RECAP: Twentynine Palms Planning Commission, December 17, 2024
No surprises as Planning closes out 2024
Note: Two Planning Commission seats are open for applications. The Desert Trumpet encourages residents to apply for these important City positions. With major development projects like the solar farm and Ofland planned for District 1, your voice is crucial—especially if you live in that district. District 1 is not currently represented on the Planning Commission. (The City’s district map is here.) Applications are due on January 6, 2025. Also note that City offices are closed beginning December 23 and will reopen on January 6.
On a brisk Tuesday evening, it appeared the Planning Commission might wrap up 2024 in time to pack in some late holiday shopping. After quickly sending three buildings to demolition, the meeting slowed considerably as Chair Max Walker and Commissioners Leslie Paahana, Jessica Cure and Alexander Garcia strained to understand the details (and politics) of recycling locations and the implications of deferring utility undergrounding. Commissioner Jim Krushat was out with an excused absence. Video of the just under 90-minute meeting is available on YouTube, and our agenda preview can be perused here.
The Consent Calendar, consisting of minutes for two meetings: November 5 and November 19, 2024, was approved 4-0. Several members of the public were in attendance, but there was no general public comment.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
Items 3, 4, 5: Declaring the properties located at physical addresses of 6664 Sahara Avenue, 7535 Sherman Hoyt Avenue and 72083 Sunnyslope Drive Public Nuisances and Dangerous Buildings
Community Development Director Keith Gardner introduced the properties individually, each of which had several code violations as we covered in our preview. While there was an opportunity for public comments on these items, none was given.
City action on the first property considered, located at 6664 Sahara Avenue, was approved 4-0 in under three minutes, due in part to a deceased owner and unsuccessful attempts to locate any successors.
The Sherman Hoyt property has a living owner who has often promised to clean up the property, but has failed to follow through, per Code Enforcement Officer Vanessa Cabrera. She added that it is a significant clean-up “mostly because of the tires. There's over 1000 tires on this property.” Action was voted through 4-0, as was action for the partially burned structure at 72083 Sunnyslope Drive, where owners have not responded to numerous outreach attempts.
In all three cases discussed at this meeting, the owners will be notified of the Commission’s declaration and be given 45 days to pull a permit for rehabilitation of the structures or to demolish them. If the owners do not act, the City will demolish the structures and take the costs to City Council, which will then likely place a lien on the properties for the clean-up costs.
The Commission discussions on each item were brief but yielded useful information such as the Single Marine Program and local churches sometimes being able to help.
Commissioner Garcia pointed out that “a lot of the time for people with houses like that, they suffer some from some kind of mental illness, or, you know, certain things.” Cabrera indicated that the City doesn’t have programs in place to assist in cases like that other than calling social services. In some cases, though, she offered that Code Enforcement has worked with homeowners on creating strategies for reducing overwhelming jobs to manageable goals:
We try to talk to them and try to get an action plan on how they can do it. We have one gentleman, he said, “It got out of hand, and I don't know where to start.” So we kind of grid his property, and we made it where every two months we go out there. He has just one little area that he needs to make sure that he clears, and it's working, because he's now focused, “Okay, this is my grid. This is what I'm doing now.” But it, you know, it takes a lot of work.
Item 6- AUP24-000003 Recycling Buyback Center/Small Collection Facility
The meeting then took a turn into 30 minutes of the arcana of recycling centers, CalRecycle, handling fees, convenience zones and other details specific to these very necessary businesses. Although it wasn’t stated in the staff report or in the permit application, the request appears to be for CRV Only Store Recycling Centers, which have outlets in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
As we mentioned in our preview, the CRV Only Store is hoping to operate in the space that was formally occupied by Wing-N-It in the Stater Brothers grocery complex.
The Commissioners generally conceded that it’s not a world they are familiar with, especially when faced with conflicting information from Antranik Saiyan, the recycling center applicant; Maria Khachiyan, the owner of CRV Only Stores; and Pros Recycling owner Johnnie Ward, the competition, who spoke during public comment on the item. Adding to the confusion, the Commissioners said they’d been handed information as they entered the meeting that wasn’t included in the agenda packet.1 The source of the information was unclear, but it appeared to have been distributed by Mr. Saiyan who had been given a head’s up by a Planning staff member that “the competition” had submitted a letter regarding recycling center convenience zones.
Per the CalRecycle web site, a convenience zone is the area within a one-mile radius of a supermarket. There must be “one certified recycling center that can redeem all CRV (California Redemption Value) containers” within that zone. The rePlanet recycling center that was in the Stater Brothers parking lot fulfilled that requirement until it closed in 2019. In rural areas, a recycling center can petition CalRecycle to expand a convenience zone. Additionally, some recycling centers receive handling fees from CalRecycle as an incentive toward making recycling of beverage containers convenient for consumers. To qualify for these fees, the recycling center has to be the only center in the convenience zone.
From the public comment offered by Mr. Ward, it appears that Pros Recycle, which opened in 2022, may have petitioned for the expanded zone. Mr. Ward also mentioned receiving an $800,000 handling fee from CalRecycle “to do pop-ups.” Because of this he is claiming there is a potential conflict with Mr. Saiyan. Mr. Saiyan, who may not be familiar with allowances made for rural areas, is saying that the Stater Brothers asked them to be there and that CalRecycle is “good with this.”
In addition to the intricacies of the recycling business, there was an apparent discrepancy between the location size on the Administrative Use Permit (AUP) application (499 sq. ft.) and the location size when the same space was occupied by Wing-N-It (1178 sq. ft.). The question of whether the business needed an AUP or Conditional Use Permit (CUP) was also unresolved.
So…it’s complex. The Commissioners tabled the item to January 21, and a call to CalRecycle is likely in their future.
7- Reset Hotel Deferral of Utility Undergrounding
The question before the Commission was whether the Reset Hotel should be allowed to defer undergrounding utilities until construction of Phase 2 of the development or five years, whichever comes first. Phase 2 adds an additional 30 rooms to the 65 rooms that are currently under construction. The item itself was deferred from November 19 when Reset representatives did not attend the meeting and were therefore unable to answer Commissioners questions. A summary of the questions as well as answers from a Reset representative were included in our preview of this item.
Development partner Ben Uyeda presented on behalf of Reset explaining that they are in favor of undergrounding the utilities. Their issue is with SCE’s $300,000 charge for doing so:
We paid for the undergrounding. We want things to be underground. We spent about $220,000 to trench all the way between those [poles]. So right now, inspected by some of the nice piece people that share an office with Keith, they inspected all that conduit in the ground, all the large Donald Judd2 looking concrete boxes in the ground. We have no problem paying for construction. It's what we do. We like it. It goes into the local economy. It's great.
Mr. Uyeda further explained that the deferment would allow time for negotiating with SCE for a better price or payment agreement. Referring to the utility as a monopoly, he blamed their poor communication for late notice of the undergrounding cost, “Let's just say it makes the DMV look like really well established community servants.”
In public comment, Shane Corrigan and Brett McAffee spoke in favor of the deferment. Ashton Ramsey also submitted a note scribbled on the back of a public comment form. Project engineer Vickie Bridenstine from NV5 sought to clarify comments made at a February 6, 2024 Planning Commission meeting where she told Commissioners that Reset was relinquishing all rights to Phase 2 of the project, now indicating that Reset had since bought additional parcels and “wanted to spread it out a little bit.”
Gretchen Grunt read a letter from Pat Flanagan, who was also in favor of the deferment but only until 2026, due to the additional parcels bordering Joshua Tree National Park:
This landscape is habitat for the California Desert Tortoise, listed as endangered by the California Department of Fish and Game Commission in April 2024. Extra care must be taken to comply with the listing and to honor the City’s General Plan Guiding Principle #2 to encourage high quality development compatible with the Joshua Tree National Park, and #4 to preserve the desert environment and its natural and cultural resources for future generations.
Flanagan’s letter added that “Above-ground utility poles will attract ravens to the Reset Hotel location, which could be detrimental to the local tortoise population.”
When the Commissioners returned to their discussion, the environmental consequences of the deferment were not understood, with Commissioner Paahana commenting, inaccurately, “Those [poles] were already there the whole time. Ravens or not, were always there.” As Flanagan pointed out in her letter, “Ravens did not begin to develop high numbers in the desert until after World War I, when phone and utility poles began lining the desert, providing places to nest and hunt from.”
Instead, Commissioners focused on the findings necessary to allow the five-year deferment, such as whether the cost of undergrounding was excessive relative to the total cost of the project. To date, Reset’s developers had avoided mentioning the cost but Commissioner Cure finally drew a response with Uyeda acknowledging that the $300,000 “represents about 3% of the total construction budget.” If accurate, that percentage places the budget in the $10 million range.
After a “who’s on first” style discussion of the five-year or Phase 2 deferment conditions, the agreement in the agenda was approved 4-0.
Community Development Director Updates
Director Keith Gardner announced that two Planning Commission seats are open for application and that sitting Planning Commissioner must reapply. He also worked to clarify the Commission calendar for 2025. Commissioners agreed that September 2 and December 2 should be cancelled. Also, the January 7 meeting is cancelled making the next Planning Commission meeting Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at 5 pm.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Please note that we do not allow anonymous comments. Please be sure your first and last name is on your profile prior to commenting. Anonymous comments will be deleted.
Feel free to share this article!
Not currently subscribed?
Per the Brown Act, information made available to Commissioners in a meeting must also be presented to the public.
Donald Judd was an artist and writer associated with the art movement known as Minimalism and for objects fabricated from non-traditional materials such as concrete.
I read that there are two Planning Commission vacancies that need to be filled. However I could only find the mention of District !.
What is the 2nd District?