Planning Commission approves 1,500-square-foot City Hall storage facility

BY RYAN P. CRUZ

In a quick decision, the Carpinteria Planning Commission unanimously supported a new 1,500-square-foot storage building at City Hall Monday night. With the new storage facility, the city will stop paying for offsite storage costs and be able to consolidate its materials in one location.

Associate Planner Syndi Souter presented the proposed storage facility to the commission on Monday, although the project didn’t receive much criticism or discussion before being approved in a 5-0 vote.

The pre-manufactured steel storage building would be placed in an open grass area between the City Hall parking lot and the neighboring public works yard, Souter said, and the project would include new hardscape and landscaping plans.

In order to make room for the 15-foottall building, which will be 30 feet wide and 50 feet long, the city will need to remove a few trees and move the temporary office trailer to another location. An existing avocado tree will need to be trimmed, but the three Redbud trees will remain, and the city will plant four new Fuyu persimmon trees and hummingbird sage plants in the area.

The landscaping was chosen to “screen the structure from Carpinteria Avenue,” Souter said, following recommendations made by the city’s Architectural Review Board.

Public Works Director John Ilasin said that the new storage facility will allow the city to clear up existing city clerk storage and offsite storage, which the city paid for each month until now.

“We’re definitely going to save money from offsite storage,” Ilasin said. “At the same time, we’re going to consolidate materials.”

Community Development Director

Steve Goggia said that the new location will house the city’s archives, which are currently in the process of being digitized – a painstaking and time-consuming process where each page has to be checked for readability.

“It will take a number of years before we get it all through,” Goggia said.

The commission passed the development plan and coastal development permit required for the storage facility.

Later, Goggia previewed an upcoming meeting where the city council will take a look at a number of proposed changes to city code in response to recent housing issues in the region.

The council will look at updating the city’s density bonus – a process which has

The city’s new 1,500-square-foot pre-manufactured storage facility will be built at City Hall, in an open grass area between the City Hall parking lot and a neighboring public works yard. already been initiated – and about five or six “anti-displacement projects” which would amend codes to protect renters and lower-income tenants.

One option would be a short-term rental ordinance, which he said would make it “tougher to break the law”; another proposed ordinance would tackle the new method of displacement called “renovictions,” in which property owners evict tenants under the guise of renovations in order to hike up rents.

These will all be discussed during next week’s city council meeting, he said, on May 8.