Residents want city to mediate disputes
By MICHAEL J. TITTINGER Daily Press Staff Writer
CITYWIDE — Longtime resident Ken Ziff has had that creeping feeling lately, as he sits looking out the window in his second-story Ocean Park apartment. Each day that passes, he bears witness to the manifest destiny of a bamboo hedge four feet from his window that continually stretches skyward.
Ziff, a sales and marketing rep who has been entrenched in his unit for a quarter century, is slowly seeing what he calls a “beautiful eastward view” eclipsed before his eyes. Waiting for the city to resolve widespread criticisms of its hedge-height ordinance, Ziff and his roommate are left in the dark.
“The whole thing is a joke, it’s been going on so long,”a frustrated Ziff said this week of the city’s ongoing efforts to enforce agreeable limitations.“They keep trying to come up with a solution so that people can get along with each other, so that we can live in harmony … but how many years are going to go by with people suffering as they wait for a resolution?”
Less than a year ago — on Aug. 26, 2005 — new interim fence, wall and hedge regulations went into effect across the city, after having been approved by the City Council. The provisions stated that front yard hedges could not exceed 42 inches and that those abutting alleys could be as high as a property owner desired. However, it is the hedge-height standards for those living dividers that separate one property owner from another that is leaving once-friendly neighbors on opposite sides of the fence.
The ordinance adopted in the wake of mounting pressure last summer from residents calling on the city to start enforcing hedge laws that had been on the books since 1948 permitted property owners to exceed the previous eight-foot height requirement in favor of a new 12-foot restriction. However, the provision also made allowances for the “grandfathering” in of pre-existing hedges that already exceeded those standards,putting the onus on disgruntled neighbors to file complaints with the city about exceedingly tall hedges and prove they adversely affected their quality of life.
The fallout has been more mounting pressure — from both residents who feel City Hall has turned its back on them, denying their claims that hedges have had a profound affect, as well as property owners citing privacy requirements and fears that if they trim their hedges it could affect property values.
“It’s left us with this antagonistic relationship between property owners, like the Palestinians and the Israelis,” said Ziff, whose appeal against the adjacent Raymond Avenue homeowner with a bamboo hedge is currently in appeal. “It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be solved, and that’s particularly frustrating.”
HEDGING ON TAKING ACTION On May 25, more than a dozen residents with their respective hedge complaints in appeal attended a council meeting to voice their dissatisfaction with the interim ordinance, calling upon the council to revisit the law and its enforcement, or lack thereof, as well as to lodge complaints about a seemingly one-sided appeals process that costs each party in excess of $200.
Mayor Bob Holbrook, a staunch supporter of hedge height limits, requested that the council direct staff to prepare amendments to the interim fence and hedge ordinance, including extending the period for appeals to the Planning Commission and to waive appeal fees entirely, according to the meeting’s minutes. In the end, no formal action was taken.
In June, a letter was sent out “To interested parties involved in a fence, wall or hedge objection appeal hearing” from Amanda Schacter, a planning manager with the City Hall’s Planning Division, informing those with quality-of-life complaints that appeal hearings have been postponed until later this year, or early next year, as a result “of recent events.”
For many residents waiting for the city to mediate an ongoing dispute with their neighbors, the latest postponement was greeted with a pessimistic shrug and resignation.
“We really have no recourse. We’ve hit a wall,”said Ann Greenspun, who has lived north of Montana for 29 years and is feuding with her neighbor in regards to an Eugenia hedge between the two homes. “I can understand there are a lot of other issues with the city, but it’s frustrating. No one even calls anymore.
“Besides, how many times can we go to City Council and tell them the same things over and over again?” she asked.
Hedge heights became something of a galvanizing campaign issue in 2004, helping to prompt current Mayor Pro Tem Bobby Shriver, an advocate for those with considerable hedge heights, to throw his hat in the ring and mount a run for City Council.
A reprisal of the 2004 debates would likely pit Shriver and Holbrook against one another in the months and weeks leading up to this year’s election, in which Holbrook and fellow council members Pam O’Connor and Kevin McKeown are all seeking re-election. Shriver is currently the co-chair of Holbrook’s re-election campaign.
At least one disgruntled property owner with a hedge complaint in appeal questioned the timing of Shriver’s excusing himself from the May 25 Council meeting, leaving to catch a flight to New York shortly before those scheduled to speak out against the unenforced hedge heights took to the podium.
For his part, Shriver doesn’t think the current list of complaints warrants a rewriting of the city ordinance.
“My official position is that if people are behaving badly, then the city should try and do something,” said Shriver last week. “But if there were 3,000 people cited two years ago and now nine are having a problem, well, you draw your own conclusions.
“In a perfect world, nobody would be complaining, but I don’t know that the whole ordinance needs to be rewritten.”
BITING THE BULLET As complaints about City Hall’s inaction on hedges mount, so do the frustration levels of those living in the shadows of hedges that exceed height standards. Virginia Kohfeld claimed she had a very agreeable relationship with her neighbor before a sprouting bamboo hedge came between them.
“We loved our neighbors before all this. We made every effort to welcome them,” said Kohfeld of her neighbor of 10 years. “Now that hedge is over 20 feet high and it impinges on our windows. There’s no light in the bedroom. We have over the years trimmed the bamboo, but my husband is 79 and I’m 70. We’re getting too old to do that.”
Meanwhile, the city remains in a “holding pattern,” in regards to its enforcement of the hedge heights throughout the city, according to Schacter. This week, the planning manager said that city staff wasn’t really certain what the council’s direction, as they were not given specific directions at the May 25 meeting and must wait for council members to put the matter back on the agenda to be discussed.
Several residents have complained that the burden has proven too daunting, with the city requiring color photographs, timelines and scientific proof to back up claims that the respective resident’s quality of life has been impacted. Add in the council’s grandfathering clause of one year ago, whereby hedges that exceeded height limits but predated the hearings process could remain intact unless written objections were filed, and more than a few residents have lost faith in the system.
A list of complaints lodged with Holbrook by dissatisfied residents earlier this year included: Neighbors being pitted against one another, a dereliction of duty on the city’s part to enforce hedge heights, a lack of definition for terms such as “quality of life” and “injurious or detrimental”, a bias in favor of hedge owners, well documented problems with the appeal process, and property values being negatively affected.
Lastly, the complainants admitted they were “pessimistic about future enforcement.”
“The problem is we really don’t have any standards at all,” said Holbrook. “Say what you like about the grandfathering, but it’s a moving target. It’s growing. It’s alive and it’s just gonna keep on going.”
Holbrook’s counterpart on the dais, Councilman Kevin McKeown, expressed frustration this week that the council hadn’t instructed staff to research recommendations for the current hedge height ordinance.
“Clearly, there’s a need to expedite a solution,” said McKeown, who said he had received two complaints just last week — one from a resident who felt unprotected by the city, the other from a property owner who feels cutting his hedges might impact the sale of his property.
“What complicates it is that Shriver and Holbrook are on opposite sides of the issue, but we made a commitment to residents to come up with a fair way to deal with the issue and I will do what I can,” McKeown said. “The way the appeals process was handled administratively has left people feeling unheard, and some feel the situation is getting worse. We have to take it on a case-to-case basis. It’s a big commitment, but if we really wanted to deal with the problem — one that was undealt with for 55 years — it’s time to play catch-up and bite the bullet. People are in distress.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 11, 2006. Read the original PDF.