The Seal Beach City Council on Oct. 27 certified a program-level environmental impact report and adopted the city's 6th-cycle housing element — actions the city said are required to meet state housing law and the region's RHNA allocation. Council also introduced three ordinances to implement rezoning and voted to overrule a finding by the Airport Land Use Commission (ALUC), moves that staff said are necessary for state certification.

City staff and two consultant teams told the council and the public that state housing law (including California Government Code §65589.11 and related guidance) requires cities to demonstrate site capacity for a prescribed number of units. Interim Community Development Director Sean Temple said the city's RHNA allocation for the current cycle is 1,243 units and that the EIR evaluates a buffer and programmatic rezoning to provide flexibility to meet that number.

"The state's legislature has the intent to make housing available and affordable as a matter of statewide importance," Temple said, summarizing the statutory framework for the housing element and the need to show zoning capacity. Anna Radnich and Trevor Masinski of Stantec reviewed the programmatic EIR process and explained that, as a program-level analysis, the document evaluates potential citywide and cumulative impacts and sets the framework for subsequent, site-specific environmental reviews.

The Lisa Wise Consulting Group team described the proposed rezoning: a new MCRHD (Mixed Commercial Residential High Density) zone, objective design standards for ministerial review pathways, and application of the zone to selected commercial centers and opportunity sites (including Rossmoor/shops sites, Old Town parcels, Seal Beach Plaza, and a 3-acre site listed as "99 Marina" near Bridgeport). Lisa Wise consultants said the code amendments were written to provide predictable, objective standards required by recent state law changes while retaining development standards aimed at preserving local character where feasible.

Public commenters, particularly residents from the Bridgeport neighborhood, urged the council to reject or restrict high-density housing at the 99 Marina site, citing privacy, traffic, parking, and stormwater concerns. Several speakers also raised potential aircraft-noise and safety issues near Old Ranch Country Club and the Navy/Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base flight path. The city's presentation noted an ALUC finding of inconsistency but also noted that many nearby jurisdictions have overruled similar ALUC determinations and that the ALUC determination does not in itself permit or deny a specific development.

Staff and consultants emphasized limits of a program EIR: it evaluates impacts at a policy level and does not replace future, project-level environmental review if and when a developer submits a specific project. Trevor Masinski (Stantec) said projects that later propose greater impacts would require additional environmental review, and the EIR includes mitigation measures and a mitigation-monitoring program intended to reduce identified impacts where feasible.

Council members debated the trade-offs between moving forward with a housing element that meets HCD's requirements and the legal risks and local impacts of doing nothing. Councilmember Sinegal reviewed recent HCD enforcement actions and stipulated judgments in other cities to illustrate the consequences of noncompliance. Several council members said adopting the housing element would remove immediate "builder's remedy" risk and regain some local controls through a statutory process that requires zoning and objective standards.

After deliberation the council voted 5'0'0to'''00 to: certify the final EIR (Resolution 7705); adopt the 6th-cycle housing element (Resolution 7706); introduce ordinances to establish the MCRHD zone and amend the zoning map (Ordinances 17-21 and 17-22) and to amend the Main Street specific plan (Ordinance 17-23); and adopt a resolution to overrule the ALUC determination (Resolution 7707). Ordinances were introduced and will return for second reading before final adoption.

Council and staff said the moves preserve the city's ability to regulate project-level details through objective design standards and subsequent entitlements, while reducing the immediate legal exposure that comes from being out of compliance with state housing element law. Staff also said the Old Ranch Country Club pipeline project remains subject to its own specific-plan process and to ALUC review when the applicant submits those materials.