Council hears concerns about community standards

By JULIE DRAKE
Valley Press Staff Writer

Monday's informational meeting was scheduled by the Lake Los Angeles Rural Town Council in response to community members' concerns about the draft document.

"I felt pretty good about it," council Vice President Kathy Terrones said.

Organizers estimated the crowd at about three dozen people. Mitch Glaser, a Los Angeles County supervising regional planner, was on hand to answer questions.

"I think now they get it a lot better. I do think they understand it," Terrones said.

Terrones said there were a couple of flare-ups at the start of the meeting, but that, for the most part, the crowd was orderly.

For the second time in as many months the town council was forced to address the draft community standards district's boundaries. The Llano Community Association sent a certified letter to the council last week asking that the community be excluded from the boundaries.

"It was a very nice letter just requesting that they be excluded from the East Antelope Valley Community Standards," Terrones said.

"If that's the way they feel, that's fine. We are not pressuring any community to be part of it."

She said the council agreed to change the southern boundary to exclude Llano, moving the southern boundary to Avenue S. They also changed the name from the East Antelope Valley Community Standards District to Lake Los Angeles Community Standards District.

"I talked to the other members of the committee and we decided to go back to our boundaries and make it a Lake L.A. document," she said. "At this point, everybody on the north and everybody on the south, they don't want to be part of this standards district. So we just excluded them."

Warren Wilken, treasurer for the Llano Community Association, said the association was satisfied with the town council's actions. "We realized they had received our request," he said.

Terrones said a couple of developers raised concerns about detached second dwellings or so-called mother-in-law houses. An anonymous flier distributed prior to the council's regular March meeting stated the proposed community standards district would prohibit them.

"That's not true," Terrones said. She said the standards only deal with second dwellings that are rented out to another family.

"That's only because by doing that you curtail the ability of your neighbors and yourself to have livestock such as cattle or horses because the county code is 50 feet from a dwelling."

Terrones said one person at the meeting volunteered to translate the draft community standards district document into Spanish.

A second informational meeting has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, June 2, at Deputy Stephen Sorensen County Park, 16801 East Ave. P. Copies of the proposed community standards district are available by visiting www.lakelachamber.org/llartc1.htm. A hard copy of the document will be available at the Lake Los Angeles Library, 16921 East Ave. O.

"What we're asking them to do is make a copy and leave the original, please," Terrones said.

jdrake@avpress.com