A public display of dysfunction

CITY HALL — Heated testimony from Councilman Bob Yousefian about two setback ordinances introduced Tuesday boiled into a public, expletive-laced altercation between the councilman and City Manager Jim Starbird immediately after the gavel fell.

The exchange, which both officials reportedly colored with expletives, ended only after Starbird clutched Yousefian’s arm and forced him behind closed doors where Starbird said they continued the debate for 30 minutes. The scuffle prompted Mayor Ara Najarian to summon an on-duty police officer standing near the chamber entrance to move closer to the back room, “in case somebody needed help,” Najarian said.

“It’s a physical altercation, man. . . . I was out talking to a couple residents and they were just freaking out. . . . Yousefian was cursing and was using the ‘F-word,’ and saying that he was pissed off and that [city staff members] had lied to him. . . . It was bizarre,” Councilman Frank Quintero said.

The ordinance, which would increase the permissible frontyard setbacks of Yousefian’s and 122 other residents’ homes on East Glenoaks Boulevard, was originally proposed by Councilman Dave Weaver as a way to maintain the relative uniformity of existing setbacks along a portion of the street. The targeted area currently requires a 15-foot setback, but most of the homes maintain a significantly larger distance from the property line, according to a city staff report.

“The point is to prevent someone from putting a 10-foot addition in front of their home and sticking out like a sore thumb,” Weaver said.

But Yousefian attacked the ordinance because he said it’s based on incorrect data about these homes’ existing setbacks.

In preparing the report and drafting the ordinance, staff may have been misguided by an error in the city’s geographical information system — a typically reliable map database used by most city agencies, including the fire, police and planning departments, Starbird said.

For at least some of the blocks targeted by the ordinance, including Yousefian’s, the property lines recorded in the city database do not account for a city right-of-way that extends into many front yards, Yousefian said.