Moreno Valley Temporary Warehouse Moratorium Fails In Split Vote

The Moreno Valley City Council Tuesday failed to adopt a 45-day moratorium on the establishment, expansion or modification of any logistic-type warehouse in a split vote with Mayor Ulises Cabrera and Mayor Pro Tem Erlan Gonzalez voting against. 

“At this time, I don’t support a moratorium, and do look forward to having more extensive conversations about the future of economic development to make sure that we continue bringing in the right businesses to the city…as opposed to just settling for distribution centers and temporary jobs,” Cabrera said at the February 3 meeting. “We need to have higher standards for ourselves, y’all, and I think there’s a middle ground, but this is the beginning of that conversation.”

Both Cabrera and Gonzalez voted last month to bring the proposed ordinance to the full council for consideration on a motion made by Councilmember Cheylynda Barnard. In order to pass, the moratorium needed at least four votes in support.

The city, which initially planned to present the proposed ordinance to the council for consideration, ultimately recommended that it be approved in an effort to reduce potential issues of processing development applications for logistics facilities while the city was in the midst of updating its General Plan.

“The purpose of this moratorium is not to buy additional time for getting that General Plan update to the city council for its consideration,” he said. “Rather, the purpose is to avoid the complications associated with having to process an application for a logistics warehouse facility under our current 2006 general plan and our current zoning and development regulations, many of which include provisions that are inconsistent with current state law.”

As part of the General Plan update, which began in June 2024, City Attorney Steven Quintanilla said the city was engaged in ongoing negotiations with the attorney general’s office over issues regarding the application of both AB 98 and SB 415.

Barnard, who brought the item forward at the start of the year, said she understood that a moratorium was a controversial step, but urged people to consider what she was attempting to accomplish with the move.

“While I hear everyone’s concerns — I’m hearing what everyone’s saying — I came with this motion, one, because this general plan update situation continues to come up,” she said, noting that she would also ask staff to use the 45 days to look into health concerns associated with warehousing if the moratorium was adopted, “because we do need to start looking into those things also.”

Council members Elena Baca-Santa Cruz and Ed Delgado, who voted against bringing the ordinance forward last month, both supported the moratorium Tuesday to prevent additional complications as the General Plan update process continued.

“Blanket moratoriums are not good for any city or industry, in my opinion,” Delgado said. “However, like the city attorney and the city manager said, this would help the city get through the General Plan update so that we don’t have complications associated with processing logistic warehouse applications in the meantime, while we’re dealing with the Attorney General.”

Cabrera and Gonzalez, noting that the General Plan update process would be completed regardless of whether a temporary moratorium on warehouses was in place, felt the step was unnecessary at this time.

Sentiments of the 20 people who spoke at the meeting were mixed, with advocates for the moratorium citing the impacts of warehouse proliferation in the area, the necessity of having a temporary moratorium in place to ensure the city complies with new state laws and their belief that the brief pause could allow the city to better plan for the future.

“The city really could use this time to think about how you guys are going to handle the thousands of trucks that haven’t even come onto the streets yet from some of these projects you guys have already approved,” said Andrea Vidaurre, the co-founder of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice and winner of the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize. “You guys can take a chance to figure out what your strategies are to address the greenhouse gasses that will inevitably come from the ones that haven’t been built yet.”

Those against the moratorium pointed to the fact that the vast majority of the city’s land currently zoned for industrial uses was already developed or entitled, the potential negative impact a moratorium could have on future development in the city and the ripple effect that would have on local laborers.

“The message of this proposal is that the city is closed for business, that’s the way developers are talking, and that’s the way we look at it,” said Omar Cobian, a Moreno Valley resident and representative for the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters. “Our city needs smart growth, good jobs and opportunities that support working families, not blanket policies that slow progress without solving real issues.”