Meetings and more meetings, and canyon challenges still unresolved

In the business world when someone asks if this is a “meeting before the meeting,” it’s not a good sign.

It usually highlights inefficiency, bureaucracy or an unruly project. In the public sector, however, it’s business as usual.

Which brings us to the April 20 meeting on the fate of Laguna Canyon zoning by the Planning Commission. It was a meeting before the meeting times 27.

In other words, there will be countless additional meetings, workshops, brainstorming sessions, whiteboarding, note taking, handwringing, snarky public testimony and, in the end, the long-suffering consultant, MIG, will craft immaculate PowerPoint slides with 10.2 recommendations.

All of them will be sanitized and wholly predictable, mirroring the loudest and most powerful voices of the community.

The irony of this crafted, well-intentioned guidance is that none of it holds any real power. It’s just an expensive exercise in hearing ourselves talk. The outcome of the Laguna Canyon Planning Study, while most likely interesting, is not legally binding.

Having said that, here we are (again) trying to solve the canyon’s woes. And there are plenty of them.

It’s a bottle-necked catastrophe waiting to happen. Pick any flavor of disaster — fire, flood, mudslide — and there’s no way out.

The existing development is a schizophrenic nightmare.

The residents claim environmental protectionism so loudly that it’s a wonder any wildlife still stick around. And yet, historically, there are so many ecological code violations that the city has stopped keeping track.

A poorly maintained, nasty creek sometimes trickles in the middle of the canyon, reminding us that everything bad runs downhill. And when that creek does decide to roar, the illegal cementing by residents only contributes to the flooding.

The long and short of it is the city has never really done a good job in the canyon. To be fair, significant portions were outside of the city’s control until the annexation.

Nonetheless, it’s a mixed zoning bag that presents significant challenges, not to mention inherent unfairness.

“You can’t build within 25 feet of the center line of the creek, but everyone out here has,” said resident Louis Longi, after the meeting. “Everyone has encroached with concrete, fences and walls, and they’ve choked the creek. So now a 25-year flood seems like a 100-year flood. Now there’s a problem with safety.”

Longi has been working for more than a year to build a new artist live-work housing project. While he has received the initial go-ahead from the city, he is still working through appeals and the California Coastal Commission.

In the meantime, he has worked to mitigate creek problems but laments what he sees as double standards within city policies and politics.

“This is all just a way for the City Council to feel like they’re doing something because they’re not doing anything,” he said, referring to the new canyon study. “It’s the city allowing zoning to happen. It’s no different than in the ‘80s when Village Laguna passed a code that said no more second stories. No one questioned it. But it’s this need to put restrictions on something without looking to the future. That’s what happening.”

Whether or not the future can be predicted, it was clear in the meeting that the first order of business for MIG was to review and consolidate the closet full of dusty historical reports and studies.

“As we looked at the plethora of planning documents, what we discovered is that there are great policies and guidelines,” said Jenny An, MIG’s project manager, in her opening comments. “It’s not that additional policies are needed, but rather there may need to be additional development standards and regulations.”

So no policies but more standards and regulations, which probably means more meetings.

The planning commissioners want MIG to beef up the findings and focus on suggestions that can make an impact.

But for the residents in attendance, there was a consistent theme: Keep it the same, keep it rural and low density, but feel free to support some quirky artsiness.

For Longi, a decorated artist, he couldn’t help but sit in the back and shake his head, thinking about all the challenges he’s faced with his live-work project.

“The hypocrisy is beyond me,” he said, again pointing to the downtown lesson. “We need to be responsible and have more economical housing and more of an urbanesque environment downtown to keep Laguna truly what it is. Otherwise, it’s just going to be these high-end retail shops that aren’t going to be the identity of Laguna. And that’s our problem.

“If they pass this and no one is fighting it other than me, then in 15 years the city will come along and say, ‘You know what, we need to change the density in the canyon and encourage artist live-work.’”

I have to admit that there is more to the Laguna Canyon Planning Study than meets the eye. What it becomes and whether it has any real influence remains to be seen.

But for now, the city needs to step up and start making these meetings count. No one wants to waste time fighting the same well-worn battles of protectionism.

Let’s be clear. Laguna Beach is a small town throttled by entrenched favoritism, and until we change that, we will continue to have meetings before the meetings.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.