EDITORIAL: Victory for ‘just folks’

Two cases in the news last week show how the pendulum swings in the constant struggle between community activists and people who are in business or trying to build something in Laguna Beach.

The Roof Top bar at La Casa del Camino got a reprieve from the City Council, after staying open to the public despite a decision by the Planning Commission that an open-to-the-public bar was expressly prohibited at the site.

The Roof Top, as it is affectionately known by its clientele, garnered a lot of local support after the operator was ordered to keep non-hotel patrons out. The fact that city officials had disapproved of the bar for reasons including patron safety and neighborhood impacts was all but lost in the rush of enthusiasm for the site.

Now we’ll see whether the barkeep can come to terms with the Planning Commission, which has been all but ordered to do what it must to keep the bar open to all.

St. Catherine Catholic School had the reverse problem: A proposed redevelopment project that was supported by city officials, who were aghast when the California Coastal Commission, responding to a local activist’s query, decided that the city-issued permit for the project could be appealed to the state panel because a rivulet of water runs through it.

The school, with the blessing of city officials, sued the commission and won a judge’s ruling that the water on the site was not an official “stream,” therefore negating Coastal Commission jurisdiction.

City officials are delighted by the ruling, because they saw the case as having far wider ramifications for Laguna Beach. If a rivulet of water on a property could open up city coastal development permits to appeal, city heads argued, then thousands of parcels would be potentially subject to Coastal Commission oversight.

We’re pretty sure the “activists” who sought the commission’s review of the project are not happy with this result, and there may be more to this story.

But at the end of the day, both cases saw victories for “just folks” who were up against bureaucracies wielding the sword of law.