Council Leaves Door Ajar

After five years of watching Ventura Boulevard explode with development and traffic, the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan came within an eyelash of final approval on Dec. 18. Ignoring the pleas of homeowners and the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores withheld her crucial vote, a highly unusual move, thus delaying further City Council action on the plan until Jan. 4.

This could allow time for other developers with out-of-scale projects to squeak through. One project in particular is the proposed 3-story, 85,000-square-foot full city block building of developer Jacky Gamliel. The people of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. have been struggling to mitigate this inappropriate development for 1 1/2 years.

For what possible reason could Flores, whose constituency is not even in the plan’s district, want to withhold her vote on this plan, which has been in the works for so long? Flores said she was “concerned about builders and projects nearing approval” and thought “it was unfair to subject them to a new set of rules.”

One infers from this kind of thinking that Flores thinks that the intentions of the plan were a big secret to developers and builders. Many developers were on the panel created to devise the plan, including Gamliel’s attorney.

Flores’ “touching empathy” for the developers and builders is a blatant example of a politician who prefers to serve the needs of builders and developers rather than the needs of the people.

The inordinate five-year time frame on the plan’s development has already allowed many developers to squeak their out-of-scale projects through. Thanks to Flores, the door to this overdevelopment is still not shut.

JUDITH McCURDY, Sherman Oaks

McCurdy wrote on behalf of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.