Rosemead CDC/City Council Meetings -- Tuesday, December 11

The Rosemead Community Development Commission and City Council meet on Tuesday, December 11, at 6pm and 7pm, respectively.

The main item on the CDC agenda is the exclusive negotiating agreement with Primestor for the Glendon Way redevelopment project.  That's the Levitz's and hotel property, just north of the San Bernardino Freeway and west of Rosemead Blvd.  This some primo land, provided the new development includes an improvement of freeway access and traffic signal improvements on Rosemead.

Primestor got the right to negotiate on the lot, but commission members feel that they haven't done enough work over the past four months.  It seems likely that the commission will award the ENA to another group.

The City Council agenda, meanwhile, is eleven pages long.  Partially, that's their own fault, for trying to/having to function on one meeting a month for the past three months.

Among the items on the agenda are two mixed-use projects that the Planning Commission approved back in October.  One is at 7419-7459 Garvey Ave.  The other is at 3862 Rosemead Blvd.  Both, in my opinion, are good projects, for the reasons I have outlined in "The Advantage of Mixed-Use Development" posts elsewhere on this site.

After that, there are 19 items on the consent calendar (they practically used the whole alphabet on that one!).  Then there is one item of "Matters from City Manager and Staff," followed by seven items under "Matters from the Mayor and City Council."

Can't always tell which of those "consent" items are going to be controversial.  But the sex offender residency and the property maintenance ordinances are on the consent agenda.

The property maintenance ordinace is largely as it was originally suggeted by staff, with two changes.  One, they've added an "appeal to the city council" stage between the staff finding and the filing of charges in court.  Personally, I think this is a mistake, because it just screams out as an opportunity for favoritism and politics as opposed to objective conditions as the determinant for whether or not charges will be filed.  But it's precisely because of this opportunity for favor-granting that some members of the council pushed for this provision.

The other change is that a lot of the definitions of conditions have been "removed."  They haven't really been removed so much as they have been "incorporated by reference" to county ordinance definitions.  Legally, it has no effect on the enforcement of the ordiance.  Politically, it lets certain elected officials claim to have soften the "draconian" conditions.

In my opinion, both changes were in the wrong direction and for the wrong reasons.  On the other hand, a bird in the hand, etc., etc.

Matters from the city manager includes a report from Cosolidated Disposal, asking for a 5.62% increase in residential refuse collection, and a 5.79% increase for commercial customers.

Matters from the Mayor and City Council includes a new traffic commission appointment (to replace Janet Chin, who was recently elected to the Garvey School Board), city hall closures during the Christmas-New Years period, a possible request for proposals for the city's engineering needs (currently served by Willdan), Rosemead Blvd relinquishment from the state of California to the city of Rosemead, and the city's appointment to the SGV Mosquito and Vector Control District board.

Quite an agenda.  This meeting could be long.

Depending on where I am in terms of getting my grading completed, I may or may not be attending this meeting.