Residents now have the right to keep views they currently possess, but whether they will have the right to restore views is still up in the air.
By Knowles Adkisson / Associate Editor
The Malibu City Council on Monday voted 3-2 to adopt a view preservation ordinance, but delayed a decision on the much more controversial subject of view restoration for approximately six months.
The preservation ordinance allows property owners, effective immediately, to request a primary view determination from the city. For a $260 fee, planning staff will go to the property, determine the primary view and take photographs to establish the right to that view in perpetuity. If foliage from neighboring properties grows to obscure that view in the future, the property owner can have the city force the offending neighbor to trim the foliage and restore the view should mediation and arbitration between the two parties fail.
Not as clear is what will happen with view restoration. Sixty percent of Malibu voters in 2008 approved an advisory measure that asked if the council should adopt an ordinance requiring the removal or trimming of foliage “in order to restore and maintain primary views from private homes.”
However, Councilmembers Lou La Monte and Pamela Conley Ulich expressed fears that if the city granted property owners the right to restore views that existed as far back as the city’s incorporation in 1991, the city could potentially face a deluge of lawsuits. La Monte and Ulich were countered by Mayor Laura Rosenthal and Councilmember Jefferson Wagner, who argued that voters had specifically requested view restoration and the council should comply with that request.
Councilmember John Sibert, the swing vote, instead suggested giving property owners interested in view restoration a one-time, six-month window of opportunity to file view restoration claims with the city, or else permanently forfeit that right. Sibert said the period was needed to know how many property owners are actually interested in view restoration, and thus what the city’s potential legal costs would be.
Sibert said property owners needed to “recognize that if they really want this restoration ordinance they need to come forward and then we’ll have a measure of what it is we’re dealing with. I don’t know whether the [legal] risk to the city is $600,000 or $6 million.”
Before the six-month period can begin, staff has been directed to prepare a program outlining how property owners should be notified. The program will likely be approved by the council at either its March 13 or April 9 meetings. The six-month period would then begin as soon as all residents receive notification.
At the end of the six months, the council would decide among three options for the view ordinance. One would be to exclude restoration from the ordinance altogether, if it is determined the legal vulnerability to the city is too great. Or, the council could direct staff to amend the existing preservation ordinance to include retroactivity. A third option would be to write a separate ordinance, in which the city would only issue advisory opinions on individual view claim cases but would not be liable for enforcing them.
Councilmember Jefferson Wagner, who voted against the measure, said the council was “tiptoeing” around the issue and the six-month period was an unnecessary delay.
“You micromanage these things and you never get anything done,” Wagner said. “ŠWe owe [voters] what they elected to put on the ballot and what we are elected to return to them.”