The policy, approved by the City Council unanimously, will require top city officials’ calendars to be posted to the city’s website by the 10th day of each month, listing meetings that occurred in the previous month. The deputy and assistant city managers will be required to disclose their meetings as well.

“There’s nothing more transparent than telling everybody who we’re meeting with and who we’re talking to,” Councilmember Natalie Meeks said.

The new policy is the latest reform the council is making to promote transparency in City Hall.

City officials must list the date and time of the meeting; the names, titles and affiliations of the people they met with; and what the topic of the meeting was. Meetings with members of the public, lobbyists, developers and union representatives would be required to be disclosed.

Excluded from the policy are disclosing meetings that are with city employees only, criminal investigations and personal appointments.

The policy will go into effect in 2024. Mayor Ashleigh Aitken has been posting on the mayor’s webpage meetings requested with her. The latest post Wednesday included meetings until the end of July.

City officials’ calendars were public record already, but required people to file a records request with the city clerk.

The City Council on Tuesday night in closed session unanimously approved making Huntington Beach Police Chief Eric Parra the interim city manager. Zelinka, in a news release, said he was retiring from public service to have more time to care for his elderly mother.

“My decision to retire is based upon considerations culminating with a significant and challenging personal issue: caregiving of my elderly mother,” Zelinka said in a statement. “This is requiring more time, attention and work schedule flexibility than possible while concurrently rendering professional services to the city of Huntington Beach.”

Parra will remain the police chief as he takes on his new duties as city manager. The city manager oversees more than 1,500 employees and a $500 million budget.

Mayor Tony Strickland thanked Zelinka in a statement. Strickland also said he was thrilled Parra is willing to become the interim city manager.

“I trust he will do a great job for this city that he also calls home,” Strickland said. “The residents of Huntington Beach will greatly benefit from his direction and contributions in this new role.”

Parra has been the police chief for the last two years and has worked in law enforcement for more than three decades. He has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Cal State Long Beach and a law degree from Western State University College of Law.

Zelinka was not in attendance at Tuesday’s council meeting. His last day on the job will be Wednesday, Nov. 8.

Several city department heads have left their jobs this year, including the public works director and community and library services director.

Zelinka took the top job in June 2022 after previously serving as Riverside’s city manager and earned $320,000 a year. Zelinka had a background in urban planning. He previously worked in Fullerton as its community development director and before that worked for a consulting firm.

Huntington Beach’s previous city manager, Oliver Chi, left in 2021 to take the same position in Irvine.

Dozens of Orange County firefighters responded when the blaze was first reported at the north hangar just before 12:55 a.m. By midmorning, however, they stood by watching the structure burn, helpless to stop its demise.

For update, see: Tustin hangar was largest surviving artifact of Marine aviation and a landmark for OC

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Thanh Nguyen said sending firefighters into the building was too dangerous.

“The biggest fear is collapse and getting our firefighters injured,” Nguyen said.

The cause of the fire and where it began were not clear Tuesday.

No injuries were reported and firefighters did not believe anyone was inside the building when the fire broke out, Ngueyn said.

OCFA Chief Brian Fennessy said early Tuesday the fire was expected to stretch across the length of the hangar, which will ultimately need to be demolished. He said it could take a lengthy amount of time before the fire was out. When firefighters arrived, the blaze was intense.

“We expect the fire to continue … possibly until it gets to the other side of the hangar, and whether that be the end of the day, tomorrow — whether it stops at some point in between, we don’t know,” Fennessy said. “So at this point we’re standing back, keeping people and firefighters away and we’re watching.”

By evening, the roof and one of the two long sides were gone, with the gigantic framing for the big doors still upright. The blaze appeared out; firefighters planned to stay overnight to keep watch for any flames kicking up.

But early Tuesday was chaotic.

Just before 6:30 a.m., firefighters said the plan was to allow the hangar to collapse. Only after the roof came down would fire officials send in ground crews.

Due to the dynamic nature of the fire, and the imminent danger of collapse, we have determined the most operationally sound method is to allow the structure to collapse, at which point ground crews can move in closer, and aggressively work to extinguish the fire. pic.twitter.com/SmBl2UahMB

— OCFA PIO (@OCFireAuthority) November 7, 2023

At first, fire officials sent in helicopters including a Boeing CH-47 Chinook to help fight the blaze. Nguyen said helicopters are typically not used to douse a structure fire with water.

“This is not a regular fire,” Nguyen said.

But it later became clear dumping water on the structure was having no effect.

“It was felt that perhaps … it was possible for us to maybe slow it down and maybe get our ladder trucks in close enough to be able to slow it down,” Fennessy said. “That was not the case, so we cancelled them and returned them.”

Both hangars once housed blimps used in World War II and later provided cover for military helicopters.

The hangars were built in 1942, Fennessy said, and are two of the largest wooden structures ever constructed. They were named historic civil engineering landmarks in 1993.

The hangars have been featured in television shows and films, among them “JAG,” “The X Files,” “Austin Powers,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Star Trek.”

For some time, there were plans to raze the north hangar and use the space to construct homes and a regional park. But the plans were never realized, and in August 2021 the City Council voted to scrap the park and maintain the site.

Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard called Tuesday a sad day for the city. He described the two hangars as more than just structures.

“It’s a personal thing to a lot of (the) Tustin community,” Lumbard said. “They mean so much to the city’s past, to the region’s military history.”

Before the fire, Lumbard said, a decision hadn’t been made on the ultimate fate for the north hangar. It was damaged by heavy winds in 2013 and had been supported by two cranes.

“It’s just been kind of sitting there, damaged,” Lumbard said. “There’s community sentiment that wants to save the hangars, (but it’s) very, very cost prohibitive to repair those things and bring them up to commercial code.”

Lumbard said the city looks forward to collaborating on what ultimately will happen to the remaining hangar and the former air station’s 85 acres.

The city, he said, recently invested in new fencing, adding signs and cutting overgrown vegetation in the area.

Councilmember Letitia Clark said the U.S. Navy needed to do more.

“I think we did everything we could in our power to really ensure that the site was clean and safe,” Clark said. “I think the hindsight-20/20 part is really more on the Navy.”

Clark said the city has an operational agreement with the Navy, which owns both hangars.

“I hope that the Navy is now aware that there’s probably more that they could have done,” Clark said. “And, hopefully, there’s more they can do now in terms of helping us move forward with making sure the site is clean and that we can move forward to fully transitioning ownership of the (south) hangar from them to us.”

U.S. Navy officials did not address the councilmember’s concerns on Tuesday.

“The Navy thanks the Orange County Fire Authority for quickly arriving to the scene of the fire and preventing the fire from spreading to nearby structures,” a Navy statement said. “The Navy is working closely with the city of Tustin and Orange County Fire Authority to determine the cause of the fire.”

Tuesday morning, every few minutes, the dying structure emitted a loud, low rumble as the metal and wood inner lattice still holding up the curved roof started to give way, sending debris crashing down to the hangar floor in burning heaps.

By 9 a.m., fire crackled along the edges of the gaping hole now making up nearly half of the old hangar. Flames ripped through the interior, bursting through the hangar’s roof in spots.

Amid billowing columns of brownish, white smoke, pieces of the hangar’s outer covering were ripped from its walls. The pieces twirled up in the air like confetti before raining back down on the fields and streets around the building. The loud snaps and pops of flames and the explosions periodically rumbling through the old structure served as the death throes of one of Orange County’s most iconic buildings.

Like giant soda cans tipped over in the sand, the twin, hulking hangars at the air station have sat here for longer than many locals have called Orange County home.

The air station was one of the first sights Curtis Schneider, 61, remembers seeing when his family first drove through the area after moving here in the 1970s.

In a T-shirt, shorts, sandals and sunglasses, Schneider stood just behind the open driver’s door of his car, holding his phone up to capture the destruction. When one loud blast roared from the burning building, he tensed up.

“Whoa!” he said, as others in the group of about 50 onlookers hooted and hollered. Still watching, Schneider took a quick drag from his vape pen.

He recalled standing on the floor of the hangar beneath its towering walls for different events over the years, when visitors were still allowed inside.

“We saw car shows in there, helicopter shows,” Schneider said. “We had some good times in that hangar.”

Tammy Murphy, 65, looked on in horror and wonder as decades of Southern California history burned to the ground in front of her. Murphy stood with her two grandchildren just behind a chain-link fence about a quarter of a mile from the hangar.

“Oh my god — so many emotions,” she said. “These were here when I was a kid growing up.”

She remembered seeing the Blue Angels perform here. Her father was in the military and would take her to shop at the air station grocery store.

“It was bustling,” Murphy said, about the facility before it closed for good in 1999.

Local officials tried for years to develop a plan for what to do with the hangars. It’s a history Schneider said he knows well.

He answered his cellphone, on speaker phone.

“That’s a historic building,” the caller said.

Schneider replied: “It was.”

Lori Spiak, a lifelong Tustin resident, gasped at the sight.

Spiak said she hopes the south hangar is maintained — she and her friends have talked about how it could be turned into a concert venue or a soundstage.

Adora Cole said the hangar has been a fixture in her life since she was a child; she remembers Marines going by in their pickups trucks when it was an active air station.

“My heart is just broken,” Cole said. “It’s so close to home. It’s very, very upsetting.”

Staff writer Erika Ritchie contributed to this report.

Lawyers representing resident Guadalupe Ocampo filed the request on Friday, arguing the election is invalid because it failed to collect enough valid signatures and ballots were sent to ineligible voters. More than 350 voters received ballots who shouldn’t have, according to the filing, and more than 1,100 people who could vote in the election didn’t get a ballot.

Lopez was elected to Ward 3 in 2020, before the boundaries of that district were changed in 2022 based on the latest U.S. Census. The 2022 version was used in calculating how many signatures needed to be collected to force the recall election and what voters would receive ballots. OC Registrar of Voters Bob Page contacted Santa Ana leaders about the map question on Oct. 26.

The filing requests the court issue a declaration that the city was required to certify the recall based on pre-redistricting boundaries.

If the court doesn’t stop the election, the request asks the judge to have ballots issued to all registered voters in the pre-redistricted boundaries of Ward 3 and not count ballots cast by voters not within that area.

Voting is already underway in the Nov. 14 special election.

Ocampo, a registered voter in the pre-redistricted boundaries of Ward 3, does not live in the ward after the new boundaries were drawn in 2022 and did not receive a ballot, according to the court filing. She says in the filing she voted in the 2020 election and is now being “deprived” of her right to vote on who should represent her community on the City Council.

Lopez could not be immediately reached for comment. The Santa Ana City Council deadlocked last week on whether to cancel the election, with at least one councilmember saying it should be up to a court to decide.

Page, in a response fiing, told the court he “welcomes direction” from the court.

Tim Rush, chair of the recall campaign against Lopez, said the filing is just another tactic to kill the recall.

“That’s unfortunate, especially at this late hour,” Rush said. “It was interesting that nobody claimed that they felt their civil rights have been violated up until now.”

Rush said the recall supporters followed all the directions given by the city clerk and “if she had told us to turn around three times, and click our heels, and point north, well that’s what we’d do. We did what she told us to do.”

A hearing is scheduled before Judge Craig Griffin at 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday.

A state Superior Court judge ruled Friday, Nov. 3, that the lawsuit file by the state Attorney General’s Office and California Department of Housing and Community Development must wait. The ruling is a win for city officials who hope to fight off state housing mandates to keep the “suburban character of the city.”

The state earlier this year sued Huntington Beach for refusing to adopt a housing element in compliance with state law. The city fired back by filing a lawsuit in federal court that argued because it is a charter city it’s not subject to state housing laws.

City Attorney Michael Gates called the judge’s decision “a huge loss” for the state and said the decision can’t be appealed.

“The state is stuck and can’t take any further action against the city for failure to adopt a housing element,” Gates said.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said, “We are disappointed by the court’s ruling and considering all options to obtain the swift relief that state law requires.”

For decades, on a regular cycle, the state has required local communities plan for allocated amounts of housing at a variety of price points, including some amount of affordable, to meet needs of the future. More recently the legislature has given the process more teeth.

The state wants Huntington Beach to adopt zoning that would allow developers to build 13,368 new housing units over the next eight years. Huntington Beach officials have argued the city’s allocation is a disproportionate burden compared to other jurisdictions, such as Marin County.

The state filed a motion on June 22 to dismiss the city’s federal lawsuit, but a judge hasn’t ruled on it yet.

“I don’t see how the court is summarily going to be able to dismiss it,” Gates said. “We await the ruling, but I think the motion to dismiss is not going to be granted, at least not in whole.”

The state filed a motion on Oct. 30 asking the court to make a decision on whether the lawsuit would be dismissed or not. The state argued the court had 120 days to rule on the motion to dismiss.

Huntington Beach refused to join in on the request with the state for the judge to make a decision. State officials and attorneys for Huntington Beach differed in opinion on when the 120-day clock started for the judge to make a decision.

Deputy Attorney General Matthew Struhar said both sides needed to make the joint request, and state officials ended up filing without getting signatures from Huntington Beach attorneys.

The state also took issue with the city’s request to depose Gov. Gavin Newsom and other top state officials at City Hall.

The city will renovate the motel, which officials bemoaned as once a trouble spot in town, into an affordable housing complex with supportive services. The state and county have given $7.5 million for the city to buy the motel and complete the conversion.

“Affordable housing is one of the best investments we can make in our neighborhoods,” said Councilmember Stephen Faessel, who represents the district the motel is in.

The motel had 32 rooms and is planned to reopen as affordable housing in late 2025. Erin Ryan, a spokesperson for Anaheim, said the state funding covered the cost of buying the motel, and $2 million from CalOptima will cover most, if not all, of construction costs to convert the rooms into studio apartments.

The motel opened in 1960. Faessel said there was a time not too long ago when there was little to celebrate where the motel is, and it had outlived its usefulness.

“For years this motel was a problem for the families that just lived on the other side,” Faessel said.

The Tampico Motel is the third conversion of its kind in Anaheim. The city opened two other motel conversions to serve as housing in 2021 and 2022. In June, the city unveiled a 102-unit affordable housing complex on Orangewood Avenue near the 5 Freeway.

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said the conversion is a cost-effective and fast way to create affordable housing since building new units takes a long time and is expensive.

The complex will focus on housing young adults who have been through the foster care system and are homeless or are at risk of being unhoused. The goal is to provide stable housing at a critical stage to help them become self-sufficient and avoid falling into a lifetime of homelessness, Ryan said.

The nonprofit Jamboree Housing is in talks with the city to run the future housing complex, and has submitted a proposal for a young adult community with supportive services, Ryan said.

“This is a group that sadly often falls through the cracks,” she said.

The City Council voted in 2022 to buy the motel for $5.3 million. The signage for the Tampico Motel will likely be removed and the building will adopt a new name.

The new group, Protect Huntington Beach, was surrounded at a news conference outside of City Hall Wednesday afternoon by about 100 residents chanting “Vote no” as its members presented a laundry list of issues they have with the proposed charter amendments.

The amendments were placed on the March primary ballot this month by the City Council majority.

“This is an expensive, wasteful solution in search of a problem, and needs to be voted down,” said former Mayor Connie Boardman.

There are three charter amendments voters will consider in March – one concerning election laws, another requiring a unanimous City Council vote for the city to display commemorative flags on government property, and a third with administrative updates including moving Huntington Beach to a two-year budget cycle and changing how the council cancels its meetings.

Boardman said there isn’t a problem with voter fraud in Huntington Beach and argued the flag charter amendment was rooted in intolerance for the LGBTQ+ community.

“This is about flying the Pride Flag at City Hall in June and making it as hard as possible for any future council to do that,” Boardman said. A large pride flag was draped outside of City Hall during the press conference.

Mayor Tony Strickland, who is pushing for the amendments, said Wednesday that he is confident voters will approve the measures in March. He said they are on the March ballot so they can get the attention they deserve, and not be buried with statewide initiatives on a general election ballot.

Strickland said the election changes would give people more faith in elections. “People have to have trust and faith in our election system, otherwise our democracy doesn’t work.”

As for flags, Strickland said any flag the city flies “needs to represent 100% of the population,” adding that the flags that would be allowed including military flags and American and the state flag.

Boardman also took issue with the potential for a mayor gaining the power to cancel meetings. She said the current mechanism for canceling meetings is working.

Other former mayors in attendance included Barbara Delgleize, Jill Hardy, Linda Moulton-Patterson, Shirley Dettloff and Victor Leipzig. The former mayors criticized the cost of placing the charter amendments on the ballot.

An October staff report said the election will cost around $400,000. Boardman said it speaks to the popularity of the measures to be placed on the March primary ballot, instead of the November 2024 general election, where voter turnout is likely to be lower.

Pat Goodman, a member of the group, said they started getting together around January to analyze the City Council’s agenda. The political group, Goodman said, has no desire right now to continue organizing beyond the March election, “but as being spontaneous residents dedicated to good governance, who knows?”

While the plan, called the “shared passenger track alternative,” isn’t set in stone, Jim Patrick, a spokesperson for California High-Speed Rail Authority, said it is likely the option the agency will move toward making official and work to get environmental clearance for. It would add a fourth track on the line down to Fullerton; two tracks would be used from there to Anaheim.

The California High-Speed Rail project hopes to move passengers from Anaheim to San Francisco at top speeds of more than 220 mph. Construction work is well underway in the Central Valley to start moving passengers from Bakersfield to Merced by around 2030. Service in the Southern California region is planned for 2040. More than 30 million people a year are expected to ride the line.

Traveling from the Los Angeles Union Station to Anaheim’s ARTIC station is expected take 46 minutes under the new proposal. The route from Los Angeles passes through Norwalk and Fullerton on its way to Anaheim and is estimated to cost more than $6 billion to build.

There are already three existing mainline tracks near Union Station and where a possible Fullerton station would go. Adding the fourth mainline track will give more room for freight rail, Metrolink and high-speed rail to operate in the corridor.

The changes in the Los Angeles to Anaheim segment come in part due to community opposition to a proposed freight facility in Colton.

“So instead of holding freight trains to keep them off the three existing lines, we are building a fourth line,” Patrick said. “We are gonna have two lines for freight trains and two lines for passenger trains running between Los Angeles and Anaheim.”

At times the freight trains could run on the passenger tracks, but not vice versa.

The Rail Authority’s board will hear a presentation of the new option at a Thursday meeting – it is unclear when in the future a decision on the new option will be made.

A part of that presentation is new details for how train crossings will be modified in Anaheim. Rail Authority officials hope to make two new grade separations – to keep trains separated from other traffic at intersections – around the Platinum Triangle at State College Boulevard and Cerritos Avenue and modify four other crossings in Anaheim.

Previously they had planned for seven new grade separations.

City of Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said Anaheim officials welcome the grade separations being looked at because they focus on future busy areas of the city, around the Platinum Triangle, OC Vibe and the planned Santa Ana Riverwalk.

“We as a city have provided input through the years. At this point, they are in advanced stages of looking at the route into Anaheim with evaluation of what will work best with rail crossings and other specifics,” Lyster said. “In general, we welcome as many separations of roadways and railways as possible, understanding there are always considerations and limitations for impact, feasibility and funding.”

Patrick said every grade crossing at minimum will have four railroad crossing gates. He said the Rail Authority is evaluating crossing configurations in Anaheim and Fullerton with consideration given to reduced servicing capacity since there will be only two trains an hour instead of four.

The Rail Authority is still exploring whether there will be stations in Fullerton and Norwalk/Santa Fe Springs. The presentation prepared for Thursday says city support for stations has been uncertain and would add a few hundred million to construction costs. Patrick said it’s an ongoing discussion between cities and the Rail Authority about what makes sense for the project, cities and ridership.

Fullerton Public Works Director Stephen Bise said the city will study at a later time whether to build a station and will wait to hear more from the state agency about the plans.

“It would be a pretty big endeavor if they were to put a station here,” Bise said.

Bise said a fourth-track expansion will have lots of construction and right-of-way impacts in Fullerton.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority is hosting an online open house on Nov. 29 to talk about the Los Angeles to Anaheim segment.

“Vietnam’s success is America’s success,” said Marc Knapper, who has been the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam since 2022, “just as America’s success is Vietnam’s success.”

The tour in Orange County comes weeks after the two countries strengthened their partnership, promising new investment and closer relations. Orange County is home to the largest Vietnamese American community in the U.S., and Knapper said there is an opportunity for its residents to build cooperation and understanding between the two nations, especially in high-tech industries.

Rep. Lou Correa organized the ambassador’s visit to Orange County. They made stops at religious institutions, including the Our Lady of La Vang Shrine at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove and the Bao Quang Temple in Santa Ana, and met with business leaders throughout Little Saigon.

Faith leaders greeted the delegation Monday morning at the Our Lady of La Vang Shrine, explaining the history behind the 12-foot tall Virgin Mary statue and showing them the wall with the names of 117 Catholics who were martyred for their religious beliefs in Vietnam over several hundred years.

At the Bao Quang Temple, Knapper and Correa met with a small group of monks, with Knapper speaking in Vietnamese with the Buddhist leaders. They burned incense and then got to see the temple’s private trove of Buddhist artifacts.

Loc Bach, president and chairman of the Vietnamese American Buddhist Center for Charitable Services – Bao Quang Temple, said the ambassador’s visit shows that Knapper wants to have a good, open relationship with refugees of Vietnam.

“The people who fled their country, they want to see progress is being made and their country is moving in the right direction,” Bach said. “I’m just very thankful and happy to see the congressman and the ambassador visit the temple.”

The delegation received a big welcome at the Advanced Beauty College in Garden Grove. State Sen. Janet Nguyen said there the nail industry is largely made up of Vietnamese workers.

During a short discussion at the school, Knapper said America’s relationship with Vietnam is significant.

“We don’t always see eye-to-eye with the government of Vietnam,” and there are times when the U.S. will raise concerns with religious freedom and human rights, Knapper said.

The Little Saigon community continues to have disagreements about working with the Vietnamese government. When asked how Vietnamese Americans can contribute to the relationship between the two countries, Knapper said he can’t presume to understand the feelings at play, but he knows they are complex.

Correa in September, along with Rep. Michelle Steel and others, asked President Joe Biden when he was visiting the country to address human rights issues in Vietnam and encourage the release prisoners of conscience. Correa said it’s important for the community to push political leaders on these issues.

The last stop of the day was the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster.

Correa said the private sector is making substantial investments in Vietnam already. A lesson learned from the pandemic, he said, is that the U.S. can’t rely on single nations for sourcing critical products, and that Vietnam is part of a policy of broadening supply chains.

The northbound 405 carpool lanes at the 73 closed Wednesday night. The carpool lanes in both directions along the 405 – between the northern county line and the 73 – will close at night on Nov. 1, including the connector lanes between the 22 Freeway and the 405 and between the 605 and 405. When the lanes reopen in a month the $2.16 billion project that started in 2018 will be completed.

“There should be some plans for a longer commutes,” OCTA CEO Darrell Johnson said. “Maybe leave a little bit early, look ahead at traffic on all the (apps), whether it’s Waze or Apple Maps, but at the same time also recognize there will be some changes in the freeway system coming forward. A little bit of extra time now should help you later after Dec. 1.”

The lanes are closing to do final testing of the new tolling equipment, and will reopen as express lanes.  All travelers will need a FasTrak transponder to use the new 405 Express Lanes.

FasTrak Flex transponders, where you set the number of passengers in the car from 1 to 3+, will be needed to take advantage of the free tolls for carpoolers.

In Santa Ana, a 24/7 staffed traffic operations center will monitor the freeway’s express lanes. The room has large video boards with real-time traffic data and toll pricing. Workers there will have access to 50 cameras filming the freeway.

Johnson said if there’s an accident or some other incident on the express lanes, depending on the severity, the center would be able to close the lanes to new traffic. And if there was a significant incident on the freeway’s general lanes, they could also move traffic to the express lanes and not charge people.

The 405’s new express lanes are modeled after the 91 Express Lanes. There will also be tow trucks dedicated to servicing the 405 in Orange County.

The 16-mile expansion of the 405 is the largest single freeway investment in the county’s history, Johnson said.

The project also two new general lanes and two express lanes (on top of the converted carpool lanes), one for each direction. The 405 is one of the most congested freeways in the county, carrying more than 300,000 vehicle trips daily in parts, according to OCTA.