By The Signal Editorial Board
It’s an opportunity to do the right thing. And Mayor Pro Tem Laurene Weste should take it.
The controversial proposed five-story mixed-use apartment and commercial building on Main Street in Old Town Newhall is showing up on the City Council’s agenda Tuesday night, and the city staff recommendation is exactly the deal Weste told them to recommend after she negotiated it privately with the developer, Serrano Development Group, and secured a pledge from the builder to pony up $750,000 for her pet historical preservation projects in exchange for demolishing the old Newhall courthouse building, which is on the city’s own list of historic structures.
The deal has Weste’s fingerprints all over it, and the developer’s representative openly acknowledged it in a Planning Commission meeting last month when he said, in no uncertain terms, that he had negotiated the deal with a council member. He didn’t name her at the time, but it was Weste.
As a side note, the project is just a stone’s throw from Weste’s own Placerita Canyon property, though apparently not close enough — we think — to compel her to recuse herself over a legally defined conflict of interest.
Regardless, she should recuse herself anyway.
Whether it’s a legal matter or not, it’s the right thing to do. It’s the right thing to do because she negotiated a shady back-room deal — which is not how we want things done in Santa Clarita, even if that somehow has become the norm as Laurene Weste sees it. It’s also the right thing to do because, even if her property isn’t within the legal “radius” to compel her to sit this one out, she should, because she clearly stands to gain from it personally in terms of improved property value.
Anyone looking at a map can see that.
So, it’s in all likelihood more of a moral question than a legal one. If Weste does recuse herself, then that means the remaining four City Council members — the ones who didn’t have personal stakes in negotiating a shady backroom deal — will make the decision on the project. That might just kill the project because those who “count votes” by watching City Hall goings-on are pegging this one at 2-2 without Weste.
But if the council doesn’t kill the project, there’s another matter council members should address before giving the project their stamp of approval, and that’s the request for relief from Carl and Jeri Goldman, the owners of KHTS, the Santa Clarita Valley’s radio station.
The KHTS broadcast studio happens to be right next door to the Serrano project site. And by right next door, we mean RIGHT next door, as in the construction site and the KHTS building are an eighth of an inch apart.
As you might imagine, the radio station is worried about construction noise. And they have a point.
You might think it’s odd that we would go to bat for a business competitor. After all, The Signal and KHTS both sell advertising in this market that both the newspaper and the radio station love.
But fair is fair, and right is right. KHTS has simply asked the developer to mitigate its most noisy activities — blasting and the like — during the radio station’s morning drive hours of 6 to 9 a.m., Monday through Friday, and for a half-hour at midday on weekdays, so the station can broadcast its most important shows without undue background noise from jackhammers and who knows what else.
The developer, with Laurene Weste and her privately negotiated (dictated?) city staff recommendation for approval firmly in his back pocket, has told KHTS to go pound sand because it would cost extra money to alter the construction schedule.
The City Council should right that wrong and give KHTS the reasonable relief it seeks from a noisy construction schedule. As Carl Goldman put it, in a letter published by The Signal, they can blast to their hearts’ content the other 150.5 hours of the week.
That’s fair. KHTS should not have to relocate in order to broadcast its morning drive and midday shows without construction noise. The council, if it chooses to approve the Serrano project, should stipulate it as such.
So much has already been done wrong on this deal. Is the old Newhall courthouse still historically significant? No study was conducted to weigh the question. Would it cost too much to relocate the courthouse building? No study was done to weigh the question. Is $750,000 a fair “offset” fee for the developer to just demolish the old courthouse building? Again, no study was done to weigh the question.
It just sounded like a good deal to Laurene Weste, in her private negotiations with the developer, and then it became so, because she said so.
There are additional fair questions to ask about the project. Is a five-story building in that location consistent with the city’s Old Town Newhall specific plan? It apparently depends on whether you buy the developer’s contention that the project would occupy a “whole block,” which, considering that the project directly abuts the KHTS building, would lead one to believe that it does not.
That, too, has not been an open topic of conversation or deliberation about the project.
We generally favor the rights of property owners to develop their land. And, in the long run, the Serrano project may very well end up being a good thing for Old Town Newhall. But as we said in a prior editorial, our objection here has to do with the way this particular sausage has been made.
This is not the level of transparency we expect in the running of our city. Nor is it the measured consideration we expect for matters like this. And nor does this deal, as it stands, give due consideration to a particular business for which excessive noise is more than a nuisance — it’s a killer.
The City Council has an opportunity to do what’s right on Tuesday. We urge Weste to do her part, and do what’s right by recusing herself.
And then we urge the other four council members to do the best they can to clean up the mess.
