HUNTINGTON BEACH : Panel Expected to Act on Housing Plan

With a large developer and a school district still at odds over a school planned to serve the Holly-Seacliff project, the Planning Commission tonight is expected to intervene and advance plans for the massive development.

Commission members have twice delayed considering plans for the 780-acre housing project because representatives from Pacific Coast Homes and the Huntington Beach City School District have been unable to agree to terms on a new elementary school.

When they postponed their action for a second time earlier this month, commissioners set tonight’s special meeting to consider the matter and promised that there will be no further delays. A 7 p.m. public hearing is scheduled to precede the panel’s vote.

The key obstacle to agreement between the district and developer is money. The district is seeking more compensation to build the new school than Pacific Coast Homes is willing to pay. Each side has made compromises to the other but says it can budge no further.

Supt. Duane Dishno said the district wants only to see the school built without being forced to subsidize the project with its own funds. And the financing package being offered by the developer, he said, falls $1.5 million short of what it would cost the district to buy the land and build the school.

“This development will impact this district, and the developer has a responsibility to mitigate that impact,” Dishno said Monday. “The district shouldn’t have to do that. The developer should, in the way they have with other public agencies.”

But Pacific Coast Homes, a residential development arm of the Huntington Beach Co., the city’s largest private landowner, contends that the $9.3 million in fees it is offering is enough to accommodate the additional schoolchildren that the project will attract.

The developer’s school fees are required by law, but their amount may be negotiated with an affected city or school district. Since talks began, Pacific Coast Homes has boosted its fees by 20% and has dropped the price of the school-site land to $730,000 from $825,000 per acre.

Bill Holman, a spokesman for Pacific Coast Homes, argues that the district may open or sell one of its four closed school sites to make up any difference.

“We have bent over backward trying to accommodate the district’s needs, but they have been unwilling to negotiate,” Holman said Monday.

During the three weeks since the issue last came before the commission, the negotiators met for another round of talks but say that virtually no progress was made. The district’s school board rejected the latest two compromise measures the developer offered.

Now it is up to the Planning Commission--and, ultimately, the City Council--to settle the issue so the project, calling for up to 4,410 homes in the north-central part of the city, can proceed.

The commission’s chairman, Kirk Kirkland, said Monday that he and his colleagues may approve the plans, contingent upon future resolution of the school site.

Kirkland, however, criticized the school district as being unjustifiably intransigent on the issue.

“I find the school district’s position very difficult to support,” he said.

If district trustees were to accept Pacific Coast Homes’ offer, “they would be made whole,” he said. “But they want to be made whole and a half. I don’t know why they can’t live with the solution the Huntington Beach Co. has offered them. It certainly seems adequate.”

Three sites on Garfield Avenue near Edwards Street are being considered for the elementary school, which is to accommodate up to 600 students. None of the sites have been approved by the state.