Halt the Top-Down Approach to Rezoning Across Los Angeles County's 9 Unincorporated Areas
Halt the Top-Down Approach to Rezoning Across Los Angeles County's 9 Unincorporated Areas
The Issue
As residents, community members, and property owners of Los Angeles County's nine unincorporated areas, the proposed West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan (WSGVAP) rezoning plan takes us by surprise. We feel disenfranchised, and have felt powerless to stop it. We did not know about this, nor were we given the opportunity to provide input from a grass-roots and community level - something vital to ensuring these plans meet the true needs of our diverse communities. The areas in question - Altadena, East Pasadena–East San Gabriel, Kinneloa Mesa, La Crescenta–Montrose, San Pasqual, South Monrovia Islands, South San Gabriel, Whittier Narrows, and South El Monte Island - represent a significant swath of LA County's population.
We approached the WSGVAP planning team several times regarding these concerns and they were unfortunately dismissed. This is why this petition is here now. None of our concerns showed up in the presentation during the public hearing on 9/25/2024 to the LA county commissioners, despite asking that they at least acknowledge these concerns publicly for everyone to see. Another example of dismissed concerns, is we brought up the fact that residents with changes in their zoning were just sent a very misleading, templatized, and robotic letter to addresses that were on file with LA county:
https://planning.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ZCltr_WSGVAP_Other_vfinal.pdf
The letter does not really explain in plain english what effects this will have on their properties, and more importantly does not explain what effects the changes will have around their properties. It also misleadingly calls to "No action is needed by the property owner to continue existing allowed uses." Well action is needed as these piecemeal changes to zoning in the community will have a dramatic effect on how the community evolves. There was also no effort to circle back and confirm residents received this letter either. Additionally, residents with no changes received no notice to give them an update on what was happening next door or down the block. These are just several examples where the proper standard of care was not applied to ensure residents even understand ramifications to this, and ultimately reveal a worrisome trend of a dismissive approach to the community's concerns. This is precisely why this type of rezoning cannot be done from the top-down.
As referenced earlier, this plan already had a public hearing on 9/25/2024 with the LA County commissioners. The Commission opened the public hearing and took testimony from 17 community members, eight (8) in favor, six (6) opposing, and three (3) voicing their concerns for the project. The concern and opposition from the community here (9) was greater than the members in favor (8), however, nothing was done to address any of the concerns or objections:
https://lacdrp.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=M&ID=1224616&GUID=BAC436DD-B99E-41B8-8FD2-887E348F2EFA
Why? This is antithetical to a democratic process. The fact that such a wide reaching proposal only had 17 community members publicly provide comment is also very telling that many are in the dark about this.
Video/Audio of this hearing has yet (as of 10/5/2024) to be posted:
The only way to stop this top-down approach is to halt the current plan so a better localized process can be established to generate a plan going forward.
The top-down approach may not consider the uniqueness, culture, needs, goals, and social fabric of these individual areas. The community needs to be involved in such decisions as they will directly impact our residential life. It is the basic right of us inhabitants and local property owners to decide the course of development in our own areas. For example in Altadena they are proposing to significantly downzone areas below current developed density and even below current acceptable density, but then are proposing to significantly upzone in areas above current developed density to allow track home developments and/or apartment developments all within a few blocks away from each other. Speaking to several residents in the area, this is definitely not what the residents want. The LA county planning department in the plan claims this is equitable. But all the residents in the area say it is flat out inequitable. The scarier part of all this is: How many changes lurking in this proposal will have a detrimental effect on our properties and communities across LA County? And how many stakeholders in these communities will remain completely unaware and in the dark due to the lack of outreach and this broken top-down process?
The West San Gabriel Area Valley planning team produced a very dense, complex, and rushed plan across 9 unincorporated communities across LA County in one fell swoop. It’s blatantly obvious they bit off more than they could chew once you get down into the details for each individual area:
https://planning.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/00_WSGVAreaPlan_PUBLIC-DRAFT-2024-06-27.pdf
Sadly, the elected local community representatives and community members themselves were not empowered to lead the community engagement for this plan for their own communities. As a result we were all mere bystanders who were never even queried to create these very goals in the plan in the first place.
Our fear is that these decisions, if not handled properly and locally, can exacerbate existing local issues or even create new and unexpected issues that we did not sign up to. Allowing this top-down proposal to pass would also set the wrong precedent for future proposals which would more than likely just end up using a similar, undemocratic, broken, top-down, process.
In accordance with the principles of local representative democracy, let the voices of the residents be heard and this top-down approach be shelved. We urge the authorities to involve us, the residents, the community members, the property owners, and the locally elected representatives in leading the conversations, debates and community engagement early for our own communities, before irreversible decisions are made. Due to the lack of outreach and broken process, silence from the residents should not indicate support of this plan by the broader community come December 2024 when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on this. Why are they all in such a rush? Unfairly so, silence is being taken as approval. Please sign this petition to advocate for a bottom-up, inclusive, equitable, decision-making process and finally stop the disenfranchisement. Please consider signing this as only together we have the power to stop this. Give the locals their voice!
690
The Issue
As residents, community members, and property owners of Los Angeles County's nine unincorporated areas, the proposed West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan (WSGVAP) rezoning plan takes us by surprise. We feel disenfranchised, and have felt powerless to stop it. We did not know about this, nor were we given the opportunity to provide input from a grass-roots and community level - something vital to ensuring these plans meet the true needs of our diverse communities. The areas in question - Altadena, East Pasadena–East San Gabriel, Kinneloa Mesa, La Crescenta–Montrose, San Pasqual, South Monrovia Islands, South San Gabriel, Whittier Narrows, and South El Monte Island - represent a significant swath of LA County's population.
We approached the WSGVAP planning team several times regarding these concerns and they were unfortunately dismissed. This is why this petition is here now. None of our concerns showed up in the presentation during the public hearing on 9/25/2024 to the LA county commissioners, despite asking that they at least acknowledge these concerns publicly for everyone to see. Another example of dismissed concerns, is we brought up the fact that residents with changes in their zoning were just sent a very misleading, templatized, and robotic letter to addresses that were on file with LA county:
https://planning.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ZCltr_WSGVAP_Other_vfinal.pdf
The letter does not really explain in plain english what effects this will have on their properties, and more importantly does not explain what effects the changes will have around their properties. It also misleadingly calls to "No action is needed by the property owner to continue existing allowed uses." Well action is needed as these piecemeal changes to zoning in the community will have a dramatic effect on how the community evolves. There was also no effort to circle back and confirm residents received this letter either. Additionally, residents with no changes received no notice to give them an update on what was happening next door or down the block. These are just several examples where the proper standard of care was not applied to ensure residents even understand ramifications to this, and ultimately reveal a worrisome trend of a dismissive approach to the community's concerns. This is precisely why this type of rezoning cannot be done from the top-down.
As referenced earlier, this plan already had a public hearing on 9/25/2024 with the LA County commissioners. The Commission opened the public hearing and took testimony from 17 community members, eight (8) in favor, six (6) opposing, and three (3) voicing their concerns for the project. The concern and opposition from the community here (9) was greater than the members in favor (8), however, nothing was done to address any of the concerns or objections:
https://lacdrp.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=M&ID=1224616&GUID=BAC436DD-B99E-41B8-8FD2-887E348F2EFA
Why? This is antithetical to a democratic process. The fact that such a wide reaching proposal only had 17 community members publicly provide comment is also very telling that many are in the dark about this.
Video/Audio of this hearing has yet (as of 10/5/2024) to be posted:
The only way to stop this top-down approach is to halt the current plan so a better localized process can be established to generate a plan going forward.
The top-down approach may not consider the uniqueness, culture, needs, goals, and social fabric of these individual areas. The community needs to be involved in such decisions as they will directly impact our residential life. It is the basic right of us inhabitants and local property owners to decide the course of development in our own areas. For example in Altadena they are proposing to significantly downzone areas below current developed density and even below current acceptable density, but then are proposing to significantly upzone in areas above current developed density to allow track home developments and/or apartment developments all within a few blocks away from each other. Speaking to several residents in the area, this is definitely not what the residents want. The LA county planning department in the plan claims this is equitable. But all the residents in the area say it is flat out inequitable. The scarier part of all this is: How many changes lurking in this proposal will have a detrimental effect on our properties and communities across LA County? And how many stakeholders in these communities will remain completely unaware and in the dark due to the lack of outreach and this broken top-down process?
The West San Gabriel Area Valley planning team produced a very dense, complex, and rushed plan across 9 unincorporated communities across LA County in one fell swoop. It’s blatantly obvious they bit off more than they could chew once you get down into the details for each individual area:
https://planning.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/00_WSGVAreaPlan_PUBLIC-DRAFT-2024-06-27.pdf
Sadly, the elected local community representatives and community members themselves were not empowered to lead the community engagement for this plan for their own communities. As a result we were all mere bystanders who were never even queried to create these very goals in the plan in the first place.
Our fear is that these decisions, if not handled properly and locally, can exacerbate existing local issues or even create new and unexpected issues that we did not sign up to. Allowing this top-down proposal to pass would also set the wrong precedent for future proposals which would more than likely just end up using a similar, undemocratic, broken, top-down, process.
In accordance with the principles of local representative democracy, let the voices of the residents be heard and this top-down approach be shelved. We urge the authorities to involve us, the residents, the community members, the property owners, and the locally elected representatives in leading the conversations, debates and community engagement early for our own communities, before irreversible decisions are made. Due to the lack of outreach and broken process, silence from the residents should not indicate support of this plan by the broader community come December 2024 when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote on this. Why are they all in such a rush? Unfairly so, silence is being taken as approval. Please sign this petition to advocate for a bottom-up, inclusive, equitable, decision-making process and finally stop the disenfranchisement. Please consider signing this as only together we have the power to stop this. Give the locals their voice!
690
The Decision Makers
Supporter Voices
Petition created on September 30, 2024