Pacific Palisades homeowners lambasted the City of L.A.’s lack of law enforcement concerning Building and Safety orders at last Thursday’s Community Council meeting. Rustic Canyon residents appeared before the council to complain that Building and Safety is not enforcing its control over a corner residence at 909 Greentree, the home of Mehr and Vickey Beglari. The house is 14 feet closer to the street than permitted by the Los Angeles Municipal Code, and last December the State Court of Appeal ordered Building and Safety to revoke the permits issued to the Beglaris for the completed addition to their home as well as their certificate of occupancy. However, while Building and Safety revoked the Beglaris’ certificate of occupancy as well as their main permits in May, neighbors argue that nobody has ordered the Beglaris to vacate their home or make their house comply with the Code. “This case has been adjudicated,” said Randy Young, a local resident and longtime community activist. “The court has said the City of Los Angeles is not doing its job.” He called the City’s unwillingness to act “cultivated ignorance” and said, “they have worked at being incompetent.” The main issue of the dispute is whether the front-yard setback was calculated correctly, and whether the Beglaris must now lop 14 feet off the entire front of their two-story house to meet the setback requirement of 27 feet. Vickey Beglari told the council, “The City throughout this whole process has said that we’ve done nothing wrong, that we’ve complied with this whole process. There have been mistakes, and we’ve responded to them.” Mehr Beglari said that “the City stopped our job three times to check and recheck all our plans, to make sure we were in compliance.” Vickey added, “Our property is large but it’s not that large compared with other homes in the Rustic Canyon area.” She noted that “the appellate court said the goal was not to tear down the home, but to make sure the City complies with the error.” By the “error,” Vickey was referring to the disputed calculation. Council member Steve Boyers expressed confusion about what the Beglaris wanted the council to do about their current situation, seeing that the case has already been adjudicated. “There are alternatives to tearing down the home,” Vickey said. “We’re still looking into other alternatives to make this right.” Asked after the meeting what some of those alternatives are, she declined to discuss that with the Palisadian-Post. Rustic Canyon resident and attorney Ronald Oster, one of the six plaintiffs in the case against the Beglaris, spoke on behalf of the group and requested that the council write letters to Building and Safety and the City Council asking them to enforce the law. “I’m asking for the support of this community,” Oster said. “You have a judgment. This is a clear-cut case. The certificate of occupancy has been revoked and the building cannot be inhabited.” After hearing from both sides, the council voted that chairman Kurt Toppel write letters “to any and all people to get the City to enforce the law.” Meanwhile, the Beglaris have started construction on a second property they purchased in early 2004 at 921 Greentree, just down the street from their disputed residence. For a year, next-door neighbor Sue Toigo has been concerned about a cluster of eucalyptus trees on the Beglari property that hang dangerously low over her own property. She has previously discussed the problem with Mehr Beglari and trimmed two of the trees over her roof at her own expense. Toigo’s concern for “the safety of my family and home” grew in recent weeks as the Beglaris began excavating their property, which compromised the roots of the trees. On Tuesday, she approached Beglari about the problem and he suggested that she call the City Street Tree Division, which she did. Jerome Washington, a supervisor with the Street Tree Division who visited the site shortly after Toigo’s call, told the Palisadian-Post that he determined that “the trees have to be removed at the owner’s expense,” and if they’re not removed, “it’s a public hazard.” Toigo wrote a letter to Beglari on Tuesday stating, “Now that the City has determined that the excavation of some of the trees in your backyard at 921 Greentree has rendered them unsafe and that they must be taken down, I hope they can be removed quickly… “As neighbor to neighbor, I respectfully ask that you not let any quarrel you might have with the City authorities delay the tree removal which could jeopardize my family’s safety.” Beglari did not answer a telephone call from the Palisadian-Post that afternoon, before our Wednesday morning deadline.

In an unusual alignment of opinion, about 700 Westsiders attended a public meeting on the future uses of the Veterans Affairs property last Thursday and voiced their opposition to recommendations that the 387-acre campus include a mixed-use residential complex or a medical research facility. Members of a advisory panel, who met for nearly three hours after the marathon public meeting in the Wadsworth Theatre on the VA campus, were nearly unanimous on their recommendations, which they hoped would be seriously considered by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. Appointed by the VA secretary, the panel is made up of state and local VA officials, a UCLA/Veterans Hospital physician, veterans service providers and Brentwood activists, including realtor Barbara Tenser and Brentwood Community Council chairman Flora Krisiloff. They adopted a set of four principles which guided their votes on each of the business plan options. The principles included: 1. Honor former Secretary Anthony Principi’s pledge that there be no commercial development on the site. 2. The land should be retained for direct benefit to veterans in perpetuity, in compliance with the deed. 3. Honor the Cranston Act, which established preserve areas totaling about 109 acres; and 4. Abide by the National Preservation Act. “Everything else followed these four guiding principles,” Krisiloff told the Palisadian-Post. “We were unanimous on every vote except the plan to establish a medical research facility on the site, which I voted against because I felt it hadn’t been vetted properly. I didn’t want to see Amgen or Genetech on the property.” Secretary Nicholson is under no obligation to accept the panel’s recommendations, Krisiloff said. “He will decide which options he wants to adopt and then send the business plan options back to the consultants for analysis.” There will be two more public meetings, and further reviews by the panel at each step of the process. The third public meeting may be called by the end of October. “I think, in the end, that our recommendations turned out to be better than I had expected because we followed the guiding principles,” Krisiloff said. “But it’s 50-50 if the secretary will accept our recommendations. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back with more commercial options. Nor would I be surprised if he supports our proposals. “I really do hope that this secretary honors the new land-use plan,” Krisiloff added. “I would really like to see a land-use master plan that covers all the federal land in West Los Angeles, including the proposed 1 million-sq-.ft. FBI headquarters at the Federal Building, and the army reserve [at the corner of Federal and Wilshire]. We have all this federal land that is not heavily developed and the federal government is looking at ways to increase revenue. It’s the wrong time, because we’re in traffic gridlock.”

“Folks, we can’t just complain about the traffic,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told a Palisades Democratic Club gathering last Sunday. “We all have to be part of the solution.” Although the mayor realized that virtually every person in his audience of about 250 people is wedded to a car 24/7, he earnestly tried to promote his campaign for lessening that dependence. “Traffic congestion is everywhere, not just here on the Westside,” Villaraigosa said, “and the only way out is to change our patterns of living. We’ve got to get more people to carpool, to walk, to get on a bus. As you ride buses, you’ll realize, ‘Hey, this is okay, it works.’ ” Spotting County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky in the audience, the mayor said: “I see Zev as an important ally in my efforts to expand our rapid-transit system in the city, with buses and light rail.” He noted that funding is back on track for Phase I of the Expo light-rail line from downtown L.A. to Culver City, a project that will be completed “by 2009, because it already has a dedicated right of way.” Phase II will extend the line to Santa Monica. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Villaraigosa reiterated his commitment to address widespread poverty in Los Angeles. “If we had had this tragedy in Los Angeles, the world would have seen the poverty capital of the United States,” Villaraigosa said. “We have more poor people and more uninsured people than any other city. Just go downtown, to Pico Union, to South L.A., and you see the dilapidated houses, the schools where so many kids are dropping out.” “A great city, a healthy city, has to be a place where people are growing and prospering together,” the mayor said. “That’s what I’m going to be working on.” Earlier, City Councilwoman Bill Rosendahl reiterated many of the goals he outlined during this past spring’s campaign, and he praised the 22-person staff he has hired. They include Palisadians Norman Kulla, his district director and senior counsel; Laurie Sale, his arts, education and cultural deputy; and Reza Ahef, a constituent advocate. “I’m only as good as my staff, and hopefully my staff is better than me so we will have a sm smooth-functioning District,” Rosendahl said. “My number job is constituent services.” He noted that his staff is “a hybrid blend of folks’young and old, men and women, gay and straight,” and that residents should always remember: “My number one job is constituent services.” Among those attending Sunday’s event were four early candidates for Assemblywoman Fran Pavley’s termed-out seat in 2006: Julia Brownley, Barry Groveman, Kelly Hayes-Raitt and Louise Rishoff. The primary election will be held next June 6.

Bobbie Farberow, owner of Mort’s Deli, helped Councilman Bill Rosendahl keep a campaign promise Tuesday. Running for office last spring, Rosendahl vowed that if he were elected, he would treat the City Council to Mort’s famous chicken matzoball soup. “He loves the soup,” Faberow said, “and it brings him good luck”‘he had a bowl for lunch the day of primary (which he won) and the day of the general election two months later. On Tuesday this week, Faberow and two employees, Esperanza Caulderon and Abelino Martinez, loaded up Mort’s van with an oversized thermos that contained enough soup to feed 20 people, and drove downtown. They brought along crackers, bowls and spoons and carried a chafing dish to keep the soup hot. Bobbie had two concerns before leaving. She wanted to make sure she had directions on how to get past security, but more importantly, she hoped the council members would like the soup. “I want to tell you,” Bobbie said upon her return to the Palisades, “they were so nice and so gracious. They loved the soup, and one of them said, ‘When we come to your area, we’re going to eat at your place.'” In addition to catering to politicians on Tuesday, Mort’s Deli was the backdrop for an HBO television show last Sunday night. Fans of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the comedy show starring Palisadian Larry David, may have recognized Mort’s in the opening episode of the new season. Although the deli was called Leo’s, the show was actually filmed in the Palisades at Mort’s. In the story line, the deli owner has decided to name a sandwich after Larry David. But the sandwich consists of white fish, sable, capers, onions and cream cheese’everything that David hates. He tells the deli owner that no one is going to buy “his” sandwich, and he asks Leo to switch and name his sandwich after actor Ted Danson, whose sandwich has everything in it that people love like turkey, tomato, swiss and Russian dressing. The deli owner refuses to switch sandwiches, even after Shelly Berman, playing David’s father, orders the “Larry David” sandwich and then has a stroke, which could possibly be blamed on the sandwich. Ultimately, Leo tires of David’s whinning and cajoling, takes David’s name off the sandwich board and names the sandwich after another comedian, Richard Lewis. Arnie Wishnik, executive director of the Palisades Chamber of Commerce, and his wife Cathie thought the episode was funny but that the actor playing the deli owner was “over the top.” “If Mort was alive, he should have played this role,” Cathie said. “He would have been more believable and more fun.” Mort Farberow died three years ago tomorrow, on September 30.