Belvedere couple wins approval of new home despite open-meetings law concerns

A Belvedere Island couple can move forward with plans to demolish their existing home and build a new home with two accessory dwelling units, provided they make some minor tweaks to their design.

The Planning Commission voted 3-1 at its Jan. 20 meeting in favor of the project from 81 Belvedere Ave. homeowners Patrick and Melissa Feder, though the approval is conditioned on the couple moving a trash enclosure, reducing the size of proposed skylights and soliciting an arborist’s report before deciding on the fate of a cypress tree.

However, the commission’s Jan. 20 vote appeared to violate California’s open-meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, because it did not meet requirements for establishing the quorum necessary or for audiovisual teleconferencing, as Commissioner Alex Seidel attended the meeting remotely via Zoom from his home using audio only. In an interview, Seidel said he was sick.

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