The 702 E. Glenoaks rezoning case continues to amaze us. Again, the City Council took a fairly simple case, bungled it and made themselves look foolish. The people applied for an architect's office and said there would be no client traffic. Reality is that they started a contractor's office, allowed construction material deliveries, and then they wonder why people are upset. The councilmen who had potential conflict-of-interest dealings with the applicants should have given their clients better advice - but of course, one councilman tried to push the vote off and made it look like he was doing his friends a favor, while another councilman tried to blame the whole thing on the Planning Department - way to go Mr. Yousefian! If I were the applicant, I'd sue the city for all the fees and claim that Mr. Yousefian said it was all the City's fault. Doesn't Scott Howard listen to these hearings?

Anyway, a reader sent in this note:

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.

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion