The seemingly never ending saga of “What happens to the Portola Auto Center?” continues this Thursday night when the Trumark people come before the Planning Commission (PC). Trumark Homes is seeking to build 72 homes on a 7 acre site currently occupied by Elite Automotive Group.
BACKGROUND
To get the nitty gritty about this entire process, here are some relevant previous articles.
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Find out what's happening in Lake Forestwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
CURRENT STATUS
At the last meeting the PC denied Brookfield’s plans to build 151 homes for a host of reasons, but recommended a change to the General Plan. Although this action escapes any rational explanation, it’s what they did. For more details, click here.
The PC recommendation has yet to go to the Council (where at least 3 of the 5 sitting members have benefited from Brookfield and Trumark’s largesse).
PROPOSED PLANS
On the PC agenda is a line that reads –
“Trumark MND, GPA, ZC, TTM, SDP, DA”
Now, you tell me – what’s this about? Well, maybe if we read the next sentence we’ll see –
“RECOMMENDED ACTION: Adopt Planning Commission Resolutions listed on staff report: “
Still in the dark? Me too. Perhaps if we read the next line, that follows the full colon, we’ll finally see what’s up? Here it is –
Did you see anything? No? Me neither. It’s because there is nothing there.
Hmmm.
I’m not a lawyer and I’m not all that familiar with the laws regulating open meetings and the requirement that the agenda provide an adequate explanation of what’s going on, but, this seems to me to be a very poor job of alerting the public to what’s going on.
Every other single agenda item is relatively descriptive and every other full colon is followed by a lengthy description. Why should this project be an exception?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the inclusion of this item on the agenda violates the open meeting act which requires “The agenda items should be drafted to provide interested lay persons with enough information to allow them to decide whether to attend the meeting or to participate in that particular agenda item.” I don’t think this listing rises to that standard. I could be wrong, so tomorrow I'm going to discuss the proposal in more detail.
