Budget Adopted and Housing Eliminated: Seniors Impacted

The Hemet City Council voted in favor of adopting the budget with one major component eliminated; the housing technician/department.  The budget without the housing department puts the city at a $350,000 deficit in the General Fund.  It was confirmed by City Manager Meyerhoff that this version of the budget does eliminate the housing programs and the Housing Technician/Specialist.  Raver suggested an amended motion to adopted the budget that included the housing technician position.  That motion failed 2-3 (In favor: Raver & Wright; Against: Krupa, Milne and Youssef).  Another motion was made to adopt the budget as is; eliminating the housing department and technician position.  That motion passed 3-2-1 (In Favor: Krupa, Milne, and Youssef; Against: Wright; Abstention: Raver). 

Prior to the economic downturn, our housing department had 3 ½ employees.  After the downturn, it was reduced to one person, the housing technician.  Seniors, lower income home owners and our city utilize and benefit from the programs that fall under this department.  The idea in eliminating the role, per the discussion during the council meeting, is that these duties will now shift to other departments.  There are time and cost issues associated with this decision.  It costs time and money to go through the training that our housing technician went through to do the job properly and keep the department and programs functioning.  This will now cost the city time and money for the employees to go through training. A good portion of this department is funded by grants.  I reached out and spoke with someone from the Riverside County Division for the state.  If the awarded funds are not utilized, then the state will encumber the funds for the state programs.  Also, if the city were to contact the state and let them know that they do not have anyone to manage the programs, then the state will encumber the funds.  The housing department deals with both state and federal programs. 

Housing Choice Vouchers (previously called Section 8), is a federal program through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  The federal funds for the vouchers are administered through your local housing agency, and in our case, the County of Riverside.  This does not go through the City of Hemet.  However, if you look at the minutes (link below) or were present at the last council meeting, you will see that there is discussion with the county to take that program to the city level.   

Below, I have a few of the day-to-day tasks and programs that your Housing Technician maintained. 

The Housing Technician is in and out of the office due to property inspections and environmental reporting.  The Senior Home Repair program falls under this department.  In order for seniors to qualify for this program a good deal of documentation is required: 6 months of bank statements, information on the home, social, etc.  There is a two-year wait list to get work done.  The morning I inquired, there had already been five calls that day regarding the repair program.  In order for people to be added to the wait list, the current list needs to go down.  As of right now, the list is closed.  CalHome is a program that assists owner-occupied, low income households.  As of right now, there is no funding being awarded for this program.  The Riverside County representative for the state said that Hemet must be using the awards for the 2014 year.  If someone was previously approved but not funded, and it has been longer than 6 months since their income has been verified, then they must be re-qualified. 

The housing department also takes dilapidated homes and/or multi-units and rehabs them.   Once the rehabbed properties have all been rented out, the housing specialist checks on all of the units, then reports it to HUD.  This requires interior and exterior inspections. 

The housing technician also steps in and assists residents that come into city hall if no one else is available at that time.  Not only is the Housing Technician and Housing Department eliminated by this vote, there are code officers that are also affected by this elimination.  There are a multitude of links below for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and California Department of Housing Community Development. 

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/financial-assistance/

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-policy-development/housing-resource-center/plan/he/

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/home_improvements

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/states/california

http://www.cityofhemet.org/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/910

http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/enforcement/sidebar/decrelationships

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-policy-development/housing-resource-center/plan/he/housing-element-review-letters/rivhemet012914.pdf

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-policy-development/housing-resource-center/plan/he/housing-element-review-letters/rivhemet062812.pdf

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-policy-development/housing-resource-center/plan/he/status.pdf

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-policy-development/housing-related-parks-program/docs/he-compliance-and-apr-status-final.pdf

http://gisdata.scag.ca.gov/Pages/SocioEconomicLibrary.aspx?keyword=rhna

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/financial-assistance/annual_report_2010-2011.pdf

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/financial-assistance/annual_report_11-12_final_22_feb_13.pdf

http://www.hcd.ca.gov/financial-assistance/docs/finalhcd2014-15ar.pdf

Caltrans Project along Hwy 74

This median project will start (estimations) in the summer of 2018 and will end in the summer of 2019.  It is estimated to cost $7.4 million.  They have already spent $100,000 up to this point for staff time related to the project.  Caltrans categorizes this as a highway safety improvement project, which is why, according to Caltrans, they did not reach out to the city sooner.  Between the years of 2006 and 2010, Caltrans conducted their Caltrans Annual Multilane Cross Median Collision Monitoring of the segment of Hwy 74 scheduled for the installation of the raised median.  In 2011, they assessed the data and determined that the segment had met or exceeded the number of fatality collisions per year.  This led to the development of the project presented to the community Tuesday night at the Simpson Center.  According to Caltrans, a raised median will reduce the number of collisions resulting in fatalities by 25%.  Reducing fatality collisions is a priority, especially if it can be avoided by extra safety measures.  When we asked for the data on timing, location and ultimate cause of the collisions, Caltrans was unable to offer any of that data to the public. They stated that if we wanted those documents, then we needed to submit a public records request. However, it was later discussed after that if you are to call and request the public documents, that they have to give them to you without filling out the form.  Thank you, Loni Vogler for addressing that with them further and making it a little easier to access the information!
 
Some of the concerns were: business access, public safety response times, traffic congestion, flood control and aesthetics. 
Business access: This will make access to businesses a bit more inconvenient. 
Public Safety: As a company policy, AMR is not permitted to drive over a median. 
Traffic Congestion: It will cause a back-up unless enough people decide to commute down side streets.  This will affect our neighborhoods and road maintenance with increased traffic. 
Flood Control: Hwy 74 already has some flooding without a raised median.  This does need to be addressed.  If another agency is in fact in charge of this, then we can imagine how much more time this is going to take.
Aesthetics: How will the medians be designed?  If there is any landscaping, who will maintain it?

According to Caltrans, we should be reaching out to them for education on future projects they have planned.  Hmm... Apparently, we did not know about this project.  I guess a yearly phone call needs to be made to Caltrans.
This is where city leadership got a taste of its own medicine; lack of transparency and communication. If the city leadership was so irritated about how they were treated by Caltrans, then they should consider how irritated we, the citizens, are with their lack of consideration.  City of Hemet: you may want to start doing business a little differently at City Hall!

Solar Facility at Acacia & Sanderson

SunEdison has been mentioned a bit lately.  I decided to bring back the info I wrote in January after the 1/12/16 council meeting.

The SunEdison facility is located on Acacia and Sanderson.  Part of their agreement was to maintain and landscape along the facility on Acacia and Sanderson.  At the January 12, 2016 council meeting, the consultant was asked why this had not been completed.  He simply stated there was no follow through. It was mentioned that public works had to do some maintenance on the property.  The city was reimbursed for that cost. 

The proposed amendments are below.

PROPOSED FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE AGREEMENT: The proposed First Amendment to the Agreement is provided as Attachment No. 1, The Amendment recitals provide an update on the current status of the project in terms of the requirements under the Temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO) and Agreement. The Amendment modifies specific sections of the original Agreement in order to set forth the following terms:

1. Section 4 of the Agreement is amended to allow for the extension of the TCO, subject to the submittal to the City of a detailed construction schedule and timeline for completion of the remaining plans and improvements.

2. Section 5 of the Agreement is amended to specify that any extension under the TCO shall terminate on June 1, 2016. After that date, if the work is still not complete the City may grant extensions of time in one month increments, provided that Sun Edison pays $10,000 for each monthly extension requested after the June 1 ,2016 date. In addition, because the Letter of Credit for the improvements expires on June 22, 2016; any requested extensions will require that the Letter of Credit be extended as well.

3. Section 13 of the Agreement is amended to change the date in which the Solar Fee is due to the City. The existing Agreement states that the payments of the solar fee shall

Page 3 of 4 commence after the issuance of the C of O on the first business day of December. Therefore, since the Final C of O has not yet been issued, no payments have been made to date, and the soonest the first payment would be due to the City is December 1,2016. Because the solar facility has been in operation for 6 months already, and is requesting an additional minimum 6-month extension, the Amendment requires that the payment schedule be adjusted to have the annual payments being due on January 31't of each calendar year, with the first payment due on January 31, 2016. The amount of the annual payment would not change from the original Agreement. Per the schedule included as Exhibit A of the Amended Agreement, the first Solar Fee payment due to the City is $66,500.

A new Section 18.6 is added to the Amended Agreement regarding "Force Majeure", which recognizes that there are acts such as severe weather events and other extreme events that may result in delays in performance outside the control of the Developer. Such delays shall not be deemed a default under the Agreement.

This means that if they can place blame on SCE in any way (I even heard El Nino mentioned as a reason per the above), they are not going to be held to that $10,000 penalty, if passed.

I received a call back from Director Elliano a little bit after I published the original in January.  She explained that SunEdison has to adhere to the construction schedule set forth by the city unless one of the above happens.  Please note: The city administration is only open Monday through Thursday.  

Something very interesting happened during the discussion of this agenda item.  A past city council member was sitting toward the back of the council chamber.  After the vote of this agenda item, this past council member walked out with the consultant smiling and in conversation.  SunEdison’s stock has also taken at least a 90% dive over the last 6 months (approx. June 2015 to January 2016).  Now, this is information that the council should have known prior to this meeting and vote of they were on top of this company and doing their homework.  Keeping these things in mind, check out how this discussion went.  Youssef said he did not agree with the amendments.  Raver asked if SunEdison was the Federal Government (of course the consultant said no) because they acted like it.  During the discussion, both Youssef and Raver expressed that they did not agree with the amendments.  Milne said something to the tone of, please stay as close to the schedule as you can. The motion passed 5-0. 

Update:  SunEdison filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in April.  Those of us who have been keeping an eye on this are not surprised.  However, they were allowed to continue to operate however they pleased by your city council.  So in the meantime, what happens to the operations here in Hemet?

It just so happens they were on the agenda a couple times tonight (June 14, 2016).  When it was mentioned that the company filed Chapter 11, the council looked flabbergasted.  So, they had no idea that just 6 months ago the company's stock had plummeted about 90%?  This is concerning and for 2 possible reasons.  One, they do not do their homework on companies in which they decide to conduct business.  Two, they know what is happening and ignore it.  Either way, it is not good for the City of Hemet.  So here is what happens now, the city will take the money needed to develop/landscape from the letter of credit.  The landscaping (per the contract), will be maintained by the property owners.  And guess who was present for the meeting?  The same council member who was present during the January meeting.  Almost forgot to mention.... they will be hiring a consultant to see the project to completion. 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/04/21/sunedison-chapter-11-bankruptcy/83329928/
http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=SUNEQ