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Covina homes cleared on appeal; Lennox townhouses sent back for talks · LA County

• 0:07
  Maya: This is CivicFM, with the week in LA County government.
• 0:11
  Maya: The Board of Supervisors lets a hundred and four homes go ahead in unincorporated Covina. A Lennox townhouse plan across from an elementary school goes back for talks with neighbors. And the county approves its sixth year of Care First community spending.
• 0:28
  Maya: This episode was produced with AI from the public recordings of the week's meetings. Links to the sources are in the show notes.
• 0:38
  Maya: Our top story this week: on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors cleared the way for a hundred and four homes on a former elementary school site in unincorporated Covina, in the East San Gabriel Valley. The developer, RC Homes, plans detached condominiums on land owned by the Azusa Unified School District. Sixteen of them would be sold as affordable homes at the lower income level.
• 1:01
  Theo: Neighbors had appealed after the Regional Planning Commission approved it. Their representative and about four other neighbors said they'd support the project on conditions, and they brought a list of safety demands. They wanted a traffic signal at one neighborhood exit, some closed-off streets opened for emergency access, and no density bonus homes until their safety demands were met. They cited their own counts, with rush-hour waits of ten to twelve minutes to get onto Lark Ellen Avenue.
• 1:28
  Maya: So why couldn't the Board just say no?
• 1:30
  Theo: County staff said the state Housing Accountability Act bars the Board from denying or shrinking a project like this unless it finds specific, quantifiable harm to public health or safety, and they said there was no evidence of that. Staff said the project's added traffic fell below the county's threshold, so no further traffic study could be required. A fire official said the site isn't in a high fire hazard zone and its streets meet fire codes.
• 1:57
  Maya: One supervisor noted that the commission had approved the project four to one, and that her own commissioner, who voted no, had raised concern that no traffic study was done. The Board denied the appeal. Supervisor Janice Hahn was absent, and planning staff told the commission the next day that the vote was four to nothing.
• 2:16
  Theo: Public Works said it will make changes over time, including signal timing and new neighborhood access points. It said the first phase of a separate median project on Lark Ellen should be done by the end of the year, weather permitting, and that the access points could come with its second phase, set to start construction in the summer of twenty twenty-nine. And the Board asked Regional Planning, working with Fire, Public Works and other departments, for a written report in two years. It's to cover the Lark Ellen work, local hiring, and how the affordable homes are marketed to people nearby.
• 2:52
  Theo: Next we go to Lennox. On Wednesday the Regional Planning Commission took up a plan for ten-three-eleven Condon Avenue, directly across the street from Jefferson Elementary School. The applicant would split one lot into four, keep three existing duplexes, and build twelve new three-story townhouses for sale. Under the density bonus, three homes would be affordable, and in exchange the applicant asked for smaller setbacks and lots.
• 3:18
  Maya: About ten people testified, and all of them raised concerns, though several said they weren't against housing as such. Nearly every speaker raised traffic and children's safety at morning drop-off and afternoon pickup. The school's principal said it serves more than seven hundred students, and that the school learned of the project only about four weeks earlier, from the county's notice. The Lennox School District superintendent asked for a traffic and safety study that covers arrival and dismissal times.
• 3:46
  Theo: Several neighbors also said the developer never contacted them. When a commissioner asked what outreach had been done, the applicant first said they'd been working with tenants in the existing duplexes, fixing up the units. Here's what the applicant said next.
• 3:59
  The applicant (from the meeting): I didn't I didn't really walk around the neighborhood too much. I mean, we we sent out out the flyers and notifications, and I didn't hear anything from anybody. So that was that was kind of the extent of our outreach.
• 4:13
  Maya: Later the applicant offered frosted glass for privacy at the two neighboring homes, and offered to bring construction trucks in before or after hours. One commissioner praised the design and the affordable units. Another said it was concerning that the applicant hadn't worked with the neighborhood first.
• 4:31
  Theo: The commission voted five to nothing to continue the hearing to January sixth. Before then, the applicant is asked to meet with the principal, the superintendent and neighbors about school safety, traffic and privacy, and to report the results to staff. One commissioner noted that the meetings are a request, not a requirement.
• 4:53
  Maya: Our third story is back at the Board. On Tuesday, supervisors held a hearing on the sixth-year spending plan for Care First and Community Investment, the county's fund for community investment and alternatives to incarceration. The agenda puts the plan at sixty-nine and a half million dollars. A supervisor said all eleven million dollars in new ongoing money goes toward closing Men's Central Jail, by expanding diversion and treatment programs. The plan also covers housing stability, immigration legal help, and access to capital for small and minority-owned businesses.
• 5:27
  Theo: A different supervisor was concerned that more than forty-three million dollars from earlier years went unspent and has to be reallocated. County staff said some of it came from county programs that started late, because of contracting and hiring. Staff said reallocated money goes out for three years, so departments have time to spend it.
• 5:46
  Maya: The same supervisor also asked how the county knows whether this spending actually advances alternatives to incarceration. Staff said they now report to the Board every quarter, will look for an independent evaluator, and plan to hire a data scientist. The plan passed.
• 6:04
  Theo: Now a few shorter items from around the county.
• 6:07
  Theo: The Board had a progress report on closing Men's Central Jail scheduled for Tuesday. At the Chief Executive Officer's request, it was put off to January twenty-sixth, so there was no update this week.
• 6:18
  Maya: A resolution to end the local health emergency from the January 2025 fires was continued again, at the request of Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger. It now goes to November twenty-fourth. The agenda lists six earlier continuances since June, so the emergency stays in place for now.
• 6:37
  Theo: In public comment, about ten food service workers from Universal Studios Hollywood asked the Board to press Universal to do right by them. They cited a worker survey on hunger and understaffing, and said hours get cut in the off season. An Altadena resident asked for a public hearing on Fire Department leadership and accountability for the Eaton Fire.
• 6:56
  Maya: In the Santa Monica Mountains, the Planning Commission voted five to nothing to grant an appeal on a proposed two-lot hillside subdivision on Lobo Canyon Road, near Agoura Hills. A hearing officer had denied it because it had sat inactive. Now the county will keep processing it. The project itself hasn't been approved, and it will come back to the commission for a decision.
• 7:17
  Theo: The Board won't meet next Tuesday, which is Election Day. Its next regular meeting is November tenth.
• 7:23
  Maya: And in a single vote with no discussion, the Board approved up to three million dollars for Foothill Transit to buy zero-emission buses for the Colima Boulevard corridor. It also cleared the way for a ground lease with the Sanitation Districts for Puente Hills Landfill Park, and for the parks department to accept a fifteen million dollar National Park Service grant for it.
• 7:48
  Maya: Before we go, a look at what's ahead.
• 7:51
  Theo: The Regional Planning Commission meets next Wednesday, November fourth. It has one hearing on its agenda: a request to keep operating an existing warehouse of nearly a hundred and fourteen thousand square feet on South Main Street, in the West Rancho Dominguez-Victoria area. The request includes a zero-foot front setback in a green zone, where ten feet is required.
• 8:16
  Maya: If you hear something we got wrong, there's a link on the episode's page to report it, and we read corrections on the air.
• 8:23
  Maya: That's the news from the county. See you next Thursday.