Decision on Building Ban Put Off : Landslide: Officials still studying whether to seek extended moratorium in fire-damaged Laguna area.

A recommendation that the City Council today extend a building moratorium for another 10 months in one fire-battered community was pulled late Monday and may be considered next week.

The city staff recommendation had shocked and angered some fire victims in the targeted Mystic Hills community, where a previous 45-day building moratorium is scheduled to expire June 28.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said he hasn’t decided yet whether he will recommend extending the moratorium at the council’s meeting next Tuesday. He said he decided to pull the staff’s recommendation for a 10-month moratorium after a call from Mayor Ann Christoph.

The moratorium was imposed after geologists concluded that an ancient landslide may lie under Mystic Hills. Earlier in the day, Mystic Hills residents had reacted bitterly to the possibility that their building plans could be further stalled.

“I think it stinks,” said Ron Retterer, a fire victim who said that he has been denied a building permit since the ancient landslide discovery. “I’ve waited eight months, and they’re still screwing around and I’m getting very upset. It’s costing me money not building. I get so mad every time I talk about this.”

Still on the agenda today is a staff recommendation that the council appropriate an additional $20,000 to further study the Temple Hills area, another fire-damaged community which may have similar problems.

Early studies of that neighborhood by two geological firms show a suspected landslide there may be smaller and more shallow than previously feared.

The October firestorm incinerated 366 homes in and around Laguna Beach and damaged dozens more. Mystic Hills, a neighborhood sprawled in the hills above City Hall, was the hardest hit.

Residents there were later stunned when city-hired geologists revealed that two dozen Mystic Hills properties--including 13 rendered vacant by the fire--were sitting atop an ancient landslide. In all, the report said, 38 lots could be directly or indirectly affected.

Skeptical that the landslide poses any real danger or even exists, residents demanded last month that the city obtain a third geological opinion. That report is expected to be the subject of the special council meeting next Tuesday.

At that meeting, the council could either lift or extend the building ban, Frank said.

City officials say a key element to lifting the building ban is the development of an assessment district to generate the $1 million needed to steady the hillside. That subject will also be addressed at the June 28 meeting.

Although he had favored implementing the ban during tonight’s meeting, Frank said late Monday that after further consideration, he realized it made more sense to wait. Once the findings of the latest geological report are released and residents decide whether to form an assessment district, it will be easier to determine whether a further building ban is needed, Frank said.

The additional 10 1/2-month ban was proposed because that is the only time frame offered by state law for a moratorium extension, Frank said. Even if an extension is approved next week, Frank said, it will likely be lifted much sooner, probably within two months.

Mystic Hills residents, however, were not particularly soothed.

“It doesn’t make me feel any better,” Retterer said. “We should have been allowed to build about three months ago.”