Occasionally we’ll got out of our way to over-emphasize a point here because we think it’s something that needs to be stressed, and usually over and over again until someone finally gets it. Tonight is one of those nights.
That’s because our city council is going to be asked by staff to turn down a neighborhood appeal of a restaurant that wants to go in where Geographia used to be. There’s no room for parking there, and so the planning board agreed last month to allow the restaurant to waive the normal rules and let its customers park on the street. Some of the neighbors obviously disagree.
Now in order to be granted this exemption, the project has to satisfy six separate findings. Five of them are innocuous (in our view) and do little more than beg the original question about this restaurant’s need and purpose. But one finding that must be made for it to go through is all-important. This finding revolves around satisfying the claim that the new use will not have a derogatory (“detrimental”) impact on the surrounding neighborhood.
Clearly, a no-parking-lot restaurant will have a negative impact on its surroundings, especially in that particular closely packed multiresidential neighborhood. So how was staff able to do an end-run around this self-evident problem?
Unbelievably, they are claiming that this new restaurant will not have a negative parking impact on the nearby neighborhood because most of its customers will be WALKING there! That’s how they got it through the PB last month, and it’s what they’re trying to pawn off tonight to the council.
The business will not generate noise, traffic, waste, or other adverse impacts in excess of what is typical of commercial uses permitted by right in the Media District General Business (MDC-3) zone and the restaurant will mainly serve the employees of surrounding office buildings during the work week and adjacent residences on the evenings and weekends who will most likely walk to the site.
Love that “most likely.”
Now in the days of Ted McConkey this would have been a fun one to watch play out. Rather than take this absurdity at face value, Ted would have engaged in one of his famous cross-examination sessions. He would have peppered staff with about a dozen different follow-up questions about how they could possibly arrive at this certainty. And it’s one that they MUST make in order to satisfy their necessary finding for the project to go through.
But of course, Ted was considered to be the Rudest Man in Burbank, and the amount of pearl clutching that he inspired whenever he’d ask any of these kind of searching questions was truly awe-inspiring. How dare anyone so disrespect our hard-working staff members, or ever call their motives into question! Why, this is Burbank! And we know how good that is.
We don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, but it will certainly be another test of intelligence and good faith. The Boosters will try to push this restaurant through just like they got in that huge development across the street, and as always, the neighbors be damned. And they’re sure to find a couple of shills who will speak up on its behalf, too. They always do.
But there’s no way in hell that they can make Finding #2 in any rational or evidentiary way, and the council can’t either. This is a no-brainer: most of the customers are going to drive there, and so where are they going to park?
**UPDATE**
Well glory be! Golonski agrees with us about Finding #2.
He also brings up a good point about something we hadn’t noticed. Staff mentions in their report that this being an “Indian” restaurant somehow gives it added stature because there’s nothing else in the area.
G’ says this kind of rationale bothers him, because it’s pretty irrelevant if not inappropriate. The city shouldn’t be talking like this.
We agree. It does reference ethnicity, and if you start doing this around town on projects and proposals then there will be no end to it.
Ok so the fat puffer fish mayor is all over the zonat for young women. What the hell is a zonta ? The puffer fish said it went away for a while but the zonta is back so should everyone run and hide or what ? I would not trust that puffer fish mayor around anybody not even a zonta whatever the hell a zonta is to begin with I don’t think we need any around Burbank. Oh and the luggage woman went deep into excuses about that night she talked with the nobodies in the public but she did not fool me because I remember she made a discussion item and then went with the nobodies and talked about her discussion item. Looked crooked to me luggage lady.
EGL was wrong, and she got bad legal advice from the CA.
She probably didn’t even have a conflict of interest in the first place, but if she did, she can only speak at orals on her personal interest alone. Which means DIRECT interest, and then only to speak to that.
Like, the city paving a street in front of her house– a limited issue.
Instead, EGL talked at length at orals about the Rancho neighborhood and all its glories. Not kosher. The exception does not allow this. She went beyond the topic of her personal interest, and on an issue that was not even directly ABOUT her personal interest.
If this were indeed allowed under the ‘exception’ rule, then any recused council member could always stick around and weigh in on ANY conflicted topic that impinged upon their property interest. It would make a mockery of the whole idea behind the COI law. But that’s what she did!
It has to be a very LIMITED personal property interest to create the recusal-exception. Like, practically singular. The pavement in front of her house example.
Worse, now she says she has no conflict with GM because she’s more than 500 feet away. She may not have a COI, but this ’500-foot’ rule only means that if she IS within 500 feet then there’s almost SURELY an automatic conflict under the law.
It does NOT mean that if she exceeds 500 feet then there is no COI. Big difference. She can still have one, but it will take a REAL attorney to decide if/not/why.
Talk about absurd. So 12 months of traffic nightmares and millions of dollars just to add a carpool lane on the interstate 5 . Have they considered the amount of polution all the traffic delays and all the detours wiill cause ? In the end the carpool ideaof anti polution world saving green will in the end burn money and cause higher fuel emissions. What a joke this is.
The operative phrase here is “Number 2.”
I am feeling a pattern here from people. In the case of the Resturant all I heard from people who supported it was we like Indian food and we would go to an Indian food resturant. Then came Walmart and you are right in your above story all I was hearing is we don’t like Walmart so Walmart should not be here/ The irony in watching this was people like a specific resturant so it’s ok for it to have NO parking while people dislike Walmart so even with a very large parking lot there is not enough parking and there should not be a walmart. Do these people see that what they are saying is that if I like you your ok but if I don’t like you your not ok ? Really looks like the attitude of city officials is rubbing off like a disease on way to many people.
Warner Bros. has outsourced a gook chunk of IT to a firm from India. That firm has a lot of Indian employees who moved to the US to work in Burbank. Many of them carpool or take public transpo so they can send money home to their families. Maybe they will keep this new restaurant going?
I’ve heard these companies are starting to have big problems with their Indian subcontractors, too.
Lots of hostile workers, lack of polish, professionalism, the works. And Indian supervisorial personnel who bully and harass their underlings.
I could tell you horror stories about the secret problems that one HUGE major American company is having over there with their foreign employees– and here. It ain’t Apple, but close.
Resident’s comments validate what Mike Nolan had said last time about Discriminatory on It’s Face.
Butt Ovrum tried to give the big finger to all of us when he waived the parking requirements for restaurants along San Fernando, then championed PAID parking for the other businesses.
There is still a City backed faction pushing for METERS.
The legacy of British colonialism.