HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — April 28, 2026 — 
At 4:55 a.m., most people in this quiet Huntington Beach neighborhood are fast asleep, but it’s another rude awakening for those who live next to the former Kettler Elementary School property.  
You see, it’s around this time that the delivery trucks and workers roll up to what neighbors complain is an illegal-unpermitted industrial maintenance operation. Roughly 15 employees are here every day, switching on the parking lot stadium lights, setting car alarms, and loading and receiving the daily truck deliveries. 
It wasn’t always this way. Becky Granger said when she bought her home 33 years ago, it backed up to an active elementary school and playground.  We never had noise before 7 am when it was a playground, just the sound of kids having a good time.  
Kettler Elementary School opened in 1972 and finally closed to students in 2005. Concerns about methane gas pockets underground, fewer students and higher operating costs pushed the Huntington Beach City School District to shut it down.  
Over the next 13 years, the playground turned into a ghost town. The equipment fell apart, and a patchwork of weeds broke through the painted hopscotches on the pavement. Then in 2018, the school district spruced up the school and moved its offices here.  Eventually, all evidence of a playground was removed, and the blacktop was paved into a large empty parking lot.  The HBCSD began using the space to park its school buses, landscape maintenance trucks, and tractors. Hazardous chemicals are stored outside, mulitiple shipping containers for tools and equipment sit on ground built up over an area known for its toxic methane gas.   
Neighbors like Becky Granger fear that the combination of these chemicals, an active work site and methane gas might lead to a fire or explosion.   
“I’m over here in the fight of my life, battling cancer, and now I have to worry whether or not this maintenance yard is a toxic cesspool,” Granger said. “I ‘m woken up every morning by workers, noise, light, and the exhaust from the vehicles.  
Granger and her neighbors, who are adjacent to the district property, say the district pulled a fast one on them. They lied to officials at the city of Huntington Beach about being exempt from the stringent environmental review known as the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  
Specifically, the school district never had permission to transform this playground for school children into a maintenance yard in the first place. It was done illegally, without the authorizations required under city regulations.  

Now, the  residents of Huntington Beach are exposing a calculated deception by the Huntington Beach City School District (HBCSD), which has successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of the City Planning Department and the Planning Commission. On March 10, 2026, the Planning Commission voted 6–1 to approve Conditional Use Permit No. 23-014 for a new industrial Maintenance & Operations (M&O) Building at the Kettler Education Center. This approval was based on the City's blind acceptance of a deeply flawed and legally vulnerable California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Notice of Exemption (NOE) engineered by the school district. 

The "Existing Use" Illusion 
The core of the District’s deception lies in its CEQA baseline. The District’s NOE relies on the false premise that the new 7,525-square-foot industrial facility involves "negligible or no expansion of existing or former use".
However, the District intentionally misled city planners by establishing this "baseline" on unpermitted, illegal operations. The District relocated its maintenance yard to the Kettler site around 2019, operating heavy machinery, storing hazardous materials, and running diesel trucks in a residential parking lot without ever obtaining a required City Conditional Use Permit.  A public agency cannot legally establish a CEQA baseline of "existing operations" to avoid environmental scrutiny if those operations have been unpermitted and illegal since their inception.   

Misapplication of the "Small Structures" Loophole 
Furthermore, the District deceived the City Planning Department by misapplying a Class 3 CEQA Categorical Exemption (Section 15303) for "Small Structures". This specific exemption was created for small stores, motels, offices, and restaurants—not a full-scale industrial maintenance facility. City staff failed to recognize that the industrial nature of these activities, which includes a woodshop, metal shop, and the storage of hazardous materials just 22.5 feet from residential property lines, completely disqualifies the project from this minor exemption.
Calculated Evasion of Public Scrutiny 
To orchestrate this bypass of environmental review, the District utilized questionable procedural tactics to manipulate the statute of limitations. The HBCSD Board formally recorded its NOE with the County of Orange on November 1, 2023, which, they erroneously claim, triggered a brief 35-day window for legal challenges. The District then deliberately waited for this legal window to quietly expire before formally resubmitting the CUP application and plans to the City Planning Department in April 2024: During the March 10, 2026, Planning Commission hearing, both the District's CEQA consultant, Malia Durand, and their legal counsel, Jeremy Brust, relied heavily on this 35-day statute of limitations. Brust testified that because the CEQA findings were made in 2023 and the "time for challenges has passed," the CEQA exemption is legally "settled.

The City’s Failure to Protect Residents 
The City of Huntington Beach Planning Department acted as an unwitting accomplice, accepting the District's flawed NOE at face value and failing to conduct an independent CEQA evaluation. The Planning Commission subsequently agreed that no environmental report was required for this project.   This occurred despite the fact that the Division of the State Architect (DSA) explicitly confirmed in writing in August 2024 that it has no authority to issue conditional use permits or enforce local zoning for this non-classroom property.
Cumulative Environmental Burden on Southeast Huntington Beach

The approval of this unpermitted industrial maintenance yard represents a compounding environmental injustice for the residents of Southeast Huntington Beach, a community already burdened by a history of major industrial cleanups. The neighborhood is currently contending with the highly publicized Ascon Landfill—a recognized hazardous waste cleanup site located just down the street at Magnolia and Hamilton. Furthermore, the proposed M&O building project sits directly adjacent to Edison Community Park, an area encompassed by the inactive Cannery Street Landfill (Disposal Station #16). Environmental database reports confirm this history, classifying the area northwest of Magnolia and Hamilton as an inactive landfill and solid waste disposal site. For the City and the District to force a new industrial facility—complete with heavy machinery, hazardous materials, and known methane gas risks—into a residential neighborhood already grappling with the legacy of two major toxic landfill sites demonstrates a flagrant disregard for the long-term health and safety of this community.

Call to Action 
The Neighbors of the Kettler Education Center demand that the Huntington Beach City Council stand up for its residents and see through the District's smoke and mirrors at the final appeal hearing scheduled for May 5, 2026. The City Council must overturn the Planning Commission's misguided approval, reject the District's legally vulnerable NOE, and compel the HBCSD to conduct an honest Initial Study (IS) or Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) that evaluates the true environmental impact on our community.  
 

The HBCSD has cheated the environmental review process, and the city has believed them, so far.  Let the city council know that every resident should be protected by a legal and proper environmental review.  Email:  

City.Council@surfcity-hb.org

Gracey Van Der Mark: Gracey.VanDerMark@surfcity-hb.org
Pat Burns: Pat.Burns@surfcity-hb.org
Casey McKeon: Casey.McKeon@surfcity-hb.org
Tony Strickland: Tony.Strickland@surfcity-hb.org
Don Kennedy: Don.Kennedy@surfcity-hb.org
Chad Williams: Chad.Williams@surfcity-hb.org
Butch Twining: Butch.Twining@surfcity-hb.org 
 

Questions:  email Robert Granger at robert@grangeragency.com