Additional Documents

CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA

ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025, AT 7:00 PM

AMEDEE O. "DICK" RICHARDS JR. COUNCIL CHAMBERS

1424 MISSION STREET, SOUTH PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91030

AMENDED ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS

Amended Additional Documents to the April 16, 2025 City Council Meetings. The attached

documents include submitted written public comments and amendments to the agenda.

Submit by no later than 12:00 p.m., on the day of the City Council meeting. Correspondence

received after this time will be distributed the following business day.

AMENDED ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS TO THE APRIL 16, 2025 CITY COUNCIL

MEETINGS

General Public Comment_Thomas Neuberger

General Public Comment_Lisa Pendleton

General Public Comment_Yvonne LaRose

Public Comment_James Lloyd_Item No. 11

Memo for Item No. 13

Presentation for Item No. 3 (Special Joint Meeting)

1

CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025, AT 7:00 PM AMEDEE O. "DICK" RICHARDS JR. COUNCIL CHAMBERS 1424 MISSION STREET, SOUTH PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91030 AMENDED ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS Amended Additional Documents to the April 16, 2025 City Council Meetings. The attached documents include submitted written public comments and amendments to the agenda. Submit by no later than 12:00 p.m., on the day of the City Council meeting. Correspondence received after this time will be distributed the following business day. AMENDED ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS TO THE APRIL 16, 2025 CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS General Public Comment_Thomas Neuberger General Public Comment_Lisa Pendleton General Public Comment_Yvonne LaRose Public Comment_James Lloyd_Item No. 11 Memo for Item No. 13 Presentation for Item No. 3 (Special Joint Meeting) 1

Additional Documents Agenda Report ITEM NO. DATE: April 16, 2025 FROM: Todd Hileman, City Manager PREPARED BY: Mark Perez, Deputy City Clerk SUBJECT: AMENDED ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS TO THE APRIL 16, 2025 CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS Executive Summary The attached documents include submitted written public comments and amendments to the agenda. Submit by no later than 12:00 p.m., on the day of the City Council meeting. Correspondence received after this time will be distributed the following business day. Attachment: General Public Comment_Thomas Neuberger General Public Comment_Lisa Pendleton General Public Comment_Yvonne LaRose Public Comment_James Lloyd_Item No. 11 Memo for Item No. 13 Presentation for Item No. 3 (Special Joint Meeting) 2

From: Thomas Neuberger To: City Council Public Comment Cc: Omari Ferguson Subject: Public Comment 16 April 2025 Date: Monday, April 14, 2025 3:16:04 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the City of South Pasadena. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the City of South Pasadena. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Good evening Councilmembers and Commissioners, My name is Thomas Neuberger, in response to the City Council and the Planning Commission Agenda Report On March 26, 2025. I’m a South Pasadena resident here to voice strong support for maintaining—and even expanding—the City’s pro-housing direction, including height and density allowances as outlined in the Housing Element. Arguments against this work often rely on the myth that new housing leads to displacement or the loss of “affordable” homes. In truth, the greatest driver of rising costs is a chronic housing shortage. Restricting new housing—especially multi-family and mixed-use—simply locks in exclusivity and makes it impossible for young families, seniors, and working people to stay here or move in. The Housing Element was carefully crafted to meet our RHNA obligations with State oversight. While it's tempting to "right-size" and walk back density or height, that would undermine the feasibility of building anything at all. Developers don’t build when projects aren’t economically viable. Denser, taller buildings—especially in our downtown core and near transit—make housing more feasible and more sustainable. From a Strong Towns perspective, we need development that pays for itself. Allowing more residents brings in more property tax, sales tax, and helps fill our schools with students—at no cost to the City. Incremental, mixed-use infill is the lifeblood of fiscally resilient communities. Let's be clear: the true threat to affordability is inaction. Let's not waste this opportunity. Let’s build a South Pasadena that’s open, thriving, and welcoming. Thank you. Thomas Neuberger 3

April 16, 2025 To: South Pasadena City Council Members Mayor Janet Braun, Mayor Pro Tem Sheila Rossi, Michael Cacciotti, Jon Primuth, Omari Ferguson From: Lisa Pendleton, Architect and Former Planning Commissioner 1241 Blair Avenue South Pasadena, CA 91030 Re: General Plan and Still Missing Density Capacity Table updates Over the last year and a half, the City Council has been reviewing and approving various changes to the 2023 “Partially” approved Zoning Code and Zoning Map yet the “Partially” approved 2023 General Plan has still not been updated. Most importantly the General Plan density Capacity Table errors were never corrected and reinserted in the General Plan as was requested during the 9-27-23 City Council meeting when the General Plan was only “Partially” approved. The City Council approved the General Plan under the premise that the density numbers would be correctly calculated and the density capacity and land use designations further adjusted as appropriate at a later date. The General Plan is the guiding document for all other land use documents, plans and codes, so for the City to continue to make random and often incoherent zoning and land use revisions without a fully approved, complete General Plan makes no sense. This unprofessional approach to land use is leading to chaos especially considering that these random changes have to be explained to HCD and the settlement attorneys without an updated General Plan. At the 9-27-23 City Council meeting the Council felt compelled to rush the General Plan approval even though there were admitted errors in the density tables in both the Housing Element and the General Plan. Specifically, Jon Primuth (Mayor at the time) discussed that the General Plan Capacity Table (labeled B3.2 in the 9-2023 final draft of the General Plan) erroneously showed the resulting realistic capacity density with an artificially lower number than was “logical”. Mayor Primuth went on to explain how the stated realistic density capacity did not reflect the true expected “net” development density. The Mayor then proposed reducing the densities in the RM and RH zones from the 30 and 45 DU/acre back down to the original 90’s General Plan’s lower density of 14 and 24 DU/acre as his method to correct the excessive density numbers. This would result in no increase in those land use areas. At that point in the 9-27-23 meeting the City Attorney, David Snow suggested that the City Council simply remove the erroneous General Plan Capacity table with the caveat that staƯ would correct this table and bring it back for review at a later date and suggested that the Council could call the General Plan approval a “Partial” approval and could also eliminate the draft’s proposed density increases in the RM and RH land use designations to compensate for the excessive density. 4

April 16, 2025 General Plan Missing Density Capacity updates (continued) The majority of the Council voted to follow Mayor Jon Primuth’s and the City Attorney’s recommendation and “Partially” approved the General Plan with the eliminated RM and RH increased densities and the removal of the erroneous density Capacity table. While this might have seemed like the best decision given the time constraints to get the plans approved, this was all done last minute with no public vetting. More importantly, if the density tallies were so flawed and the resultant proposed land use, zoning and density areas were also flawed then this certainly should have justified a pause to get it right. Fast forward 18 months later and the City still has not corrected the General Plan to show the true density numbers which greatly impacts all of the other land use documents. The missing density table in the General Plan needs to be corrected and reinserted. It should utilize the total buildable acres of the city broken down by land use categories with related units DU/acre densities totaled for the full capacity and then use a “rational” (per Mayor Primuth’s comments on 9-27-23) formula to better project the true realistic density anticipated to be built. I along with other involved community members were under the impression that the necessary density and land use plan corrections and updates would be coordinated once the height repeal was determined. However, the City staƯ decided to proceed to make significant changes to the land use documents in the interim with very little if any public vetting. These included changes proposed and approved in January thru March of 2024 that revised the RM and RH densities back to the 9-23 draft density increases to 30 and 45 DU/acres. This may have been due to outside pressure from the settlement attorneys etc, however this should not have happened until the density tables were corrected and ideally done after the height repeal outcome. Further at the same time the staƯ introduced a new designation of land use a HO Housing Opportunity overlay area of 70DU/acre that was described to be applied in lieu of the MU Mixed Use areas at the Ostrich and Huntington Drive areas originally called Focus Areas. These new HO overlay areas significantly exceed the original MU Mixed Use or Focus Area boundaries, extending over large areas of RM and RH resulting in extreme upzoning for those areas now going from 14 and 24DU/acre as approved Sept. 27, 2023, to 70 DU/acre, a huge increase with no vetting. More recently, after the height limits were repealed and the Arroyo Group consultant was hired to work with the City staƯ and public input on various height and massing impacts additional changes were proposed, however we still did not have a corrected picture of the City’s real density requirements. So once the consultant began their work the decision was made by staƯ to arbitrarily change the land use designations again but this time acknowledging the errors in the HE densities and stating they had new learning about the inappropriate scale of 70 DU HO areas overlayed on the lower density RM and RH areas so they decided to scale the HO areas back. However, the revised HO areas were still larger than was originally proposed in the original 9-23 MU/Focus Areas. In addition, the staƯ arbitrarily proposed to reduce the higher Fair Oaks corridor densities from 90 and 110DU/acre to 70 and 90DU/acre. Again, this proposed reduction may be the correct course of action, however without a corrected density capacity table it still appears the City may have increased the density from the original Sept 23 final draft General Plan which as noted the City Council at the time believed was excessive. 5

April 16, 2025 General Plan Missing Density Capacity updates (continued) Without knowing our true density capacity we still may be unnecessarily exceeding our State and legal obligation which could have ramifications well beyond the current Housing Element cycle. The City is now again at a critical point where all of the necessary land use updates should have been completed yet the City still does not have the corrected density tables on which everything else is built. I urge the City Council to work with staƯ and the consultant to update the HE and General Plan density tables along with updating all other related aspects of the General Plan to reflect a more appropriate density that meets our requirements with more modest land use areas and density designations. This should include a fully redlined General Plan document showing all of the corrections and updates posted on the City’s website for public review. In closing it is important that the City Council think of it as being no diƯerent than a city not knowing its overall budget but going ahead and deciding how to allocate their expenses. With the exception of city finances, land use is the most important responsibly that the City Council oversees and now it is time to pause and get our land use documents in proper order. Respectfully, Lisa Pendleton, Architect and Former Planning Commissioner Cc: City Manager – Todd Hileman City Land Use Attorney – David Snow CC Public Comment 6

From: Yvonne LaRose To: City Council Public Comment Subject: Public Comment: April 16, 2025 - Sanctuary City Declaration Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 11:35:44 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the City of South Pasadena. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the City of South Pasadena. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. These days we have Executive Orders[1] flying out of the White House like popcorn at a movie theater. Each a successive step into a dark past in history, inculcating a practice of kidnapping (akin to abduction from Central and West Africa for the sake of slave trade in the 16th Century) to abandoning the hard-fought rights of women to vote and have power of self direction with regard to their health care needs. Sanctuary City-ICE Many cities have declared themselves to be sanctuary cities[2]. In California, we have SB 54[3] which limits the amount of cooperation local police will assist in ICE activities. SB 54 has some distinctions from over declarations of being a Sanctuary City. At the beginning of March, Alhambra's Target parking lot became a staging are for ICE. It was quickly abandoned because a group of activists in that city staged a rally that drove the team away. No such rally stopped ICE from rounding up 300 men on the east coast. Even with a judge's order, three planes left with their cargo for an unknown destination - three planes that never returned. It was later reported that the purported Venezuelan gang members were transported to one of the most notorious jails in El Salvador where the detainees were shaved and put into a standing room only cage with no beds, nor blankets, nor sanitation. The detainees were never given due process. There was no attempt to learn whether they have legitimate citizenship rights, whether they have criminal history of any type. And then the man from Maryland who IS a citizen with the unfortunate circumstance of having an Hispanic surname. He was deported, again, with no due process nor investigation into his background, and sent to the same El Salvador jail (now considered a concentration camp). There are images of these atrocities where "standing room only" conditions exist for shaved men being locked into cages, while the Secretary of Homeland Security sports a jaunty pose in front of the cramped cage. The Secretary has no answers for when these men's backgrounds will be investigated, when they will be charged or not, when they will be released. Another image shows shaved men sitting scissor-style behind one another, wrist bound behind their backs inside a cage, again, with no beds or bedding, no signs of sanitation all accused of being members of a Venezuelan gang yet they are in the most notorious El Salvador jail in the world. I have asked five times for this body, this City Council, to declare the City of South Pasadena to declare itself a Sanctuary City and join the company of other cities in California who have declared themselves Sanctuary Cities. In addition to Alhambra (declared itself a Sanctuary City before former Mayor of Alhambra, Sen. Perez took her seat in Sacramento). Those 7

Sanctuary Cities were[4]. With my fifth plea for declaring South Pasadena to be a Sanctuary City, the denial was predicated on the fear that doing so would be tantamount to waving a flag to call attention to its status, thereby invoking intensified scrutiny and desire to search out the "suspect" population. Although I did not respond to the objection at the time, I should have. As with domestic abuse, there should be no acquiescence to the unacceptable. In other words, we should object to mistreatment and disrespect, we should unequivocally say "NO" to incursions on our human and civil rights. To do less than object, to cower in fear, is to accept whatever consequences follow and we, thereby, accede to becoming the victims of abuse or else a 21st Century holocaust. Here, the analysis of Dr. Reginald Williams, political theologian, should be noted as he scrutinizes what Germans were aware of circa 1933 (the beginning of the German Holocaust) [5]. Given all of the above, in addition to what has yet to be discussed, South Pasadena has a duty to its citizens to declare itself a Sanctuary City for the sake of resisting ICE activities. Sanctuary City-Abortion With regard to healthcare advice, choices, and procedures, people should not have to endure government interventions with regard to those choices and opportunities. People should be allowed to make their own decisions with regard to those private matters. This is especially so when it comes to a woman choosing whether to seek advice or submit to the procedure of having an abortion. A woman should not be criminalized when she suffers an abortion or miscarriage, especially when the occasion is a consequence of something beyond the control of the woman. Additionally, miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies are not considered abortions, per se[6]. That being said, those consequences should not be criminalized. Therefore, I again ask that the City of South Pasadena declare itself a Sanctuary City with regard to reproductive health, advice, and procedures, especially as those matters relate to pregnancy.[7] SAVE Act We also have on our immediate horizon the threat of the SAVE Act, initiated by two Congressional representatives from Texas. The Act proposes onerous requirements of married women whose names no longer match the information contained on their birth certificates. Because of that lack, the married women will be prevented to exercise their right to vote. I am not aware of any mechanism our city can use to uphold the right to vote for women, whether married or not. I defer to WISPPA and the League of Women Voters. However, the 19th Amendment to our country's Constitution conferred the right to any woman the right to vote. That right needs to be protected.[8][9] ~~~~~ [1] An executive order is a written directive issued by the President of the 8

United States to manage the operations of the federal government. While not explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the power to issue these orders is generally understood to be an inherent aspect of presidential power, as derived from Article II of the Constitution. Specifically, Article II, Section 1 vests the executive power in the President and requires them to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". Here's a more detailed breakdown: Key Characteristics: Presidential Directive: It's a specific instruction or mandate from the President to the executive branch. Force of Law: It has the force of federal law upon the executive branch and federal agencies, but it does not require congressional approval. Subject to Review: Executive orders are subject to judicial review and can be struck down by the courts if found unconstitutional or outside the president's authority. Can be Overridden: Congress can also pass a new law to override an executive order. [2] A "sanctuary city" is a jurisdiction (city, county, or state) that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These cities often have policies that restrict local law enforcement from assisting in immigration enforcement, such as refusing to honor ICE detainers (requests to hold individuals for ICE) or limiting the sharing of information about an individual's immigration status. See: Global Refuge; and American Immigration Council. [3] . . . SB 54, California's Values Act, applies to municipalities in California, limiting the cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement (ICE). It prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from investigating, interrogating, detaining, or arresting individuals solely for immigration enforcement purposes. The law also restricts the sharing of information about individuals in custody with ICE. 9

Key Points: Limiting Cooperation: SB 54 significantly restricts the ability of local law enforcement to assist ICE with immigration enforcement. No Immigration Enforcement: Law enforcement is generally prohibited from engaging in immigration enforcement activities, such as investigating or arresting individuals based on their immigration status. Limited Exceptions: While there are some exceptions, such as transfers for serious crimes, the law generally prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. Impact on Municipalities: Cities and counties in California are subject to these restrictions, meaning their police and sheriff's departments cannot engage in immigration enforcement activities or cooperate with ICE in ways prohibited by the law. See also, California Values Act (SB 54) ICE Out of California https://www.iceoutofca.org › values SB 54 remains binding law in California. States and localities continue to have the constitutional right to opt out of federal immigration enforcement and to ... [4] From California City News, Sanctuary Agencies After the election results came rolling in several local agencies took it upon themselves to issue resolutions declaring themselves "sanctuaries" for refugees and immigrants amid rising fears of deportation under the new federal administration. Multiple cities and counties already had policies in place and simply reissued their promises. Additionally, the passage of Senate Bill 54 now makes California a sanctuary state. Below we have compiled a list of cities and counties that have passed "sanctuary" resolutions, and we will continue to add more as more resolutions are passed. If we have missed your agency or if you would like to correct any information, please 10

email feedback@californiacitynews.org and we will include it. Counties: Alameda County Los Angeles County Monterey County San Francisco County This list is currently being updated. Cities: Alameda - Alameda County Baldwin Park - Los Angeles County Berkeley - Alameda County Cudahy - Los Angeles County Culver City - Los Angeles County Davis - Yolo County Emeryville - Alameda County Hayward - Alameda County La Puente - Los Angeles County Livingston - Merced County Los Angeles - Los Angeles County Malibu - Los Angeles County Maywood - Los Angeles County Oakland - Alameda County Palm Springs - Riverside County Petaluma - Sonoma County Richmond - Contra Costa County San Francisco - San Francisco County San Jose - Santa Clara County San Leandro - Alameda County Santa Ana - Orange County Santa Cruz - Santa Cruz County Santa Rosa - Sonoma County Soledad - Monterey County Watsonville - Santa Cruz County West Hollywood - Los Angeles [5] Germany's apathetic tolerance of the Holocaust, Dr. Reginald Williams: 11

Historians debate just how much knowledge the German civilian population had of their Nazi government's macabre practices by the end of WWII. Civilians knew full well about the mass deportations, kidnappings, and the existence of concentration camps (first one at Dachau was established in 1933). But some would argue that at least in the early years, not even the victims themselves knew what would happen to those who were taken by the regime. But in the later years of the war, prior to 1945, it seems debatable that the public was so naive. After the U.S. Army liberated Buchenwald, they forced civilians from the nearby town of Weimar to walk thru the camp to see and smell for themselves the gruesome nature of their governments treatment of everyday people, some of whom were once their neighbors. Did they know what was going on? Did they not know that they were organizing their society by cruelty? Fact is, whether they knew the grisly details, they knew enough. Cruelty was all around them, in plain view. They knew enough to withdraw support from their villainous government. But instead they were apathetic about the cruelty they saw happening. They were on board with the mass deportations, the "blood and soil" patriotic devotion to the Aryan nation which was little more than a contemporary white nationalist wish dream