The Huntington Beach Planning Commission held a study session at 5:00 PM and a regular meeting at 6:00 PM on January 23, 2024. The study session provided an overview of the Zoning Map Amendment Clean-Up Project, covering 141 parcels across six phases. The regular meeting included the election of the 2024 Chair and Vice Chair, a public hearing on the first phase of the zoning map amendment (17 city parks and city-owned properties), approval of meeting minutes, committee assignments, and annual code of ethics acknowledgement.
I'd like to uh call the planning commission study session to order. Well, I banked it first, but okay. Um, and I'd like to welcome everybody to the January 23rd, 2024 Huntington Beach Planning Commission study session. Well, while the planning commission welcomes public input and free speech, it rejects comments from anyone that are discriminatory, defamatory, or otherwise not protected speech. Those comments will not inform nor be considered by the planning commission. It may be cause for the chair to interrupt the speaker. Such comments will not be uh consented to or otherwise adopted by the planning commission in its discussions and findings for any matter tonight. Thank you. And at this point, um Mr. Coitegan you do the roll call. Commissioner Adams is Commissioner Adams is absent. Um Commissioner Kennedy, your Vice Chair Twining. Chair Palman. Here, Commissioner Wood. Here, Commissioner Rodriguez? Here. Commissioner Costa Gabon. Here. We have a quorum. Thank you. And at this time, do we have any public comments? We have no one signed up for public comments. Okay. Um, so there's no speakers. So next on the agenda in our study session item, uh, which is the zoning map amendment cleanup overview. And staff, um, I believe we have a presentation. Yes, we do. Yeah, uh, Medal and Welch, Associate Planner will give the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Chair and members of the planning commission. Tonight's study session item is an overview for the zoning map amendment project that was brought um to study session in October of 2023 and has been reorganized based on direction uh provided from that study session meeting. This item um, this is zoning map amendment cleanup overview, and I am Madeline Welch, the project planner. So to provide some background, as you know, the general plan is a comprehensive blueprint that provides a framework for the city's resources and guides decisions regarding the land use through 2040. California state law section 65860 requires that the zoning ordinance for every city be consistent with the general plan. This is because the zoning ordinance and the zoning map are tools that are used to implement the general plan, so they should be consistent, specifically the land use element of the general plan. With that, staff has identified 141 parcels that which have zoning designations that are inconsistent with the general plan. For additional background, since staff has identified parcels throughout the city that have become inconsistent over time as the general plan updates have occurred, with the last update being in 2017. This amendment is prompted as a housekeeping item to clean up such inconsistencies. Um essentially a long overdue cleanup. So when an inconsistencies exist, properties are then considered non-conforming. So this amendment is not only important to comply with state law, but to also relieve such sites of those limitations that occur when nonconformities exist. The proposed designations will generally correspond to the pattern of the existing uses on sites since the sites are mostly already developed. Staff has broken down this project into phases, bringing one phase to the commission at a time. And during each phase, staff will go through every parcel included in this proposal to allow the commission the opportunity to have a deeper understanding of each parcel and what each amendment will look like. So we have revised our community outreach efforts, and this includes expanding the noticing for the project to not only the subject parcels, but also to the properties within at least 300 foot radius of each subject site, as well as sending out the notice uh for each hearing a month before instead of the required 10 days to allow the community additional time to review the notice to contact staff with any questions or concerns they may have, or to provide additional time for them to plan ahead should they wish to attend the meeting. We have also added additional language on the notices that were sent to the property owners of the subject sites, which includes information on the option to opt out should they wish to do so. Phase one of this project includes 17 of the 141 parcels, which will be presented at tonight's planning commission hearing. The notices for phase one were sent out a month from a month prior from today's date, and it included 2200 notices. So here is the tentative schedule uh with all 141 parcels split up into six phases.