Steep Fee Hikes Proposed for Planning Appeals

Los Angeles residents who appealed a city planning decision would have to pay up to $5,000 if they challenged a project that was more than 500 feet from their own residence, under a controversial proposal being backed by Mayor Richard Riordan.

The fee, which will be considered today by the City Council, is intended to discourage frivolous appeals that Riordan says impede business growth.

But some homeowner officials are calling the proposal unconstitutional and vow to challenge it in court.

Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., argues that charging higher fees depending on how far residents live from a proposed project violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

“It’s a violation of the 14th Amendment,” said Schultz, who added that he is meeting with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union to prepare to fight the plan.

Under the city’s current fee structure, a resident who opposes a decision by a city zoning or planning panel must pay $64 to appeal to a higher decision-making body, regardless of where the resident lives.

The fee package proposed by a development reform committee created by Riordan sets a maximum of $150 for an appeal but increases it to up to $5,000 for residents living more than 500 feet from the project they oppose.

The fee could be less, depending on the city’s cost of holding new hearings and issuing notices to interested parties, among other factors.

The proposal would also put a cap of $10,000 on the fees developers would pay to appeal when their projects were rejected by a city panel or agency. The city currently has no cap and charges developers the entire cost of additional hearings.

The fee package was developed by Riordan’s Development Reform Committee, a panel that the mayor formed as a way to make the city’s planning and development process more friendly to business.

The group, whose membership includes real estate lawyers and other representatives of the development industry, has been criticized by homeowner groups that say it does not include enough community representatives.

Deputy Mayor Sharon Morris acknowledged that the higher fees are designed to discourage appeals that slow down development and cost businesses time and money.

“The whole idea is to reduce the frivolous appeals that are without any merit,” she said.

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She said the system currently makes it too easy for homeowners to block new projects. Often, she said, the homeowners who appeal the most live miles away from the project they oppose and thus suffer no negative effects from it.

“We have to consider how far from a project can you be and still be aggrieved,” she said.

Morris said the 500-foot standard is not unprecedented. She said many state and federal pollution laws set a 500-foot standard for deciding who will be most affected and who should be notified about a new project.

Some City Council members have expressed outrage at the proposal, saying it will have a chilling effect on the ability of residents to participate in the city’s planning process.

Councilman Joel Wachs, whose district stretches from Studio City to Sunland, said he opposes the proposal because the most controversial development projects tend to go into minority and low-income neighborhoods, where residents can’t afford the appeal fees.

“Basically, this will shut people out of the process,” he said. “The whole nature of the appeals process is so the public and the community can address the potentially adverse impacts in their neighborhood.”

And Gordon Murley, a leader of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., said the increased fees violate Riordan’s campaign promise not to increase taxes--an allegation Morris disputes. “We certainly would not see this as a tax,” she said.

In an effort to address homeowner concerns, Councilman Hal Bernson, who heads the council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Development Reform, suggested in March an amendment that would charge residents who appealed projects over 250,000 square feet $150 but only if they lived in the same ZIP Code as the project.

This way, Bernson argued, nearby homeowners would pay the lower fee to appeal large developments that would create traffic and noise problems that would affect entire neighborhoods.

His committee also suggested waiving fees for developers of affordable housing units and other “public benefit projects.”