New City Council has First Meeting of the New Year

The new San Fernando City Council held its first meeting Tuesday since ratifying the results of last year’s midterm election, with Celeste Rodriguez as mayor, Joel Fajardo making his return onto the dais and Mary Solorio joining as a councilmember for the first time.

One of the first issues the City Council tackled during the meeting was the issue of ADUs — an accessory dwelling unit that is a second housing unit on a single-family residential lot. The public hearing was to discuss  adopting an ordinance that would implement lot splits and two-unit residential development within the single-family residential zone.

Fajardo and Councilmember Cindy Montañez had multiple questions about the ordinance, with the former wanting stricter guidelines for the ordinance. In a 3-2 vote, the council decided not to adopt the ordinance, instead choosing to continue the public hearing to their next meeting on Jan. 17.

The council will consider an additional one-year extension and direct staff to present a revised draft ordinance to include additional options for potential design and architectural standards.

The issue of creating more housing is a high priority for local and state governments. The City of San Fernando has already been impacted by a lack of parking and there is public concern about neighborhood density.

Street Resurfacing

The other major piece of business that took place was to discuss awarding a construction contract for Phase 2 of the Annual Street Resurfacing Project. The goal of Phase 1 of the project was to preserve approximately 18 miles of streets that were in fair condition and to extend their useful life using slurry seal — a maintenance treatment that would seal cracks, prevent further deterioration and development of potholes.

In Phase 2, the City aims to use a two- and three-step slurry seal process on 12 miles of streets that are moderately to significantly deteriorated with cracks and potholes. The process will involve multiple layers of asphalt slurry to help fill and level the roads to more acceptable levels.

After some discussion, and some comments by Montañez to make sure that some manner of quality control and repercussions against the construction for improper work is in the contract, the council approved the consideration.