BREAKING NEWS: LA Budget Fallout
Funding for the unit that was working on the highly controversial, proposed Wildlife Ordinance was defunded in the city budget that took effect on Tuesday, City Planning Director Vince Bertoni announced in the department’s quarterly newsletter today.
The unit was presumably working on responses to the draft ordinance that the department received last fall in anticipation of a City Council vote in December. That vote never happened and the status of the proposed ordinance has been in limbo ever since. Now, with the unit defunded, it appears that the ordinance is dead.
If approved, the Wildlife Ordinance would have imposed more significant limitations on allowable floor area, building heights, grading, setbacks and lot coverage than any of the city’s current development overlays.
Supporters of the ordinance said it would protect wildlife habitats in the city’s hillside communities. Opponents questioned how an ordinance that significantly reduces the size of homes (including a major reduction in allowable basements) would be ‘wildlife friendly.’ They said the proposed ordinance was really an anti-development ordinance.
The origins of the Wildlife Ordinance go back to 2016 when then-councilman Paul Koretz called on the department to create a set of land-use regulations that would “maintain wildlife connectivity” in the city. The Planning Department hosted multiple meetings to receive public comment before issuing its first draft in Spring 2021.
Hundreds of people attended multiple hearings to argue for and against the ordinance. The City Planning Commission approved the draft ordinance in December 2022. The City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee approved a draft version of the ordinance in June 2023.
More than 16 months later, City Planning released an updated version of the ordinance this past November and it was expected that the PLUM Committee and full council would vote to approve it before the end of the year. But no vote was scheduled.
Included in the updated ordinance was a memo from Director Bertoni that stated if the ordinance passed, City Planning would need 6 additional staffers to process the anticipated flood of applications. Instead, the unit’s budget was eliminated this week.
Had the ordinance been approved, it would have created a new overlay district that would have imposed the development limitations on the neighborhoods south of Ventura Boulevard, north of Sunset Boulevard, east of the 405, and west of the Cahuenga Pass. The overlay district could have been expanded to include additional hillside areas around the city, and Planning staff had indicated last year that areas west of the 405 and in Northeast Los Angeles would be next.
The announcement in Planning’s quarterly newsletter was one of several changes to unit funding and staffing that was announced in the department’s newsletter. The budget also eliminated funding for the department’s Health and Environmental Justice Element work program, its Office of Racial Justice, Equity and Transformative Planning, and the unit that was working on the expansion of the Rim of Valley.
Director Bertoni did note several positive results of the budget, notably that no layoffs will be needed (earlier budgets had the department eliminating more than 100 positions or roughly one-fourth of its staff at full-funding).
Bertoni also said that 42 employees will be transferred from LADBS to his department to create a Zoning Review Program that will “streamline (the) process when addressing zoning.” Also, the two-person Office of Forest Management will move from the Board of Public Works to City Planning.
