When the Los Angeles City Council approves new condos, office towers and other forms of growth, should it know whether the city's troubled, aging infrastructure can take that extra load? And should city planners make those potentially troubling facts public by combining them all in a single report to the City Council each year?
PHOTO BY TED SOQUI
The "grand canyon" on Western Avenue went ignored for two months.
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Those are the questions before a California court, where L.A. environmental lawyers sued city leaders on behalf of more than a dozen community groups that say the City Council, bent on creating a far denser Los Angeles, is approving developers' projects in the dark.
The community groups lost an initial legal round early last year, and the case now is on appeal, with a decision expected this year.
But in some ways, it is already too late for Los Angeles' ancient infrastructure of decaying pipes, circa 1910, and roadways that in some areas have fallen behind on routine paving by 70 years.
"Every one of the hundreds of commercial and residential developments in the past 10 years has been approved by the City Council with no clear way for them to know if our infrastructure can handle them," says Lucille Saunders of La Brea–Willoughby Coalition, the first group of L.A. residents to sue the city in 2008.
Several community groups and their lawyers say the City Charter — L.A.'s municipal constitution — requires the city planning department to create a comprehensive annual report on the state of the infrastructure for the City Council and, by extension, for the public.
And until 2000, that's the way it was, thanks to a long-ago fight by neighborhood and community groups that sought a single go-to report on the state of the city's water pipes, sewage lines, power grid and roadways. Their efforts eventually required the city planning department to provide the annual report as part of a so-called Framework Element, a set of laws that oversees growth and development.
But in 2000, as Mayor Richard Riordan departed office and Mayor James Hahn took over, then–city Planning Director Con Howe overrode the carefully hammered-out practice.
Community leaders and their attorneys say Howe, now retired, unilaterally tossed out a constitutional mandate within the City Charter.
After Howe put the kibosh on the annual reports, massive new housing and commercial projects were constructed during the Los Angeles construction bubble. Some critics now say the City Council is flirting disastrously with maxing out L.A.'s underlying infrastructure.
After Howe retired, no subsequent city planner — not Gail Goldberg or current City Planner Michael LoGrande — resumed the publicly released infrastructure reports.
Instead, they're now arguing in court against them.
Howe wrote, as part of the city's response to the 2008 lawsuit (Saunders, et al., v. City of Los Angeles, et al.), filed by attorneys Sabrina Venskus and Doug Carstens on behalf of L.A. residents, that he had problems with the "format and utility" of the annual infrastructure report.
Venskus says it's absurd that a hired city manager such as Howe could be allowed to override a mandate worked out by residents and approved by the City Council, saying that the planning department's "Trust us, we know what we're doing" presumption just doesn't fly legally.
Some would say the planning department in Los Angeles — infamous for overriding existing zoning to serve land speculators and politically connected developers — is an oxymoron.
Says Venskus: "The Planning Department is supposed to be in the service of the City Council, not the other way around."
Hundreds of developments have been green-lighted under Hahn and Mayor Villaraigosa without the annual report.
In 2008, unable to locate the infrastructure report for a proposed retail-residential development at La Brea Avenue and Willoughby Street, near where she lives, Saunders sued on behalf of the La Brea–Willoughby Coalition.
Its suit calls for a moratorium on all new development until the planning department resumes the public infrastructure reports.
Saunders has since been joined by a dozen homeowners' and community groups, including watchdog group Fix the City.
"We have the worst cut-through traffic of any area of the city," Westchester resident John Fisher said at an L.A. Department of Transportation meeting with the Westchester Neighborhood Council. But city planners envision dramatic new density surrounding the area.
The lawsuit alleges that the city's failure to provide annual reports also violates a core requirement of the California Environmental Quality Act.
However, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich argues that the annual report requirement is a suggestion, not a mandate, and that infrastructure information can somehow be gleaned from hundreds of city website pages — should anybody try hard enough to dig out that data.
He claims that a clause in the Framework Element of the City Charter, which says the report's publication is "contingent on the availability of adequate funding," means the report is not required.
Trutanich argues — ludicrously, to some — that since 2000 the huge city planning department hasn't had enough money to produce annual infrastructure reports.
City Hall watchers will find this a tired trope, which the planning department also uses to justify cutting down on community input and its failing to assert stronger administrative muscle over questionable developments.
