Homeowners who brought low expectations into last evening’s City Council meeting to address overbuilding may have been the only audience members not surprised or disappointed by the climactic vote.
“This was a small step in the right direction,” Councilman Jeff Cooper after his colleagues voted unanimously to have city staff package the Planning Commission’s recommendations into an attractive legal package, a proposed ordinance for a meeting in the near future.
“The more we explore (overbuilding), the more new and different layers we find – rooftop decks, people putting solar panels on their roofs,” he said.
The notion that most residential lots in Culver City are 5000 square feet, 50 by 100, was knocked sideways when slide shows turned up lots from a wide range of shapes and sizes.
In Mr. Cooper’s view, the 13 mid-city residents who protested present rules and insisted the Council produce much heftier ones, had two goals”
- They wanted a non-City Hall team of outside consultants, preferably someone from their ranks, and
- A building moratorium, which may be the longest shot of all.
The tug of war between City Hall residents who feel they are construction-pinched by imaginative developers and ambitious neighbors who supposedly are unconcerned that the view from their home-addition or their brand new home allows them to peer through next door’s windows and/or is so high and wide it blocks sun rays formally taken for granted.
Mr. Cooper said homeowners should be pleased at the pace the City Council has been moving. “This matter came to us in June, and 4½ months later we have started making changes. For government, that is moving at the pace of lightning.”
