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Richard Gardner, Capistrano Beach
The outcome of the Via Verde duplex issue is disappointing.
The City Council each handled their concerns and were articulate regarding the issues.
I expected the Council to ask the attorney what the options were and he would have said approved, denied or sent it back to the staff for further review. The applicant could have reduced the back building to a size similar to the neighborhood, maybe two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and the item could have been placed on the calendar for the next meeting.
The real issue is how we can control the wolves who will devour our community for profit. The General Plan Housing element talks about our affordable housing requirements. Demolishing a smaller, single-family house to build a much larger, (and more expensive) single-family home doesn’t help the housing crisis. Your planner told you the solution was three smaller, two-bedroom homes on each lot. Total size is 6+6 =12 bedrooms, but that was not allowed by the zoning code. You approved 16 bedrooms. Fix the code.
The traffic or parking issues must be reviewed. Nowhere in the record is parking dealt with thoroughly and analytically. I tried to tell you that the city parking enforcement has written 3,600-plus tickets for parking on a sweeper day. (That’s about $180,000 from our duplex community alone).** That is because some people forget, but also because there is little parking. They don’t all fit on the other side of the street.
You must get control of growth for profit in our community. The first step could be to look at other zoning codes to see what is worth incorporating into our code. It is time to revise our zoning code to manage our special beach community.
**Editor’s Note: The number of tickets cannot be confirmed.
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