By Elizabeth Pearson
As a former 12-year councilmember and six-year plus planning commissioner, I’d like to respond to those arguing for a new Initiative that allows residents to weigh in, through a vote, on new businesses and projects near or on Laguna Canyon Road and Coast Highway, I’d like to provide the following two considerations:
1. We already have a process to weigh in—through planning commission and City Council hearings. I offer the following to demonstrate that our existing system works, and why the alternative is a bad idea:
Remember the Montage Project. The Planning Commission (on which I then participated) spent more than two years reviewing in minute detail, the Local Coastal Plan and Environmental Impact Report—as well as working in concert with the Design Review Board—to review (over and over again) the design, including the landscaping and view corridors. Was there input at every step? Yes. Every single step. Once the Planning Commission approved the project and passed it along to the City Council, were residents allowed to weigh in? Yes, time and time again. Did the naysayers fight it at the Coastal Commission? Of course, en masse. Ultimately the plan was approved by the City and Coastal Commission. And it was built as the Planning Commission and City Council approved it. Is it a high rise? No. Does it “fit in” to all of our visions of being smaller-scale and compatible with the environment? Does it have a park for the public? Are residents allowed to access the beach now, where they weren’t before? Our system worked, and some of it thanks to the input of some of the naysayers along the way, through the system we already have in place.
Many of the people now involved with this new Initiative wanted to stop the creation of the Montage after it was approved, so they got enough signatures to put it to the project on the ballot—causing a referendum to go in front of the voters. This town was torn in two. It was vicious, divisive, and negative. The naysayers mailed out, citywide, over-sized post cards depicting Miami Beach with their high hotel towers saying that this was what Laguna was going to look like if the Montage moved forward. The proponents of the new Montage, the one that was built as approved, barely won that election.
I believe that if this new Initiative were to pass, we will be living in the negative environment we lived in during the Montage fight—over and over again. Aren’t we trying to live in a more peaceful environment and working to avoid that kind of vitriolic local society?
2. Other cities have used this type of initiative to control their city’s projects, is a claim the proponents of the Initiative make. I ask you: have you taken a look at those cities? Are they as charming as ours? Do they have buildings over 36-feet (our height law)? Do they have illuminated signs and/or billboards? Do they look charming and low-scale, or simply “urban” or “too commercial”? The reason why we “look and feel” different is because our codes have been written to maintain the charming nature of our commercial areas, and they work. Our existing codes already protect our town. We don’t have to “fix them”. We were ahead of everybody else by developing codes since 1971 to ensure that our unique “look and feel” were maintained. And yes, some of the Initiative’s proponents had input into those codes along the way. This is a good thing.
In conclusion, let’s keep our town peaceful and charming. Let’s not open the flood gates to repeated viciousness and divisiveness such as was experienced with the Montage referendum. That kind of environment is not who we are, nor why we moved here. Vote “no” on the Laguna Residents First ballot initiative.
Elizabeth is a former Laguna Beach mayor, city councilmember, and planning commissioner.
Yeah Elizabeth! A voice of reason.
Let’s keep the Montage history accurate. The original Montage project, which was approved at the time, did NOT consist of a public park nor public parking. It was slotted to be for hotel guests only as Ms. Pearson is well aware. It took the pressure of a ballot measure at the time to bring the developers back to the negotiating table to get the lovely public park and parking that we all enjoy today. Thank heavens the residents and public nay-sayers (as Ms. Pearson described them) pushed back. It got us the beautiful space that we all enjoy today. The Ballot Initiative will encourage similar kinds of resident- and public-friendly developments that occurred with Montage. Democracy works, folks. Let the residents vote.
Deborah Laughton Weiss, I agree: “Let’s keep the Montage history accurate.” Instead, you are rewriting history to recast the Montage referendum as a success story that supports your case for the BLOZ initiative. The referendum did not succeed, as you wrote in a Nextdoor thread last July 20, in “getting the Montage right.” Nor, as you claim here, did it take “the pressure of a ballot measure … to get the lovely public park and parking that we all enjoy today.”
The Montage concessions — like the public park it is obligated to maintain in perpetuity, if not longer — were the result of negotiations between the Montage and the City, with tons of community input. When Village Laguna decided that the give-backs were not adequate, they launched a campaign to block the project altogether, even after the developers put a further concession on the table that would have increased the size of the public park. Had the referendum not been defeated, there would still be a gated trailer park there.
Rather than rewrite history, you might take to heart what Winston Churchill wrote: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
That lessons of history quote? It’s from philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana.
My NGO, Clean Water Now, worked with The Athens Group development staff to craft a very strict Water Quality Management Plan in late 1999-2000, when it was heard and certified by the Cal Coastal Commission in June 2000.
CWN was ostracized by many local protectionists as being traitors, but we felt that it was better to be at the table instead of on the outside looking in. What was best for the fragile marine habitat below the resort was our top priority, not political disputes.
Many in our own NGO weren’t comfortable negotiating, wouldn’t attend the meetings, but my Dad was chairman of his union and taught me to not leave that table until I got what was best.
All of that said, our City was on the hook to pay for the creation of the frontage, estimated ≈ $3 million…….and how quickly memories fade: Due to the ineptitude of both our City Manager and City Attorney, I believe the language in the contractual agreement they helped craft and agreed to was deficient.
We ended up with over a $9 million price tag for that park.
So WE, not THEY paid for that park, and obviously maintenance should be theirs as their guests enjoy it 24/7/365.
So why should anyone believe that if something similar comes up, WE won’t get the shaft again, wind up heavily subsiding a private developer? Wasn’t THAT a lesson of history, that government can’t be trusted without citizen oversight, without guardians holding ALL accountable, City and developer?
We’ve still got the same doltish City Attorney and this CM seems to be continuation of the Ken Frank/John Pietig style of governance.
The song remains the same. Power in and of itself doesn’t necessarily corrupt, but it does attract the corruptible.
PS: For those of us who haven’t made up our minds yet, aren’t affiliated and don’t socialize with the 2 warring sides?
There may never be a time when initiatives at municipal, county or state level are unnecessary, noteworthy is that those who object to its existence are starting to display fear, retaliatory via venomous (or in this column disingenuous) rhetoric.
Until that fictional time when initiatives are repressed or replaced by another mechanism, that allows free expression of organized yet non-violent dissent, it’s a legitimate form of redress, in this situation preemptive.
The “pro-MO” cabal has repeatedly alleged that the LRF cabal are afraid of change, yet they themselves present symptoms of the same worrisome anxiety they accuse their opponents of——Fear and Loathing In Laguna Beach, where’s Hunter Thompson when we need him?
Personally? I don’t think that the initiative will pass, but men like me (USMC) & more recently women raise/raised their hands to keep ALL of us and our freedom alive….gotta wonder, if we took a poll, how many on either side ever offered THEIR lives to preserve democratic rights, hmmm?
Last: I wrote disingenuous for simple reason, EP is BFFs with Joe Hanauer, pro development architects, and her LagunaADU corporation? According to the Cal Business Portal, Larry Nokes is her attorney of record.
There’s nothing wrong with letting residents decide, unless of course you feel yourself superior, and we in the middle, no doubt a majority, your hoi-polloi subservient class.
Feudal states are passé, so yesterday.
A simple Google search, Roger, would have yielded useful information like this: Variations on the repeating-history theme appear alongside debates about attribution. Irish statesman Edmund Burke is often misquoted as having said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with the aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” while British statesman Winston Churchill wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Well said Elizabeth. This referendum by Village Laguna would be a disaster for Laguna. We already have in place a process that works. Not perfect, but it works. We do not need another layer of bureaucracy. The Montage as you said is an excellent example of the process working. Hard negotiations, compromise, and good land planning.
By the way, all you people out there who purchased and own a house in Laguna…..has it gone up in value? Guess what? You are a “developer”.
I naturally expect Elizabeth Pearson to oppose the Laguna Residents First ballot initiative, as she is a renowned advocate of tourism, business and development. During her tenure at City Hall, Laguna turned from a charming, resident-oriented village into a bar and restaurant tourist mecca.
In 2013, she vigorously supported building a $60 million parking structure at the Village Entrance, which was defeated by public opposition.
While she claims overdevelopment safeguards are already in place, it’s a whole different world since her term. Wealthy developers have funded $250,000 to get their pro-growth City Council candidates elected, thereby creating a three-to-two controlling voting bloc that consistently ignores residents and their fellow city councilmembers while promoting downtown business and development interests.
Developers have hired a high-end political consulting firm to dupe the unengaged into opposing the ballot initiative. (Calling themselves the “protectors” of Laguna is the height of irony.)
The City Council bloc has appointed a pro-growth city manager and stacked City departments, boards and committees with like-minded members—all to change building ordinances and grant variances to businesses and developers.
Take the City Council’s recent Brown Act violation—illegal voting in secret to allow Mo Honarkar’s Hotel Laguna renovation to continue with no plans, no permits and few inspections. What next—the community-killing destruction of the library so we can clog downtown with a parking structure that businesses want residents to pay for? All while permitting new, high-capacity restaurants and bars without demanding them to provide more parking.
Pearson calls the Montage a shining example of the system working. It only got approved because alarmed residents went outside of town to buck the system and prevent it from becoming an architecturally incompatible, private compound. Oddly, she mildly praises those activist residents who fought its overdevelopment but now she admonishes residents to shut up and let developers steamroll over them.
She claims our existing codes protect our town. They don’t. Liberate Laguna’s Sam Goldstein has been lobbying the press and city hall to dramatically increase building heights. One look at the heavily business-oriented Downtown Specific Plan clearly shows it’ll destroy much of Laguna’s charm in favor of more tourists, taller buildings and more restaurants and bars.
If anyone thinks the city is protected, remember that’s what Dana Point thought. And it’s passed a similar initiative, as have Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.
Voting yes on the Laguna Residents First ballot initiative is the only safeguard that ensures residents will have a say in the large, commercial development of Laguna – not just developers, businesses and the politicians they fund. Vote yes on the ballot initiative.
There was no Brown Act violation except by George Weiss, by his own admission.
Only in your mind, Mr. Quilter.