Recently, the City Council has overstepped their authority by redesigning building projects that have been unanimously approved by the Design Review Board (DRB), including those at Shady Place and Chiquita Street.
The City Council has a clear responsibility to objectively look at proof provided by the appellant. They are not tasked with “fixing” grievances. The DRB already took all points of view into consideration. If it is determined that the DRB had sufficient evidence to come to their conclusions—even if a councilmember might have come to a different conclusion—the appeal should be denied. We finally have five intelligent and professional design review boardmembers who spend countless hours analyzing every aspect of each project that comes before them. Overturning a unanimous decision by the DRB should be extremely rare and until recently it was.
If the council wants the best people to serve on the Design Review Board the council needs to respect their work and their resulting decisions as a matter of respect and a matter of law.
Robin Miller, Laguna Beach
