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