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"You've got two, two and one, plus three: that's six."
Council flounders on development rules
by Robb Fulcher
Alternately entertaining and annoying their largest audience since Bob Benz brought a topless woman to a city council meeting, the council waded through a complex array of potential changes in future homebuilding rules, to little ultimate effect.
At the end of Tuesday night's four-and-a-half hour public hearing, the council decided to continue discussing the potential overhaul and take more testimony from the public on Tuesday, May 2.
Meanwhile, city staff determined to grind the tangle of conflicting concerns expressed by the council into some kind of understandable report.
"I think what we see is a lack of consensus, so we have four different directions," City Manager Steve Burrell told the council. The fifth council member, John Bowler, left the meeting early to attend a seminar in San Francisco.
The possible changes are aimed at easing parking problems and preventing the spread of boxy, monolithic homes in this former bungalow town. By the end of the meeting council members were showing little interest in the wholesale changes feared by many developers and residents, and the decisions they did reach reflected that.
Council members agreed to scrap the idea that had drawn the most fire, which would have required many condos to be tiered back in their upper stories like a wedding cake.
The council also agreed not to change the parking requirements for new and rebuilt single-family homes, and to do away with a limit on the number of stories a home can have, as long as it satisfies the city's height requirements.
Left until May 2 were questions of increasing the number of parking spaces required for condos and multi-family homes, and requiring more open space on the ground and on upper floors of condos and some other homes.
As council members waded through the niceties of the interwoven development rules, a restive audience public got a few laughs.
Councilman Sam Edgerton used his fingers to count off a potential change in the configuration of condo parking spaces.
"You've got two, two and one, plus three: that's six," he said.
Granted, the rest of the council had become just as confused.
The possible rule changes previously were kicked around in planning commission workshops.
Gary Brutsch, a real estate agent and former councilman, was among those sharply critical of the tiered condo idea, pointing to a property he owns on Eighth Court. He said he would have seen a 500 square-foot reduction in the volume of a new home, which can stand at 3,000 square feet under current rules. He said tiered upper stories would have reduced the ocean view as well, and a sale price of more than $1 million would drop to about $800,000. ER