AgdaPkt 2013-09-23 Closed and Regular

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8.A. - Page 451 SSL ML Silvia Vonderlinden R .UX April 16, 2013 LAW Page 5 FIRM LLP requirement not met is for minimum front yard setback, and that is because the proposed homes need to account for the differences between uphill and downhill lots. Because the proposed Project generally complies with the Zoning Code, it should have been approved as sought. Instead, Amended Condition 19 applies a house size restriction that is not found in the Zoning Code. In fact, the Zoning Code contains no similar restriction in any zone on house sizes. The Planning Commission apparently considered information regarding how other communities have, by legislative action, decided to regulate hillside homes. The Commission amended and applied these policies from other jurisdictions in an ad hoc fashion, applying new standards to LWJV. These standards have no basis in law. In fact, in the fall of 20113 the City considered and rejected a similar formula (see Exhibit H2) that would have governed the size of all new hillside residences throughout the RH zone, which has more than 2,000 properties. In this way, the City has singled LWJV out for treatment different from that afforded every other property owner in the City generally, and within the RH zone specifically, without any basis for doing so. Had the City determined that limited house sizes in the RH Zone was appropriate and necessary, it should have and presumably would have adopted the Zoning Code amendment it considered. Subjecting these owners to standards not applied against others violates their rights to equal protection and substantive and procedural due process. Hamer v Ross (19663) 59 Cal.2d 776; Ross v. City of Yorba Linda (1991)1 Cal.AppAth 954. Just last year, the City properly applied the RH Zoning requirements and issued a PD Permit for an approximately 4,000 square foot home on Laurel Way. There is no rational basis for treating LWJV's application for a PD Permit differently from their neighbor down the street. We respectfully remind the City Council that the LWJV group banded together in order to address concerns regarding infrastructure improvements necessary to serve the proposed homes and to facilitate comprehensive environmental review, a level of review that is not required when a single property owner develops a home on his or her own property. The LWJV has been through four years of Project and environmental review and has already spent over $1 million dollars to get to this point. It is time fbr the City to approve the Project as sought and allow LWJV members to move on with applying to build the homes they seek to build. [Remainder of page intensionally left blank] 2 In fact, the Staff Report for the Manch 26, 2013 Planning Commission meeting explained that the hillside development restriction had been rejected due to the vohm m of existing residents who were opposed to the proposed change. (2369-0002100312193;3 )