permit

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Ever since the Jan. 7 wildfire incinerated much of Pacific Palisades, residents have pressed city leaders to do more to speed the recovery.

Fire victims have pushed Mayor Karen Bass to weigh in on mortgage relief. They have asked city leaders for help with their insurers. And they have sought clearer answers about the city’s timeline for putting utility lines underground.

Now, Palisades residents are on the verge of a major victory — wide-ranging relief from the permit fees charged by the Department of Building and Safety and several other agencies during the rebuilding process.

On Friday, the city’s top budget official issued a reworked proposal, recommending that the City Council waive the fees for every type of building destroyed in the fire.

In his nine-page report, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo recommended fee relief for single-family homes, duplexes, condominium complexes, townhouses, apartment buildings and commercial businesses.

That is a departure from the approach Szabo and other city officials initially favored. In October the council’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee sought to limit the relief to two types of buildings — single-family homes and duplexes — after expressing fears about the hit to the city budget if the program were more expansive.

Dozens of Palisades residents showed up at City Hall last month to denounce that narrower approach. Among them was Roseanne Landay, whose two-bedroom condominium was destroyed in the fire.

Landay said she didn’t understand why council members were treating residents of her building differently from other Palisades homeowners.

“We pay taxes. We vote. And these are our homes,” she said at the time. “We lost everything, just like our neighbors who happened to be lucky enough to live in a different structure, a different building.”

The boisterous protests helped spur the council to take another look. On Tuesday the budget committee is set to take up Szabo’s revised plan. From there it would head to the full council for a vote.

Szabo’s change in strategy was immediately welcomed by Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades.

“If we are going to rebuild and recover, it needs to be holistic, and that includes all of the properties,” she said in an interview.

The push to waive building permit fees in the Palisades has become a thorny political issue for Bass, who first announced the idea during her State of the City address last spring. Some in the Palisades said Bass did too little to shepherd the fee relief through the council’s approval process, allowing it to drift for much of the year.

Asked about Szabo’s propsoal, Bass said she would keep working to help Palisades residents “rebuild and return home.”

“I look forward to signing the ordinance into law to waive these fees and provide this much-needed relief that survivors deserve,” she said in a statement.

In April, days after her State of the City speech, Bass issued an emergency order temporarily suspending the payment of permit fees by wildfire victims until the council enacted a law making the fee relief permanent.

Weeks later, Landay and the group she founded, Pali Condo Captains, pressed Bass to expand her order to include townhouses, condominiums and other multiunit buildings. Bass did so in May.

The council’s ad hoc committee on wildfire recovery, which is chaired by Park, endorsed Bass’ proposal in June. But things got bogged down from there.

In October, council members on the budget committee voiced alarm about the potential loss to the city budget caused by forfeiting the permit fees, which cover the cost of city staff time. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield drew a link between the plan for fee relief and reduced services in other parts of the city.

During one hearing, Szabo warned that the cost of waiving the permit fees could reach as high as $278 million, which could wreak havoc with the city budget.

Palisades residents blasted that estimate as overinflated, pointing out that it assumed that every fire victim who lost a property in the Palisades would rebuild at 150% of the structure’s original size.

By December, it was clear that many had decided against rebuilding and planned to sell their properties instead — rendering them ineligible for the relief program. Under the proposal, fee waivers would not be provided to buyers of burned-out properties.

Szabo, in the report released Friday, said he reworked the numbers after reviewing the assumptions underlying the original cost figures presented to the council. Based on the revised numbers he now expects the cost of waiving the fees to reach about $90 million.

That estimate assumes the city will cover property owners who rebuild at 110% of the size of their original buildings. Property owners who build larger than 110% would have to pay a portion of the additional fees, Szabo said.

Landay, the Palisades condo advocate, said she’s happy to see a more inclusive relief plan and hopes the council will support it. From the beginning she argued that condo owners, many of whom are elderly, are among the community’s most economically vulnerable members.

At the same time, Landay wished she and her neighbors hadn’t had to spend so much time pressuring the city to act.

“I would much rather have spent this past year healing and recovering and rebuilding, instead of having to battle various government offices for assistance,” she said.

State of play

— CARUSO OUT: In a Friday evening news dump on social media, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso announced he will not run for mayor or governor. “Though my name will not be on a ballot, my work continues,” he said.

— HERE COMES THE TAXMAN: L.A. labor unions began gathering signatures this week for a ballot measure to raise taxes on companies whose top executives make at least 50 times more than their median employee. “It’s high time the rich paid more taxes,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel employees.

— WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO? Under the tax proposal, 70% of the proceeds — about $350 million per year — would go toward the development of housing for working families. Business groups denounced the proposal, saying it would drive companies out of the city.

— TAXES, PART TWO: Bass publicly threw her support behind a half-cent sales tax hike planned for the November ballot that would raise money for the fire department. The firefighters union recently began collecting signatures to get the measure on the ballot.

— MOVING ON: Meanwhile, L.A.’s new fire chief said in an interview that he won’t try to find out who was responsible for watering down the LAFD’s after-action report on the Palisades fire. Jaime Moore made those remarks one week after he publicly confirmed that the after-action report was rewritten to shield top brass from scrutiny.

— PLENTY OF POTHOLES: Since Christmas Eve, L.A. street crews repaired more than 3,800 potholes as they respond to a deluge of road repair complaints. The pothole problem comes amid a rainy season that has dumped more than 14 inches of precipitation on downtown L.A. between October and last week — roughly 99% of what the city typically sees by the end of March.

— WORDS GET IN THE WAY: The long-running legal battle between the city of Los Angeles and the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights over homeless services has devolved into a fight over definitions of specific words, The Times reports.

— BACKING BASS: Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and City Councilmember Tim McOsker spoke at a fundraiser for the mayor’s reelection campaign in San Pedro on Thursday. Bass is seeking a second four-year term in the June 2 primary election.

— POSITIONING PARK: Park, who is running for reelection in her Westside district, has raised more than $1 million for her campaign, spokesperson Michael Trujillo said this week. About half the donations came from within Park’s district, which includes coastal neighborhoods stretching from LAX to Pacific Palisades, according to her team.

On Monday, while speaking at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, Park made clear that she would rather concentrate on her council duties.

“It’s really more of a nuisance, having to focus on the campaign,” she said. “I have a lot of very, very serious, heavy work that we are in the midst of.”

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to the area around Venice Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue in the Pico Union neighborhood, which is represented by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez.
• On the docket next week: The council’s budget committee takes up the issue of Palisades rebuilding fees, as well as the mayor’s push to continue hiring police officers.

Stay in touch

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