An example of harebrained bureaucracy

For the second time, the Glendale City Council this week was forced to overturn a commission-level decision blocking a new gym at Chamlian Armenian School — two years after it applied for the right to build it.

Since 2010, the school has been stuck in a bureaucratic quagmire in which a select few play the system to tie up a project they feel is “incompatible” with “their” neighborhood. How many times have we heard this argument?

First, the Planning Commission turned down the zoning application. When the City Council overturned that decision, the Design Review Board then rejected the building plans, basically contending the gym was too square — in both senses of the word.

So yet again, two years after the school applied to construct a badly needed gym for its students, the council overturned the design rejection. Because after all, who has seen anything but a boxy gymnasium?

Even Councilman Dave Weaver, a typically unsympathetic ear for such cases, told the audience on Tuesday night that he was angry the gym was even still an issue. And several on the dais expressed surprise that the gym hadn’t been built yet.

Well, now Chamlian is free to build its gym. And we have yet another example of how government can sometimes manage to make such a no-brainer a harebrained example of road-block bureaucracy.