L.A. City Council Considers Lowering Appeal Fee for Developers
Categories: Politics
At the Los Angeles City Council meeting tomorrow, council members such as Ed Reyes, who chairs the powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee, will consider lowering a planning department appeal fee for real estate developers while raising that same fee for citizens, according to community activists.
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| Jack Balingit |
| Will skyscrapers more easily sprout up in residential neighborhoods without affordable appeal fees? |
The move already has community groups mobilizing for a showdown at Tuesday's council meeting.
Daniel Wright of the Mount Washington Homeowners Alliance, for example, sent out a mass email to its members and other neighborhood activists saying that the "fees appear to be more intended to discourage the exercise of your right to appeal than to meet the city's obligations to you."
Wright, who's a land use and environmental attorney, says that instead of a real estate developer having to cover 85 percent of a planning department appeal fee for a given project, the developer would now pay a fraction of that cost and the citizen would be asked to pick up more of the tab.
Community activists have been urging citizens to contact their city council members about the appeal fee switcheroo.
Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.
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