The latest chapter in the Hillside Ordinance story was written August 22nd. when the city ignored the law, ignored the speakers and granted the builder a variance he hadn't even applied for just to make sure he could build his house.

With the honorable exception of Frank Quintero (who alone appreciates the rule of law), there is nothing this City Council won't do to make sure developers have their way with substandard lots.

The case last night was an extremely steep lot that was denied by the ZA and BZA 5 years ago. Sensing the new City friendliness to builders, they took another run at the project, and, no surprise, this time they prevailed.

Thanks to Homeowner's Associations who have been protesting the killing of oak trees in Glendale, the City council was pressured into at least doing something to try to save a great old oak tree the builder was going to bulldoze.

The City engineer wanted the builder to give up 4-5 feet of his property to widen the street, since the lot is right on a dangerous and narrow blind curve. With this dedication, the only way the builder could have saved the oak tree would have been to build a smaller house.

His cronies on the City Council decided that this wasn't fair, so they allowed him to build the house without the 4-5 foot dedication to be taken into consideration! Not only that, they told him he didn't have to widen the road right away - but that some day in the future (presumably after someone on Kennington Drive is killed in a head-on collision around that blind corner) the City could come in and reclaim the dedication and widen the street (at City expense this time). That's when the setback will be violated and the de-facto variance applies.

So what did these geniuses do last night?

A. They granted the owner a de-facto variance to have his house closer to the where the City Engineer said the street needed to be (WITHOUT making ANY findings of fact per California State Law)

B. They put residents of Kennington Drive into further jeopardy by not making the builder widen the street for safety

C. They transferred the cost of widening the road for safety from the builder to the City of Glendale, so that if the road is ever widened the citizens of Glendale get to subsidize this builder.

D. They (once again) TOTALLY ignored the speakers who were against the CUP by reason of the findings not being made by any factual arguments or reasoning.

E. They spared an oak tree because it was a good excuse to try to look like they were placating the public, while throwing another VERY VALUABLE bone to their developer pals.

In short, the City Council violated the law again (both in not addressing the findings for the CUP, and in granting a de-facto variance without ANY findings),  created another traffic hazard, guaranteed the City will face future legal costs and road-widening expense (because you can bet the City will be sued if there is an accident at that blind corner) and added yet another unsightly 3-story house for the people going up and down Chevy Chase to have to look at, and they just don't care.

The bottom line is that since the City Council doesn't consider hillside residents as important any more - they think they can win favor by buying up open space while cramming an oversized house into every nook and cranny of substandard real estate left in the hillsides.

The Council just doesn't CARE about the quality of life in Northwest, Chevy Chase or any of the hillside areas. They don't CARE about the LAW or what it means to make findings in accordance with legal principles. This City Council is a rogue council and it desperately needs to be replaced with responsible adults.

The August 15th City Council meeting taxed my ability to focus, as it lasted for EIGHT HOURS, four hours of which dealt with a CUP appeal, and those hours are worth commenting on here in summary form.

A developer applied for a CUP to develop a very large house on two lots off a narrow dirt road in the Chevy Chase Canyon area. The CUP was for lot slope (too steep of course) and for a massive amount of grading. It was yet another Ed Hagobian “carve out a big flat spot and put a flat-land house on it” project. The massive 3-story house with a 3-car garage was very much not in keeping with the neighborhood, and of course both the ZA and the BZA got it wrong as usual.

A neighbor appealed to the BZA and then to the Council, and many area residents expressed objection to the project. After much debate, the City Council voted to grant the CUP, but they made the developer cut the size of the house quite a bit, limited him to a 2 story house, 2-car garage and they are going to make him pave Ramsay in such a manner so as to spare most if not all of the oak trees.

Briefly, here are some highlights:

1. The BZA chairman defended her decision to grant the CUP by asserting that the finding that the house was compatible with the neighborhood didn’t need to be made by the BZA really, because the DRB would make sure the house was compatible. Miss Ohanganian is a pretty poor lawyer if she thinks her board can make a legal finding based on the premise that it will be someone else’s job to cover her butt later.

2. Once again we have a case where a project is getting entitlements (the CUP means they are entitled to build subject to conditions that allow the City to make the 4 findings that supposedly insure the project is in keeping with the intent of the laws and the City;s General Plan) before engineering has had a chance to see if it can even be built. This is a total waste of everyone’s time, and puts the people who should be doing interpretation of the law in the position of designing and re-engineering the project.

3. Yousefian exposed his real agenda when he compared this project to one of similar mass and scale on Chevy Chase (I think he called it the Harolambos house?). That house was a large ugly eyesore, but according to Yousefian, it was OK because the lot was so small the only thing you could DO was to build a large ugly and massive structure. Why not say NO, Mr. Yousefian? You shouldn’t allow bad houses to be built on unsuitable lots period. To justify a bad house by saying it was the only design that could be put on the lot is plain stupid and cowardly.

4. One factor cited as something in favor of the project was that the owner was combining 2 lots. Consistently the hypocrite, Weaver stated that the finding that the project was consistent with the General Plan could be made because the intent of the HSO was to get people to combine lots — a fact that he conveniently forgot in May when he allowed his friend Simonian to build on a tiny lot without making him purchase one of two available adjacent vacant lots. The law is whatever Weaver wants it to be at the time apparently.

5. At the end of the public commentary, the appellant was only given 5 minutes to rebut the testimony (Weaver once again violates the rules of public fairness and common sense), and then in an unprecedented move, he allowed the applicant to rebut the rebuttal! Talk about prejudicial and wired hearings – there was only one way this was going – the guy was going to be allowed to build no matter what.

6. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Weaver followed up his arrogant and condescending treatment of the appellant with the incredible statement to his fellow City Councilmen “Disregard everything you have heard in the rebuttal – that’s my direction to my colleagues.”

Who in the hell does he think he is? He has no legal or moral right to even make such a statement – he’s not a judge, his position as Mayor gives him authority to run the meeting, but not to give direction to his colleagues as to what they may or may not consider – this was a totally illegal and unethical command by our self-appointed King.

7. The owner had cut down a 30-40-year-old oak tree in the middle of the property to make room for his house. He was charged $8,000 as a fine. The City Council made it pretty clear that they don’t appreciate his lying about it, and that they can’t trust him, so they made it clear to Engineering that they are to watch this project closely.

8. In order to save oak trees, most of the Councilmen were against paving Ramsay – of course I’m sure the builder would have loved that ruling. The Planning Director argued that leaving Ramsay as a dirt road was dangerous as it makes it difficult for fire or emergency equipment to get up there, so it was important that the road be paved. King Dave tried to make the dumb argument that since there were houses up there already another house wouldn’t hurt – in other words, if it is already difficult for the fire department to reach those houses, adding another one won’t hurt. Fortunately the City Manager intervened and basically told Weaver that there was no room for discussion here – if the house gets built, the road gets paved, period, end of story. If it kills oak trees, too bad, since fire safety is more important.

Well, enough about this – another bad project is approved (albeit redesigned and made smaller by Bob the Builder) because the City Council doesn’t have the guts to say no to any builder, even though the City Attorney told them that saying no to this project would not be a taking and could be defended in court. Weaver’s arrogance and unfairness to the appellant and his astonishing admonition to the Council to ignore the appellant just shows how badly we need to elect some new councilmen in April.

My comments are threefold. First, read Mr. Manoukian's letter to the editor of the News Press, July 12. It is a script for what happened at Council the night before. Second, for those of you who intend to take pictures for Council to view because you are sick of your neighbor parking his or her car on the front lawn (the owners of 702 E. Glenoaks park their Range Rover on the front lawn)  make sure that your neighbor is sitting in the car and making a rude gesture when you take the picture - or else Mr. Yousefian will accuse you of "embellishment" (possibly he meant falsification but was trying to be gentile with me) as he did at the July 11 hearing. You want to be able to firmly establish that  you did not photoshop the picture.  Finally, stepping up and making the hard decisions are part of the job of being a City Council member. The City Attorney advised that Mr. Najarian could vote, even though he had a monetary conflict, under the Fair Political Practices Act, which he correctly disclosed.  Without his vote Council could not conduct a hearing and the neighborhood won by default - with no clear Council decision. I can only assume this was by design.