My views are that the most immediate planning issue in Los Angeles is the inadequacy of the DEIR for the update of the Hollywoood Community plan since it comment period closes on June 3, 2011.

1) The policy language is irrelevant. No decision makers ever looks at it in making budget or land use decisions.

2) The focus should be opposition to anything in the DEIR which sanctions broad increases in density through general plan amendments and zone changes because:

-- They will become a template for dramatic increases in permitted densities in the remaining 34 community plans.

-- There is no planning rationale for this up-planning and up-zoning based on the "growth neutrality" intent of the Genera Plan Framework Element. The city, according to the Framework, has enormous untapped potential for population and housing expansion based on established plan designations and zones.

-- In fact, in the Hollywood Community Plan's implementation program up-zoning and up-planning is proposed to encourage growth, an approach which turn LA's growth neutral General Plan on its head.

-- As far as we know, the city's infrastructure, which has not been monitored in over 11 years, cannot handle existing user demand, much less the demands of a larger population which result from up-planning and up-zoning. Without demonstrated unused infrastructure capacity, there should be no increases in permitted density.

-- The DEIR uses year 2000 census data, even though current 2010 census is available.

The Infrasructure Coalition

A website covering the Infrastructure Coalition's lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles relating to the Annual Report on Growth and Infrastructure

• Home

SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2011

Infrastructure Lawsuit Appeal Filed

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Infrastructure Lawsuit Appeal Filed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Sabrina Venskus

April 14, 2011 (213) 482-4200

venskus@lawsv.com

Infrastructure Lawsuit Moves to Next Phase

An appeal was filed today by several Los Angeles community groups to overturn a Los Angeles Superior Court judge’s denial of their landmark lawsuit to force the city to produce and implement its Annual Report on Growth and Infrastructure. Superior Court Judge John Torribio ruled the City of Los Angeles need not follow mandatory duties and mitigation measures set out in its General Plan Framework Element, the City’s “land use constitution”. The appeal requesting review of the decision was filed in the Second District Court by group attorneys Sabrina Venskus and Doug Carstens. The original complaint was filed in 2008, case number L.A.S.C. BS115435.

As part of its General Plan update, the City promised to monitor and report upon its infrastructure, including public services, and population growth, and further to put building controls in place if growth was found to outpace infrastructure availability. The City has not produced and implemented an Annual Report on Growth and Infrastructure since 2000.

“With fire services being cut, police hiring being frozen, roads deteriorating, libraries schedules being cut, park staff and hours being cut, traffic gridlock, water main breaks occurring and water rationing put into effect, there is little doubt that the infrastructure is more than threatened – it is collapsing,” said Lucille Saunders of the La Brea Willoughby-Coalition, one of the groups suing. “ Now we know why.

Many of the city’s community plans clearly describe the required monitoring and mitigation set forth in the General Plan. Those community plans state:

“…if this monitoring finds that population in the Plan area is occurring faster than projected; and, that infrastructure resource capacities are threatened, particularly critical ones such as water and sewerage; and, that there is not a clear commitment to at least begin the necessary improvements within twelve months; then building controls should be put into effect, for all or portions of the West Los Angeles Community, until land use designations for the Community Plan and corresponding zoning are revised to limit development.”

The City provided further clarity in their mitigation program for the General Plan. It states:

“Lastly, the policy requires that type, amount and location of development be correlated with the provision of adequate supporting infrastructure and services”

Unfortunately, the City has failed to implement its own mandated policy, resulting in the predictable: existing residents and businesses are dealing with an utterly dysfunctional government that fails to improve its infrastructure and provide adequate public safety services.

Jim O’Sullivan of Fix the City, another group involved in the suit, stated: “We will pursue this lawsuit as far as necessary to force the city to do its job as required by law. The city’s failure to ensure adequate infrastructure is costing us police and fire coverage and putting public safety at risk. We just are not going to let that happen.” ###

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CONTACT INFORMATION

The Infrastructure Coalition is represented by Sabrina Venskus and Doug Carstens. Inquiries should be directed to:

Sabrina Venskus

1055 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1660
Los Angeles, CA 90017
phone - 213.482.4200

21 South California Street, Suite 204
Ventura, CA 93001

FAilure to Implement LA's Community Plans

Get Informed and Involved: The Failure to implement LA's Community Plans

By

Ron Kaye

on November 9, 2010 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: The assault on planning rules that protect neighborhoods and require processes that give the public a voice is in his gear. The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday will vote on a proposed ordinance that will fundamentally change how Community Plans are updated. It would enable the city to effectively upzone and change zoning within Community Plan areas without a formal Community Plan update, to spot-zone individual sites with only adjustments and exceptions without requriing variances, potentially override existing Community Design Overlay Districts, Pedestrian Oriented Districts and Q conditions and undermine the new Baseline Hillside Ordinance, according to LA Neighbors United. This article by former city planner, Dick Platkin, now a planning consultant, helps explain the issue.

By Dick Platkin (rhplatkin@yahoo.com)

On Wednesday, November 10, 2010, the Los Angeles City Council will consider and may adopt a new Community Plan Implementation Ordinance (CPIO). This ordinance is enabling legislation which will then allow the city to implement a community plan through a zoning overlay ordinance for an entire community plan area.

But would such local ordinances actually implement a Community Plan? The answer is hardly at all, and the title of this new legislation vastly and misleadingly exaggerates its importance.

This is because the City's elected officials, with long-term and consistent support from the Department of City Planning, long ago abdicated their role in planning Los Angeles. For them planning has become an appendage to the city's Department of Building and Safety, not a rigorously prepared and maintained vision for governing Los Angeles.

As anyone who has taken the time to actually look at the city's General Plan elements, such as the General Plan Framework or at one of the city's 35 Community Plans quickly learns, these documents always address 100 percent of the land area in Los Angeles. This is why all plans contain page after page of thoughtful policies and programs addressing such public infrastructure as parks, and such public services as libraries and sanitation.

These portions of the General Plan and its implementing land use element, the Community Plans, such as the Hollywood Community Plan now being updated, address 80 percent of the land area of Los Angeles. They should therefore guide the bulk of City Hall's activities, the city's annual budget, including its Capital Improvement Program.

Furthermore, only 20 percent of the city's surface area is private lots, and only a small amount of the activity on these private lots is new construction regulated by Building and Safety and City Planning. Most of what goes on in private lots has nothing to do with new construction and is addressed by code enforcement or other cutting-edge programs to "green" existing buildings. Examples of the latter include environmental upgrades, such as cisterns, strategic tree planting, green roofs, double-paned windows, and home appliances.

Not only does the proposed CPIO fail to address any policies or programs for existing structures, but -- more importantly -- it totally fails to implement any of the policies and programs for the 80 percent of Los Angeles carefully addressed in Community Plans, but under the jurisdiction of the big city departments, in particular LADWP, Harbor, Airports, Public Works (Engineering, Street Services, Sanitation), Police, Fire, Transportation, Libraries, and Recreation and Parks.

In other words, the CPIO is almost totally irrelevant. This is because these city departments control most of the land area of the city, spend most of the General Fund and collected fees, build and maintain the city's entire infrastructure, and operate all of the city's municipal services (e.g., garbage collection, traffic control). Yet, they are totally absent from the misnamed Community Plan Implementation Ordinance.

The real heavy lifting in implementing a community plan comes through the city's budget, department work programs, and the Capital Improvement Program. Building permits, in particular discretionary actions to obtain building permits not otherwise allowed by city codes, are, in reality, a tiny part of Community Plan implementation.

Since City Planning long ago abdicated any role other than processing these discretionary actions, they have proposed an ordinance which has the hubris of claiming it is implementing the Community Plans, when, in fact, it is only a back door for circumventing discretionary actions for the small number of building permits which cannot be directly approved by the city Department of Building and Safety.

What Los Angeles needs is real implementation of its existing and future city plans, not misleading ordinances which claim to implement the General Plan and Community Plans, but which do nothing of the sort.

DCP sets meetings for Core Findings and Community Care Facilities

Please share with your distribution lists:

The Department of City Planning invites you to attend one of four upcoming
informational meetings about the proposed Core Findings and Community Care
Facilities Code Amendments. For more information about both of these
efforts including the staff report and draft ordinances, please see the
"What's New" section of the Planning Department's homepage: *
www.planning.lacity.org*


Meetings will be held on September 25th, and October 2nd, 6th and 9th at the
following times and locations:

SOUTH LA
September 25, 10 am - 2 pm
Betty Hill Senior Center
3570 S. Denker Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90018
(auditorium)

NORTHEAST LA
October 2, 10 am - 2 pm
El Sereno Recreation Center
4721 Klamath Street
Los Angeles, CA 90032
(community room)

WEST LA
October 6, 5-9 pm
Felicia Mahood Senior Center
11338 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(auditorium)

VALLEY
October 9, 10 am - 2 pm
Marvin Braude Center
6262 Van Nuys Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 91401
(1st floor meeting room)

Important Upcoming Dates to Remember:
10/7: Last day for formal written comments to Commission Secretariat on Core
Findings & Community Care (Please note that comments are also taken at CPC
on these items both verbal and in writing)
10/14: CPC Meeting, Thursday, after 8:30am, City Hall, 200 N. Spring St.,
Room 1010, 10th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Please see the attached flyer for more information about these information
sessions.

For questions, please contact Gabriela Juarez at
gabriela.juarez@lacity.org or
(213) 978-1337.


--
Gabriela Juarez
Department of City Planning
Code Studies Section
200 N Spring St, Room #763
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Mailstop: 395
Ph: (213) 978-1337
Fax: (213) 978-1334

Comment Letter Re: Core Findings

September 14, 2010

To The City Planning Commission:

Re: CPC-2010-1572-CA

The first paragraph of the Staff report for this Ordinance states:

“Pursuant to Charter Section 558 and Section 12.32-A of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, the Director of Planning has initiated development of six recommended zoning code amendments intended to streamline and simplify the Department's case processing function. The attached Appendix A is the first of these six proposed ordinances to be presented to the City Planning Commission.”

As such, the Director of Planning for the City of Los Angeles has initiated a project that proposes to be implemented in 6 segments, commencing with this first Ordinance. It is impossible for the public to evaluate this Ordinance because of the large unknown scope of the entire project. We disagree that this ordinance is simply changing words and will have no impact on discretionary actions. Changing a finding from “That there are special circumstances applicable to the project or project site which make the strict application of the specific plan regulation(s) impractical to “That the project will enhance the environment in the surrounding neighborhood or will perform a function or provide a service that is essential or beneficial to the community, city or region” is not a small matter to those in the community. It is also hard to understand how eliminating the language in 11.5.7 C 2 (b) dealing with mitigation measures or monitoring helps the community. It may or may not be redundant of CEQA but it should not be omitted given the City’s poor record with mitigation measures as outlined in several City Controller Audits as well as the City’s non compliance with the Framework Element’s monitoring program and Annual Reports on Growth and Infrastructure.

Given that this “project” appears to be a major rewrite of the Administrative code, for whatever reason, the City should not do it in segments. It will be impossible for the public to determine if one finding complements or conflicts with another as the project unfolds. The City must do a through evaluation of the entire code and present one clear, ordinance in the form of a full Environmental Report that the public can evaluate and comment on.
Before it does that, the City must complete the required Annual Reports on Growth and Infrastructure, not compiled and distributed since 2000. The Reports are specific and essential mitigation cited by the City as part of the General Plan Framework. The Report was to inform the city on all environmental approvals. The Statement of Overriding Consideration stated:
Absent the report and its findings on actual versus expected growth, actual versus expected infrastructure improvements and availability of infrastructure, the city cannot provide a statement of consistency with the General Plan, and depending on the area, the Community Plan. Most of the Community Plans in the City rely on the Report. Model language (taken from the West L.A. Community Plan) appears as follows:
“Accordingly, the proposed Plan has three fundamental premises. First, is limiting residential densities in various neighborhoods to the prevailing density of development in these neighborhoods. Second, is the monitoring of population growth and infrastructure improvements through the City’s Annual Report on Growth and Infrastructure with a report to the City Planning Commission every five years on the West Los Angeles Community following Plan adoption. Third, if this monitoring finds that population in the Plan area is occurring faster than projected; and, that infrastructure resource capacities are threatened, particularly critical ones such as water and sewerage; and, that there is not a clear commitment to at least begin the necessary improvements within twelve months; then building controls should be put into effect, for all or portions of the West Los Angeles Community, until land use designations for the Community Plan and corresponding zoning are revised to limit development.”
The City should not approve any project unless and until it has prepared the required Report and can make a finding that there is sufficient infrastructure citywide.
Project-based EIRs and even Community-Plan level analysis is not sufficient to overcome the necessity for the Report. The General Plan EIR stated:
“focusing the analysis at the neighborhood level may be too myopic resulting in a loss of "overview" or "the big picture".
Any projects which rely on a faulty approval may be subject to court rulings in the matter. We reserve the right to challenge any faulty approvals issued by the City.

Sincerely:

James O'Sullivan
213-840-0246

Fix The City
Fixlosangeles.com
Miracle Mile Residential Association

cc. Mayor, City Attorney, City Controller, City Council members, Director of Planning

Comments to the Citywide Urban Design Guidelines

From Dick Platkin

I have quickly looked over the three sets of design guidelines and have several reactions.

First, the Framework already has a design chapter, Chapter 5, which is quite good. If these three sets of design guidelines are to augment and update the Framework as appendices, then why is there is no effort to connect these new guidelines with the existing, adopted guidelines? There are obviously many points of connection, yet at no point is there any effort to amend the existing document's design section.

Second, I cannot think of any situations since 1995 where the Framework's Chapter 5 was ever used or invoked to modify a project's design or to make a legal findings. So, why should the Framework now be implicitly updated, if it design role has been continually ignored?

Third, just as the original design chapter was flushed down the memory hole, I would expect the same for these three new appendices. They can't be used for most buildings because they are built by right and only require LADBS-issued building permits. In those cases all the LADBS plan checkers do is review projects for compliance with the LAMC's Building Code and the Zoning Code.

Plus, the appendices can't be used for Specific Plan and CDO projects because these regulations already have their own Design Guidelines, and there is no legal or administrative procedure to supersede those with these three design documents.

Furthermore, they can't be used for Plan Amendments and Zone Changes because those only relate to use, not the structure built on the desired use.

So, even if the three sets of design guidelines were better linked to the existing General Plan Framework, I can't think of many discretionary actions where a Zoning Administrator or Planner would be able to use these design guidelines to modify a proposed project.

Fourth, the problems of the Framework are not addressed by new Design Guidelines. The Framework is the heart of the city's General Plan, yet its horizon year of 2010 is nearly over, with no known efforts to update it or even resume monitoring the General Plan after a hiatus over 10 years. Instead a few Community Plans are being updated to elaborate an outdated planning document. Design Guidelines are totally oblique and peripheral to what is truly needed, and, in effect, are little more than a distraction from serious planning work which Los Angeles desperately needs.

Fifth, we need to remember that design review, even if well done, can never substitute for good planning and good zoning. Though good design obviously is desirable, for the most part it is a distraction to avoid attention of the major planning and zoning issues facing a community. Instead, activists get caught up in secondary questions about window treatments, step backs, and colors.

Core Findings Draft Ordinance - Staff Report

Dear Interested Parties, Please find attached the staff report and draft ordinance for the Core Findings Draft Ordinance (CPC-2010-1572-CA). Of the six code amendments comprising the Code Simplification Work Program, this is the first to be scheduled for CPC. Due to the size of the attachment, the environmental review has not been attached here, however, copies are available upon request. The draft ordinance updates the zoning code’s common findings for conditional uses, adjustments, and other quasi-judicial land use approvals to provide a better framework for analyzing the merits of proposed development projects and eliminate redundancy in case processing. Please contact Tom Rothmann by email at tom.rothmann@lacity.org or by phone at (213) 978-1370 for copies of the environmental review or other questions. Please feel free to share this with anyone you believe would also be interested.

Best regards, Gabriela — Gabriela Juarez Department of City Planning Code Studies Section 200 N Spring St, Room #763 Los Angeles, CA 90012 Mailstop: 395 Ph: (213) 978-1337 Fax: (213) 978-1334

Core Findings Report