Lawndale Planners on Hot Seat; 6 City Employees Targeted for Possible Layoffs

Lawndale’s beleaguered city staff, depleted by the forced resignations and voluntary departures of several key administrators in the past two years, is under the gun again this week.

The City Council majority--Harold E. Hofmann, Larry Rudolph and Dan McKenzie--took the Planning Department to task at an emergency meeting Tuesday for issuing eight building permits for projects that do not meet city parking and setback requirements.

During the grueling, five-hour meeting, an obviously exasperated Rudolph demanded to know which of Lawndale’s three planners approved each of the eight projects. Later, on the steps of City Hall, he said: “We should fire the whole Planning Department.”

Mayor Sarann Kruse and Councilwoman Carol Norman disagreed. They said that the Planning Department has been short-staffed, and the planner assigned to clarify language in the Building Code has been diverted to other tasks.

Possible Layoffs

Meanwhile, Acting City Manager Jim Arnold has targeted six administrative employees for possible layoff tonight, including one assistant planner and three middle-management employees who have worked for the city for 12 to 16 years.

He proposed the layoffs because the council is looking for ways to cut $418,592 so the city can hire more sheriff’s deputies to fight crime and gangs in Lawndale. With the budget already trimmed during previous cutbacks, the only place the city can achieve such a large sum is by eliminating salary expenses, Arnold said.

The city recently received $10 million from the sale of its interest in the Galleria at South Bay, but Arnold said he believes the interest from those funds should be used for capital projects, such as development of parks and modernizing the Hawthorne Boulevard business district.

The emergency session Tuesday and the discussion of layoffs tonight are the latest examples of the precarious relationship between the Lawndale City Council and the staff at City Hall.

Since the fall of 1987:

* Two city managers and a planning director have been forced to resign after closed-door sessions with the council.

* City Treasurer Ray Wood was fired for authorizing a speculative securities investment in which the city lost $1.68 million.

* Last year, a maintenance supervisor was dismissed after he was accused of charging to the city building supplies that he used in his remodeling business.

* At least two department heads have left to take better jobs, and others are said to be looking for work outside Lawndale.

Meanwhile, the remaining staff has been called upon to fill in. Some, who requested that their names be withheld, complain of overwork and high stress under a barrage of criticism from the council majority.

Kruse and Norman, who generally are supportive of the staff, said that the frequent personnel turnover has made it difficult for anyone to deal with the city’s planning problems. One planner was hired to revamp the code but has had little opportunity to do so because of the other jobs she has had to take over, they said.

Special Session

City politics have become so divisive that Lawndale “has become an absolute laughingstock all over Southern California,” Kruse said. She criticized the council majority for calling the special council session on matters that could have been, and in some cases had already been, handled by the city staff or the Planning Commission.

The majority on the council has previously defended its actions, saying that serious problems uncovered in the Planning and Maintenance departments have justified its vigilance.

The city uncovered so many errors in the issuing of permits in recent years that, in July, the council declared an amnesty for all residential projects that had received permits in error. The amnesty, which allows developers to get their final occupancy permits although their projects do not meet all city requirements, was extended to cover the projects discussed Tuesday night.

Arnold said part of the problem is due to ambiguities that have remained in the city code, in spite of the efforts of several administrators to make the city building and zoning regulations consistent and clear. In most cities, for example, the parking requirement for a single-family home is contained in a single paragraph, but Lawndale’s is “pages of gobbledygook,” he said. “They should junk the whole thing.”

‘Stressed Out’

Arnold said some of the most recent errors also can be attributed to the staff being “stressed out” over having to perform several jobs at once.

Arnold was named acting city manager late last year, after Daniel P. Joseph was forced to resign in a conflict with the council majority after only five months on the job. The previous city manager, Paul J. Philips, was forced out by the council in 1987.

City Planner Kendra Morries was named acting planning director when Arnold became acting city manager. She later took on a third job, as acting housing director, when that post was vacated by longtime employee Paula Burrier, who took a job with the County of Los Angeles.

Morries was on vacation Tuesday and was unavailable to comment on the eight projects Hofmann earmarked for discussion at the special meeting Tuesday.

At the meeting, Planner Felix J. Reliford told the council that the problem is not the city staff but the ambiguity of the city’s codes. “Five council members can’t agree on an interpretation, two different staff members don’t agree and the city attorney looks at it differently from the staff,” he said. “How many people can you get rid of before you see that?”

‘A Waltzing Halt’

Hofmann responded: “I’ve heard this same song and dance for 10 solid years. We’ve got to put a waltzing halt to this.”

McKenzie complained that the city has been paying planners to straighten out the city’s codes for at least five years, under three different planners, without success.

Rudolph said that, if planners were unsure of an interpretation, they should have asked the city attorney for a clarification.

“I don’t get paid $30,000 or $40,000 a year to make that kind of determination, but you do,” he said to the planners. “I no longer have any faith in our Planning Department at all.”

The mistakes the Planning Department has made “are going to affect the city for the next 30 years,” he said.