By Geoff Page
While the regular monthly meeting of the Ocean Beach Planning Board February 2nd was short and relatively uneventful, some useful information was shared with the community. This function of the planning boards is as useful, if not more so, than the central task of reviewing projects.
Vendor Ordinance, city budget, and stairs
The vendor ordinance is a big one for OB and District 2 council representative, Teddy Martinez, provided an update. A draft of the proposed ordinance has been released for review by anyone who wishes to see it and provide comments. Just go here.
This is a long document and there is a staff report, so it will be the subject of a separate article. The time to make comments, though, is now as this is moving along to the city’s economic development committee and from there to city council. Current council president Elo-Rivera has scheduled a council vote for March 1 if all goes well.
Martinez said the city budget is being drafted and is up for review. He said there will be a Capital Improvements Project or CIP meeting on February 17 to listen to the public about what improvement projects people want to see done. Here is the city’s announcement.
Unfortunately, this was all that could be found on Campbell’s website and it did not contain any information about the time and place of the District 2 workshop.
Lastly, and for what seems like the millionth time, a board member asked about the Bermuda stairs. Other than to say the design was done – something everyone already knew – Martinez had no information on the timeline to actually build the stairs.
City Council Candidates
Three of the announced candidates for the District 2 city council election this year were present and introduced themselves.
The first was Mandy Havlik, then Joel Day, and then Daniel Smiechowski.
Havlik is married to a retired Navy officer and has three children. She is on the Peninsula Community Planning Board and sits on the OBPB’s transportation subcommittee. She is also involved in several more community groups. Havlik is unhappy with Campbell’s stance on the 30-foot height limit and short-term vacation rentals.
Joel Day is UCSD faculty member who has experience in city government as the Executive Director of the City of San Diego’s Human Relations Commission and International Affairs Board. For more on that experience go here
Day has a campaign website that provides more information: https://www.joeldaysd.com/
It’s not clear if Daniel Smiechowski is a candidate as he is not listed as one yet, but he has run for office before. The only way to do Smiechowski justice is to hear him speak for himself. The meeting was recorded and can be found on Facebook. (He begins at 21:21 on the recording.) [Editordude: Smiechowski has been banned from OB Rag comments for his previous racist and misogynist statements.]
Planning Board Elections
The OBPB will hold its annual elections during the March 2nd meeting. Applications and information can be found at this Rag article or on the board’s website . Applications have to be in this week if a candidate wants to get on the printed ballot. Eight seats are open this year.
The board voted to waive a requirement in their by-laws because of the COVID issue. Normally, a candidate for office has to gather 20 signatures from people within the OBPB district the candidate resides in. It was considered unwise to ask candidates to knock on doors asking for signatures at this time.
One Project – 4751 Pescadero Ave.
The applicant is proposing to add a new two-story residence and a 737/SF accessory dwelling unit, or ADU, to their lot that already has an existing residence. The original proposal included a second, attached ADU.
After recommendations from the OBPB project review subcommittee, the owner made changes to the design. The attached ADU was eliminated and the square footage was just made a part of the one house resulting in only one ADU. The subcommittee had issues with how the front of the project interfered with the view corridor and the architect modified the design to mitigate that.
The board was pleased that the applicant worked with them on those issues. The only sticking point at vote time was that the vote was being taken on unapproved plans. The plans were approved before the aforementioned changes were made to the plans. The applicant has to resubmit the plans but wanted to avoid more delay by not having to come back to the OBPB again.
While desirous of avoiding more delay was understandable, there was reluctance. The applicant was asking the board to take the applicants at their word that they would submit the new changes after the vote. Several board members explained that they had been lied to by developers over time and were mistrustful of promises they had seen broken.
In the end, the board voted to approve the project contingent on the applicant submitting the set of plans dated that day, February 2nd ,that showed the changes.
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