Blog note: this article refers to two grand jury reports.
The Guadalupe City Council amended Tuesday its accessory dwelling unit ordinance, creating a new appeal process for homeowners denied permits under the the city's strict requirements.
Approved unanimously by the City Council, the amendment creates a new avenue for those denied permission to build an accessory dwelling unit to appeal the decision. It also creates a new administrative use permit that city staff could grant homeowners.
Contract city planner Larry Appel said Guadalupe’s current ordinance for accessory dwelling units, which limits permits only to those homes where the owner of the property lives on-site, created very narrow conditions for approval.
“What we found is that there are some very strict guidelines that we’ve placed in the procedural section for what someone has to do to get a secondary unit,” Appel said. “For that reason, staff may have to recommend denial. And that isn’t a good thing if the second unit was going to help them out.”
Appel said an example would be a homeowner who permits an immediate relative to live on the property and wants to build an accessory dwelling unit.
“You still really got family there but, technically, it’s not the owner of the property,” Appel said. “Under this provision, we could use the administrative use permit — at the staff level through an administrative process — to allow that to occur.”
In order to deny an administrative use permit, the city could find that the unit would be detrimental to public health and safety, overburden sewer and water services, create unreasonable adverse impacts to neighbors or overburden traffic flow.
Guadalupe resident Shirley Boydstun said there should be black and white rules not subject to review by city staff.
“If a permit for a unit does not comply with standards, that should be it,” Boydstun said. “No waffling or squeezing out changes. Either the application meets the standards or it does not. This sounds like being a little bit pregnant — either one is or one isn’t.”
In other business, the City Council unanimously voted to approve its 2018-19 Cost Allocation Plan, which calls for $586,600 to be transferred from other city funds as reimbursement for services provided to the Street, Lighting and Landscape, Community Block Development Grant and Enterprise funds. The amount — which is based on a cost allocation study — is $10,600 more than initially approved for transfer as part of the city's 2018-19 budget.
The cash-strapped city has long struggled with its finances. Three years ago, a Santa Barbara civil jury recommended Guadalupe disincorporate due to the scope of the city’s financial mismanagement.
In a report issued this June — an update to the previous report — the civil grand jury noted that the city has had modest improvement but continues to have budget shortfalls. In particular, it noted the city appears to have used interfund transfers of Measure A and the Gas Tax funds — which have restricted uses — to cover General Fund shortfalls.
In Guadalupe’s 2018-19 budget, the city estimates receiving $11.14 million in revenues and spending $10.86 million during the 2018-19 fiscal year.
The approved budget has projected General Fund revenues of $4,218,714 and expenses of $4,218,417 — a difference of only $354.
For its General Fund, Guadalupe expects to collect around $100,000 less from sales, property and other taxes in 2018-19 compared to the previous year but is projecting that revenues from building permits and fees will increase.
August 14, 2018
Santa Maria Times
By Razi Syed
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