Dispute Raises Issue of Citizen Panels’ Power

For eight years, members of the Mulholland Scenic Parkway Design Review Board have looked for ways to preserve the beauty of the mountains that separate Hollywood and the Westside from the San Fernando Valley.

But there was nothing pretty about the way the five-member, all-volunteer panel’s last public meeting ended.

As board members discussed landscaping to camouflage an equipment structure that a telephone company wants to build in upper Brentwood, a city planner interrupted to announce his intention of approving the project without their consent.

Shocked and angered, review board members got up and walked out as stunned community leaders in the audience looked on.

The Oct. 5 episode prompted a flurry of complaints over alleged heavy-handedness by the city. But nearly two weeks later, board members say they have received no apology from City Hall--and no explanation for why the potential decision of a key city advisory panel was apparently discounted.

The incident has prompted some neighborhood leaders to question the usefulness of citizen planning panels being created by reform of the City Charter.

And with the Mulholland board it has raised a more immediate question: Will members show up for work at their next meeting, scheduled for Thursday?

Lynnette Robe, chairwoman of the review board, said Tuesday that she isn’t certain what will happen.

“I’m hoping everybody comes. There’s a lot of work for the review board. What are coming before us now are truly difficult projects, large houses on small lots in hard-to-build places,” said Robe, an attorney who lives in Studio City.

Although several board members threatened to quit as they stalked out Oct. 5, none has so far submitted a written resignation to those who appointed them to the nonpaying posts--Mayor Richard Riordan and City Council members who represent the mountain area.

“I’m going to the meeting looking forward to an apology or an explanation of why this kind of unlawful activity occurred,” said Jenna Abouzeid, a Brentwood designer who is the board’s vice chairwoman. “I’m seriously considering resigning if an apology is not offered.”

An apology could be in the works at the board’s 6:30 p.m. meeting at a nature center at 26000 Franklin Canyon Drive above Beverly Hills.

“We’re sorry it happened,” city Planning Director Con Howe said Tuesday, adding that his department will take steps to prevent a similar situation from arising again.

Although most of the work done by the Mulholland board involves minimizing the impact of new-home construction in a mile-wide swath along Mulholland Drive between the Cahuenga Pass and Calabasas, the project that triggered the current flap was a relatively minor one.

Sprint Communications had applied to install new cellular phone equipment near the Skirball Cultural Center at 16000 Mulholland Drive. But the board did not see details of landscaping, fencing and paint colors that could screen the equipment.

Board members were discussing delaying the matter. But then city planning staff member Richard Platkin spoke up, saying he would approve the plan himself when Sprint showed him the plans.

In the audience was environmental activist Barry Read, executive director of the group Mulholland Tomorrow. Read believes that the city trampled on the authority of the review panel. In a letter to Riordan, Read wrote: “In the face of such shabby treatment, it is often surprising that citizens are willing to take on these responsibilities.”

Another onlooker, Cahuenga Pass neighborhood leader Joan Luchs, who is vice president of the 42-group Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., described the episode as “symptomatic of a rampant problem” with the city’s land-use planning and enforcement system.

On Tuesday, Platkin asserted that his Oct. 5 actions were proper. But his boss, Howe, denied that design review boards and the new area planning commissions are mere window dressing. Although review board recommendations are only advisory, Howe stressed that 90% of the Mulholland recommendations are included in his department’s final conditions placed on developers.

He promised that the Mulholland board will be able to review the telephone company landscaping issue Thursday.

He suggested that the lateness of the hour was responsible for the Oct. 5 dust-up. “I think at 11:30 at night everyone’s nerves are frayed,” Howe said, adding that he was not present.

Nonetheless, board member Abouzeid said: “We’ll have a skepticism Thursday we didn’t have before. It will be a very tense meeting.”