CHICO — The Bell Muir Special Planning Area has a new type of specialness after the Chico City Council decided at Tuesday evening’s meeting to remove that designation in the general plan.
From a relatively light agenda, councilors also opened a 30-day window for public comment on allocating federal block grant funds, agreed to modify rules for cannabis businesses and initiated a review of council procedures.
Attendance also was relatively light: two-dozen, including several from the Jesus Center — for a presentation on the Genesis shelter facility — and several Public Works employees. The presentation took nearly a third of the meeting, which ended with the sun still out.
A subdivision triggered the Bell Muir discussion. In approving Orchard Creek Estates on Feb. 20, the council pulled the 20 acres — encompassing the 74-lot project and the Chico Masonic Family Center — out of the 398-acre SPA, which the city’s general plan identified for master planning.
The lot on West East Avenue in Chico, California on Tuesday, April 16, 2024 where Orchard Creeks Estates is slated to be built. (Jake Hutchison/Enterprise-Record)
With the project approval, councilors also directed the Community Development Department to return with a recommendation on how development should proceed in this northwest part of the city’s sphere of influence. (Chico subsequently annexed the Orchard Creek Estates property; the remainder of the SPA remains unincorporated under Butte County jurisdiction.)
City planners propose removing the SPA designation and, per a report from Community Development Director Brendan Vieg, “pre-zoning and designating the area for single-family development, and planning for infrastructure needs” such as sewer lines, storm drains and streets “to support buildout of the area.”
Over the past 10 years, subdivisions have sprung up under county standards and septic instead of sewer, Vieg noted. Bell Muir comprises 240 separately owned properties, a patchwork he said makes master-planned development improbable.
“It strikes me this should never have been designated a special planning area in the first place,” Councilor Tom van Overbeek said — an assessment Vieg affirmed.
Councilor Addison Winslow asked if a study of infrastructure needs should precede zoning the area R1 with large lots; Vieg responded the city can extrapolate needs based on yield from the zoning. Vice Mayor Kasey Reynolds asked about traffic signaling, given traffic in the area, which staff said the city could do.
Austin Barron, a realtor and former member of the architectural review board, was the lone speaker. Calling the Bell Muir SPA a “disaster,” he urged the council to remove the designation, annex the area and zone it low-density residential.
That, in essence, was what the council did on a 6-1 vote, with Winslow dissenting due to his concerns about pre-zoning.
Grants
The council held a public hearing on allocating funding from two programs: Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and Home Investment Partnership Grant (HOME). The federal government requires an action plan for the funding; this marked an initial step in the decision-making process.
With federal budgets in flux, Housing Program Analyst MaryJo Alonzo explained the city is assuming funding equal to last year, around $1.5 million between CDBG and HOME. Of that, $138,000 will go to service providers.
Organizations recommended for funding are Catalyst, Chico Meals on Wheels, Esplanade House, Peg Taylor Center, True North Housing Alliance and Chico Housing Action Team. Safe Space also applied but did not get a nod for funding.
Last year, the council pushed for the Jesus Center, and van Overbeek inquired about its apparent exclusion. Alonzo answered that the group did not apply.
Only one speaker addressed the plan, advocating for homebuyer assistance. A public hearing at the May 21 meeting will cap a 30-day comment period.
Cannabis
Two items on commercial cannabis came to the full council from its three-member Internal Affairs Committee.
“You’re going to get the wrong idea what I do with my recreational time,” quipped van Overbeek, chair of the committee.
The IAC recommended the city adjust its codes to broaden the types of manufacturing licenses accepted and require businesses to start operating within three years of receiving their city permit — and, in a separate deliberation, for businesses to pay their community benefit assessment to the city quarterly rather than annually.
“This is not changing what’s happening with the cannabis industry in Chico,” Vice Mayor Kasey Reynolds explained of the first recommendation. “It was more of a house-tidying kind of thing.”
Both passed unanimously.
Other business
At the request of City Clerk Debbie Presson, the council started a review of administrative policies and procedures (or AP&Ps) last reviewed comprehensively four years ago. Presson suggested several edits but also for the council to appoint three members to a Council Procedures Committee to examine the entire set of AP&Ps.
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Councilors approved the recommendation on a 7-0 vote. Mayor Andrew Coolidge floated the idea of the IAC conducting the review, but the council ultimately accepted a subcommittee of Dale Bennett, Winslow and the mayor.
In closed session, which bookended open session when councilors needed more than the initial hour, they received updates on litigation and continued performance evaluations of the city manager, city clerk and city attorney. The council took no final action on any of the confidential items and recessed just after 7:30 p.m.
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