In response to some of the comments and questions here, I thought I would respond to address them all at once. As the president of the HBDRA, our organization is very supportive of Surf City Nights and we want to keep it as a community family-friendly event. I spoke with a BID board member who had previously mentioned to me that HBCF would not be allowed to have a booth at SCN. He informed me that their booth yesterday was on Moe’s private property. That was the end of our conversation and the end of my involvement. The BID board member I spoke with is adamant about keeping HBCF out of SCN so if there was a problem with their location at Moe’s, he would have done something. Both Moe and HBCF have every right to do as they did and HBDRA has no issue with any of this. After my very brief conversation with that BID board member, I had no further involvement or concerns as my only concern was in not having a political group participate in SCN, apparently the same concerns shared by the BID and others. ### In terms of the slanderous and false accusations by Michael Daly, I sent the following e-mail to the Chief of Police today from my cell phone after I had arrived at my meeting location. It doesn’t clearly resolve this matter 100% but at least I tried to understand what went on. Perhaps others can do the same rather than engage in slander and false accusations. -----Original Message----- From: Kim Kramer [mailto:kim@e-mailcom] Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 1:19 PM To: Handy, Robert Subject: Surf City Nights Hi Chief, I understand that the police stopped by a booth yesterday at SCN that was manned by a Facebook group called Huntington Beach Community Form. Can you provide any background and information on this visit by the police? Thanks, Kim Sent from my iPhone I asked for my staff to stop by and evaluate if anything improper was occurring after we received two separate inquiries. Both inquiries referred to a possible violation of the specific event permit for Surf City Nights and one indicated a political group may be trespassing on private property. It is my understanding my staff went by and determined nothing inappropriate was happening. Rob Handy Robert Handy, Chief of Police Huntington Beach Police Department 2000 Main Street PO Box 70 Huntington Beach, California 92648 Office: (714) 536-5902 Fax: (714) 536-2895 e-mail: [email protected] ### In terms of Keith Bohr, I shared Mr. Bohr’s comments about the Main Street Library and Triangle Park with Blair Farley who was the Planning Commission Chair during the time the library and park were in jeopardy. Chair Farley was instrumental in saving the Main Street Library and Triangle along with then Mayor Cathy Green and others. Below is his response. As is often the case in land use language... the devil is in the details. The Library and associated park space was indeed zoned as part of the pre 2009 DTSP as a site for Mixed Use development. The potential was actually 25 du/acre with set backs and height limits based on the amount of street frontage for projects. However, many properties that are designated for public use or open space often have an underlying zoning designation. Many churches and other publicuse properties are zoned residential meaning if the existing use were to go away that the potential for development would apply. The fight over what became known as Triangle Park was quite simple really. Did the people of Huntington Beach want to seethe existing park space and community use change. Did they want to see this land convert from public space to mixed use development. Did they want to see a new cultural use replace the existing open space and building footprint. Clearly, there were forces on the council and in the Marketing or Bureau that wanted to see new uses on this space. Kim Kramer along with lots of other downtown residents and activists did raise the red flag on the possibility of development on this parcel of land. He and the other downtown groups worked hard to educate and seek solutions to the issue. In the end a reasonable compromise was reached that kept the intensity and usage on that property at current levels, while providing some flexibility for adaptive community reuse of the site. Ultimately the Council saw fit to extend the status of the parcel from being a de facto park to an actual park. This finally resolved the status of this land and provided it with definitive protection under Measure C. The council who wanted to increase zoning density in the downtown area were the ones who were not being honest with the people. The proposal allowed for much more dense development potential without all the pesky parking requirements. The fight for Triangle Park was truly a community effort. In the face of great odds stacked against maintaining the park, the residents led by folks like Kim Kramer worked hard to preserve open space and community services. It is still interesting to me that all these years later that Mr. Bohr continues to assert that the residents were fighting the city. I always thought that the residents actually were the city!” ### In terms of Richardson Gray, he was the first person to ring the alarm bell about saving Triangle Park in December 2008, and it was Richadson Gray that funded the listing of both the park and library on the National Register of Historic Places. He is a local hero. But after a few months, he left the HBDRA for his own personal reasons. But even after he left, he continued to be of service to HBDRA, but to a much lesser degree. During the time this was all going on, the City tried to sneak a study past the public on the real truth about the park and library redevelopment by having the Marketing and Visitors Bureau (not the City) pay for the study and therefore it would not be a matter of public record and therefore not subject to disclosure. Thanks to the HBDRA, this type of end-around has now been outlawed. Please check out this report and several newspaper articles linked below. It clearly outlines what the residents were fighting. file.e-mailcom/CulturalCenterMarketStudy.pdf file.e-mailcom/9.30.09_HBI.pdf file.e-mailcom/HB_Independent_081309.pdf file.e-mailcom/06.23.09_OCR.pdf file.e-mailcom/06.18.09_OCR.pdf file.e-mailcom/12.17.08_OCR.pdf file.e-mailcom/HBDRA_POSITION_STATEMENT.pdf
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 01:32:14 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015