Three Separate [Santa Barbara Grand Jury] Reports Find Similar Faults in City’s Lengthy and Burdensome Review Process
It was a day of hard truths for the City of
Santa Barbara’s Community Development Department and design review boards as
three different reports published by three different groups all arrived at the
same conclusion ― the land development process, while well-intentioned to
preserve the city’s Spanish colonial style and character, has evolved over the
years into a confusing warren of codes and regulations applied inconsistently
by staff who often exceed their purview and trigger costly delays.
The reports, presented to the City Council this
Tuesday, were drafted by the Novak Consulting Firm, the Santa Barbara County
Grand Jury, and the newly created COVID-19 Business Advisory Task Force. Their
findings codified many of the complaints voiced in recent years by private
planners, architects, and property owners who say they’ve been unfairly stymied
by the burdensome review process. While the frustrations are shared by both
residential and commercial developers, the studies were largely prompted by
State Street’s critically high vacancy rates.
Novak’s Jonathan Ingram — who conducted his
fact-finding mission by interviewing 55 city staff, convening six large
stakeholder meetings, and collecting surveys from customers — began by
acknowledging that land development, by its very nature, involves conflict.
Competing interests inevitably collide. Builders want to finish projects as
quickly and cheaply as possible, the city wants to make sure all zoning and
safety requirements are met, and neighborhood groups want to preserve the look
and feel of the community. Those tensions are not unique to Santa Barbara,
Ingram said. What is unique is lack of a consistent working philosophy among
staff.
“Some staff see their role as serving customers
and getting to ‘yes,’ while others view themselves as guardians of the
process,” his report states. “There is a need to protect the guidelines and
standards that have made Santa Barbara the beautiful community it is; however,
there is also a need to provide a level of customer support that helps
applicants advance a project efficiently within the framework of existing
regulations.”
Similarly, Ingram went on, he found that some
staff see narrow project applications as an opportunity to review entire
properties for compliance with historic plans and the latest design guidelines.
“This results in scope creep for a project, forcing applicants to address a
myriad of issues on the property rather than just the project they submitted
for review,” he wrote. “This can expand the cost and timeline of a project.”
Big-picture-wise, these issues need to be addressed by creating a unified
vision and sense of purpose among staff, he said. That comes from support and
direction from senior city leaders.
Drilling down into specific issues, Ingram found
irregularities in how a project even starts along the approval pipeline. He
likened it to a “choose your own adventure” book, where applicants can begin
with an overall design review, sit one-on-one with staff, or gather comments
from various departments. This creates confusion and communication problems,
Ingram said. Similarly, the screening criteria to determine if an application
is complete, as well the decisions that are made over how it is routed among
the city’s various workgroups, are all over the map, Ingram said. “This
inconsistent workflow leads to some disciplines being left out of the process
altogether or coming in much later, and the customer experiences a ‘late hit,’”
he said.
Santa Barbara ought to define standards for when
previously approved plans are resubmitted to design boards, Ingram went on,
because the current method drags down proceedings and “is often in response to
minor adjustments (e.g., changing a window location or guard railing
material),” he said. The city should also create direct, objective guidelines
for each design review board because the existing instructions “are often
highly subjective and, in some cases, unclear”; transition to electronic plan
submittal and review by fully implementing the new Accela software purchased
last year; assign a single building plan checker throughout the length of the
project instead of spreading it among many; better integrate private stormwater
regulations with broader infrastructure planning; and recalibrate turnaround
expectations for building inspectors, who are now hustling to perform a dozen
inspections a day.
While the Grand Jury echoed the Novak report in
many respects, it also made a point of calling out upper management at the
Community Development Department (CDD). “While all experiences were not the
same among the individuals the Jury interviewed, the common theme was the CDD
department suffered from a lack of strong leadership,” the Jury report stated.
“This lack of leadership manifested itself in allowing a culture that was not
customer friendly with some of the staff not interested in helping projects get
permitted.” The Grand Jury also said it discovered a “no growth” bias among
some employees and low morale among others.
In its list of 10 recommended improvements to
the city’s permitting process, the COVID-19 Business Advisory Task Force
touched on a similar theme. “Adoption and implementation of these
recommendations will not be successful absent a substantial change to the
Community Development Department’s workplace culture,” it stated. Among the
suggestions were assigning single plan checkers, limiting the scope of reviews,
and fully adopting Accela.
Jarrett Gorin, a Santa Barbara planning
consultant who participated in the Novak focus groups, agreed with many of the
points made on Tuesday, but he accused Ingram’s final report of “soft-pedaling”
some of the concerns expressed about the CDD, which is currently overseen by
director George Buell, who reports directly to City Administrator Paul Casey.
Gorin suggested the council ask for the meetings’ raw notes to get a truer
reflection of the discussions.
He also pressed the council to exercise its
authority to ensure changes are made. “Are we going to see any meaningful
improvements?” he asked. “Not unless you demand it. Not unless you hold staff
accountable, and I’ve never seen that happen before. I really hope it does this
time.”
Santa
Barbara Independent
By Tyler
Hayden
June 03,
2020
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