Lawsuit: City Hall Wins, City Loses

The whole process of land use decision making rests in the shadowy puppet hands of so many plans, agencies and individuals who have degraded the value of words and their meaning. Every step is a baffling contradiction of word and meaning. Every plan and every pretense at over sight is a lesson in futility. The City treats them as frivolous sequential steps, not as a practical guide leading to meaningful results. 

How important is the General Plan, Specific Plan, Environmental Impact Report, and Development Agreement in terms of the application consideration process?  Separately and on the surface, they appear to be highly influential.  But in reality the domino affect of disregarding key words is very disturbing and has nullified the true intentions behind such wording. 

The EIR which was meant to be a project filtration and modification system, now rests on the belief that most issues can be mitigated and those that can not be mitigated can be ignored and tolerated. The Statement of Overriding Considerations is a “get out of jail free card” for the developer. It identifies the proposed project benefits. When they are weighed against its unavoidable environmental risks, the long term losers is the communities, and the short term winners is the developers and City. 

Case in point:  The Board of the Woodland Hills Homeowner’s Organization took great exception to this ever increasing disregard to the meaning of words in land use decision making. Participating in the public hearings for the Westfield Village Shopping Center project, the WHHO hoped to earnestly address issues of concern. They became increasingly perturbed as a variety of conflicts were glossed over with little regard and no solution. 

Simultaneously, the WHHO began participating in the development of the new Warner Center Specific Plan. They realized that the old plan had failed to truly guide the Westfield development. Not because the plan lacked sufficient guidelines but because of a growing culture of indifference streaming from City hall. 

Much speculation has gone into the reasons behind the lawsuit filed by the W.H.H.O. and so much of the media speculation was off target. It was never about stopping the development; it was about making sure they complied with Warner Center Specific Plan and the Owensmouth Parkway Ordinance.

At some point, somebody had to hold the City and their departments accountable for this blatant disregard for existing plans, for their flawed analysis, for their special treatment of one developer over another, for their lack of full disclosure, for their failure to demand additional exceptions and entitlements, and for their rendering all words void of meaning in the 33,000 pages of Administrative Record.

Unfortunately, WHHO lost their case on July 2^nd. The judge ruled, “Petitioners challenge the City's determination that the project is consistent with the governing land - use plans. This is denied. Since general and specific plans are legislative actions courts consistently refuse to substitute their judgment for the legislative judgment of the governing body.”

To add insult to injury, most of the project benefits touted in the Statement of Overriding Considerations would not be realized according to the existing development agreement between the City and Westfield LLC. What one hand giveth, the other taketh away.  This type of shell game with public benefits is becoming par for the course.

Just this Friday, the City Council unanimously voted to give Westfield a $60 million tax break. The  financial package exempts Westfield from paying 42 percent of the new tax revenues that would have gone into the general fund. Instead of rehiring city employees, or paying down the pension debt, we give massive tax breaks to billion dollars corporations.

Forget about fully funding our police and fire departments, forget about filling our pot holes, forget about fully funding the neighborhood council system. Go right ahead and make your back room deals.

You’re proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Woodland Hills Homeowner’s Organization was spot on to demand a fair and equitable deal. But before the ruling could be handed down by Judge John Torribio you scurried to do your dirty work in a rush to avoid public opinion and wrath.

Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller informed officials on Friday that the project lacks the $48 million dollars needed to fund the project.  Not to be confused with Santa Claus, outgoing Councilman Dennis Zine rallied his colleagues to fund it. It really didn’t take much convincing with so many future campaign contributions floating before their eyes, how could they resist?

Vice President of real estate development for Westfield, Larry Green, wouldn’t claim that they lacked the money to do the project. He suggested that it would simply fast track the project. After all, a man begging for a $48 million dollar hand out would not want to appear to be in need.

I have a $4 million dollar project I want funded too. It’s for a lawsuit war chest for the WHHO It is quite the bargain. It could save Los Angeles from special interests, back room deals, and put meaning back into the words that guide our City.  If every Los Angeleno donates one dollar, we can fund it. Sounds like a better deal than funding private business!

Gordon Murley, the President of WHHO stated, “We formed WHHO to fight for the right things for this community. Sometimes the allure of the ‘shiny new toy’ often blinds the public to real pitfalls and problems detrimental to the community. Complaints usually crop up a year or two after a project is completed, then the public begins asking, ‘what idiot approved that?’ 

Identifying the long list of idiots really isn’t that hard … it’s the usual suspects.

(Lisa Cerda is a contributor to CityWatch, a community activist, Chair of Tarzana Residents Against Poorly Planned Development, VP of Community Rights Foundation of LA, Tarzana Property Owners Association board member, and former Tarzana Neighborhood Council board member.)

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 11 Issue 54

Pub: July 5, 2013