Hillside Management Law Weighed : Growth: Council approves draft version of a measure protecting the foothills from unregulated development.

About 50 Sierra Madre residents expressed support last week for the city’s proposed hillside management ordinance, which is to come before the City Council on Tuesday.

Although the council could not take action in the public hearing, it approved the draft that will be put to a vote Tuesday. City Atty. Charles Martin said the measure, developed to protect the town’s foothills from unregulated development, could be adopted as an urgency ordinance, which would put it into effect immediately.

It is a comprehensive management plan for the foothills of Sierra Madre that regulates development according to slope severity and considering earthquake and fire hazards. It specifies the way homes should be designed to be compatible with ridges and other natural features of the mountains, with sensitivity to native vegetation and animal life.

The plan was developed by the Hillside Task Force, a committee of property owners, photographers, geologists, land-use attorneys, a city planner and conservationists, who worked with the city’s Planning Commission, consultants and the council.

Task force member Gurdon Miller said the proposed ordinance is less restrictive than previous ones, but also more legally defensible. This is an important point because the city’s development strictures have already been challenged in a suit scheduled for trial next month.

“The new ordinance is better because it was designed to manage development in a sensitive way,” Miller said.

Task force members said the proposal ensures that any developments will not stand out as scars on the city’s mountains, as in neighboring foothill communities such as Arcadia and Glendale.

But Lawson Martin, a property owner in the Chantry Flats area, sued the city in May, 1990, requesting that a moratorium then in effect be declared invalid. Lawson Martin is not related to Charles Martin.

As part of the suit, the moratorium was struck down by the state Court of Appeal on Oct. 16.

In addition, Lawson Martin is seeking unspecified damages for “the taking of property and civil rights violations,” said his attorney, Mark Steres. Steres said the value of Lawson Martin’s real estate decreased substantially during the time development was prohibited. The case is scheduled for trial Dec. 9.

Steres said the hillside management zone line set up in the new ordinance should not include some flat portions of his client’s property. But Miller said Lawson Martin’s property is in the view line and should be in the management zone.