WRITTEN
PUBLIC
COMMENT
CITY COUNCIL
MEETING
AUGUST 2, 2022
1 From: Alena Callimanis <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 10:57 AM
To: Monika Radeva; City Clerk Mail; Laurie McGinley
Subject: Item for City Council August 2 Items not on Public Agenda ** EXTERNAL: This message originated outside of the City of La Quinta. Please use proper judgement and caution when opening attachments, clicking links or responding to requests for information. ** Good day! I would like this to be made available to Council members. This is my discussion point for Public Hearing items not on agenda for August 2, 2022. Thank you very much.
Alena Callimanis
81469 Rustic Canyon Dr
La Quinta, CA 92253
919 606‐6164
[email protected]
Honorable Mayor Evans, Mayor Pro Tem Fitzpatrick, Council Members and City Staff, I would like to respectfully request that Consent Calendar Item 2 be pulled out separately from the Consent Calendar and further discussion happen August 2 or another time on that item. All the Affordable Housing Overlays should be removed from all areas in Exhibit C. A JPEG picture is attached below. I apologize for the quality but that is why I never picked up on this before as to the location. Having these overlays in Exhibit C gives the false expectation that affordable housing could potentially come to these areas. Here are my reasons that this area should not including the affordable housing overlays:
1) Please look at the Neighborhood Commercial area in Exhibit C that is at the end of Madison at the South West corner of Madison. The first critical item is that Madison Ave stops at 60th Street. So Madison does not extend to that Neighborhood Commercial area as depicted in this picture. This overlay is in the Travertine Development, on the other side of the berm. In the presentation we had from Travertine, they said that the extension of Madison will only be used as construction access and will never be a street. This is due to the fact that it is CVWD access to the retention ponds. The only access to this CN area will be to go down Monroe, west on 62nd and then on a bridge across the berm. Perhaps eventually, the developer said, the Jefferson Street extension across the berm will one day be built. So this area can’t be an affordable housing area. It is totally inaccessible. 2) If we look at the CN areas at Monroe and 60th, and Madison and 58th, in prior public hearings on affordable housing, when I discussed adding more affordable housing to the Coral Mountain proposed area, I was told that could never happen because of the total lack of services in the area. Current discussion with Coral Mountain is that the neighborhood commercial at Madison and 58th would be a “farm to table” neighborhood restaurant and would not provide any services that would make any of these areas feasible for affordable housing.
I believe keeping the overlays in the areas in Exhibit C is providing misinformation and a disservice to the intent of ensuring affordable housing in La Quinta. For the reasons stated above, those overlay areas should be removed.
Respectfully,
Alena Callimanis
81469 Rustic Canyon Dr
CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY RESIDENT ALENA CALLIMANIS CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM NO. 2 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: AFFORDABLE HOUSING OVERLAY 2 La Quinta, CA 92253
919 606‐6164
CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY RESIDENT ALENA CALLIMANIS CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM NO. 2 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: AFFORDABLE HOUSING OVERLAY 1 From: Alena Callimanis <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 12:14 PM
To: Monika Radeva; Laurie McGinley; City Clerk Mail
Subject: email for presentation at August 2 2022 City Council meeting Public Hearing items not on the agenda
Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Completed
** EXTERNAL: This message originated outside of the City of La Quinta. Please use proper judgement and caution when opening attachments, clicking links or responding to requests for information. ** I would like to present this at public comments on items not on the agenda for August 2, 2022. Please let me know if I need to provide hard copy for distribution to the Council. Thank you. *******************
Honorable Mayor Evans, Mayor Pro Tem Fitzpatrick, Council Members and staff, I would like to respectfully request that Item 4 be removed from the Consent Calendar for further discussion either on August 2 or a subsequent time: "Adopt resolutions to approve amended and restated rules of procedure for public meetings and related functions and activities of the City Council”.
I believe that this following item needs clarification:
Public speakers may elect to use printed presentation materials to aid their comments; such printed materials shall be provided to the City Clerk to be disseminated to Council, made public, and incorporated into the public record of the meeting; it is requested that the printed materials are provided prior to the beginning of the meeting. There shall be no use of Chamber resources and technology to display visual or audible presentations during public comments, unless permitted by the Presiding Officer.
Here are the points I believe that require clarification:
1) In the City Council meeting where these rules were discussed, a comment was made that charts are made available and are on the City Council screens in front of them, even if they are not displayed in the Council Chambers or on-line. If that is still the case, it appears that some materials do need to be available soft copy for the City Council to view? Or does everything need to now be provided in printed format? I would think providing things as well in soft copy will make it more easily accessible to people who are live streaming or available after the meeting, or even the Council Members themselves. Please clarify.
2) Regarding the comment on visual or audible presentations during public comment and the requirement for permission by the presiding officer, I suspect this will be on a case by case basis. Can you let us know what the procedure is for getting a presentation approved for visual or audible presentations? For example, a process can be in place where we provide a softcopy presentation by 10:00AM the day before a regular Council Meeting or special Council session, and them we could be told that evening if we received permission. That way you also have final soft copy the day before which should help address Ms. Radeva’s concerns about getting materials late. Since soft copy materials cannot be provided to staff during the Council Meeting for display, there must be a process in place to enable permission from the Presiding Officer ahead of time.
Thank you for your consideration of these requests.
CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY RESIDENT ALENA CALLIMANIS CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM NO. 4 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: RULES OF PROCEDURE 2 Respectfully,
Alena Callimanis
81469 Rustic Canyon Dr.
La Quinta, CA 92253
919 606-6164
[email protected]
CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY RESIDENT ALENA CALLIMANIS CONSENT CALENDAR ITEM NO. 4 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: RULES OF PROCEDURE 1 From: Ian Gabriel <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2022 4:08 PM
To: City Clerk Mail
Subject: WRITTEN COMMENTS - Short Term Vacation Rentals ** EXTERNAL: This message originated outside of the City of La Quinta. Please use proper judgement and caution when opening attachments, clicking links or responding to requests for information. ** Hello Council,
My name is Ian Gabriel, I work as the Director of Data, Policy & Planning for Lift to Rise, a non-profit organization based in Palm Desert that convenes cross-sector partners around radically increasing the supply of affordable housing in the Coachella Valley.
I wanted to give comment today to point out some of the nuances that should be considered when discussing the impact of short-term vacation rentals in our communities.
We have been hearing concerns from community residents across the Coachella Valley, including in the city of La Quinta, that short-term rentals are restricting the supply of affordable housing because property owners, especially larger corporate real estate companies, are reserving what would otherwise be affordable rental and homeownership units for Coachella Valley for short-term vacation rentals advertised to out-of-town tourists.
While this concern is valid, focusing too narrowly on short-term vacation rentals as the key problem ignores the effect of both the local hotel industry underbuilding hotels and our region's crisis deficit supply of affordable housing.
Academic research on the impact of short-term rentals on local housing supply has presented contradictory findings, and the topic is understudied in our region specifically. But what we do know is that the Inland Empire is experiencing California's most severe shortage of affordable and available housing for low-income renters, according to a recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The Coachella Valley is no exception to this -- locally, the food service, casino, and hospitality workers who are the backbone of the tourism economy are becoming increasingly housing cost burdened as rents climb due to our crisis deficit supply of affordable housing.
Lift to Rise formed to transform the systems that generate supply of affordable housing, recognizing that the combination of low wages and high housing costs are the root causes of financial precarity among Coachella Valley residents.
That's why Lift to Rise and over 60 cross-sector partners, including the City of La Quinta, have coordinated around a shared goal of reducing regional housing cost burden at a population level through the production of 10,000 units of affordable housing in the Coachella Valley by 2028.
Together, we are operating off a shared Action Plan which spans 5 key strategy areas:
1. aggregating a pipeline of community-prioritized projects across the valley,
2. growing a regional Housing Catalyst fund to spur production,
3. advocating at the local, state, and federal level for policies and regulatory changes that support housing production in our region,
4. engaging and mobilizing residents and elected officials in support of affordable housing, and
5. keeping residents housed through a coordinated eviction prevention strategy.
We thank the City of La Quinta for joining us in this work thus far, and urge the Council to continue to prioritize the production of affordable housing to ensure that all Coachella Valley residents are healthy, stable, and thriving.
Thank you for your time.
CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY IAN GABRIEL, LIFT TO RISE STUDY SESSION ITEM NO. 1 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: STVR'S AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING 2 Ian Gabriel
Director of Data, Policy & Planning
+732.241.1041
[email protected] | lifttorise.org
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CITY COUNCIL MEETING - AUGUST 2,, 2022 - WRITTEN COMMENTS BY IAN GABRIEL, LIFT TO RISE STUDY SESSION ITEM NO. 1 - LETTER TO CITY COUNCIL RE: STVR'S AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING