Handling of city rezoning issue upsets area attorney
Voters shot down request two years ago
An attorney protested the way the Yuma Planning and Zoning Commission handled a controversial rezoning request during Monday’s meeting, calling it “wrong” and “completely unacceptable.”
The agenda included a rezoning request for property at the northwest corner of East 24th Street and South Avenue 9E. However, all discussion took place behind closed doors. The agenda was revised on Friday, placing the request under “Executive Session” and indicating that the commission might call for an executive session on this item “for the purpose of receiving legal advice.”
After calling the meeting to order, the commission immediately moved into executive session. Shortly afterwards, the commission reconvened in public but made no comments on the rezoning request. It simply moved onto the next agenda item.
During the Call to the Public, William Katz, attorney for Saguaro Desert Land, reproached the commissioners for removing the agenda item from the regular agenda and not taking any action on the request.
He noted that as late as Thursday, the request was part of the regular agenda and his client, as well as those who gathered for the meeting, were “ready to proceed”
“I would like to know as a matter of public record … why there is no vote to continue, why there is no vote to remove or why there is no vote to withdraw my client’s project from today’s agenda.”
Katz noted the commissioners should have explained the agenda change as a matter of transparency. “When we’re talking about public process, the key is that things should be known by the public.”
The government does not have the “ability to unilaterally remove” an item once it’s been agendized, he added.
He asked the commissioners to “take action” on the item. “What has occurred here is wrong. We’re asking you to take action. Hold the government accountable. Set what is wrong and make it right by affording my client process. This is about fundamental fairness and access to due process, and depriving my client to his property rights in essentially a unilateral fashion by the City of Yuma government is completely unacceptable. Please fix this, and please put my client’s project back on the agenda for next session.”
Katz explained that on Oct. 12 he contacted the city’s legal department and raised an objection on behalf of his client over how the staff report had been written for the rezoning request. He said he “disrespectfully disagreed” with how city staff prepared the report.
Katz said he was invited to document his objections, which he did and then sent to the legal department on Oct. 17. One of his objections was over how a September neighborhood meeting had been recapped. He said that for an hour and a half he had answered questions, but staff summarized it with one sentence and didn’t encapsulate the issues that were covered.
“I understand folks may not have been pleased with the lack of defined plans, but I answered questions and the staff report gave me one sentence,” Katz said.
Resident Luis Arroyo spoke briefly to “clarify” that Katz did not provide many answers during the neighborhood meeting. “I personally asked the attorney several questions and he failed to provide any answers.”
Katz asked that the commission reschedule the rezoning request for the next meeting, which is set to take place Nov. 12. “Let us be heard. Let the community be heard. This is all about transparency,” he said.
He offered to answer questions from the commissioners. However, Chairman Chris Hamel pointed out that they were not allowed to respond during Call to Public, calling it a “one-way conversation.”
Asked to explain what comes next with the rezoning request, Alyssa Linville, a principal planner with the city, told the Yuma Sun after the meeting that the item would be placed on a future agenda.
The rezoning request appears to be identical to one submitted two years ago, which many neigh-
bors opposed. It would have changed the zoning from agriculture to medium-density housing on the sevenacre property. Saguaro Desert Land representatives said the intent was to build about 85 apartments.
The City Council approved the rezoning over widespread objections from neighbors who said the project would worsen traffic and school overcrowding along 24th Street east of Araby Road.
The opponents gathered enough signatures to put the issue to voters in a November 2016 ballot referendum, where 60 percent rejected it.
During last month’s neighborhood meeting, Katz said one key difference between now and two years ago is that brothers and developers Brian and Michael Hall are not set on building apartments.
They are considering other types of housing, including condominiums or townhomes, Katz added.