Nailing Down Building Plans : Housing: Solana Beach considers a law that would impose a two-year deadline on home improvement projects. Opponents say measure is too restrictive.
Home improvement addicts in Solana Beach beware: City hall is worried that the serenity of seacoast neighborhoods has been taken hostage by your noisy, never-ending projects.
Officials said they’ve had enough of the nattering nuisance and mess. Now they’re considering a new law that would impose a two-year deadline on those home-grown add-ons and back-yard bulldozings--as a way to halt the racket of your hammers and do away with your unsightly driveway dumpsters.
Critics of the proposed ordinance, which is scheduled for debate and a possible vote Monday night at City Hall, call it the work of nervous politicians trying to slap a stopwatch on the American Dream.
If passed, the law would become more restrictive than the Uniform Building Code--the national standard adopted by cities countywide--setting time constraints on projects that have otherwise been allowed to continue unfettered as long as the builder demonstrated that progress was being made.
The new guidelines would force outside construction to be completed within one year--with an additional year allowed to meet final inspection for any inside work. Under the uniform building code, projects can continue indefinitely as long they are inspected every six months and are proceeding toward some conclusion.
Opponents claim the city’s get-tough ordinance could well be the only one of its kind in the Western United States, a small-town overreaction that would allow government to stick its nose where it does not belong--inside people’s homes.
“Why should Solana Beach set itself apart and above everyone else in the country when it comes to building a house?” asked Sue Beckman, a San Diego resident who plans to begin construction on a home in the North County coastal community.
“It’s like they’re trying to create a brave new Solana Beach instead of letting the city evolve on its own. What do they know that everyone else doesn’t?”
Solana Beach resident Victor Ashford, who also has a building project going, said the new law would also fail to distinguish between big projects and small--holding both to the same blanket restrictions.
“In my opinion, it’s just bad government,” he said, “taking away people’s legal rights and putting them in the hands of some committee that might grant your wishes if you smile at them the right way.
“It’s my house and they want to make me work on somebody else’s time schedule. That’s a commissar-type of government.”
City officials said their proposal is designed as a cattle prod to speed along lackadaisical neighborhood building projects that often seem to go on forever--raising the hackles of residents around them.
Councilwoman Celine Olson said the current proposal is not as strict as one previously considered--which would have restricted projects to 15 months with inspections every 45 days. And anyway, there are means of extending the deadlines for builders who run out of cash or have a good reason to go beyond the time limits.
But a study of home-building projects in Solana Beach over the past year showed that a majority of projects were finished within a year--giving ample time for the average family to hammer together their version of the American dream, she said.
“We’re aiming at those never-ending projects that cause disruption to neighborhoods and leave unsightly materials and those green dumpster things all over people’s yards,” Olson said.
“There are a lot of these building addicts out there. And their hammering and sawing can go on for a lifetime if that’s the way they want to do it. It’s enough to drive their neighbors crazy.”
Some residents said that argument is just a lot of sawdust. The ordinance, they say, is actually a narrow-minded effort to halt one man whose home renovations have gotten under the skin of several politicians who live near him, including Solana Beach Mayor Richard Hendlin.
“What we have here is one sore thumb that has begun to bug the mayor and his friends,” said Louise Abbott, a local real estate broker who has spoken before the council on the matter, saying the building limits will hurt the home construction industry in Solana Beach.
“And now they’re ready to amputate an arm rather than bandage a thumb,” Abbott said. “Why make an entire city suffer for some grudge held against one man? A lot of people are going to suffer because of this, people who had a lot of jobs in mind but who are without the money to have it done all at once.”
Norman Shaw is the home-builder whose project has supposedly raised all the hackles. And he can’t understand it.
“Somebody in City Hall is out to get me,” said Shaw, who is a building contractor. “And I’ve got a lot at stake here.”
Shaw said the problems with his renovations, which include adding a second floor, began when he started receiving complaints from Hugh Chivers, a neighbor and member of the Solana Beach citizens zoning committee.
“Things were said, like the construction project was a total disaster and that I was running roughshod on all the rules, which amazes me because I don’t have that kind of power,” Shaw said.
In September, Shaw had several of the permits revoked on the project, which he said is about 50% finished. Now he is left with an upstairs master bathroom and no staircase to get there, since city officials will not allow him to build one.
Several opponents to the proposed building limits law said several of Shaw’s neighbors were irked simply because he had secured permits for the project in time to beat a new view ordinance recently imposed by the council.
That ordinance sets limits on upper-floor buildings that might block another person’s view. Although Shaw secured his permit before the measure was passed, he did not immediately begin the project, possibly angering some homeowners around him, opponents to the proposed building limits law said.
Shaw said he is planning to file a lawsuit against the city on the deadline ordinance.
Neither Mayor Hendlin nor Chivers returned telephone calls.
City officials said the ordinance would force builders to begin construction immediately after receiving their permits--because that’s when the two-year time clock begins.
“People have been known to apply for building permits just to avoid upcoming legislation that’s more stringent,” Olson said. “They get permits and hold on to them. That won’t happen with the new law because the hourglass gets turned when the permit is issued, not when they start building.”
Councilwoman Marion Dodson said Shaw is definitely on someone’s list at City Hall.
“There’s a witch hunt going on for him, but I’m not part of it,” she said. “Several members of the City Council have pursued changes to the building code, and the prime target is Mr. Shaw.
“You shouldn’t change or make laws to affect one person. That’s what they’re doing, and I don’t agree with it. I just don’t want to be a party to these restrictive attitudes,” she said.
Ted Marioncelli, a lobbyist with the Construction Industry Federation, said the new law would indeed set Solana Beach apart from the crowd.
“They’ll be different than any other city I’m familiar with--at least in California and maybe in the Western United States,” he said. “Every other city I know of goes with the Uniform Building Code. That’s the bible. And I don’t see why Solana Beach has to reinvent the wheel.”
Olson said the city isn’t ashamed to take a stand on the issue.
“Maybe we’re the only ones who realize that quality of life means not being constantly harassed by your neighbor’s construction project,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me to be first because I think others will follow us and decide to hold people accountable who are injuring their neighbors.”
Sue Beckman doesn’t see how a little weekend hammering could wound anyone.
“Things like weekend noise--the garage door open and the sound of saber saws and joiners--are things you expect to hear in a neighborhood,” she said. “Because that’s what neighbors do, make noise. There are limits, of course. But if it doesn’t get too loud or go on too long, you learn to live with it.
“And if you can’t do that, you’re better off buying a place in the desert or something.”
Her grandfather, a retired carpenter who liked to putter around the house, taught her that some people consider home to be family tradition--always dreaming up new ways to improve on it.
Incensed by talk of the new law, Beckman wrote a letter to a local newspaper about one home project that her grandfather took more than two years to complete.
“I remember watching him scramble around the second-story framed structure, hammering nails he plucked from his mouth,” she wrote. “He was old and he had asthma, yet he worked methodically and diligently--and alone--whenever his bones and lungs would allow.
“It was, after all, his future quarters he was building, and my cousin was anxious to have his bedroom to himself again (Grandpa snored).”
Beckman said her grandfather wouldn’t approve of the current proposal.
“He would be shocked,” she said. “He was a man of the times when builders didn’t even need permits. I don’t think in his wildest dreams it would ever come down to anything like this.”
