To get the elephant out of the room, Council member Carlson opened Thursday’s council meeting with a motion to reconsider the vote for Council chair from the last regular meeting. His defense of the motion was that he didn’t feel Chair Maniscalco could adequately represent the Council in light of having received the letter from the Mayor in March and not sharing it with the rest of Council prior to the special call workshop. “Blindsided.” The motion was seconded by Council member Viera for discussion which amounted to “let’s put this off until the end of the day and take care of the agenda first.” At the end of the day, after a long review hearing and continuing several agenda items, the motion was brought forward again. Seconded by Council member Viera, the motion passed with Council members Henderson, Miranda and Maniscalco voting no. Nominations were re-opened and both Maniscalco and Council member Clendenin were again nominated for Chair. This time the vote was 4-3 for Clendenin. Council members Hurtak, Viera and Clendenin all voted Clendenin for Chair during the first vote 2 weeks ago; they didn’t “flip” their votes, they voted consistently.
As Clendenin was the Chair Pro-Tem, new nominations and vote were required for the vice chair position. Henderson and Carlson were both nominated, with Henderson elected Chair Pro-tem with votes from Maniscalco, Viera, Miranda and Henderson. She was unanimously elected Chair of the Community Revitalization Agency Board on May 1st after the votes for Council Chair and Chair Pro-Tem.
Beyond that, there were accusations of politicizing the police department, Committee assignments, and revenge. It wasn’t exactly clear what they were talking about, Carlson said several times committee assignments or flip-flopping on committee assignments had nothing to do with his reconsideration. Council member Maniscalco got the last word saying he looked forward to the headlines. He may have wrote a couple when he said “today set a bad precedent and makes us look bad.”
As to the actual agenda Thursday, there’s a fundamental problem with scheduling review hearings during regular Council sessions. There were 2 review hearings on the agenda today, one was continued. It still took up 3 hours of their afternoon. Council, and the public, were unable to get the mid fiscal year report from the Finance Department. That was continued until June 26, 3 weeks before the next fiscal year’s budget is presented by the Mayor to Council. They were unable to have any discussion about the $235 million reimbursement resolution, continuing that until June 5, when they will also be voting to actually approve a $65 million bond resolution (actually issuing bonds).
At 5:10pm, as they were just getting to the that part of the agenda, the Budget Director made a comment that he’d been waiting since 1:30pm with two consultants to speak to the 2 items . Which doesn’t play well with the criticism of Council not respecting staff’s time. However Council didn’t pick a 3 hour review hearing for the middle of their regular meeting. Which ever rule or code section that dictates review hearings are held during the daytime of regular meetings needs to be re-evaluated. They should be evening hearings on the same nights as other land use cases. Beyond that, the only thing Council could have done to better manage their time Thursday was take a shorter lunch break. Council session started at 9am, broke just before noon and reconvened at 1:30pm.
Rome Yard did get pulled from the consent agenda and there was a brief discussion about the project. Staff provided a lot excuses on behalf of the developer, disguised as “progress”. How exactly a project of this magnitude was approved and a timeline amended two years into it without financing in place should be a major concern.However the new, second amended timeline and related item were approved 6-1 with Carlson voting no.
Another topic that was punted by Council was public safety. Council member Viera has been asking for a Public Safety Master Plan for 3 years and for 3 years there has been a disconnect from what he is asking for and what the Police and Fire Rescue Chiefs present. The latest iteration was continued until a later date, as were any updates and discussions about fire station 24. The $250,000 contract for the consultant to manage the project passed on consent.
As to the aforementioned 3 hour review hearing, it came down to what the definition of “direct access” to an arterial or connector road means. The scope of the Special Use application was limited to two things: does it have direct access to such a road and does the proposed use fit within the RM-24 zoning standards. There was no debate on the later, the question was the “direct access”. On a map, the currently zoned commercial (CI- commercial intensive) property is only adjacent to a residential street on the north. There is a big parking lot to the south which is connected to an arterial road. It was demonstrated there is access—a private road of sorts—in the original commercial development’s platt. As this was something staff had approved and the neighborhood (the petitioner for the review) didn’t have anything concrete to counter the criteria used, Council voted to uphold staff’s decision. That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of comment the about Coastal High Hazard Area, flooding, traffic and density, but that isn’t part of the criteria for this “step in the process” as one representative for the developer put it. It’s also a cautionary tale in that properties like this one could potentially use the Live Local Act and build considerably denser developments without a single review by staff. “Straight to permitting” as the developer’s representative said.
Which gets to the last thing of note that came from Thursday’s meeting. The presentation the Planning Commission scheduled for next week related to the city’s updated future land use plan was moved to a special call meeting August 28, 2025 5:01pm.
