The city council, early Wednesday morning, certified the Environmental Impact Report for the proposed affordable housing project on Baseline Road, paving the way for the project to move forward.

The council voted 4 to one in favor of the document, finding that it had comprehensively addressed environmental issues surrounding the project. Only councilmember Corey Calaycay opposed.

Council members took some time to ask technical questions from experts who prepared the EIR, however little discussion on the rationale behind their votes was offered.

Hundreds of residents came out to the Alexander Hughes Community Center and dozens addressed the council, dragging out the meeting until roughly 12:30 a.m. At one point, the lights automatically shut off shortly after midnight, and the council discussion carried on in the dark.

A majority of the speakers in attendance criticized the proposed project, citing everything from poor air quality, freeway noise and a lack of transportation options to traffic problems and the increased potential for crime.

Several residents also spoke in favor of the project, among them low-income residents who would like to live at the site and representatives from local organizations such as the League of Women Voters and the Democratic Club of Claremont. They argued that affordable housing options in the city are too limited, that the EIR is too conservative in its estimates on the effects of pollution, and that there are plenty of ways to mitigate the freeway pollution and noise.

Council members were barraged by opinions and testimony, some of which were factually inaccurate. One resident, David Jacks, insisted that there was DDT in the soil at the site. The city’s legal advisor on the EIR, Fernando Avila, said testing for such material had been conducted and no DDT had been found. (story continues below)

Another speaker, Karen Vance, a low-income housing advocate for the League of Women Voters, said she had assurances from Claremont Unified School District superintendent David Cash that Condit Elementary School had enough space for all the additional children that were brought into the city by the affordable housing project, and other housing developments along Baseline Road. She also said no child would be transferred out of Condit Elementary due to the influx of new students.

“Karen Vance does not represent me or the Claremont Unified School District,” Superintendent Cash said, when reached by phone on Thursday. “We are gladly willing to teach every child living in the district, but there is absolutely no way to guarantee placement of students at any of our schools … We have standard guidelines for doing that.”

The vote to approve the EIR came after a failed push by Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Taylor and Mayor Peter Yao to certify the document with language that excluded the possibility of placing the project at two alternative sites identified in the EIR. The two sites are located in south Claremont and will be under consideration at the council’s February 12 meeting.

The EIR was certified despite its finding that air pollutants from the freeway would pose a significant health risk to residents of the project.

If the project is to be approved, the council will also have to accept a “statement of overriding considerations,” a legal requirement outlining why the city will go ahead with the project despite the EIR’s findings on health risks.

The council will also consider the Disposition and Development Agreement with the project’s developer at its February meeting. If the agreement is approved, construction would likely begin later this year and could be finished in 2009, Housing and Redevelopment Manager Brian Desatnik said.

  

— Tony Krickl