Apartment Wars : Laguna Beach Residents Take Aim, Hit the Building Inspector

John Hingula is somber now, even occasionally droll, when he speaks of the abrupt ending to his 10-year job as a Laguna Beach building inspector.

He dubs his departure as the final event in “the week the building inspector went out.” It was a week in which a complaint was filed against him for having an illegal apartment in the home where he lived, he corrected the violation, he suffered an anxiety attack at work, and then resigned out of fear of being fired.

“They had to make a martyr out of someone. Well, here I am,” the soft-spoken Hingula observed. He says he believes he became the city’s fall guy in a furor that has broken out in Laguna Beach over complaints against South Laguna residents with illegal second apartments in their homes.

The apartment squabble has rocked this seaside art colony, pitting neighbor against neighbor and causing embarrassing revelations about city hall employees.

It has also fueled a recall effort against Mayor Dan Kenney and council members Robert F. Gentry and Lida Lenney, with the ultimate goal of removing City Manager Kenneth C. Frank.

The recall group has until June 7 to collect 3,000 signatures per council member to force a recall election in November. As of Monday, about 1,800 signatures had been collected for each council member.

And today, some other Laguna residents plan to announce the formation of a group to fight the recall movement.

Said Kenney of the controversy: “I think everything goes in peaks and valleys and this is not a peak for Laguna Beach.”

It began earlier this year with an advertisement in a local newspaper: “$500 reward for the best horror story of city wrongdoing.”

“I read the ad, but I didn’t know it’d be me,” Hingula said.

The ad, paid for by the residents waging the recall campaign, was spurred by the illegal apartment problem.

Since South Laguna was annexed to Laguna Beach in December, the city has started processing 119 complaints from neighbors in South Laguna about homeowners who had converted garage apartments and other building code violations. The complainants said the violations caused increased population and parking problems in the beach community.

Vigorous Protest

Some angry residents protested vigorously against city officials for pursuing the complaints. They felt that the “village” quality of their community would be destroyed by removing the illegal apartments.

The City Council did vote last month to give residents a five-year grace period to comply with the residential zoning code, which limits building to one living space per parcel of land.

But some Laguna Beach residents felt the city was being unfair by pursuing the complaints and set out on a campaign to find city employees and officials who had violations of their own.

They found some.

The first complaint was filed in late March against Community Development Director Kyle Butterwick, for some construction in his Old Top of the World neighborhood home, for which he failed to get the proper permits.

He has agreed to remove the construction and take two weeks of vacation without pay.

Councilman Gentry also was accused of having an illegal room next to the garage in a home he owns on Skyline Drive. After inspecting the home, the city wrote Gentry a letter saying the room could not be used as a bedroom.

Gentry denied that it ever was a bedroom. He said that when he lived there, from 1975 to 1979, he only used the room as a den. The house now is for rent.

But because of building inspector Hingula’s position in the city, his violation was considered more serious.

Hingula, 40, lives with his wife, Kiayu Sun, in her mother’s Laguna Beach home. Before the two met, Sun had sealed off one part of the home and installed a second stove.

When Hingula and Sun married and moved into the home four years ago, he saw that she had violated the residential zoning code by dividing the house.

He didn’t report the violation.

“Obviously, he was protecting me,” said Sun, who had made several other improvements to the home with permits from the city.

Hingula thought that if it was discovered the house was illegally divided, he and Sun simply would correct the problem, as is the procedure when zoning code violations are reported. In most cases, the resident has 30 days to bring the building up to code.

“When a police officer is in a car and his wife is speeding, he doesn’t write her up a ticket,” said Hingula.

Sun and Hingula said that most of their neighbors knew their home had been converted into a duplex, but no one complained of any parking problems and no one reported the violation--until April 1.

“I thought I was doing the right thing by getting it corrected . . . I thought at the most they’d make me take a month off without pay,” Hingula said, noting that Sun’s mother was notified in writing of the violation on April 5 and that he and Sun removed the stove and opened the wall by the following day.

But when he went to work on Thursday, April 7, something wasn’t right.

“I was sitting at my desk and I was dizzy,” Hingula recalled. “I was having the shakes. I looked at my hands and noticed they were turning blue. I was trying to call out the other inspector’s name and nothing came out. He looked at me and later told me I was completely white. I was falling out of my chair and he said he caught me.”

Paramedics were called and a doctor later determined that Hingula had suffered an anxiety attack related to stress.

“I had to laugh at how (city officials) said we would be treated just as any other person in Laguna Beach. . . . It became political . . . I think now I should’ve rode it out, but emotionally I couldn’t handle it any more,” he said, his voice cracking.

Hingula Resigns

Hingula said he resigned because he thought he would be fired.

“Through signals and noddings (of supervisors) it looked like (the committee) would make the determination to fire me,” Hingula said, referring to a committee of city department managers formed to decide if disciplinary action should be taken against him.

But City Manager Frank said it was Hingula’s choice to resign and that the committee had not put anything in writing at the time he offered his letter of resignation on April 8.

“John was doing a good job and it’s unfortunate for him and it’s unfortunate for the city,” Frank said.

At the time Hingula resigned, his supervisor, building official Ed Wilczak, said the committee had not yet made a decision. In a telephone interview at that time, Wilczak was asked if there was a chance that Hingula was about to be fired. He said, “In the realm of options of any disciplinary review, termination is always a possibility, but we hadn’t gotten that far.”

The complaints against Hingula and Butterwick were filed by Paul and Barbara Westbrook, Laguna Beach residents who are involved in the recall campaign and also are in a legal battle with the city over parking restrictions at their art gallery on Laguna Canyon Road.

The Westbrooks, and others involved in the recall campaign, are combatting what they consider to be selective enforcement of laws by the city.

“When your own ox is gored you start taking a look at the people who are doing it to you,” Barbara Westbrook said. “We’re just asking for equal application of the law, and not selective enforcement,” she said, noting that several citizens throughout Laguna Beach are looking for building violations in other city officials’ homes.

Recall supporters said it isn’t fair that some of those who are in City Hall to enforce city laws have themselves violated the law.

The recall group also believes the City Council’s “overzealous” sign regulations and restrictions on outdoor displays hurt business in Laguna.

For example, shoe store owner Jack Hansen recently was convicted in South Orange County Municipal Court of violating a city ordinance by displaying footwear outside of Axline Village Shoes. He has appealed the conviction, for which he was placed on informal probation for one year.

Frank said Butterwick’s and Hingula’s violations were “certainly embarrassing to the city.”

“(The Westbrooks) just want to get the staff and they picked a good way to do it,” Frank said at the time the complaints were filed.

But Barbara Westbrook said her group believes some South Lagunans are being unfairly singled out.

“It’s our thought that those people are really being jerked around,” she said.

However, she also said that she believes Hingula should have kept his job with the city and been given five years to comply with the zoning regulations just as those in South Laguna.

Mayor Kenney said he was irked by the “ironic” actions of the recall supporters. First, he said, they accuse South Laguna residents of being vigilantes for filing complaints against their neighbors, but now they are the ones filing complaints against people they live nowhere near.

“Most beach communities have a history of second units. The city has always taken the attitude that we don’t have the staff or the opportunity to go look into other people’s windows. We do it on an individual basis (when complaints are received),” Kenney said. “People in town, for whatever reason, have gone on this little campaign.”

Kenney said he was sorry that Hingula had to resign. However, he added: “If you’re in a position like (Hingula and Butterwick) you should be squeaky clean.”

Today, Hingula is training to be an inspector for a private home inspection service.

“He’s real happy,” Hingula’s wife Sun said. “It’s a lot different than working for a city.”

LAGUNA’S ‘BOOTLEG’ APARTMENTS

When South Laguna was annexed to Laguna Beach on Dec. 31, 1987, the city inherited about 100 complaints that had been on file with the county regarding illegal apartments. The City Council on April 5 adopted a policy to bring the “bootleg” units into compliance with the residential zoning code.

Most of the homeowners, as of July 1, will have a 5-year grace period to comply, except:

Apartments found to have faulty wiring or other safety hazards will be required to meet building code standards within 30 days.

In homes with more than one illegal apartment, the apartments must be removed within one year.

Converted garage apartments must be removed within one year unless there are two offstreet parking spaces for the tenants.

Homes with apartments listed on county property tax rolls and on loan documents at the time of purchase are permitted to exist until a change of ownership occurs, at which time the illegal apartment must be removed.

Residents of illegal apartments whose owner-occupants and tenants were 60 or older as of Dec. 31, 1987, may remain in the apartments for the rest of their lives.

If the house is sold, the illegal apartment must be removed.