Del Mar Council Rejects Plea by Opponents of Mayor’s House

Del Mar Mayor John Gillies received the backing of his City Council on Monday night to continue the construction of his 6,000-square-foot, three-story home despite an appeal from other residents that he is receiving special treatment.

Gillies was charged with increasing the height of the structure above the present limits and of failing to extend city and county permits. The council voted 3 to 0 to deny the appeal and to accept the opinions of the city staff and an outside consultant that Gillies, an architect, operated within the law at the time.

Deputy Mayor Brooke Eisenberg and Councilwomen S. Gay Hugo and Jacqueline Winterer made the decision after Gillies and Councilwoman Jan McMillan excused themselves from the discussion on the basis of possible conflict of interest.

The appellants, former Mayor Tom Pearson and architect Lewis Dominy, argued that Gillies had received special treatment from the city staff because he was mayor and that the outside consultant, a Northern California land-use attorney, was not given all the facts in the case.

Gillies never presented his case because the three remaining members of the council decided they had heard enough to rule without hearing the mayor’s defense.

All three councilmen attacked Pearson and Dominy for appealing the case. Hugo, an attorney, said she and other members of the council had “bent over backward to be fair” in judging the mayor’s case and had not favored him over his opponents.

“This is truly a personal battle” by Pearson and Dominy against Gillies, Hugo said.

“The bottom line is that we cannot apply current policies and laws retroactively,” Hugo said, pointing out that Gillies obtained his approvals in 1984, 1985 and 1986, before building codes were tightened.

Winterer charged that the mayor’s adversaries had “harassed, attacked and treated him in a most unseemly way” during the hearings. Eisenberg called the protest over the mayor’s home the “most frivolous and costly appeal” in the city’s history, costing the taxpayers “thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Dominy argued that Gillies’ plans had changed to increase the size of the house by 1,000 square feet and the height by 8 feet after the initial Planning Commission approval. He said no other Del Mar resident had received such preferred treatment.

Gillies still faces action by the state Coastal Commission, which has ruled that he is in violation of his coastal permits.