With the days leading up to the end of the line for the current City Council dwindling, there's a mad rush to get lots of stuff done. This week, we'll have a Council meeting on Tuesday that's absolutely packed with business. On top of that, four policy committees will meet Wednesday through Friday. For this post, we'll focus on tomorrow's Council meeting.

If you'd like more detail on anything summarized here, click the agenda, then click on the item. Over on the right side of the page, you'll see links to a staff report and other pieces of supporting material.

City Council -- Tuesday, Nov. 17

Tuesday's meeting officially starts at 9 a.m., when the Council will listen to public comment on any items on the closed-session agenda. Then they'll retreat to closed session and return to open session at the unconventional time of 10 a.m. The open-session agenda includes three ceremonial proclamations and 33 (!) consent items that are considered noncontroversial and won't be discussed unless a member of Council or a member of the public asks to have an item pulled out for conversation.

The discussion agenda is composed of 15 items (yowza!). Here they are:

• Riverwalk San Diego (Item 343): The Council will be asked to take a series of actions that would allow the large Riverwalk San Diego project to move forward. The Riverwalk project would transform the Riverwalk golf courses into a new, transit-oriented neighborhood on 195 acres of land north of Interstate 8, west of the Fashion Valley Mall, and south of Friars Road in Mission Valley. The long-rage plan includes 4,300 rental and owned residences -- 430 of which would be deed-restricted affordable -- 152,000 square feet of retail space, 1 million square feet of non-retail commercial and office space, 97 acres of park and open space around the San Diego River, and a new Green Line Trolley stop.

• Popular Market Site (Item 337): In July 2019, Kilroy Realty Corporation bought up most of an entire block in East Village -- bounded Broadway to the north, Park Boulevard to the west, 13th Street to the east, E Street to the south -- as well as the full block directly to the east, between 13th and 14th streets. In order to turn the two-block area into a mixed-use development of office and retail space, all that's left for Kilroy to acquire is a 20,000-square-foot piece of City-owned property -- known as the Popular Market Site.

  This past July, the City Council approved an exclusive negotiating agreement with Kilroy under which the developer would purchase the site for its market value plus an affordable housing premium. The negotiated purchase price is $8.5 million. Net proceeds will be used to develop affordable housing elsewhere. On Tuesday, the Council will consider approving the purchase and sale agreement.

• Affordable Housing Bonds (Items 339, 340, 341): The Council will hold Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act hearings in order to issue multifamily housing revenue bonds to help finance these three affordable-housing projects:

  • Ventana al Sur Apartments: $25 million in bond financing for the acquisition and construction of 100 units to be located at 4132 Beyer Blvd. in San Ysidro.

  • Fourth Corner Apartments: $27 million in bond financing for the development of 74 units to be located at 4021, 4035, 4037, and 4061 Fairmount Ave. in City Heights.

  • Wakeland Price UB Apartments: $21.4 million in bond financing for the development of 59 units to be located at 4390 University Ave. and 4038 44th St. in City Heights.

• Selection of Chair pro Tem for Dec. 10 City Council Meeting (Item S501): On the morning of Thursday, Dec. 10, five San Diegans, having been elected on Nov. 3, will be sworn in as the newest members of the City Council. By the way, hearty congrats to Joe LaCava (District 1), Stephen Whitburn (District 3), Marni Von Wilpert (District 5), Raul Campillo (District 7), and Sean Elo (District 9). Once that happens, someone will need to take over as chair of the meeting, as Council President Georgette Gómez (pictured) and Council President pro Tem Barbara Bry will no longer be members of the Council.

So, Council President Gómez on Tuesday will ask her colleagues to pass a temporary rule allowing the Council to choose one of the four returning members to be the chair pro tem, who will adjourn the morning session on Dec. 10 and open the afternoon session, when a new council president and a new council president pro tem will be elected. After the Council passes that temporary rule, they'll go ahead and pick the member who'll be the chair pro tem on Dec. 10.

• Capital Improvements Program Budget Revisions (Item 334): The City's Engineering and Capital Projects Department (ECP) needs $8 million more than is currently budgeted to complete five emergency storm-drain repairs around town. The department proposes to take the money from other transportation projects to solve the problem. In addition to those, there are Parks and Recreation, Public Utilities, and Transportation Department projects that need funding. ECP staff is proposing to move money to and from various pots to fill those gaps.

When this item was heard by the Council's Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in October, the committee insisted on the inclusion of a clause in the resolution clearly stating that the departments intend to refund the projects that are having funding taken away from them with commercial paper financing.

• Construction Change Orders for CIP Projects (Item 335): ECP staff are also proposing construction change orders totaling $4.7 million for three ongoing projects -- tunneling for a water main in Sorrento Valley, roadway resurfacing and bike improvements along 30th Street, and water-main installation in La Jolla.

• Black Mountain Road Community Plan Amendments (Item 338): The City's Planning Department on Tuesday will ask the Council to approve amendments to the Rancho Peñasquitos Community Plan and the Black Mountain Ranch Subarea Plan that will reclassify a 1.3-mile stretch of Black Mountain Road from six lanes to a four. Once upon a time, it was thought that this section of the road -- from Twin Trails Drive south to the southern boundary of Rancho Peñasquitos -- would need six lanes. That is no longer the plan. Since the road is currently four lanes, nothing will change, except for some design features that, eventually, will improve access to State Route 56 and the flow of northbound traffic. 

• Historical Designation of Property in the Gaslamp Quarter Historic District (Item 342): This past February, the City's Historical Resources Board voted to officially designate a building located at 340 Fifth Ave., Downtown, as a contributor to the Gaslamp Quarter Historic District. On Tuesday, the owner of property will appeal that decision to the City Council, based on a series factual errors and pieces of new information. The structure was built sometime before 1888 and reflected the Romanesque Revival architectural style. At some point, it was stripped of many of its original decorations during a renovation but then restored before 1991. The building itself wasn't designated as historically significant; it is merely considered to be a contributor to the historic Gaslamp Quarter. 

• San Diego Tourism Marketing District (Item 332): San Diego's Tourism Marketing District (TMD) is a mechanism by which the lodging businesses within the city assess themselves a 2-percent fee on hotel-room stays and use that revenue to market San Diego as a destination. The district operates under an agreement with the City of San Diego that regulates how the district does its business and handles its money. Partly due to the economic impacts of COVID-19, the TMD and the City this past June scrapped their existing operating agreement and approved a new one. The TMD is now back with proposed amendments based on changing economic conditions and an update on its planned marketing activities.
• Lease Revenue Bonds and Commercial Paper (Item 331): The City's Debt Management Department would like the Council to authorize the issuance and sale of $100 million in lease revenue bonds to refund $88.5 million in outstanding Public Facilities Financing Authority general fund commercial paper notes and to provide $11.5 million in additional funds for priority public capital improvements.  

• Conflict of Interest Waivers (Item 336): The Council will consider a proposal to make a change to its process of granting conflict-of-interest waivers. Attorneys aren't allowed to represent clients whose interests may conflict with another client’s or a former client’s interests -- unless the client whose interests are being potentially compromised agrees to waive the rule.

Under current Council policy, when the City of San Diego is asked to waive the rule, the City Attorney's Office notifies Council members. If four or more members agree, they can ask for a hearing on the waiver request before the full Council. The proposal coming forward on Tuesday would require all requests for conflicts-of-interest waivers that are within the purview of the Council to be docketed in the consent portion of the Council agenda and considered the full Council. 

• 2020 Census Informational Update (Item 330): Folks from United Way of San Diego County and San Diego Association of Governments will present an overview of their 2020 California Census Final Report. SANDAG received $1.56 million to reach out to communities throughout San Diego and Imperial counties and urge them to respond to the 2020 Census. In the end, the two-county region had a 73.6-percent response rate, 5.5 percent better than during the 2010 Census. The city of San Diego had a 74.1-percent response rate, 4.8 percent better than 10 years ago.

• City Treasurer's Investment Policy (Item 333): The state allows the City Council to invest City funds and sell or exchange securities. In turn, the Council is allowed to hand this authority over to the City Treasurer for one year at a time. Each year, the Council must act to grant this authority and bless the Treasurer's Investment Policy. This year, the Treasurer is proposing a handful of fairly technical changes to the policy.

Finally, the Council on Tuesday will also double as the San Diego Housing Authority. In that capacity, the Council will need to provide duplicate approvals for the three affordable-housing bond items mentioned above. They'll also be given a quarterly report on the San Diego Housing Commission's loan portfolio. 

Members of the public can participate in the virtual meeting and make comments by dialing 619-541-6310 and entering the access code 877861 followed by # when the item you're interested in comes up (full call-in instructions). Watch the meeting on cable TV channel 24 or AT&T channel 99, or stream it online.

Next up will be a post on four policy committee meetings scheduled for this week -- Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods, Active Transportation and Infrastructure, Environment, and Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations.

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