, that it be corrected,” she said.

Brandon's complaint can be viewed online at http://lakelive.info/provinsalia/GJcomplaint.pdf.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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