Even after the City Council’s unanimous vote last evening to direct staff to shape an ordinance tightening a dozen regulations pertaining to overbuilding single-family homes in Culver City, it is unclear, nay unlikely, whether a single complaining homeowner has been mollified.
Based on the impressively disciplined, informed, intricate critiques by 13 homeowners from the Carlson Park and Lindberg Park neighborhoods, the answer is negative.
In a joint session with the advisory Planning Commission, the Council called the proposed ordinance “a baseline” in amending the building code to embrace the preliminary recommendations of the Commission. The Council asked Commission members to further evaluate revisions to lessen the degree of second story intrusion – invading privacy.
At decision time, the large crowd was quiet. Perhaps they were reconciled to the outcome. There wasn’t much opposition from colleagues after Vice Mayor Andy Weissman suggested approving the recommendations as baselines and working from there.
The Planning Commission will continue to evaluate further changes that may need to be made. For now, as Commissioner Dana Amy Sayles said, these changes are seen as “the low-hanging fruit.”
The Other Side
An evening projected to be wringing-wet with emotion instead emerged as a blanket presentation of professionally polished, remarkably detailed observations – one is tempted to say pleadings – by deeply worried residents of substance.
All of the homeowners had studied the proposed dozen technical rules changes governing home building and additions. Decidedly unmoved, they asked for a non-Culver City expert to review and reach presumably more objective conclusions about amended regulations.
Virtually every speaker – longtime owners, up to 50 years – issued two neon complaints:
- That privacy inside his home had been violated by what is called mansionization, runaway expansion, and
- A strong fear that unacceptable, seemingly uncontrollable changes to daily living routines are inevitable and will severely decrease property values.
