QUESTIONS FOR THE CANDIDATES FOR CULVER CITY COUNCIL
ON RESIDENTIAL ZONING
Issued to every candidate on February 28, 2016
Responses submitted between March 7 and March 9, 2016
Candidates who responded:
Goran Eriksson
Jay Garacochea
Daniel Lee
Meghan Sahli-Wells
Thomas Aujero Small
Marcus Tiggs
Candidates who declined to respond:
Scott Wyant
Introduction written to the candidates: The following questions are on behalf of a group of concerned and involved Culver City residents. During your campaigning, you may have learned that many residents feel strongly that our neighborhoods are rapidly losing their unique characteristics in the currently building boom. The changes the City Council recently adopted to Culver City’s antiquated R-1 zoning codes are a step in the right direction. However, the City continues to refine the balance between minimizing impact on current owners while promoting responsible growth through updates to its residential zoning codes. As a Councilmember, you will be quickly asked to consider both the immediate and long term health and happiness of our residents, so we greatly appreciate your taking the time to address the following questions.
With a recent quantifiable increase in large home construction and increasing public outcry in opposition would you characterize Culver City as being at a residential crossroads? In regards to residential neighborhoods, please explain your vision of where CC is now and how its future is being shaped.
Do you believe the new regulations for R1 zoning are adequate or do they warrant further study? (For example, the current zoning code still allows for the construction of a home that is more than twice the size of the average current Culver City homes.)
At a recent Council meeting, the Council directed the Planning Department and City Manager to prepare an RFP to hire an outside consultant to further study and refine our residential zoning and codes. Is it your opinion that investing the time and money in a thorough study from an independent outside consulting firm will be in the long term best financial interest of Culver City? Why or why not? (Other nearby cities and communities have done such as they re-evaluate and update their respective residential zoning codes).
If you support the hiring of an independent outside consulting firm, would feel one of their main responsibilities would be to work with residents of each neighborhood to develop a thorough proposal for each neighborhood that maintains the character of that neighborhood as neighborhood renewal takes place?
Culver City has already officially defined the boundaries of it respective neighborhoods, and in recent study sessions quantitatively defined the differences of each. Do you support establishing zoning codes on a residential neighborhood by neighborhood basis to replace the current single, city-wide codes?
How do you respond to some developers’ claims that large homes are a substantial benefit to surrounding property values and the city through increased property tax revenue? (Per the 2015 Annual Financial Report: “Property taxes only account for about 3.5% to 4.5% of General Fund revenues.”
As you may be aware, there has a record number of permits approved and submitted recently for homes above 3,000 sf, many of which are yet to start construction? Would you support an immediate temporary moratorium on issuing permitting to homes of a certain size, say above a .5 FAR (approximately twice that of average current Culver City house) until the independent outside study is completed and its recommendations acted upon?
During the “mansionization” discussion in 2015 with the Planning Commission and City Council, the public’s only opportunity to be formally heard in public was limited to two and three minute comments at the head of each meeting. If you do not feel this is sufficient, specifically how would you work to better engage the residents of Culver City in this discussion?
Conclusion: I have said throughout my campaign whatever is decided by this Council or the new Council will not make everyone happy. However, if elected I will give more weight to the concerns of the residents. I personally have the sense while acknowledging the hard work of planning and the commission that the mansionization can has been kicked down the road for too long. Clearly the process was rushed and still not really complete. While the FARs will help it is an incomplete solution. There is nothing we can do to come up with subjective designs that are agreeable to all stakeholders, however we can and should focus now on design guidelines that fine tune the new FARs, etc. to come closer to a more complete solution.