Over the Hedge, Again

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

May 30 -- How to regulate Santa Monica’s oversized hedges seems to be a politically thorny problem that just won’t go away.

For years the City has been dealing with neighbors’ disputes over too-tall shrubbery. The City Council had hoped to lay the matter to rest ten months ago when it approved new regulations to replace a seldom-enforced 50-year-old fence-and-hedge ordinance.

But, in the latest wrinkle in the council’s continuing conundrum, more than a dozen residents were back at City Hall Thursday night to say that the new rules have failed to protect them from their neighbors’ fast-growing and ever-encroaching shrubs and shoots.

“The procedure here is a little unfair,” Bill Conkel told the council. “We’ve had our property diminished and we’ve never had an opportunity to do anything about it.”

In particular, the residents complained about the new ordinance’s “grandfather clause” and an appeal process they say is too expensive and puts them at an unfair disadvantage in making a case against the overwhelming walls of vegetation.

“We were snookered,” said Robert Freeman, who wants his neighbor’s 41-foot hedge cut back.

“Everybody thought there was a 12-foot-hedge ordinance,” Freeman said. “There is no such ordinance. There is no (limit on) footage at all.”

Under the rules, new front-yard hedges can only go up to 42 inches and side-yard hedges up to 12 feet high. However, a pre-existing oversized hedge doesn’t have to be cut back unless a neighbor can show that the shrub barrier seriously impairs his or her quality of life -- an unreasonably high burden of proof according to residents at Thursday’s meeting.

One resident complained that her home’s value has decreased $200,000 because of a hedge which blocks her ocean view. Another testified that his world-class garden featured in home tours will no longer grow because his neighbor’s overshadowing foliage robs his backyard of sunlight. Others talked of rat-and-possum infested ficas and bamboo allowed to grow wild.

The residents told the council that they tried to work out their problems with the neighbors. When that didn’t work they turned to the City for help only to have their complaints turned down or ignored, they said.

Now that time periods for filing complaints and appeals have expired by several months, the residents are asking the council for relief.

Mayor Bob Holbrook, who had a previous meeting with the residents, explained to his fellow council members what the disgruntled constituency had told him several months earlier.

“I feel we just fumbled the ball on this thing,” Holbrook said.

“I think more than 100 filed complaints,” Holbrook said. “As near as I could find out… all of these complaints have been denied by the City.

“No one realized that they had the burden of providing absolute scientific proof” that they were negatively affected, Holbrook said. “Appeals were so expensive, and people felt there was no fairness in the process at all, that dozens and dozens gave up at that point.”

In addition, Holbrook faulted staff for “responding erroneously, mixing up properties,” adding that there are “obvious safety violations that were ignored.”

Perhaps part of the problem is planning staff’s worries of getting caught up in a backlog of complaints and appeals surrounding an ordinance they say is hard to administer and difficult to enforce.

“When the planning administrator was considering this it was a very difficult situation,” Andy Agle, the City’s interim planning director, told the council.

There could be 20 to 40 hours of public hearings to handle the 27 appeals so far, Agle said. To open up the process again would likely lead to four times that much work, he added.

“The impacts on the workload on staff could be pretty significant in regards to handling their other responsibilities as well,” Agle said.

City Attorney Marsha Moutrie pointed out what may be at the root of staff’s trouble.

“It is unusual to use a grandfathering concept for something that by its very nature changes size and shape,” Moutrie said.

Last year, staff had warned of the pending problems created by the ordinance’s “grandfather clause” -- or “grandparent” clause in the gender-neutral language of Council member Kevin McKeown.

McKeown said he had hoped the ordinance would have worked out better, but cautioned that the city would lose much of its verdant beauty if all the non-conforming hedges were cut down.

“I’m really disappointed,” McKeown said. “I was convinced that by having this appeal process we were going to protect people.

“We’re going to have to work something out,” McKeown said.

Mayor Holbrook apologized for the late hour Thursday night -- it was nearly 2 a.m. before the residents got their hearing.

“I’m seriously going to consider bringing back the hedge ordinance at some point, down and dirty,” Holbrook said. “But I gotta tell ya, our schedule is really, really full right now.”

Possible remedies may include reopening the time period for complaints and appeals as well as tinkering with the ordinance itself.

“I think we just need to bite the bullet and maybe say that hedges can’t be over a certain height,” Holbrook said.

Santa Monica’s first fence-and-hedge ordinance was adopted in 1947 but didn’t generate much political heat until the City started enforcing it four years ago.

In 2002 the council voted to make code compliance a top priority and hired additional staff to do the work. The Planning Department then moved away from its longstanding policy of only citing violations after receiving a complaint and began a more proactive approach.

In the spring of 2003 the City began sending out hundreds of letters telling folks to cut their too-tall shrubbery or face stiff penalties, in some cases as much as $25,000 per day.

The letters provoked an angry backlash from hedge owners who formed citizens groups --- at least one of which tapped into business interest money to fight City Hall -- blasting the City bureaucracy and the SMRR majority on the council in particular.

One of those cited was Bobby Shriver, a Kennedy nephew and brother-in-law to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Shriver’s frustration over the citation pushed him into local politics and helped him get elected as the council’s newest member.

In 2004, with four members up for reelection, the council seemed to feel the heat and voted to halt enforcement until staff could prepare a study.

Over the next year, the issue resurfaced at City Hall several times, bringing in dozens of residents from both sides of the hedge issue to argue why they should keep their too-tall shrubs, or why their neighbors should not.

In April 2005, the Planning Commission advised against making any changes to the old regulations until 2007 when the General Plan update will be completed. Until then, the commission said, enforcement should return to a “complaint driven” basis.

But in May 2005 the council pushed forward with new regulations. The new fence-and-hedge ordinance passed in July 2005.

Shortly before the council passed the new rules, Shriver – who was not at Thursday’s hearing – said he had spent three hours reading the ordinance and sensed trouble ahead.

“Enforcement of this thing is going to be a nightmare,” he said.