County Snubs Grand Jury Zoning Protest

In a stinging rebuke to the Orange County Grand Jury’s recommendation, county officials decided this week to stand firm behind a decision made on apparently erroneous information to allow development on 14 acres of pristine hills in Laguna Niguel.

The grand jury, in a June 9 letter, said it had found that the Board of Supervisors seriously erred in approving the rezoning for the 187-unit Country Village development last December and asked the county to take “immediate action to rectify this mistake.”

The panel had found that the supervisors voted to approve the development based on erroneous information that the county Planning Commission had already rezoned the land from open space to residential. The commission, in fact, had not, according to grand jury foreman James Lindberg.

The county responded by suspending development proceedings on the project, which is being built by Shapell Industries of Beverly Hills, and ordering the county counsel’s office to investigate the matter.

After a review, County Counsel Adrian Kuyper concluded last week that he could find no legal basis for changing the zoning back to open space or holding further hearings on the project.

To Abide by Conclusion

Ernie Schneider, director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency, sent a letter to the grand jury Wednesday, saying that he would abide by Kuyper’s conclusion.

In so doing, he acknowledged: “. . . I realize that there will be unhappiness on the part of some residents with the decision.” Residents living near the site have vigorously protested the planned bulldozing of the hills.

“I’m flabbergasted,” Cindy O’Neal, a resident of the nearby Kite Hill subdivision, said upon learning of the county’s decision. “I think they’ve thumbed their noses at the grand jury and the community concern.”

Tom Wilson, president of the Laguna Niguel Community Council, which is pushing incorporation for the area, added: “It’s a total community concern. There’s something there (in the county’s decision) that looks very cloudy. I think it’s something the community needs to be appraised of.”

Lindberg said that he had not yet received a copy of Schneider’s letter Thursday and could not comment.

Despite outcries from the community, Schneider defended his action.

“We relied on the advice of counsel and we do what the county counsel says,” Schneider said Thursday. “We don’t have the latitude to just unilaterally make decisions.”

Kuyper said he based his conclusion on the assumption that the supervisors acted from faulty information, although he added that there is no proof that there was, in fact, an error.

The alleged error occurred when the supervisors thought that they were following the Planning Commission’s recommendation that the 14 acres of open land be redesignated residential, Kuyper said.

The commission, in a November, 1986, hearing, had voted to preserve the land as open space when Shappell Industries first presented a rezoning request. The commission heard a scaled-back rezoning request for the disputed land in October, 1987, and at that time approved the change, mistakenly believing that the land had been rezoned for residential development since the first hearing, the grand jury found.

O’Neal and other residents discovered the mistake and appealed to the Board of Supervisors to overturn the commission’s action. But the supervisors acted to uphold the Planning Commission’s decision in December.

In January, O’Neal and the other residents complained to the grand jury, which launched an investigation. The grand jury said in its report that the Planning Commission members acknowledged that they were wrong in believing that the property had been rezoned. The grand jury, subsequently, appealed to the supervisors to change their decision.

However, Kuyper said the supervisors could not go back on their decision even if they had acted on bad information, because the 120-day period within which a zoning appeal can be filed has already expired.

O’Neal complained that the supervisors ignored the residents when they pointed out that they had made a mistake during the appeal hearing last December.

“We were saying something is not right here,” she said.

O’Neal said she became so upset at hearing the county’s decision Thursday that she went to the district attorney’s office to urge an investigation. She added that that office has not indicated whether it will enter the fray.