Greetings All:

The Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee of the City Council has officially recommended that the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions be moved to the City Attorney’s Office for their review and preparation of an official Ordinance. The version that was moved forward essentially upholds the City Planning Commission recommendations with three technical changes as recommended by the Department of City Planning; two procedural changes that will enable the Department of Building & Safety to better implement the proposed regulations, and the other is a correction to a typographical error. The recommended changes should be available for download on the online Council File within the next day or two.

Useful Links
April 22, 2010 City Planning Commission Staff Report: http://planning.lacity.org/StaffRpt/InitialRpts/CPC-2010-581.pdf
May 27, 2010 City Planning Commission Staff Report: http://planning.lacity.org/Code_Studies/BaselineHillsideOrd/CPC-2010-581-CA052710SRpt.pdf
City Planning Commission Determination Letter: http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2010/10-1001_rpt_plan_6-8-10.pdf
Online Council File: http://cityclerk.lacity.org/lacityclerkconnect/index.cfm?fa=ccfi.viewrecord&cfnumber=10-1001

What’s Next?
The PLUM Committee has referred the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions to the City Attorney’s Office (with the recommended changes). The City Attorney will now review the proposal for both form and legality and will prepare the official Ordinance (a legal description of the changes to the Code that would incorporate the proposed hillside provisions), in addition to a few other City Charter mandated steps. Once everything is reviewed and prepared, the City Attorney will transmit a report to the City Clerk and will likely go back to the PLUM Committee for their final action on the matter and the proposal will then go before the full City Council.

At this point, Planning staff does not have an idea how long this review and preparation will take, but when we have any updates we will send an email to the interest list.

There are still at least 3 steps left to go before the Ordinance is officially adopted, which have been summarized below:
The preparation of the official Baseline Hillside Ordinance by the City Attorney’s Office;
The adoption of the proposed Ordinance by the City Council; and
The signature of the Mayor.
Once these steps have been taken, the City Clerk’s Office will post the adopted Ordinance for a period of 10 days and a 30-day effective date will begin after that.

Even if we have an official Ordinance quicker than expected, it is important to note that the City Council goes into a recess period in August and is not likely to act on it in that month. This means that we are possibly looking at sometime in September as the earliest date for an official City Council action. This means that the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance could be in effect as early as late-October/early-November, but this timeline is still subject to change depending on how long it takes to get through the next 3 steps.

Feel free to forward this information to anyone you feel might be interested.

If you received this email via forwarded message from someone other than myself, and you want to obtain updates directly from the Department, please email erick.lopez@lacity.org and ask to be added to the interest list. Please type “Add Me To Hillside Notification List” in the subject line and provide your group/organization/company affiliations and contact information (please include at least your ZIP Code).

Facebook™ Users: Look for the Baseline Hillside Ordinance page; add the page and receive updates in your news feed. You can also view our events calendar and participate in discussion boards.

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact myself or Jennifer Driver at jennifer.driver@lacity.org or at (818) 374-5034.

__________________________________________
Erick Lopez
City Planner
Department of City Planning
Community Planning Bureau – West Coastal Division
200 N. Spring St., Room 621
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 978-1243
(213) 978-1226 – fax
erick.lopez@lacity.org

Greetings from the Los Angeles Department of City Planning.

In celebration of the ZIMAS (Zone Information and Map Access System) *10-year* anniversary, the Planning Department is rolling out a new version of the system on the Internet.

The new ZIMAS uses the latest GIS, mapping, and Internet technologies; features a brand new graphical user interface; and provides Internet users instant access to a wealth of planning, zoning, and property information for any property within the City of Los Angeles.

We welcome you to visit ZIMAS at www.zimas.lacity.org

Thank you.Internet ZIMAS 3 Flyer
Vincent P. Bertoni, AICP
Acting Director

The recent resignation of Gail Goldberg, the City’s Planning Director, is a great loss for Los Angeles. I hope the Mayor and his new team appreciates what she has accomplished and recognizes the transformation she has set in motion for city planning in Los Angeles. As we look toward the selection of the next Director, we need to assure that neighborhood council and civic leaders across the city are actively involved in the selection process to help insure the continuation of what Ms. Goldberg has started.

From the beginning, Ms Goldberg came out to neighborhoods throughout the city and engaged the residents. She listened and conveyed a sense of respect for the differences and an optimism that a high level of professionalism could help forge consensus, even in controversial land use discussions.

I had an opportunity to work closely with Ms. Goldberg’s team as Chair of PlanCheckNC, a grass-roots alliance to promote local stakeholder participation in planning issues. Recognizing the role neighborhood councils as part of the city structure, she took the lead in creating a successful “Planning Department Pilot Program” with neighborhood councils citywide. This program has provided greater transparency and opened new channels of communication on neighborhood concerns by providing a liaison with the Planning Department, giving neighborhood councils early access to all project entitlement applications and helping to train neighborhood council leaders on land-use planning.

I saw first-hand the progress she made in transforming a highly political and unpredictable land use and development environment into a more participatory process, with real planning for communities that both residents and developers can count on. She is a leader whose professionalism, intelligence, and willingness to embrace change in order to accomplish clearly articulated goals set the right direction for city planning in Los Angeles.

And she is delivering–there are now four communities with new draft plans that will be brought to the City Planning Commission later this year. She has insisted upon creating “real” plans — plans that are comprehensive and detailed, that include all of the zoning and other measures that implement those plans so they won’t just sit on a shelf, but provide a consistent guide for implementing the vision of the community. And that, for the first time, identify the infrastructure needs of each community. Continuing this work must be a priority for our city to develop confidently forward into the future.

At the same time, she began an ambitious and far-reaching reorganization of the entire department in order to better serve communities, better handle development project applications, and more effectively deploy the severely reduced staff. Some observers have called the reorganization “a game changer,” and it is. Entitlement projects will be handled by a single staff member from beginning to end. And all case processing will no longer take place in functional “silos,” but, instead, in geographic divisions in order to allow staff members to develop closer relationships with the communities they serve.

I personally participated in a unique and unprecedented outreach effort by the Planning Department which speaks volumes about the direction the department has been taking under Ms Goldberg’s leadership. The Planning Department sought a grant to take 17 South LA residents to Portland, Oregon to see first-hand what good Transit Oriented Development can be, as our community grapples with potential development proposals around the new Exposition line stations. We all learned a great deal and what we experienced opened our eyes to what is possible in South LA. This was meaningful outreach by a department that clearly values it.

Beyond even her specific accomplishments, Ms. Goldberg has made real strides in changing the often-poisonous and politicized culture of planning in Los Angeles. She insisted that Planning Department staff recommendations and decisions be guided by sound professional planning principles, not by political whims or bullying. As the Director, Ms. Goldberg sometimes disagreed with elected officials, with developers, and with neighborhood representatives, but she always did so with the utmost respect and her disagreements were based on planning principles, not personalities or politics.

In all of these ways, the Department of City Planning has changed quite meaningfully over the past four years. What will her resignation bode for the future of planning in our city, and the Planning Department? Will Mayor Villaraigosa choose to build upon this recent progress, or do the hints in press accounts about frustration in the development community mean that he will select a new director who focuses on speedy case processing, to the exclusion of policy planning and real community engagement?

Until the answers to these questions become clearer, neighborhood and civic leaders need to be especially vigilant in the coming weeks, and loudly reassert the value of “doing real planning” with transparency and an open door.

Maggi Fajnor, Chair
PlanCheckNC

Greetings All:

The City Planning Commission approved the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions at their regular meeting today, and has recommended to the City Council that they adopt the hillside regulations as shown on Exhibit A of the May 27, 2010 Staff Report (http://planning.lacity.org/Code_Studies/BaselineHillsideOrd/CPC-2010-581-CA052710SRpt.pdf). We expect to have a Commission Determination Letter prepared for transmittal to the City Clerk by the end of next week.

The next step will be to take the proposed Baseline Hillside Ordinance provisions before the Planning & Land Use Management Committee (PLUM). PLUM is a Subcommittee of the City Council that reviews all planning related matters. The Department of City Planning does not have any control over the timing/scheduling of PLUM agendas, but will do everything it can to make sure that the City Clerk’s Office has everything it needs to be able to schedule this item.

We will send an email to the interest list when a date has been determined.

I just want to take the time to thank everyone for their participation and the input we have received up to this point. We will continue to be here if you have any further questions or concerns as we move on to the next steps. Please do not hesitate to contact myself or Jennifer Driver at jennifer.driver@lacity.org or at (818) 374-5034.

Feel free to forward this information to anyone you feel might be interested.

If you received this email via forwarded message from someone other than myself, and you want to obtain updates directly from the Department, please email erick.lopez@lacity.org and ask to be added to the interest list. Please type “Add Me To Hillside Notification List” in the subject line and provide your group/organization/company affiliations and contact information (please include at least your ZIP Code).

Facebook™ Users: Look for the Baseline Hillside Ordinance page; add the page and receive updates in your news feed. You can also view our events calendar and participate in discussion boards.

__________________________________________
Erick Lopez
City Planner
Department of City Planning
Community Planning Bureau – West Coastal Division
200 N. Spring St., Room 621
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 978-1243
(213) 978-1226 – fax
erick.lopez@lacity.org