Council Cuts Hillside Home Down to Size

The City Council listened to more than a dozen hillside residents who pleaded with the council to prohibit construction of a two-story home that would block their ocean views, before voting unanimously to deny a property owner’s request to exceed hillside height limits.

Instead the council voted to waive the $500 application fee for property owner Lisa Sabo so she could submit new plans to the city.

The council’s vote upheld a Planning Commission decision last month, which Sabo appealed.

The two lots under discussion, located at the northwest corner of Mariposa Drive and Artemisia Avenue, currently contain a single-family home and a garage. The owner wants to demolish those, and replace them with two single-family homes.

But land in this hillside area has stringent height limits, designed to keep neighbors’ views clear and unobstructed. A home proposed on one of the lots would have been more than 13 feet above the permitted height of 15.7 feet.

The Planning Commission first considered allowing Sabo to exceed current height limits, but after an outcry from neighbors, commissioners twice visited the site.

Saying it did not want to set a bad precedent, the Planning Commission ultimately denied her request for a variance.

“This is a slippery slope,” Planning Commission Chairman Ted Temple told the council, adding that many residents in the past have had to fight strenuously to get a 9-inch variance. “If we go 9 feet above the height variance, we are way out of line.”

Hillside residents circulated petitions and fliers, and turned out en masse to support the Planning Commission’s decision.

Mayor Jack Tingstrom said the council received 75 letters and petition names, with 70 of them backing the present height ordinance and five of proposing a compromise with Sabo.