The Laguna Beach City Council opted to maintain the status quo at the Design Review Board, reappointing two incumbents on Tuesday.
Jessica Gannon, a Realtor with a Beverly Hills-based team affiliated with Compass, and Laguna Beach real estate agent Don Sheridan will continue serving after two years on the panel. Sheridan is the husband of Sally Anne Sheridan, who was recently named principal officer of Laguna Forward, an influential political action committee formerly called Liberate Laguna that has spent more than $255,000 to local election campaigns since 2018.
“I think we work very hard to bring a new temperament to design review to be very collegial with each other. We don’t always agree but we’re not disagreeable. I think we’ve done a good job and I’d like to stick with it,” Don Sheridan said.
Gannon said her track record as a design review board members shows that she doesn’t support large developments in Laguna Beach.
“There’s a fine line between property rights and trying to have an application meet the DRB guidelines with neighborhood capability and view equity. I feel like there’s a way to make decisions that’s equitable for all,” she said.
Realtor Cindy Adams’ candidacy for Design Review Board was supported by councilmembers Toni Iseman and George Weiss but didn’t receive enough votes to unseat Sheridan.
“We are disappointed that no one with design experience applied. It would be nice to see more balance on the board since everyone is either in real estate or some form of development. We hope they will be following and applying DRB guidelines and doing what’s best for our town,” Village Laguna president Anne Caenn wrote in an email.
Mayor Sue Kempf and Councilmember Peter Blake were partially elected on a platform of reforming a design review process bemoaned by many Laguna Beach homeowners as onerous and unfairly subjective. Among these tweaks to city law was allowing staffers to approve new air conditioning units rather than sending them to a time-consuming Design Review Board hearing.
Although neighbors’ appeals of design review decisions regularly appear on city council agendas, a majority of councilmembers have been more reluctant to second guess their appointees’ decisions in recent year.
Last month, the City Council denied an appeal of the Design Review Board’s unanimous approval for construction of a new 3,590-square-foot house and massive wildfire fuel modification zone on an undeveloped 40-acre hillside lot near Skyline Drive and Atlantic Way. Neighbors have characterized the lot as unbuildable partly because it hosts two earthquake fault lines, protected coastal cage scrub, and other habitat potentially supporting migratory bird nests.
In other business, the City Council reappointed Lauriann Meyer and appointed Brendan Gagain, Gary Kramer, and Brandon Rippeon to the Parking, Traffic & Circulation Committee on Tuesday.
Dan Rosenthal and Scott Sumner were also reappointed to the Heritage Committee, which advises city officials on alterations to historic structures, requests to place structures on the Historic Register, and recommendations for properties to receive Mills Act tax benefits.
