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Published on 09/08/1997 All articles from this issue

Issues behind planning commission blow-up now begin to surface

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Gloria Bauer lost her cool. And then she lost her job. The Los Altos City Council kicked her off the planning commission, where she was chairwoman, for her "profane and obscene" language at an August study session.

She described both the director of planning and the senior city planner using the F-word.

But her public fury was just a symptom of the private frustrations felt by many members of the planning commission.

"She took the job seriously, and she made a gallant effort to address some issues that have surfaced for the past six months," said Richard Abdalah, the newly elected chairman of the planning commission.

"Even though the messenger has been killed, the message won't die."

For planning commissioner Chet Frankenfield, who was chairman before Bauer, "things started deteriorating" about a year ago. "It was a gradual thing."

He remembers the Knudson condominium project as a starting point. Planning commissioners recommended to city council that the project be scaled back from three stories to two, from 24 units to 16.

But heralding the need for lower-priced housing, council approved the larger project last October. Then a glitch with notifying neighbors surfaced, the project was reviewed a second time, and council approved the scaled-back plans.

Frankenfield then mentioned the Sunkist property. The planning commissioners OK'd a second living unit to face a street different from the main house in this application.

After an uproar from the neighbors, the council did not accept the commission's recommendation and required the little house to be fenced in and behind the main house.

"We found we did not have the support of council," Frankenfield said.

The commissioners noted that "planning things were happening in the city without planning commission involvement," Frankenfield said.

For the city vision process, carried out last November and December on which the city spent $30,000, "no planning commissioners were invited" to be on the 70-plus citizen task force.

Frankenfield participated, "but I applied on my own."

Then, in January 1997, came the citizen task force to create design ideas for 401 Rosita, the 5.5-acre parcel the city bought for recreational use.

"Nobody from planning was on the task force," Frankenfield said.

In addition to a growing sense of isolation from council and community projects, the commissioners were working with a new planning director.

Larry Tong began in April 1996.

"He was not familiar with the city and was commuting a great distance (from the East Bay)," Frankenfield said.

After Bauer became chairwoman in 1997, "she'd make requests (of staff) and was only given lip service. She was not taken seriously," Frankenfield said. "I can understand her outrage."

"I didn't blow my top to be ugly," Bauer said. "We were exhausted."

Bauer worked all summer identifying and communicating issues that had been of concern to the commissioners such as color policies for housing exteriors, landscaping requirements, and second story balconies. She met with Tong several times in July and hoped these could be on the agenda for a summer council/commission study session.

Her many issues were distilled into a one-item agenda that Tong prepared and sent to Bauer by fax at noon Aug. 19, the day of the study session.

Bauer was frustrated when she didn't see her concerns reflected in the agenda.

"There may have been a communication problem, but from the memos and discussion it should have been clear," Tong said, that Bauer's issues were included.

After firing Bauer, council voted to hire a facilitator to enable people to move on and begin a healing process.

"People will get a chance to directly say what the issues are," said Los Altos city manager Dianne Gershuny.

"Now I'm not really clear about what the issues are. There are a lot of things I haven't heard before," she said.

"The predominate issue raised by the planning commissioners (at the study session) had to do with staff," said Los Altos mayor Francis La Poll.

At Tuesday night's council meeting, council members were scheduled to move forward in their selection of a facilitator.

"We are moving rapidly. We took deliberate action (firing Bauer), and now we can treat the issue," La Poll said.