If you’ve ever been to the city’s building department to turn in some paperwork for an addition on your house, you know what a process it entails. Planning Commission and City Council meetings are notorious for lasting into the midnight hour. And developers seeking to build a project in town are starting to realize that what is normally a one-month permitting process actually takes up to a year.
But the city is in the midst of developing an overall plan that will make these and other drawn-out processes that deal with the city’s business more streamlined.
Emily Wagner, a former banking executive and the city’s economic development fiscal officer, laid out plans to the Economic Vitality Committee, which is comprised of local business representatives, at its bi-monthly Sept. 20 meeting on how the city can improve.
Cities like Palo Alto and Novato are the wave of the future when it comes to updating such things as city codes, regulations and permits, even utilizing e-permits through the Internet with city residents. Wagner has been meeting with representatives from both cities to help Pleasanton loosen the bottleneck at City Hall.
The first step, she said, is looking at the current system “as is” and identifying and red flagging delays, the aforementioned bottlenecks and any lack of accountability. After that, the city can talk about what it desires “to be” by outlining practices that work, possibly shuffling staff around to become more efficient and making technological, procedural and facilities improvements.
A lot of times, city staff are overloaded with phone calls, e-mails and people in line at the planning department. Wagner said a way to lessen that workload can be to shift some of the work on the applicant–through better guidelines, permits and education efforts. The city’s current computer system has an uncertain future and employing a new system that has all the upgrades that can be used across all city departments would lead to more efficiency. Procedural improvements could include putting together manuals outlining guidelines for staff use so that when a city staffer retires, the city is not overwhelmed by the absence of that person’s knowledge and experience, she said.
Improvements can also be made to City Council and Planning Commission policies for projects. When a project is brought forward, people who live within 300 feet of the project must be notified; the city goes above and beyond that by noticing within 1,000 feet which is courteous, but requires more work from staff. The appeal process is also too forgiving for those who wish to appeal a planning project, Wagner said. As it stands, a person can make a phone call, pay a $6 fee and appeal a project. Many times, the appellant doesn’t show up to the meeting and can continue the cycle of appeal, extending the project’s timeframe into an uncertain future and causing a backlog of projects for city planners.
“We need to stop taking incomplete applications too; it bogs people down,” Wagner said.
An increasing number of residents wishing to remodel their homes have also led to the city becoming inundated with work. The reason is because the city’s housing stock is aging, driving some homeowners to carry out home improvement projects that need city approval, Wagner said.
For example, in 1990, there were about 250 roof replacements and currently, the city processes about 3,500 re-roofing permits per year.
“You should just see the volumes of paper (staff is) dealing with,” she said. “It becomes overwhelming.”
The goal is to bring the streamlining strategy to the City Council by next March. Implementation of the plan will take about two years, but Wagner stressed that residents and city staff will notice improvements happening throughout that timeframe.
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