L.A. Planners Reject Density Restrictions in Sunland-Tujunga

Despite opposition from some Sunland-Tujunga residents, the Los Angeles Planning Commission voted Thursday to uphold a hearing examiner’s recommendation to reject an emergency ordinance that would restrict development on the area’s hillsides.

The commission voted 3 to 1 to disapprove the interim control ordinance, which would reduce the density of residential construction on hillsides until the community district plan is rewritten. The dissenting vote was cast by Commissioner Suzette Neiman. Commissioner William Christopher was absent.

Nearly 100 residents, realtors and developers crowded into the Van Nuys Woman’s Club for a Planning Commission meeting on the proposed ordinance. Because of the large number of potential speakers, it was agreed that only about half of them would comment before the commission voted.

Many of the residents said the ordinance is needed to preserve the rural character of Sunland-Tujunga, while realtors and developers said it would severely limit the availability of single-family houses in the area.

Adequate Measures

However, three commissioners sided with the hearing examiner’s report, which said there already are adequate measures in the district plan to protect the hillsides without imposing a new ordinance.

William Luddy, Planning Commission president, agreed with hearing officer Charles Rausch that the ordinance would have to be rewritten to regulate subdivision design standards in the manner that Councilman Joel Wachs intended when he proposed the measure in February.

“Unfortunately, this ordinance doesn’t do what it is being asked to do and because of that I can’t vote for it,” Luddy said.

Commissioner Theodore Stein agreed. “I feel that this ordinance is flawed legally and that there are adequate measures in place” to protect the hillsides, he said.

But Arline De Sanctis, chief deputy to Wachs, said it is the hearing examiner’s report that is flawed, not the proposed ordinance.

3 Subdivision Applications

De Sanctis said Rausch’s report stated that the emergency ordinance was not needed because only three subdivision applications had been filed in the last 18 months for hillside areas. The actual number of applications pending is 16, De Sanctis said, adding that the ordinance is needed because it could take six months to a year to rewrite the community district plan.

De Sanctis disagreed with Luddy and Stein that the ordinance’s language was flawed. “If that were the case, with as many city planners and deputy city attorneys working on this case, why haven’t they come up with that conclusion before?”

The commission will submit its recommendations to the City Council, which will make the final decision on the matter.