Council turns down gates, but evades the real issue

Even though they ended up going against staff’s recommendation, what we saw tonight at the council meeting was a classic example of city employees trying to shift the argument away from the real question at hand, and almost succeeding in getting what they wanted.

By having the “Castleman gate” vote focus solely on the red-herring issue of “safety vehicle access,” and then seemingly resolving this problem, staff led our council to think that the gate issue was a shoe-in. But in talking only about safety vehicles, what they actually accomplished was to get the council to evade the much more compelling question of whether or not a gated community belongs in Burbank under our General Plan. And the council fell right into line with this stunt.

Where was the philosophizing about gated streets? That’s all people talked about the last two times this proposal came up. It was the key question back then, and it’s still a good one.

But oddly, not one council member even noticed the readily apparent conflict with the General Plan. Instead, every one of them let their staff hijack the discussion onto terms that were set by the applicants, and it caused them an immense amount of wasted time.

We mentioned earlier that private-street gates now violate the General Plan, and that the upcoming revised Plan will soon be banning private streets on their own. So you’d think that with all the time spent formulating these new rules someone down there would have found a reason to remember them.

Dave Golonski deserves credit, though, for reminding people about the great debates of the past, and the feelings of the surrounding neighborhood regarding the mere idea of a gated community. So at least he and Dr. Gordon tried to reframe the discussion beyond the staff’s contrived and manipulative version of the facts.

And the final 4-1 vote against was the right thing to do– except that — can anyone else figure out Gary Bric’s explanation of why he voted in favor of the gates? He seemed to buy into staff’s nonsensical reasoning, that because the streets up there are already controlled, then installing new gates won’t make a difference. But if that’s the case, then why do they need them?

Everyone knows that Burbank is not a locked gates town. Speaker Maria Proctor was correct tonight: if these poor people want to be isolated, then let them go buy an island somewhere instead.

Just who wants to live in a gated neighborhood in Burbank? That’s for losers.