Council Supports Housing Legislation

Heeding the advice of the League of California Cities, the City Council has voted to support one bill now pending in the Legislature and to oppose three others.

The measure drawing support is Assembly Bill 2725. City Manager Darrell Essex, in a memo to the council, said that bill would help cities meet their state-required affordable housing goals by giving broader credit for some types of construction.

The League of California Cities has endorsed the bill, Essex noted.

The council voted to oppose three other bills: Senate bills 2113 and 1538 and AB 2569. All are being challenged by the League.

Essex told the council that SB 2113 is designed to keep contractors convicted of fraud from bidding on public works projects for three years. But critics say that the measure would actually limit existing ways cities have of excluding convicted contractors, Essex said.

SB 1538 would put more restrictions on cities’ ability to issue conditional-use permits, Essex said. “If cities wish to limit delivery truck operations,” he said, they would be required “to compensate the truck operators for the privilege of limiting delivery hours.”

Essex said AB 2569 would restrict cities, including Cypress, that have redevelopment plans. It would not allow cities to use condemnation, or eminent domain, “if the project involved the acquisition of privately owned businesses for the eventual reuse by another privately owned business.”

Essex said that would defeat the basic goal of most redevelopment projects, which is “to improve the value of a project area, removing blight, some of which may be commercial blight.”