O.C. Fire Victims Relocate, Find It Was Wrong Move : Housing: Laguna couples expected fee waivers to rebuild elsewhere. They live with frustration, bureaucratic delays.

Last spring, as their neighbors pondered whether to rebuild their fire-ravaged homes on Buena Vista Way, two families decided to move elsewhere in the hope of speeding their recoveries from the devastating blaze.

After all, the city had promised to expedite the reconstruction efforts of all fire victims. On their new land, the Carys and the Williamsons reasoned, there would be no lingering fire-related cleanup, no geological worries that were then threatening to delay or scuttle their hopes of starting over on their old street.

But the two couples have since discovered that they are not eligible for the special treatment and most of the fee breaks offered to other victims of last October’s firestorm, which damaged or destroyed more than 400 homes here.

“It’s clear that the city is more concerned about fire-damaged areas than fire-damaged people,” said George Cary, who had lived on Buena Vista with his wife, Marlene, and their young daughter since 1985. “We thought that by moving to a new lot, we would accelerate the process. That hasn’t worked out.”

Don and Jo Williamson share that frustration. In February, the elderly couple made the wrenching decision to move from the land they have owned for 38 years, prompted by the fear that a suspected ancient landslide might slow or cancel their hopes to build there.

Until recently, though, when their plans finally emerged from the city’s arduous design review process, the Williamsons had made little progress toward erecting their new home in Laguna’s Bluebird Canyon.

“All we want to do is get into a house while we have some time to enjoy it,” said Don Williamson, 80, an architect who designed the new house--and the old one--himself. “When you reach this age, it ain’t no fun to lose that much time.”

Williamson and his wife, Jo, 78, said they long ago relinquished their dream of having a new house by the Oct. 27 anniversary of the blaze that claimed their home and eight others on Buena Vista, a narrow ribbon of a street in the hills above this city’s downtown.

But they remain frustrated that groundbreaking for the new dwelling is still at least two months away. “It isn’t as if we haven’t been working on it,” Don Williamson said.

City officials acknowledge that families like the Williamsons and the Carys are not eligible for the special processing and fee waivers granted to other fire victims, which they said were intended specifically to speed rebuilding in the fire-scarred neighborhoods.

“Those who qualify for fee waivers are those who qualify for the city’s special rebuilding policies and procedures, and that is limited to the fire-damaged areas,” Community Development Director Kyle Butterwick said.

He also said the city decided against waiving fees for those who moved away because the assessments would be covered by their insurance. The fees for zoning, design and building checks can amount to $3,000 to $4,000 for a typical house in Laguna.

Butterwick said he knew of no other cases to date of fire victims who decided to move from burned out lots and build new homes elsewhere in Laguna.

But after a recent meeting with City Manager Kenneth C. Frank, Butterwick said city officials in the future will try to accelerate the permit process for these fire victims as well, although it will still assess them the fees.

“Our feeling now is that these people should also receive some preferential treatment regarding the turnaround time,” Butterwick said.

To some extent, the delays encountered by the two families are not uncommon as this city’s small bureaucracy struggles to accommodate the needs of hundreds of fire victims, many on virtually identical rebuilding schedules.

But the Williamsons and Carys also have been slowed by other factors, including opposition to their plans from several of their new neighbors.

The circumstances of two other former Buena Vistans provide a vivid contrast.

James Kelly and Robert Mangel opted to skip the headaches of reconstruction and, in May, moved into an existing house in Laguna’s Woods Cove. While they remain emotionally scarred by the fire, which destroyed their Spanish-style dwelling next to the Williamsons’ A-frame, their lives are “basically back to normal,” Kelly said.

In fact, it was a single, maddening experience with the city’s bureaucracy that helped persuade Kelly to bypass the inevitable hassles of rebuilding.

Soon after the fire, he received a citation from the city because his indoor whirlpool tub was suddenly outdoors; the room that had housed it had burned, along with the rest of his home. And by law, outdoor spas must be covered.

So Kelly went to Laguna’s City Hall to obtain a permit for the spa cover. Even though a good-hearted neighbor had already made the cover for him, the paperwork was still required, Kelly was told.

He waited first in a line where fire victims could have their permit fees waived, then in another, then in the first again. Just as he reached the head of the fourth--and final--line, the computer malfunctioned.

“I felt this anger and rage just come over me, and I’m ready to take off the head of the clerical person trying to help me,” Kelly said. “And that would have been happening throughout the process.”

Now, after learning of the hardships of those going forward with rebuilding, he added, “all I can say is I’m so glad I’m not up there fighting City Hall or fighting my neighbors.”

In fact, the only fire-related matter still facing Kelly and Mangel is a hearing today at which they will appeal last year’s property tax bill.

Not so for the Carys, whose decision to leave Buena Vista Way was prompted by several considerations, among them a desire to find a flatter, more “child-friendly” lot for their daughter Christina, now 15 months old, and the second child they are expecting in January.

They also were motivated by “the specter of geological problems,” George Cary said, the concerns raised last spring in several fire-damaged sections of Laguna that previously unknown ancient landslides might exist under some of the lots.

After a series of studies, geologists found that the slides either did not exist or were less severe than had been feared.

By that time, though, both the Carys and the Williamsons had bought land elsewhere, worried that any finding of instability on the hillsides might translate to extra costs or delays for them. For now, both are holding on to their old lots.

The Carys, who had reached a relatively early settlement with their insurance company, purchased a large, undeveloped piece of property at the head of a bluff on Pacific Avenue, across a canyon from Buena Vista. The new lot commands a view of the ocean and various Laguna landmarks that is even more sweeping than the vista at their previous home.

But almost immediately, they ran into delays. “We were told that because we’d changed lots, we were not entitled to the concessions other fire victims got,” George Cary said.

To make matters worse, the Carys’ plans to build a 5,000-square-foot house on their Pacific Avenue lot have met with a storm of protest from people whose views would be affected by the project. At a hearing last month, nearly a dozen of their new neighbors signed letters or appeared before the Design Review Board to ask that the plans be turned down.

The hearing was continued until today, but the two sides remain far apart and upset at one another, long before the Carys will move in.

Lesley Domiano, whose home behind the Carys’ property was completed in June, says her new neighbors’ house would obliterate virtually her entire view of the Pacific and several Laguna landmarks. She and her husband bought their land only after assurances from previous owners of the Carys’ lot that any structure there would be low-profile, she said.

“We’re not saying to them, ‘Don’t build here.’ We’re just saying that they should give us the same consideration that we’ve all given to each other when we built our own houses,” Domiano said. “This is Laguna. This is the way it works here.”

George Cary responded that his redesigned house will be low-profile, built almost entirely on one level. Nonetheless, he said, he will now propose lowering the structure several feet, as suggested by one Design Review Board member, although that will involve moving several truckloads of earth and cost him an extra $30,000.

His anger remains palpable.

“At this point, it’s delays, hassles and a feeling of ‘Do we really want to move into this neighborhood that is reacting this way?’ ” George Cary said.

But the alternative to lowering the home--an expected rejection of the plan by the Design Review Board that would have to be appealed to the City Council--seems equally unattractive, he said, and likely to lead to further delays.

With their living expense benefits scheduled to run out in six months, “we need a house,” Cary said. “We need to get this process going.”

The Williamsons, whose decision to leave Buena Vista was greeted with special sadness by other longtime residents of the street, have encountered similar problems.

Although the couple’s plans for a 1,700-square-foot house on Morningside Drive were submitted to the city in mid-May, they emerged only last month from the design review process--the result of bureaucratic delays and opposition from a new neighbor, they said.

In fact, it was not until Don Williamson complained about the delays in June that his plans were discovered sitting on a zoning official’s desk, where they had been--apparently untouched--for more than three weeks.

“They told me it was because they weren’t thinking of Jo and me as fire victims,” said Williamson, the former director of Laguna’s Pageant of the Masters. “Silly, isn’t it?”

The day after his complaint, however, the Williamsons received word that the plans were ready for design review. And there was another sign that the city had taken notice of the couple’s plight: right after Don Williamson paid the fees for design review, he was asked to return to City Hall to pick up a refund of nearly $600, an amount that covered most of what he had just paid.

“They just told me it had been decided that we wouldn’t have to pay that amount,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Williamsons are making amends with Ed and Dee Ann Shaw, the neighbors who opposed the couple’s plans because they feared the new house would obstruct a portion of their view through Bluebird Canyon to the distant Pacific.

In the end, the Design Review Board struck a compromise, giving neither the Shaws nor the Williamsons exactly what they wanted. The Shaws lost part of their view and the Williamsons lost easy access to their side yard and a few feet of space in their entryway.

But last week, both parties sounded conciliatory.

“You can do two things with these situations,” said Ed Shaw. “You can . . . carry the dispute forward for generations to come. Or you can say what’s done is done. . . . I wish him well.”

Williamson sounded a similar note. “We’re not at all unhappy. We wish the house was as originally designed, but we’ll still have a nice house. And maybe we can start over in the process of forming a friendship.”