Council OKs 18-Foot Height Limit on Homes : Government: Still unresolved are square-footage caps on new housing and proposed restrictions covering building on slopes.

As City Councilwoman Carolyn Van Horn noted last week, democracy was never meant to be efficient.

Then again, it probably wasn’t meant to be quite like this.

Intent on passing an ordinance to limit the size of new homes, the Malibu City Council performed to an overflow crowd last week, often losing seeming to lose itself in a haze of procedural and technical jargon.

Asked Wednesday morning--after roughly 14 hours of testimony and discussion on Monday and Tuesday nights--whether the council had adopted a height limit on new homes, a weary Councilwoman Joan House replied: “We could have. I don’t recall.”

In fact, the council approved an 18-foot height limit on homes and a site plan review process for exempting structures up to 28-feet-tall.

It also approved on first reading a zoning amendment requiring that new homes be set back at least 150 feet from environmentally sensitive areas and 300 feet from park boundaries, when feasible.

But meatier matters remain largely unresolved, including square-footage caps on new homes and proposed restrictions on building on slopes. More discussion is scheduled for Thursday night.

Those issues strike to the core of Malibu, which finds itself struggling to preserve its so-called rural character while protecting the rights of its well-heeled residents to build massive dream homes.

Both sides argued their cases passionately during a surreal public comment period Monday that began with Van Horn appealing to the public to refrain from making harassing phone calls on the issue.

“The messages are received more amiably if they’re not threatening,” she said.

With the 170-seat Hughes Auditorium filled to standing-room capacity, dozens of architects, real estate agents, developers and property owners were forced to view the proceedings on special monitors set up outside. Many passed the time by deriding the council and threatening to sue the city should the ordinance pass. Back inside, speaker after speaker described the hardship he or she would suffer should the housing ordinance be approved as submitted by the city’s special Task Force on Single Family Criteria.

One man complained that the measure would force him to build his home on the flat portion of his property, which he had hoped to use as a soccer field for his children.

“My kids will be forced to play in the street,” he said.

Another speaker argued that the ordinance would prevent him from adding a bedroom, thus forcing his daughter to continue “living in a closet” until after high school.

Pro-ordinance forces responded with rhetoric of their own.

Environmental attorney Pat Healy noted that the city has 109 homes in the procedural pipeline, some with more than 11,000 square feet and up to 35-feet high.

“They are not what this community wants,” she said.

Following the testimony, the council picked through the proposed ordinance line by line, with an increasingly antsy Mayor Walt Keller repeatedly reminding his colleagues that he would “just like to see us adopt something tonight.”

House and Councilman John Harlow resisted, with an exasperated House declaring at one point, “We’re sitting here debating policies and directions, and we don’t have Fact 1.”

Gradually, though, the council moved forward, voting on bits and pieces of the ordinance. The exception was Harlow, who doggedly abstained on each vote, saying he wanted to vote on a completed ordinance rather than taking a piecemeal approach.

More by default than design, however, the piecemeal approach appears to be prevailing.

The height limit and the site plan review process were approved as emergency amendments to the city’s existing zoning code--not as part of an overall new ordinance. That pattern will probably continue as the council considers other restrictions.

What then, has become of the proposed ordinance?

“That’s a good question,” Keller said. “It’s sort of dangling, I guess.”