Picus Says Neighbors Should Be Told : Planning: A proposed ordinance would require notification when changes are made in plans for nearby tracts.

Conceding that she was “locking the barn door after the horse is gone,” Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus introduced a measure Wednesday to notify residents of proposed changes to housing tracts already approved for construction next to them.

Picus’ motion was in response to complaints from a group of West Hills residents who are unhappy with a 70-foot dirt slope for which a developer gained city approval without their knowledge.

The slope rises from the end of Deveron Ridge Road, and residents say it has blocked their treasured views of the San Fernando Valley.

“It’s an ugly eyesore that has defaced the community,” resident Bunny Field said.

Field met Wednesday with Picus in an effort to persuade the city to order Urban West Communities, a Santa Monica builder, to halt the project. But Picus said in an interview that she did not know whether construction could be stopped because Urban West already has city approval.

In 1980, another developer gained city approval to build 299 houses in a design that called for Deveron Ridge Road to be extended slightly and houses to be built on the hillsides that slope down to the road on either side. Urban West bought the property in the mid-1980s. In 1987 the firm asked the city for a modification. Contending that the extended road would be too steep, the company instead wanted to fill in the small valley, erecting a rampart across the road, and build houses on pads atop the rampart.

The city granted the request after a public hearing. But because city law does not require neighbors to be notified of hearings on modifications to approved subdivisions, the residents of Deveron Ridge Road were not told of the hearing, according to a letter to Picus from Los Angeles Planning Director Kenneth C. Topping.

The Planning Department policy is to notify the people who attended the original public hearing--in this case, the one in 1979, Topping wrote. One person attended that hearing.

“I’m appalled,” Picus said of the lack of notification.

The neighbors are appalled too, Field said, mostly because they fear their property values will be lowered by the blocked views.

They have consulted an attorney and plan to press the city’s Building and Safety Department to take some action to lower the mound, said Field, who argues that the city negligently agreed with Urban West’s contention that Deveron Ridge Road could not be extended.

Field suggested that Urban West simply wanted the slope so it could build more high-priced view lots.

Tom Zanic, an executive of Urban West, maintained that the road could not have been built to city standards and that the slope has been an expensive undertaking for his company. Notification, he said, was the city’s responsibility, not Urban West’s.

Moreover, he said, the firm is implementing a plan to landscape the mound and maintain the greenery in perpetuity.

But the residents worry that the controversy will fade and leave them staring at an ugly pile of dirt.

“It’s going to be out of sight, out of mind,” resident Mel Fisher said.