CITY GROWTH: A BITTER TEST ON CONTROLS : Divided Council Restarts Effort to Dilute Initiative

The Los Angeles City Council tried again Wednesday to dilute the effectiveness of an initiative--before it is voted on--that would limit the city’s future commercial growth.

Last week, the council tentatively approved an ordinance to exempt a long list of properties from the initiative, Proposition U on the Nov. 4 ballot. The city attorney’s office had advised the council that its action violated the City Charter because affected property owners had not been notified.

So on Wednesday the council started the process over again, still attempting to declare exemptions from Proposition U for hundreds of properties throughout the city. Proposition U, promoted by Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude, would cut by half the commercial building allowed in Los Angeles in the future, and would exempt only a handful of areas, such as downtown and the Wilshire Corridor.

Exasperated last week over what he said were efforts to weaken the initiative, Yaroslavsky lashed out again Wednesday at his council colleagues.

“Let’s get to the root issue,” he said. The council ordinances of last week and Wednesday are “an effort to get around Proposition U.”

“You can’t get away with it. There’s going to be legal action and it will be messy and embarrassing to all of us,” he warned.

Nevertheless, a majority of the council, led by Council President Pat Russell, pressed on with efforts to enact exemptions in anticipation of passage of Proposition U.

Russell’s allies moved in two directions.

Russell said she hopes, before the election, to complete public hearings leading to a series of zone changes that city attorneys say could shield more than 30 commercial areas from Proposition U’s building limits.

Under this strategy, areas to be exempted would be given zoning designations not affected by the initiative.

As many as 10,000 property owners would have to be notified, but whether the entire rezoning process could be completed in the six weeks before the election was unclear.

Russell said the actions are needed to ensure that commercial growth can take place in areas of the city “where people have said they want development.”

“We do not want to abdicate our responsibility on such important issues,” she said, defending the council’s efforts to provide for more commercial development than the initiative.

On a 9-3 vote, the council also approved a revised version of the ordinance tentatively approved last week. As rewritten, the measure still attempts to exempt just as many commercial areas and hundreds of development projects from the initiative’s limits. As now drafted, the measure is legal but its exemptions may not hold up if the initiative is approved, the city attorney’s office says.

Nonetheless, Russell said the ordinance provides “the framework” of how the council majority thinks the conflicting demands for limiting growth should be reconciled.

The measure that was voted on Wednesday would, like the initiative, require smaller buildings on much of the city’s commercial property and would control the height of future buildings near residences.

But it would exempt far more commercial areas from building limits than the initiative. They range from low-income areas such as Pacoima, where the city is trying to stimulate development, to booming areas where huge office projects are expected, such as near Los Angeles International Airport.

The latest council ordinance also would exempt from the restrictions nearly 500 projects throughout the city that are approved or proposed but not yet built.

Russell argued that the revised council ordinance, which will be back for final approval next week and become effective just three days before the election, is a better balance of concerns about overdevelopment and the need to preserve the city’s “economic viability.” Notification of public hearings is not required for the revised ordinance.