'Technical issue' forces postponement of commission meeting

By Doug Spoon, Editor

It’s not easy to maintain a virtual City Hall when the virtual element literally breaks down.

That’s what happened Wednesday night, when the latest in a long list of technical problems forced postponement of the Menifee Planning Commission meeting. Commissioners and staff members were ready to go in the Council chambers, but problems in the digital feed to the City’s Zoom link and YouTube page made virtual attendance impossible.

As a result, with about 20 people waiting to watch the virtual broadcast rather than attend in person with limited seating, social distancing and a mask requirement, the entire meeting was continued to Feb. 9.

Watching city meetings remotely became common practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. For a time, all meetings were held strictly virtually, with Council chambers empty and participants joining at home via Zoom and YouTube. The virtual meeting option has remained as small crowds have returned in person, and the City promotes itself as a “No Stop Shop” for virtual City business when City Hall is closed to the public – as it has been since Jan. 12.

Problems within the City’s IT department have existed basically since the City moved into the current City Hall building about three years ago, however. An inferior sound system and glitchy computer monitor system at the dais led the City Council in August to approve a request for $190,000 for equipment upgrades.

Problems with council members’ dais monitors and an online voting system have persisted, but this is the first time an entire public meeting was postponed because of technical problems.

Seeking an explanation for Wednesday’s problem was not easy, given city manager Armando Villa’s edict that department heads do not respond directly to the media, instead going through assistant city manager Rochelle Clayton and the City’s new public information officer, Philip Southard. This policy has been in place for nearly two years, since Menifee 24/7 began questioning City policies and making multiple public records requests.

In response to the request for an explanation in this case, IT director Ron Pucinelli said in an email this morning that staff was “gathering information.” Later, Clayton emailed Menifee 24/7 and directed further correspondence to Southard. Her explanation:

“The technical issue last night was not related to any equipment or systems, but with the Zoom account needed to allow public participation at the meeting. For reasons we are still attempting to understand with the vendor, Zoom administratively disabled the City’s account shortly before the noticed start time of the meeting. City staff is continuing to work with our Zoom account team to address the issue to ensure it does not happen again.”

Menifee 24/7 asked for clarification from Pucinelli directly but did not receive an immediate response from him -- only a second email from Clayton saying the issue was not an IT problem.

When the $190,000 was approved in August, one of the deficiencies noted in the current system was this: “The existing video switcher used to produce the video stream does not have sufficient capacity to handle the requirements of all the different public meetings held in the council chambers.”

Is this still part of the problem six months later? The City’s response did not address that situation.

A key item on the meeting agenda that was postponed concerns the City’s proposal of a “Good Neighbor Policy” regarding industrial centers – guidelines designed to restrict the impact of such centers on surrounding areas. The issue was first brought up during a City Council meeting last July, when City staff made a presentation including a “list of policies and/or general guidelines that have been implemented by other jurisdictions aimed to protect residents from industrial warehouse and logistics development.”

Staff’s proposal, which received support from Mayor Bill Zimmerman and council members Lesa Sobek and Dean Deines, drew criticism from commercial brokers for potential industrial sites within permitted areas of the City’s economic development corridors. The discussion resulted in a delay of the issue, but a policy placed before the Planning Commission for Wednesday’s meeting included the following requirements:

-- Truck traffic be routed to “impact the least amount of sensitive receptors.”

-- To the maximum extent feasible, buildings be designed with driveways and loading docks facing away from “sensitive receptors.”

-- Landscape buffers and walls be constructed to shield storage and equipment.

-- Building massing be designed “so as to reduce visual dominance on adjacent sensitive receptors.”

A number of other requirements are included in the policy, which critics say should not be exempt from environmental review, as the City has implied.

"The Public Notice indicates the proposal is exempt from CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act],” states commercial developer Dennis Fitzpatrick in a letter that was intended to be entered into the record at Wednesday’s meeting. “What is the analysis and source of this conclusion and how old is the environmental document? It appears Item 9.1 Amendment to Title 9 of the Menifee Municipal Code ‐ Change of Zone No. PLN 21‐408; and the proposed Good Neighbor Industrial Policies is piecemealing and circumvents the CEQA process.”

Further discussion of the item can be found in a Menifee news article from July 22 here.

City Hall is scheduled to reopen its doors to the public for in-person services Feb. 1, pending an updated decision on the impacts of COVID-19.