By The Signal Editorial Board
At Tuesday’s Santa Clarita City Council meeting, Mayor Bill Miranda said he smells something rotten, and there is a stink to the way the downtown Newhall Hartwell project has unfolded.
Miranda is right: The process in which this project was approved, not once but twice, once for 78 units in May and again Tuesday for an additional 20 units, this time with the most minimal of reviews other than a wink and a nudge and a financial windfall for a private property owner at taxpayers’ expense …
Yes. It does stink.
And there is enough — we’ll call it “blame” — to go around to almost everybody at City Hall.
Laurene Weste
When the project was brought before the Planning Commission in March, it came with a staff recommendation to approve the project with the tearing down of a century-old building that formerly housed the Newhall courthouse. The building in 2012 was designated by the city as being historically significant, with the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society’s input.
City staff recommended the project, to allow the building’s demolition, based on a letter from the SCV Historical Society saying that the building no longer has significant historical value.
The staff recommendation also recommended that Serrano Development, represented by Jason Tolleson, pay the city an agreed-upon $750,000 impact fee to offset the impact of the building’s demolition, with the money going to the “city.”
The problem is the $750,000 was negotiated by Councilwoman Laurene Weste and ONLY Laurene Weste, without city staff, other council members or anyone else. Weste happens to be a longtime member of the SCV Historical Society’s board and a big proponent of the restoration of Hart Park, which is where the bulk of that $750,000 would likely be distributed.
Because the fee was negotiated by one council member and no one else with no studies as to the amount of the impact fee or the historical value of the building, if any, The Signal called this a backroom deal.
Because of this and with Weste owning property in very close proximity to the Hartwell project, we demanded Weste recuse herself from the voting, which she did.
Weste did nothing illegal. However, this is where the project first started down the road to Stinksville.
Jason Gibbs
There was much discussion about the lack of parking with this project. In addition, Carl Goldman and Jeri Seratti-Goldman, owners of the building next door, had concerns involving noise impacts on their radio station operations during construction.
They wanted sound mitigation compensation totaling $450,000.
At the second council meeting regarding the Hartwell project, city staff still recommended the $750,000 impact fee for the demolition of the old courthouse building.
However, Councilman Jason Gibbs put forth a motion to eliminate the historical impact fee and instead replace it with a $300,000 fee, to the city, to go toward a future Old Town Newhall parking structure if the project was approved.
The council voted 3-0, with Weste recusing herself, and Councilwoman Marsha McLean abstaining, to approve the project under the new conditions recommended by Gibbs.
The May 13 approval of this motion not only approved the demolition of the courthouse building and approved the project, but it also cut the city’s fee from $750,000 down to $300,000.
No explanation was provided as to where the $300,000 figure came from, except the $450,000 not given to the city was the same figure the Goldmans wanted for sound mitigation or to move their studio from one side of the building to the other.
The Signal subsequently published a story on how the council self-reports conflicts of interest, including conflicts that arise from political campaign donations, and the dollar amounts and time periods for doing so.
Fast forward to the past month, and we now have an amended permit application from the developer to add the KHTS building to the project, adding 20 more residential units, making a total of 98 units, and adding 1,100 more square feet of commercial space to the originally approved 5,300 square feet, and 36 additional parking spaces, for a total of 158.
Now, Serrano development is buying the Goldmans’ building to add to the project. Tolleson is paying $2.35 million for the building — and he’s using the $450,000 that the city did not get to buy the building.
In fact, Tolleson told the council his project can’t afford to do both: Either the city gets the $450,000 or the Goldmans do.
At the council meeting Tuesday in which the council approved the addition to the project, Weste again recused herself and now we also had Gibbs recusing himself from this vote because he accepted campaign contributions of $7,000 from the Goldmans toward his planned run for Congress.
Miranda pointed out that Gibbs voted for the project and then a short time later accepted the contributions.
The mayor said this stinks — it doesn’t pass the smell test.
He asked Tolleson why he paid $2.35 million for a building worth only $1.9 million. That happens to be $450,000 over value. Tolleson had no real answer.
The mayor called Gibbs out over it, and also scolded Gibbs for putting the council in a position that would require all three of the remaining council members to vote to approve the project after the recusals by Gibbs and Weste.
Gibbs did nothing illegal, and did the right thing by recusing himself on Tuesday, but the optics are bad.
The upshot is, even though it wasn’t described this way in the official record of the May 13 motion or the council’s approval of it, the council ended up letting the developer off the hook for $450,000 that then went to the Goldmans instead of the taxpayers.
Ironically, Weste’s ill-advised back-room deal would have been better for the city’s taxpayers than what ended up happening.
Patsy Ayala
Councilwoman Patsy Ayala also accepted $1,006 from the Goldmans but did not recuse herself, as $1,000 of the money was given to her two weeks outside the time window required for her to recuse herself.
Ayala also appointed Jeri Seratti-Goldman as a city arts commissioner in January.
Mayor Bill Miranda
Mayor Bill Miranda, although he brought up some valid points, was very abrasive, at times crass, and showed a complete lack of decorum in speaking about Gibbs, former Planning Commissioner Denise Lite and the Soroptimist Club.
In the council meeting Tuesday, the mayor seemed to change his position as he again approved the project but said he had reservations, apparently forgetting his comments at the previous council meeting when the only comment he made was to say he was from New York and in New York they build buildings every day and we should “all just get over it.”
His Tuesday evening rant — which again, did contain some valid points — was nonetheless an embarrassment for the city.
Marsha McLean
Councilwoman Marsha McLean focused on the parking issues at all three meetings. She seemed to be the only council member looking to mitigate the parking issues and asking city staff about alternatives.
McLean, who abstained from the previous vote, reluctantly approved the project on Tuesday after being told that if she didn’t vote for it, the project would be denied and the city might get sued.
As evidence of this possibility, city staff cited a letter from the California Housing Defense Fund, which sent a letter to the city on the day of the council meeting demanding the approval of the project with the additional 20 units added.
The letter included not-so-thinly veiled threats that the city could otherwise be sued under state laws that are designed to hamstring cities’ ability to govern new developments within their own boundaries.
City Staff
The city staff first brought the recommendation for this project with the $750,000 impact fee.
The staff recommendation had no explanation as to how that figure came about, if the building was historic or not, and how that condition was placed in the final recommendation.
It only came out by accident in a Planning Commission meeting when Tolleson blurted out that he had negotiated it with a council member, but didn’t identify which one — which ultimately led to The Signal’s news story reporting that it was Weste who negotiated the deal privately with Tolleson.
The city also had the right to tell the developer that the project’s parking plan was detrimental to the downtown businesses and would have an egregious effect on them. The city could have objected to the project even though its approval is essentially mandated by the state because it is near a Metrolink station, but the city would have had to do so within 30 days of the original filing by the developer in order to have a leg to stand on.
That did not happen.
Then there’s the “addendum” of the radio station’s building and 20 more units.
The Signal has some questions as to why the council had to approve the project with all 98 units and could not just leave the original project in place — the 78-unit version was already approved.
The end result was, 20 more units got added, along with the demolition of an additional building, and the city treated it as if it was a minor revision.
When we asked for answers, we were told the decision was based on the opinion of City Attorney Joe Montes and we would have to ask him.
However, the city has refused to make the city attorney available to us for an interview to answer these questions. We believe city officials are afraid of being sued because of the Housing Defense Fund’s letter.
So yes, the approval process of this project stinks and the residents of Santa Clarita will smell the stink for years as they drive around the streets of downtown Newhall looking for parking.
Questions linger about the city’s handling of the Hartwell. So will the stench.
