Hole in the Wall of Bureaucracy : Homeowner Wins 16-Month Fight Over the Height of Masonry Fence

It started one spring afternoon when a Los Angeles building inspector left a tag on David Graham’s front doorknob. Graham still has the notice, neatly stapled to a sheet of typing paper.

One of his Mar Vista neighbors had turned him in. Graham’s back-yard fence--a white masonry wall built more than 27 years ago by a prior owner--is three feet higher than the city allows. The inspector gave Graham a choice: Chop off the top of the wall or go to jail.

Graham, a soft-spoken bachelor who lives alone with his German shepherd dog, says he has been burglarized twice in three years. His wall--and some burglar bars he recently installed--are his security. The thought of going to jail to protect his home of 15 years intimidated and angered him.

“I spent a lot of sleepless nights when I was told that I could expect a tap on the door anytime from the police,” he said. “If somebody wasn’t a paranoid, this could definitely make him into one.”

Last week, more than 16 months after getting the notice, Graham persuaded a city zoning official to let him keep the wall. The ruling brings to a close a perplexing tale, one that involves allegations of bribery, harassment and selective enforcement. It is a story of a city bureaucracy that either unintentionally led Graham astray or, as he insists, purposely “put me through hell.”

‘Horribly Bungled’

“It has been horribly bungled all the way along,” Zoning Administrator James Crisp acknowledged last week. “I just don’t understand.”

Graham, a 50-year-old certified public accountant, admits his back-yard wall violates the zoning code--but he says thousands of other walls in Los Angeles do too. He argues that he has been pursued by inspectors from the Department of Building and Safety because he reported an alleged bribe solicitation by one of them. The inspector denies he sought a bribe.

Graham lives on what is known as a reverse corner lot, meaning his back yard abuts the side yard of the house behind him. The code says back-yard fences on reverse-corner lots can be no taller than 3 1/2 feet, unless the fence is set back from the property line. Graham’s wall is 6 1/2 feet tall and is at the property line.

In building his defense, Graham collected scores of pictures of other illegal fences, including one across the street that was not cited. He said he dug out a 40-year-old City Council report on the fence ordinance that justified the height restriction in part because it permitted motorists to see over walls. With many cars now smaller and built closer to the ground, the rationale is no longer relevant, he argued.

“I told them again and again: When everyone else in the city with a fence like mine is ready, we’ll all take them down at the same time,” he said. “Why should I be the only one?”

Graham has been fighting City Hall for nearly a year and a half, and he says the battle has been consuming. He guesses he has spent 300 to 400 hours taking photographs of fences throughout the city, attending hearings, filing forms and researching city documents. He used city election records to track down the homes of several city officials so he could photograph violations in their neighborhoods.

‘I Feel Like I Am In a Hurry’

Graham lives in a 2-bedroom stucco home not far from the Venice Boulevard offramp of the San Diego Freeway. His wood-paneled living room is anchored by a baby grand piano he inherited from his mother. He says he likes to play, but he hasn’t for months.

“It just isn’t enjoyable,” he said. “I feel like I am in a hurry--like I have to go check on one more fence, on one more loose end because I might have made a mistake.”

Graham said his troubles began when he asked inspector Jerry Hurt how he could keep his wall. Graham said the inspector led him on a wild goose chase, telling him he needed a special permit and a professional soil report. After being passed from counter to counter at the West Los Angeles municipal building, Graham said, Hurt offered to solve his problem.

“He said, ‘This is getting to you, isn’t it? For about $1,000, you can get me off your back,’ ” Graham recalled.

Graham interpreted Hurt’s remarks as a bribe solicitation. Hurt, who has since been transferred to a different city job, last week denied that he was asking for a payoff and described Graham as an “eccentric” making “wild accusations.” Hurt said he treated Graham’s case no differently from the hundreds of others he has handled.

“The only thing I can do is do my job,” Hurt said. “That is all I have ever done. . . . We don’t go out looking for trouble. All we respond to is complaints.”

Robert Steinbach, who was Hurt’s boss at the time, said he was convinced the inspector was not soliciting a bribe.

“It was obviously a misunderstanding,” Steinbach said. “He was complaining that it was going to cost a lot of money (to lower or move the wall), and Hurt said, ‘Probably a thousand dollars max to make it legal.’ ”

Graham reported the alleged solicitation to Steinbach and also wrote a letter to Mayor Tom Bradley. Bradley’s office “fully investigated” the complaint, a spokesman said, and “didn’t find any impropriety.” A report written for the mayor by a Building and Safety official concluded, “During a discussion of the alleged bribe solicitation, it became apparent to Mr. Graham that he misunderstood what the inspector was telling him, and he finally agreed that the inspector was not soliciting a bribe.”

‘No Question’

When told about the report last week, Graham became angry.

“I swear to God that is not the impression I intended to give,” he said. “There is no question in my mind that . . . they knew in my opinion the man had solicited a bribe.”

For several months after reporting the alleged bribe, Graham said, he was hounded by building inspectors. He said he counted 10 inspectors taking pictures, talking to neighbors, measuring his wall or just surveying his corner property. On several occasions, city helicopters hovered over his single-story house, presumably to allow inspectors to take aerial photographs.

At one point, Graham began taking photographs of the inspectors to document what he regarded as an excessive level of scrutiny.

Graham appealed Hurt’s citation to two separate appeal boards in the Department of Building and Safety. One panel could not decide what to do with his case. The other said he could keep a 6-foot wall if he replaced the top 2 1/2 feet with “open construction”--such as wrought iron. Meanwhile, Graham said, many of his neighbors still had walls that were too tall, and he was not about to make any changes to his.

Late last April, on a friend’s recommendation, Graham contacted the CBS television program, “60 Minutes.” Several weeks later, nearly a year after he was cited, Graham said he got a phone call from Peter Rudolph, who at that time was planning adviser to Mayor Bradley. Rudolph left the mayor’s office this summer.

Graham said Rudolph told him he could keep his wall if he filed for a variance with the city’s Zoning Adminstration Division for about $500. Rudolph sent Graham the form, and a week later, Chief Zoning Adminstrator Franklin P. Eberhard agreed to waive the public hearing required for variance requests.

Graham credits his letter to “60 Minutes” for Bradley’s sudden interest in his case, although he said the program did not take up the issue.

Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said Graham’s letter had nothing to do with it.

“60 Minutes never contacted us about that,” Chandler said. Deputy Mayor Mike Gage said he asked Rudolph to assist Graham after the office determined the bribery allegation was unfounded.

“I said (to Rudolph), ‘What can we do to help extricate what is obviously tied up because he is making stupid allegations?’ ” Gage said.

Revoked Waiver

Several weeks after filing for the variance, Eberhard revoked his waiver, and Graham was notified that there would be a public hearing after all. Crisp, the zoning adminstrator who held the hearing last week, said the revocation was warranted because “there is controversy here.” According to the waiver form, the public hearing can be waived only if the case “is not likely to evoke public controversy.”

Even so, no one showed up at the hearing to oppose Graham’s request, and he submitted a form with the signatures of his closest neighbors in support of it. The neighbor who originally reported the violation had apparently moved away, Graham said.

Crisp quickly approved the request, saying he had inspected the fence and found “no problem with it whatsoever.” Crisp was hard pressed to explain why a routine fence violation--which normally is resolved within a month or two--dragged on for 16 months. He said someone should have told Graham long before last May that he needed to file for a variance.

“I know what happened,” Crisp told Graham at last week’s hearing. “You came on strong to Building and Safety, and Building and Safety just went crazy.”

But Steinbach, one of the department’s inspection chiefs, had a different explanation.

“Crisp had no right to make that comment,” Steinbach said. “He has nothing to do with Building and Safety. We are not vindictive. We have too much work to do to waste time on a case like this one.”

Inspectors Shuffled

Steinbach said the department went through a recent reorganization, which meant several inspectors were shuffled between jobs. With inspector Hurt getting a new assignment shortly after Graham was cited, Steinbach said it was not surprising that Graham dealt with other inspectors. Steinbach said he was surprised, however, that Graham’s case took so long to resolve.

“I thought that case was dead,” Steinbach said. “This one might have fallen through the cracks.”

Deputy Mayor Gage speculated the bribery allegation so distracted city officials that they forgot about the violation itself.

“My guess is that when he started making allegations, people started concentrating on researching the allegation rather than what was happening with his (fence),” Gage said.

Although allegations of bribery are uncommon, Steinbach and Hurt said Building and Safety inspectors are very often unpopular with the public because they are perceived by some residents as intruding on their property rights. Steinbach said Graham was particularly offended by the citation.

“He is cranky now because we gave him a problem,” Steinbach said. “But I got the impression from talking to him that he is one of these people that goes his own way: ‘It is my property, and I will do what I damn please on my property.’ He had no ability to listen to the other side. He was shocked that the city would write him an order, and he decided to fight it.”

Graham admits that he did not like being told by the city “how to live my life,” but he says his objections were far more serious.

“They put me through hell, unnecessarily,” Graham said. “I don’t think I will get over this very easily.”