DANA POINT : Residents Foiled in Duel Over Fence

Encircling their Tudor home on Santa Clara Avenue with a fence seemed like a simple solution last October to a host of problems for Harvey and June Golumbic.

It would protect their six pets and discourage the rats that sneak in from the weeds next door, the coyotes who descend from the hills and the neighborhood dogs who abuse their lawn. Instead, however, the project has become a fight with City Hall that an exasperated June Golumbic now calls “mission impossible.”

Seven months and $5,000 later, the Golumbics remain frustrated.

The fence, originally considered too tall and too much a danger to pedestrians, finally won City Council approval Tuesday. But it will have to be built three feet back from the sidewalk. That won’t work, said Harvey Golumbic.

“This is not at all what we wanted,” he said after the meeting. “It won’t keep the dogs off our yard, and it would endanger a valuable juniper tree on our front yard.”

Said June Golumbic: “Taking this to the city, that was our mistake in the first place.”

The couple set off on their mission last fall after they encountered two coyotes in their front yard, said Harvey Golumbic, the owner of a chemical business. Since they had already decided to rebuild a 6-foot, 10-inch fence in their back yard, they figured on doing their whole fence project at once, he said. The new fence in front would be six feet tall.

“This whole thing should have been decided at the counter that day at City Hall,” Golumbic said. “Here it is April, and we don’t have one stick in the ground.”

The Golumbics were asked to pay a $1,900 fee for a “site development permit” because the proposed fence was to be higher than the 42 inches the county zoning code allows.

But on March 3 the Planning Commission voted unanimously to allow the back-yard fence but disallow the fence in front, which the members considered too tall. A 42-inch fence would be tall enough to deter most trespassers, the commissioners ruled.

In fact, the taller model would “promote the social dissolution” of the neighborhood, said to the city staff.

The Golumbics--and their neighbors--were outraged. A total of 31 residents signed a petition; the Golumbics paid another $250 and appealed the ruling to the council. The council voted 4 to 1 to let them have their fence as long as it was set back from the sidewalk three feet, with landscaping.

“I don’t have a problem with the height,” Mayor Mike Eggers said. “I preferred landscaping to soften the impact of a solid wooden structure. You’re not going to get any landscaping in only 12 inches.”

The Golumbics are undecided as to their next step.