Decisions on two key issues at the Los Altos City Council’s March 26 meeting demonstrated how council members often disagree with the recommendations of city staff and the Planning Commission.
In the city staff reports on subdividing a residential lot and revising the city’s story-pole policy, planners in charge of the projects recommended approving them. However, the council continued the discussion on the proposed subdivision and accepted just one of the Planning Commission’s suggested amendments to story-pole guidelines.
Fighting for character
Thirty residents of the Montebello Acres neighborhood weighed in on the proposed subdivision of the lot at 831 Arroyo Road, nine of whom who spoke in front of the council and 21 of whom submitted letters. They represented the 136 neighbors from 104 households who signed a petition objecting to the subdivision. That’s 90 percent of the neighborhood, according to Raymundo Avenue resident Nancy Ellickson.
Michael Look, who lives across the street from the site the owner wants to divide into an interior lot and a corner lot, said the petition was not designed to push an anti-development agenda, but rather to underscore that residents oppose development that could change the character of their neighborhood.
Previously, Look spoke in front of the Planning Commission, which he said may have been misinformed as a result of inconsistencies in the staff report. For example, the original map of the neighborhood included Gilmore Street, a road lined with 57 “significantly” smaller lots on the Mountain View/Los Altos border, he said. Look claimed the map also excluded all 19 of Montebello Acres’ largest lots directly across Arroyo Road, such as his property.
The angry shaking of heads and snickers directed at council members that rippled through the council chambers during the discussion largely overshadowed the fact that the Planning Commission and city staff had already recommended approving the subdivision. The mood worsened when project architect Rick Hartman told the council that orienting the house on the corner lot toward Arroyo Road’s cross street, Mountain View Avenue, was a viable option because it is “a legitimate street, too.”
“I don’t think we should be quite this discriminatory against Mountain View people,” Hartman said, eliciting laughter from neighbors turned out in protest.
After 90 minutes of back-and-forth among the council, staff, Hartman and Montebello Acres residents, the council unanimously approved a motion to continue the item to the council’s regularly scheduled April 23 meeting.
Rectifying an ‘eyesore’
The city of Los Altos mandates that developers erect mesh-covered story poles on-site to frame the dimensions of their proposed projects.
A windstorm that swept through Los Altos Dec. 1 caused the 2-foot-wide mesh netting around story poles installed at developer Mircea Voskerician’s 4856 El Camino Real project to act as sails that broke off a portion of the poles’ framing. A pole subsequently crashed into an adjacent, occupied structure.
A week after Jeff Potts and his staff erected story poles at his 389 First St. development recently, one bent in half, again due to the mesh’s resistance against the wind.
Although no one was hurt in either incident, local developers are lobbying for a revised policy that would enable them to use alternate materials for story poles.
Voskerician, Potts and fellow developers Alex Comsa and Steve Johnson sent letters and copies of policies from other cities to council members prior to their March 26 meeting to reiterate what Planning Commissioners had noted when they recently discussed the policy, enacted in 2015: The city should adopt more modern, safer standards to notify the public of a project’s size.
The Planning Commission in January drafted an amended policy for the council’s review that recommends installing story poles at least 20 days before the first public hearing on a new project and removing them as soon as possible after the hearing and once the poles and netting are photographed by the applicant. City staff would then select the best photos at a minimum size of 8.5-inches-by-11-inches and post them on a display board on the street side of the subject property. Only once the board goes up could the poles and netting be removed. The commission also suggested allowing flagging, or continuous pennant flags, as an option to replace mesh.
Councilwoman Anita Enander – who serves as liaison to the Planning Commission – Councilwoman Jan Pepper and Mayor Lynette Lee Eng took offense to the commission’s characterization of story poles as “stone age” and an “eyesore.” If the developers are responsible for constructing a major complex, then they should know how to properly install and reinforce story poles, Pepper argued.
The council ultimately voted 3-2 to accept only one of the Planning Commission’s proposed changes to the story-pole policy: adding pennant flags as an alternative to the mesh required to cover the story poles. Councilwomen Jeannie Bruins and Neysa Fligor dissented.
Using flagging is a “good start” to dealing with this issue, Voskerician and Comsa agreed after the meeting.
“The position on the story-pole policy of the three city council members (Enander, Pepper and Lee Eng) is reckless, irrational and uneducated and affects the health and safety of tenants and people in general,” Voskerician said. “Any liabilities will end up with the city and those individuals responsible. Ignorance does not absolve you.”
