Lawsuit forces issue of whether city staff cracked under political pressure
(Editor’s note: This is the first story in a multi-part series that focuses on a 6-year-old’s playhouse caught in the middle of a legal battle with the city of Santa Monica).
A former City Hall employee says he quit because Santa Monica’s top brass are bending to inside political pressure in deciding which zoning violations to prosecute.
Mike Gruett said he left his job because he was ordered to designate a 6-year-old’s backyard playhouse illegal even though he determined it wasn’t. Gruett, a code compliance supervisor, also said he was forced to lay off another playhouse that clearly was illegal.
Gruett’s claim marked the latest chapter in a 17-month-old lawsuit filed by David and Beth Levy against the city. The couple, who live in a Santa Monica east side neighborhood, claim that former mayor and current city councilman Ken Genser advocated that city staff reverse the ruling that the playhouse was legal because the Levy’s backyard neighbor complained directly to him.
Gruett’s allegations were unveiled at a press conference Friday held by Levys’ attorney Chris Harding.
It’s unclear why Gruett waited one year since his departure to bring allegations that the city’s zoning division can crack under political pressure.
In this case, he claims that his supervisor, Planning Director Suzanne Frick, had him issue a notice of violation to the Levy family even though he had earlier found the playhouse satisfied city zoning laws.
“In the course of my career, I have issued well over 1,000 notices of violation,” he said in court papers. “I believe that the (one involving the Levy playhouse) is the only one I have ever issued where I believe that no violation existed. I am not proud of this document but was forced to sign it by direct order of my supervisor.”
The true reason Frick decided to reverse Gruett’s original ruling is up to a judge, who’ll next hear arguments in the case March 25. Gruett wasn’t at the Friday press conference announcing his claims.
Genser said Sunday that Gruett’s claims aren’t true. The councilman says he was merely passing along a complaint from Tunde Garai, the neighbor who claimed city staff wasn’t responding to her. Genser said he asked by e-mail that city staff follow up on her complaints.
“Whatever staff did they did it on their own,” Genser said, adding Garai’s complaint was lost for weeks in City Hall. “I was just passing on the complaint and saying, ‘hey get off the dime and respond to this.’”
“Whatever staff did they did it on their own.” — — KEN GENSER Santa Monica city councilman
The Levy case presents a host of unanswered questions in a lawsuit which is, by all appearances, being used to manipulate public opinion of City Hall.
City law prevents elected officials from ordering any official staff action. It requires that all inquiries go through the city manager, currently Susan McCarthy. The law is meant to protect city employees from undue pressure by elected officials.
This political storm has brewed over the smallest of questions — whether the Levy’s playhouse is a two-story structure because it is elevated on posts.
Gruett, who had worked with David Levy for months while the playhouse was being built, said it is a one-story building which required no building permit. He determined because the playhouse is elevated above the ground by wooden posts and the space under it isn’t enclosed, there is no bottom floor.
But the city decided the space below the elevated floor is a basement after Garai’s complaint was passed on to Frick and other planning department officials. The ruling turned the structure into a two-story building and sparked the threat of criminal prosecution. “... Applying this to the Levy playhouse was absurd and I recall my jaw practically dropping when I heard plan-ning professionals state this very strained zoning ordinance interpretation,” Gruett said in court papers.
After months and thousands of dollars in modifications to appease the city and Garai, the Levys say they were told the $11,000 playhouse was illegal. To avoid charges, they would have had to tear it down.
The Levy family said Garai turned a cold shoulder to them after repeatedly cooperating in their plans to build the playhouse for their son, Jacob.
When David Levy chose to sue the city, he turned the case into the latest political storm surrounding City Hall. He chose Chris Harding, a land use lawyer who’s made something of a practice out of suing the city, to handle the case.
“I had to protect myself and my family,” he said. “It was my only course of action.”
Levy said that until Garai complained, he thought he was doing everything according to the law.
“I realized when they reopened the case I knew something else was going on,” he said. “I wasn’t being dealt with in an open and honest way. We followed the rules but some people from the city went back on their word. But now I am pleased. Finally someone in City Hall stood up and told the truth.”
Gruett is characterized as a classic whistle blower by Harding.
Gruett said his decision to quit his two-year stint with the city came after another episode in which he was deeply troubled by an order from higher-ups. While the Levy affair was brewing, Gruett sent a notice of violation to a homeowner north of Montana Avenue whose playhouse was too close to the lot line, according to court papers.
But Gruett says his notice was intercepted in City Hall’s mailroom by Frick, who told him that no enforcement was to be taken on any playhouse other than the Levy’s while the city decided whether playhouse enforcement was costing too much to be worth it, according to court papers. “... Perhaps of most direct concern to me professionally in attempting to build a zoning enforcement program for Santa Monica, I believed and still believe that the decision to move forward with enforcement on the Levy playhouse (based on at best a dubious interpretation of the zoning ordinance) while forcing my staff to retract a notice of violation relating to a plainly illegal playhouse in the city represented an egregious case of ‘selective enforcement,’” Gruett said in court papers. “In the end, I decided I could not tolerate working under those circumstances and resigned.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 18, 2002. Read the original PDF.