City Moves to Increase Night Panel Hearings

Hoping to make City Hall “more friendly to working-class families,” the Los Angeles City Council took the first step Wednesday to increase the number of planning and zoning hearings held at night.

Acting on a recommendation of Councilman Hal Bernson, the council instructed planning officials to draft criteria by which council members can schedule night meetings.

But the council dismissed a separate plan to spend $14,000 to expand the number of sites where the city can hold planning and zoning hearings at night.

The proposal by planning officials would have increased the number of locations from four to seven, including a new site in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Planning and zoning panels now hold meetings in Sherman Oaks, downtown Los Angeles, West Los Angeles and San Pedro. Nearly all meetings are during the day. Night meetings are only scheduled when a planning matter creates significant public interest.

Planning officials suggested holding evening hearings in three new sites in the northeast Valley, South-Central Los Angeles and East Los Angeles. The cost of renting meeting rooms in schools would be about $14,000 per year, planning officials said.

Under the plan, the two Valley meeting sites would be in the northeast Valley and in West Valley. The current location in Sherman Oaks would be eliminated.

But the plan hit a snag when Councilman Mike Feuer’s office protested elimination of the Sherman Oaks site. Feuer’s district includes Sherman Oaks and neighboring communities. His staff members defended the site, saying it is centrally located.

The council decided instead to ask planning officials to draft criteria that would allow council members to call for evening meetings when deemed appropriate.

Bernson, who heads the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, warned his colleagues that the criteria should be carefully drafted so the city is not forced to have night meetings for nearly every minor planning matter.

“Be careful what you establish because it may come back to bite you you know where,” he said. “You just want to make sure you don’t make a circus out of this.”

The entire matter, however, may come up for debate again Friday. In an interview after the vote, Councilman Richard Alarcon said he did not realize that the council had dismissed the plan to expand the number of meeting sites, which he supported because it would add a site in his northeast Valley district.

He said he plans to ask the council to reconsider its decision.

The debate over ways to make planning and zoning more accessible to residents came in response to a motion by Alarcon, who said he wanted to make City Hall “more friendly to working-class families.”

More than a year ago, the council struggled with a similar debate over a proposal to hold four regular council meetings outside City Hall.

But the proposal by Feuer was quashed when a majority of the council said they preferred to hold meetings in the community when deemed appropriate.