The Hermosa Beach City Council made what it hopes will be the last of its changes to PLAN Hermosa before the master planning document comes up for an approval vote next month.
PLAN Hermosa and its associated environmental impact documents will have a public hearing at the Aug. 22 council meeting. City staff expects the version of the plan on which council members will vote will be available to the public at least two weeks before the meeting.
The document contains the city’s updated General Plan and Local Coastal Program, which will guide future policy and development in the city for the coming decades.
The version of the plan the council will consider mostly overlaps with the version presented to the council by the Planning Commission at the end of March. After more than three months of study sessions on various aspects of the plan, the council was careful in recent meetings about making even minor changes to the document.
That caution was inspired in part by a backlash generated by earlier versions of the document. Although it was the product of years of community outreach and was released as a draft in the fall of 2015, Planning Commission hearings for the document were packed with residents angry about what they described as an extremist document, crafted in secret and sprung upon the town. Many claimed to have first heard about PLAN Hermosa through social media. Residents expressed outrage over goals for city-wide “carbon neutrality” by 2040 as well as a historic preservation program that could have led to the landmarking of private residences.
In response, the commission toned down or eliminated the plan’s more reviled provisions in the version that they passed on to the City Council. That body then spent the last several months fine-tuning the document and preparing it for the upcoming vote.
In the final meeting before deeming the document ready for a vote, exposure to the prolonged ire of community members loomed large over decisions about how to tweak the document. In the most heated exchange of an otherwise calm evening, Councilmember Carolyn Petty and Mayor Justin Massey sparred over whether the language of the plan’s city-wide greenhouse gas emissions goals should read “meet” or “meet or exceed” the carbon reduction mandates imposed on Hermosa by California. (The council, with Petty and Councilmember Stacey Armato objecting, ultimately settled on the “meet or exceed” language.)
Massey said that the addition of “or exceed” did not obligate the city or its residents to make any additional sacrifices, but merely gave the city the opportunity to do so if technological advances made greater reductions easier to achieve.
Petty pointed out that the issue drew the most public input in PLAN Hermosa discussions, much of it negative, and said it would be wrong to make such an alteration at Monday’s meeting, which was sparsely attended.
“In your mind, does this require the community to exceed the goal established by the state?” Massey asked Petty.
“In my mind, you are being tone-deaf to the community,” Petty responded.
Other issues generated less animosity but similar concern over deviating from the Planning Commission’s work, including the designation of six additional view corridors. Seventeen locations previously had been identified as “prominent public viewpoints,” because of the significant or aesthetically pleasing vistas they offered. Future development affecting those views would not be prohibited, but the impact on the view would be given a “seat at the table” during the permitting process, planning officials have said.
Mayor pro tem Jeff Duclos said that while he did not doubt that there were many views worthy of being included, he was hesitant to add those that had not already received commission consideration.
“We can all go out and find places in this town we think might have a particular value,” Duclos said. The council ultimately decided against expanding the list.
On most issues, though, the council found consensus. They agreed, for example, not to modify the Creative Light Industrial zoning designation for the Cypress district. Under that designation, businesses in the area will be allowed to have limited retail operations, so long as goods sold are manufactured on site. For example, if a brewery to open in the area, it could include a tasting room. Retailers would be prohibited from selling items not made there.
Cypress is the historical heart of surfboard manufacturing in the city, and houses, auto shops, recording studios and cabinet makers. But during the past year, a pair of art galleries and a glass-blowing shop have opened. While council members expressed some enthusiasm on the question of permitting other uses, there was concern that their efforts could backfire by prompting an increase in rents for tenants.
“There could be unintended consequences of changing things too much when it’s kind of happening naturally,” Armato said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Councilmember Carolyn Petty was the lone opposition vote to changing the language in PLAN Hermosa associated with the city-wide greenhouse gas emissions goals from “meet” to “meet and exceed” the California standards. In fact, Councilmember Stacey Armato also opposed the change.
