Recommendation to adopt a minute order declaring a moratorium against the issuance of any permits for the construction of any new homes or additions of more than 1,500 square feet to existing homes in the R-1-L zone; and direct City Manager to have the Department of Development Services and the Planning Commission review the development standards for the R-1-L zone and make recommendations to the City Council.
Communication from Councilman Austin. Recommendation to adopt a minute order declaring a moratorium against the issuance of permits for the construction of new homes or additions. More than 1500 square feet and the r1l zone and request development services and the Planning Commission to review the development standards. He counsel for Austin. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Several months ago, many residents of the Lower Cerritos neighborhood approached my office with concerns about the possibility of changes to the district character. Distinct character of the neighborhood. The Yellow Cerritos neighborhood north of Bixby Road is the only area in the city that has the r1l zoning designation because of the large lot sizes. Many of the homes in the neighborhood are marked by spacious yards and set backs of the homes away, away from the sidewalk and street. However, the development standards in place for this zone do not do enough to protect the character of the neighborhood. It is timely now because of the maturing of the neighborhood. We are seeing a transition in ownership and more homes for sale than in recent times. A community of neighbors. I actually did their homework researching the history of the building permits in the neighborhood and surveying what other cities and similar zoning have done to address this issue . They work with my office in developing a recommendation that will place a moratorium and allow our development services staff to work with the neighborhood to develop new standards that would ensure the protections for this zone. The moratorium would not limit homeowners owners from doing any improvements on their property. It only applies to the construction of new homes or the addition of more than 1500 square feet to an existing house. When you think about it, 1500 square feet is about the average size of most homes in most neighborhoods in our city. Anything less than that? And a homeowner can still get permits under the existing standards. Other cities, including Arcadia, Pasadena and Los Angeles, have taken similar approaches, and the neighbors have worked hard to inform and involve the entire neighborhood affected by this recommended action. More than 250 residents have signed a petition in support of tonight's recommended action. I ask you, my colleagues, to support this motion. It only affects this one neighborhood in eighth District and allows the residents to work with our planning staff to review and improve the zoning standards in the very near future. So with that, I would ask for your support on this matter. And I know there are some residents here to speak on it. If there's a motion any second on that comes from Iran, could you have any comment on the government? Okay. So what's the public comment of vice mayor, which after a public comment, please come forward. I have three speakers on this item. There's four speakers on this item. Please come forward. If you're going to speak, please line up then when we have a long night. I'm trying to abbreviate and know how, but what's the length of each comment here? So please, please begin. Esteemed mayor and council members. My name is Stacey McDaniel. I live at 4110 Cedar Avenue in the low risk district. There is an urgent need to enact this temporary and limited moratorium to preserve the character and livability of our neighborhood caused by an unprecedented number of homes for sale in the neighborhood. The action only applies to about 600 homes in the R-1 L zoning area, all of which are completely within the eighth District. And over 300 of our neighbors have signed a petition supporting both this moratorium and more zoning restrictions. This request is not about any particular family or home or street. It's about preserving the character of our neighborhood. When we say preserve the character of our neighborhood, what are we really talking about? We want to preserve the spacious feel of the lost Tahrir Square. The homes are appropriately scaled to maximize yard areas, preserve heritage trees and provide adequate light and airspace surrounding homes on their lot. Our current zoning zoning restrictions do not do this. For example, under the limited restrictions we now have given the size of the lots in our zoning area, a 12,000 square foot home could be built on a 20,000 square foot lot. And if that lot was on a corner, one side of that home could be built to within six feet of the sidewalk. There are two homes in this area that are currently on the market that fall exactly within those parameters. In fact, one of those homes could legally be subdivided. Rather, the lot could be in two separate 7200 square foot homes could be built on those two lots. We carefully researched what other comparable Southland cities were doing, and our city does not have many of the protections other cities used to prevent mega mansions and preserve gracious neighborhoods . In the last ten years, 75% of the remodeling requests in our area have been to only add between 501,000 square feet. This moratorium would only apply to additions greater than 1500 square feet. Please help us preserve the jewel that slow, storied us. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Samir. Council members. Staff. My name is Freddy Carolus. I represent a resident of Los Rita's neighborhood. First off, my client is not opposed to the trend of stopping. The mega-mansion in. The mega-mansion development in this area. Is opposing. To how its it is. Suggested on imposing the moratorium or immediate moratorium on construction. It's in its current form. The suggested moratorium will negatively impact several aspects of the real estate. Development business and the construction industry. There are other measures that could be properly affected, properly imposed, such as the stopping of the mergers and verifying if the reduction of the FFR goes from 60% to 50%. The approval of the suggested immediate. Moratorium. Will. Affect the following items. Current projects that are in the planning. Development stage. That have been through the planning department for several months have been reviewed and approved. On phases and are close to acquiring. A permit for construction. My client has been in the planning department for almost three months, has been working very hard with the planning department. Officials met all the requirements. And is. Short of a future meeting of next Thursday for final review and approval and potential permit application. My client has been has invested. A large amount of money in. Acquiring the services of the professional architect. And this architect is specialized. In high end. Development to just make sure. That the character of his new business model is going to is going to be okay with the character of the neighborhood. Having said that. My client has never been properly notified of such a petition being in the works. Had he had been properly notified, he would have stopped this much investment in such a model. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Karen Miller. I have lived at. 3833 Pine Avenue since 1998. And have been selling real estate in the area for the last 11 years. My concern with the mansion ization is the lowering of. The property values. In our area. Please consider the homes that have been there for about. 80 years and a mansion is built next door. The current residents lose privacy in their backyards. They use loose natural light in their. Homes, in their. Backyards, and their views are obstructed. When these people. Go to sell their house as houses. Many of them have been there for about 80 years. Suddenly, next to the mansion, it's considered small and dark. And will sell for much lower property value than other comparable homes in the neighborhood. For these reasons, we say that. This mansion zation, along with lowering. Our property values, it's caused dissension among the residents. Which is why we're asking you tonight to. Please help us stop this. Happening in our neighborhood. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Look, I'm. I'm a little confused by the speaker mentioning that by raising the general neighborhood, you would thereby impact property values negatively. But let's just put all that aside. If I wanted to change something in my house, I would have to apply for a variance and then I would have to put a public notice. That's not the measure that's being put forward here tonight. You are now coming in and saying immediately, we must stop all new construction. I happen to live across from a home that is, quite frankly, an eyesore. It's probably 80 years old. I know that somebody purchased the house. They planned to knock it down and built something new, nice and esthetically pleasing. This moratorium would effectively quash that immediately. I also want to point out that I used to live at 4256 Country Drive, which is the house is well over eight years old and it's over 6000 feet. Its next door neighbor, also a relatively old house. Also over 6000 square feet. So I don't understand what exactly is being proposed here. And then on one final note that I would like to make is that a wise person once told me that there is no such no thing, so permanent as a temporary government action. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Mayors, City Council members. Kevin Case I've lived in the eighth and in Los Cerritos for over 25 years. I support what's in front of you. It's a. Temporary moratorium, but it really. Is an. Opportunity to give everyone a chance to take a breath. Step back and. Look at how we're going forward. A lot of the zoning standards don't really work well in our neighborhood. And we're asking for the opportunity to work with people on the standards. And try to get something better. And it's not all about big houses. A lot of the lots have been subdivided. They've gotten pretty tiny over the years and you can put a really huge house. And again, it gets into what some of the other people have said where. They're very close together, they're very tall. And it just. Disrupts the openness. And the look and feel of the. Neighborhood. So what all those people that have signed, I guess it isn't a petition, but they're noting that they are in favor of a second look or another look in more detail at some of these. Zoning standards. And trying to get something in place for our little pocket of homes. There. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker, please. This is our last speaker. And we're going to we're going to vote. Thank you, Mr. Austin, and your staff, for the work that you've done in bringing this forward. The goal here is to give city staff a toolbox to use to develop and maintain the unique character of the law street as neighbors associate Las Vegas Neighborhood. In the past, there are 15 or 20 years. There have been a number of loopholes that have come up where it's it's changed the character. We have three streets coming in Bixby, San Antonio, Roosevelt and some people have changed the direction of their front yards and it's and allowed them to turn a different direction, which again, allows instead of a large setback, not only having a six foot step setback that can affect the ingress and egress out of the area, causing, you know, the character to change. And these setbacks are what what what make it unique and actually benefit the neighborhood for everybody. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Public comment has now closed. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I don't know if the city manager has someone from planning to answer this question, but in the report it indicated that Council District eight may be the only district that has this circumstance or not circumstance, but the r1l zone. Angela Reynolds. Thank you, Angela. So sorry. City Attorney Vice Mayor Lowenthal. I checked with planning staff on that and they indicated to me that, in fact, the eighth district is the only place in the city that does have this unique r-1 one l zoning designation. And I see all the compelling reasons why we should definitely support this. And out of curiosity. Were there others with those designations and we had eliminated them or this was always the only one with this designation? I'm just curious how this comes about in one particular district. What is the nature of that district that compels a planning team and a policy body to do something like that? Councilwoman. The question was, is this was. Were there other one else zones in the city. That we had. To leave? So that's our one one house. L for large, for the larger lots. Any thoughts on how this policy came about? Yeah. Well, you know, the city and how how it developed over time. That area has much larger lots than most any other part of the city. So that's why they had their own specific zoning. Okay. And then I wanted to know from the maker of the motion, how long is the moratorium for? Typically when we do moratoriums, we have a time certain. You know, I kind of left that open ended because I recognize that that staff in talking to the staff and preparing this that it would take several months to to to be able to go through a process that would engage the community and development services staff. So I think that question might be best for Councilman Austin. Generally speaking, with the moratorium on land use, what we do is we craft into the ordinance itself because we will have to bring back a formal ordinance, three meetings from now. And that ordinance typically would have a one year moratorium period. But there is a provision in there that the moratorium goes away if the planning commission and the City Council adopts new regulations prior to that time. So there's an incentive for staff to bring it back, but it also gives them flexibility as to when it comes back. I appreciate that. And I'm very supportive of measures like this that support neighborhood character preservation. And my questions really just were from being personally stunned that this exists. I thought really it was the second district that had all of the bad planning measures that were implemented. So it was an equal opportunity. I mean, you know how we look with our parking status. So I'm disappointed, but I'm glad we're able to rectify it, hopefully rectify it going forward. So thank you. Canterbury Ranga Yeah, you actually one of my questions in regards to the length of the moratorium. So just to get the fair idea as to when it takes effect that we will vote on this tonight, will take effect tonight or will it take effect when it comes back to us as a as a as a ordinance. The way moratoriums work, you are actually adopting the minute order that was proposed by the councilman for the eighth District. So it does take effect this evening. It is formalized 3 minutes from now when we bring back an ordinance, one thing that we typically ask for clarification of and sometimes it's not easy to know the first night it comes is what happens to projects that may be in somewhere in a pipeline. In other words, someone mentioned that they had, or at least in the planning process, typically you are not vested to move forward with the project until you have an actual building permit in hand. In the past, sometimes council has chosen to exempt people that aren't quite that far but are somewhere in the process. But typically most councils that do that would want to know how many are somewhere in the pipeline, how many that would affect, what the nature of that particular construction or constructions were. So we can address that when we bring the ordinance back. But you may not be able to adopt the ordinance the first evening if you want to later exempt people that are somehow reasonably in the pipeline. Otherwise it would apply to anyone that does not have a permit in their hand as of this evening. And that's my concern. I know there's an investment that's been made by some people, although I support I support the ordinance, no question. However, I am concerned that people have already made an investment in going to planning and trying to get a permit. And I just want to make sure that it's fair to them that they get property noticed and know exactly what's happening. So. Do I need to make a friendly amendment to this to to maybe give it a 45 day extension before it takes effect in order to in order to address those issues for those applicants? Well, what what typically happens if you give it an additional 40 day, 45 days or any period of time, it does alert people and sometimes that generates folks to get in the pipeline and actually spurs the type of development that you're trying to put the brakes on while you formulate new regulations. When we've done pipeline type situations before, we have exempted folks that, for instance, have don't have a permit in hand, but prior to the night you adopt the moratorium, had submitted an application and the planning department has deemed that application complete. But they are still in the process, for instance, because they are still going through planned check and you know, back and forth between the architects and the planners and no actual building permit has been issued. So that's an option. I'm not suggesting that you do that, but that isn't an option. Yeah, well, I guess my concern is those that are already there as of today. Do we have a number of applicants? We have a number of advocates who are already there. That would be, I guess, exempt because they weren't properly notified of this possible moratorium. Mr.. Reynolds. I think the. From what I understand, there are none that have actually received the building permit per se, but there may be some that are in the process of trying to get to that place of the permit. I also, from what I understand and correct if I'm wrong, Councilman Austin, but this motion as presented is with no exceptions, is just to have the minute order begin tonight, regardless of where they are in the process, in that process. Isn't that correct? That is. Unless they have a building permit in hand. This would this would stop that process. Well, the building permit and what the city attorney. Correct. Is a little different. Yeah. Mr. Reynolds, can you can you can you add. Do we know if there's a group of folks who answered to answer? CUSTOMER Your Angus question and customer assistance question. Mayor, I'd have to actually get that information to at a different time. I don't know how many are in the planning process. I know it's very few, but I can't tell you exactly how many. Like maybe one or two. And I don't know. If they've gone to plan check yet or not. We don't know if the one or two either have their building permit or not because isn't isn't that the. That's. Well, if they do have a building permit, this would not apply but will. Not apply to them if they don't have the building permit. This would. Apply that this would apply in order. To get the building permit, you have to go through basically the whole planning process and the and the building plan check and it's at the end you get the building. Permit. So I think that's the clear indicator. Councilmember So, so I just want to get some clarification because I heard two different things I heard. I mean, and the mayor's kind of focused on permit. Mr. Mayes you you made reference to in the planning process, and that means they're in the planning process. There has been some sort of engagement with development services that. Correct. Typically what that means is that someone has submitted an application to start a project, but they are and the planning staff has deemed the application complete, but they have not yet been issued a permit because what usually happens is there's a back and forth with the larger house between an architect and the planning staff to make sure everything is being designed correctly. So Ms.. Reynolds indicated there may be one or two that are in the process somewhere in they've submitted an application. The application has been deemed complete, but they haven't actually got the permit in their hands. What I the intent of my my motion was obviously neighborhood preservation. And, you know, I don't want to to to hurt any of any of my residents who or anybody that that may be in the process as well. But I want I want this to start this evening. But if I could amend the intent of the motion to if to exempt anybody that has any any applications in the planning process so that nobody is losing their their investment, so to speak, and then we can move from this day forward. So if I can suggest an amendment to your motion that would be to adopt the minute order and direct the city attorney's office to bring back an ordinance that reflects the minute order, but exempts anyone who lives with in the r1l zone that has a completed application on file that has been deemed complete by the Planning Department as of July 21st, which is this evening. So moved that the motions are on the floor. Please cast your votes. Motion carries nine zero. Thank you. Next up is Adam, 35.