This past Wednesday, Maria, Arturo, Necils and I met with Fausto Reyes, a landscape architect who holds a post on Ontario’s Planning Commission. He was appointed by Ruben Valencia after Ruben won as a councilman in 2016. Fausto lost his post as the planning commissioner prior by helping Ruben Valencia run for City Council in 2014. With a population that is officially seventy percent Hispanic, Ruben and Fausto seemingly are two of the very few members of the Latino community that hold high positions within city government. Fausto consults for the cities of Chino and Montclair, often doing plan-checks as these cities do not have an in-house licensed architect. Needless to say, the breadth of Fausto’s experience is vast, and we were very lucky to connect with him. He knows Scott Murphy, the director of the planning department, very well.

Recounting some of his experience, Fausto told us that many projects get stuck in plancheck not necessarily due to the city not liking the plans, but rather due to planning imperatives and the projects not conforming to the city’s planned vision for those parcels.

Fausto looked over the plans and work, and was very receptive towards it. He took home the landuse agreement, our presentation booklet as well as our current construction set. He said that there are three possibilities on why the city does not like the project: materials, the fact that there are structures planned, or a decision from the city manager or one of the councilmen.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the decision Fausto faced was whether or not to implicate Ruben Valencia. He said he would first speak to Ruben, and then he would have a private conversation with Scott Murphy to find out exactly why the city doesn’t want to go ahead with half of the educational center. Fausto said he is likely overstepping his boundaries by engaging with the project in such a way, but said that he isn’t afraid losing his position over this.

In the meantime, he said we should reach out to the representative for the 35th congressional district. Arthur said Norma Torres (U.S. Representative) has frequented the garden, and Fausto, Maria and Arthur entertained the idea of asking her to write a letter of recommendation to the planning department on behalf of the garden.

Currently we are waiting to hear back from Fausto on what Scott Murphy earnestly thinks of the project. We all agreed that the step after would most likely be a large meeting between Scott and everything we can muster from our side. The task at hand in terms of the actual work is to continue work on the construction set to ensure its maximum completeness and to produce interior renderings for each of the buildings, which can potentially be used as selling points to planning.