Commission Pulls La Paz Off Agenda

• Majority of Planning Panel Wants It Sent to City Council

BY BILL KOENEKER

In a surprising action called “shocking” by the applicant’s consultant, the Malibu Planning Commission last week voted 3-2 with Commissioners Jeff Jennings and Ed Gillespie dissenting, to take off the agenda a scheduled hearing for the proposed La Paz shopping center/ office complex planned for the Civic Center.
“It doesn’t belong on the agenda,” said Commissioner Joan House, who made the motion to strike the matter.
Municipal planning officials had put La Paz before the commission again after a previous panel made recommendations to the city council about approving a scaled back version, but gave thumbs down to an expanded version that includes a City Hall and development agreement.
Some commissioners indicated the applicant was, in effect, getting a second bite from the apple, because the staff insists the revisions to the project, which include a new wastewater system, were not enough to warrant recirculation of the environmental documents, but there is enough difference to require the commission to again review the project.
However, Chair House and Commissioners John Mazza and Regan Schaar said the planning panel had spent hours and several hearings on the matter and urged that it be forwarded to the council.
Assistant City Attorney Greg Kovacevich insisted the commission review the matter, saying they were not doing their job.
Initially, Jennings asked Kovacevich what would be the consequences, if any, of the commission taking it off the calendar.
The assistant city attorney did not answer the question at first and then said, “You can’t decide you don’t want to do your job.” Later. when it became clear the planning panel was moving forward with the House motion, he indicated the city could possibly be exposed to litigation because of the commission’s action.
At times, the deliberations became a matter of panelists debating with Kovacevich about what the commission could or would not do.
Later, the applicant’s representatives were able to comment. “I am shocked that there would be any attempt to squelch [the public hearing]. We need to speak to the specifics,” said Don Schmitz, a land use consultant for the applicant.
Jennings argued the matter should be heard by the commission. “We have a revised EIR. It is our job to decide. It is a changed EIR. I don’t know what is going on here,” he added.
When the opponents’ attorney, Alan Block, who is representing Eric and Tamara Hughes Gustavson, the owners of property next to the proposed commercial complex, spoke he said the planning commission has no authority to reconsider its prior resolutions or change its prior recommendations to the city council.
Block said the city’s municipal code did not sanction the hearing.
Both Schaar and Mazza had reiterated that position, saying it was the staff determination to bring the matter back to the planning commission, the city council had never directed such a move and, in fact, had voted that the previous council would not hear the matter, but rather the newly elected body.
However, the attorney for the applicant, Stanley Lamport, said the commission’s action would create a conundrum for the applicant, since the city council had before it the older plans and not the revised project.
“It is a strange position. This is the only way we can proceed. This is the only way to go through the process,” he added.
Block said he disagreed. “It is the same project, the same staff report. It should not be here [before the commission],” he said.
House, who was attending the meeting via teleconference call from Boston, seemed to weary of the debate and began to call the question, meaning it was time to stop talking and take a vote. However, no one seconded her call and Gillespie, who was chairing the meeting, let deliberations continue until comments concluded.
From the get-go, La Paz has followed a somewhat different path, given that the alternative proposal was handled as a separate project, and the staff’s determination that the commission would not use its authority to act on any aspects of the projects, but simply make recommendations to the city council.