Mobile home ordinance faces change

Years of complaints by mobile home owners have at last been heard.

Mobile home owners have long decried the city’s law governing the

sale of mobile home parks, which allows park owners to compensate

residents as little as $5,000 for the loss of their home or trailer

when the park is sold.

On Monday, the City Council decided in a study session to look

into updating that law.

“Our current ordinance is not only outdated, it’s a bad joke,”

Councilman Dave Sullivan said.

The city’s ordinance uses a devaluation formula to determine how

much a park owner must pay mobile home residents for displacing them

when selling their parks for development. Current law depreciates the

value of the home by 4.7% a year, regardless of any improvements the

resident has made to the unit.

Under that formula, a $20,000 unit would depreciate to $15,740 in

just five years. Mobile home owner John McGregor, who bought his

property more than 30 years ago, said it would be worth nothing under

the formula, and he would have to settle for the minimum $5,000

payment under the relocation ordinance.

“Now, what can I buy for $5,000?” he asked. “Nothing. I would be

out on the street homeless.”

Many mobile home owners were reselling their units at a greater

value than what they originally paid, Councilwoman Connie Boardman

said.

“The idea that these coaches are depreciating in value as opposed

to appreciating in value is no longer true,” she said.

The council also hopes to develop a way to protect mobile home

owners from steep rent increases, designed to kick them out of the

park before it’s sold to avoid paying relocation costs. Finding a

mechanism to prevent this is complicated by a 2002, voter-approved

charter amendment blocking the city from implementing rent control. A

legal opinion on that issue will be released in the beginning of

August by City Atty. Jennifer McGrath.

An amended mobile home ordinance is tentatively scheduled to go

before the council at its Aug. 16 meeting.

Surf City catches high-speed wave

Huntington Beach will be the first city in California to pilot a

new, fiber-optic network billed the fastest general consumer Internet

service available.

The new service, called Fios, will be introduced to Surf City

residents in October. Only two other cities in the nation, Keller,

Texas and Tampa, Fla., are being tested with the service.

“The locations we selected are really based on marketing

decisions,” company spokesperson Eric Rabe said. “We wanted to go

into areas that we see as growing, areas with a good mix of business

and residence.”

The new service will offer download speeds nearly 10 times faster

than a cable modem. With download speeds averaging three megabits per

second, a cable Internet user could download a full-length feature

movie in about two-and-a-half hours. Using the Verizon technology at

35 megabits per second, the same movie could be downloaded in about

15 minutes.

The company plans to begin running fiber-optic cables along city

streets and have the service available to more than a million homes

by the end of the year. Prices will start at about $35 a month.

Other telecommunication companies are testing similar services,

although none have been released.

In the future, Rabe said the company hopes to begin offering a

120-channel cable television network through the fiber-optic system

as well as high-speed videophones. There’s even talk of offering

on-demand movie downloads.

Coastal Commission backs Pacific City

The Coastal Commission has ruled that the Pacific City project is

unappealable on environmental grounds.

Several environmentalists attending the July 15 meeting argued the

project was less than 300 feet from the beach, illegal under state

law. Several construction consultants for the project and Huntington

Beach Planning Director Howard Zelefsky countered that the project

was far enough from the beach and should proceed.

In the end, the commission sided with Pacific City developers and

ruled the project could move forward and complete its working

drawings and building-permit applications.

Local environmentalist Mark Bixby called the ruling “highly

annoying” because he felt he had evidence proving the development was

too close to the beach.

“Anyone can go out and measure it, but the experts get believed

and we don’t,” he said. “It seems like something is wrong with the

process.”

Boardman will not

run for second term

Councilwoman Connie Boardman announced she will not run for a

second term this November. She said she wanted to focus on teaching

and encouraged the public to instead re-elect Councilwoman Debbie

Cook.

“My council job has taken a lot of time away from my career,” said

Boardman, who works as a biology instructor for Cerritos College in

Norwalk.

She said the nature of her job requires her to keep up with trends

in the scientific community and attend seminars and conferences,

which she was increasingly unable to do because of her position on

the council.

The biggest time-consumer for a person serving on the council was

responding to constituent concerns and serving as a liaison to the

city’s various boards and commissions, she said.

“This wasn’t an easy decision for me to make,” Boardman said.

“When I ran for the first time, I expected to go for a second term.”

Boardman was elected to office in 2000 in a joint campaign effort

with Cook. She served as the city’s mayor from December 2002 to

December 2003 and has actively been involved in the Bolsa Chica Land

Trust since its inception.

“I was one of the people who asked her to reconsider,” Mayor Cathy

Green said. “I’ve always felt she was very fair, issue-oriented and

really cared about the city. I’m disappointed that she is leaving.”