At first, it seems we don’t need any more red tape bureaucracy. We now have in place height limits, parking requirements, dozens of other regulations and rules, Village Laguna, Planning Commission, Design Review Board, Coastal Commission, and City Council. It is now a hard and long process to get a project approved in Laguna Beach. Just ask the folks at the Ranch and Montage – two beautiful parts of this town. The City Council over many, many, months held multiple meetings and allowed any Laguna Beach citizen who wanted to speak at a Council meeting before approvals.
On the other hand, now that I think about I have lived in Laguna for over 70 years and in my youth, we did have some big developers. They built the “Housing Tract” on Top of the World and they built houses on the “Only 25′ wide lots” of Arch Beach Heights. If “Q” was in place then we could have stopped those projects dead in their tracks. Whatever your view is please go out and vote!
Joe Jahraus, Laguna Beach
Measure Q doesn’t touch R1 residential. It also excludes any apartment buildings of 9 or fewer units, and furthermore exempts development projects consisting exclusively of 100% affordable residential units. Q wouldn’t have had any impact on developing TOW or Arch Beach Heights housing tracts.
Close observers of City Council know that the enormous amounts of money the developers and real estate speculators have spent have resulted in an extremely pro-development, pro-business-intensification, pro-tourism council. This will only accelerate with the continued avalanche of money they continue to spend. The only protection residents and long-time business owners have against the over commercialization and over intensification of Laguna is measure Q.