Neighborhood groups plan to to file complaints with the district attorney and Grand Jury
Dozens of northern San Bernardino residents who oppose the planned use of a 38,150-square-foot building being raised at West 27th Street and Little Mountain Drive gathered in the shadow of what will be the county’s new welfare office Thursday, Oct. 17, to announce they intend to file complaints over the approval process with the county District Attorney’s Public Integrity Division and with the Grand Jury.
As members of the Muscupiabe and Blair Park neighborhood associations took turns chanting “Save our neighborhood, no welfare office,” into a bullhorn, Lynne Wear, president of the Muscupiabe Neighborhood Association, said she and her neighbors do not oppose the need for social services in the area or the building itself.
But the noticing and approval processes were flawed, she said, and if the building is allowed to be used as intended, the city will have violated its development code by not requiring developer Scott Beard to obtain a conditional-use permit before leasing the building to the county.
The complaints are “to put the city, the county and the developer on notice that we’re not going away, that we’re in this till the end,” Wear said. “We expect to prevail. We want a conditional-use permit to be obtained and we want the county to consider putting some other county office in that building.
“This is about exposure, exposing all parties involved that made the decisions that got us to this point, that left us out of the (approval) process,” Wear added. “It’s as much about that as much as anything.”
Beard, whose project was approved by the city’s Development and Environmental Review Committee in November 2018, said in a phone interview Friday, Oct. 18, that his team followed the city’s process “exactly as the city directed us to follow it,” adding that the permitting “was done per the letter of the city’s existing ordinance.”
“In the neighbors’ defense,” Beard continued, “this shows just how out of date the city’s existing general plan and its subsequent ordinances are and that the need for the city to update those is pretty dramatic.”
Beard previously threatened legal action against the city over the dispute.
A day before the protest, San Bernardino’s City Attorney’s Office announced that the City Council plans to draft a resolution stating firm opposition to the building’s intended use due to anticipated secondary impacts on the surrounding community.
Additionally, assistant City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said at Wednesday’s council meeting, city staffers would bring forward an ordinance at a later date making it absolutely clear that this sort of use requires a conditional-use permit.
The county operates three Transitional Assistance Department, or TAD, facilities in San Bernardino, with operations at the North Massachusetts Avenue location expected to be moved to the new building upon completion in May. The conditional-use permitting process not only would require thorough plans to mitigate detrimental impacts to the surrounding neighborhood, it would allow the public and Planning Commission to formally weigh in on the issue.
As they have since learning this summer that the facility just east of the 215 Freeway would be used as a human services office, not a human resources office, members of the surrounding community contend operations there would significantly increase car and foot traffic, vagrancy and loitering in the area.
“We understand these services are needed,” said 55-year-old neighbor Betty McCart, her neon green sign reading: “Great need, wrong place.”
“But this is a major thoroughfare that leads right into a neighborhood,” she said. “We want to see people get help, but this sort of office could be located in a better place.”
October 18, 2019
San Bernardino County Sun
By Brian Whitehead
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