Planning department should be transparent, director says
CITY HALL — The red tape here has got to go, business owners have long complained. It takes too long to set up shop in Santa Monica, they say.
Bolstered by a recent report from a business school student group, proprietors got another boost Tuesday from within the bureaucracy itself. And bureaucrats find themselves having to untangle themselves from the red tape in order to remove it for others.
Suzanne Frick, who heads the planning department, said change is needed to make it easier for business and residents to navigate.
That means reviewing everything from the role of various workers to department processes, as well as the laws and codes that govern projects in Santa Monica. It’s a job sure to take months, if not years.
Business owners and residents have long complained that City Hall is too slow and cumbersome in approving projects and minor plan changes. They argue the bureaucracy causes an unfair burden on profits for some businesses, while driving away others from ever coming to Santa Monica.
In response, the department is currently examining the laws that govern multi-family projects and new buildings downtown, and also may soon review local zoning codes, Frick said. Meanwhile, City Manager Susan McCarthy is defining the scope of an independent review of the department expected to begin sometime this summer or fall, Frick added.
The department also will review the suggestions of a team of five MBA students from the University of Southern California who compared Santa Monica’s planning department to those in the cities of Burbank, Culver City and Pasadena. They found that Santa Monica lagged behind the other cities in the time it takes to approve new businesses, among other things.
Commissioned by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, the student group suggested improving customer service and better managing the expectations of local merchants. They gave their presentation on Tuesday to a group of 100 at the chamber’s monthly luncheon in a penthouse ballroom at the Four Points Sheraton downtown.
“Nobody was perfectly pleased with the way things were,” student Audney DePaulo said. “Most of the frustration came when (merchants) expected it would be a three-or four-month process and a year and a half later they didn’t have their bakery open or whatever.”
“Our goal is really to make the process as transparent and expeditious as possible,”
“It’s just that our job is also to make sure we’re enforcing the rules and regulations.”
Also recommended was a clearer, more comprehensive Web site that could be accessed by prospective businesses; more education for City Hall staffers, businesses and residents; better defined department goals; better public relations and the removal of certain subjective elements of the approval process, including some hearings, among other things.
But officials said simplifying the process in Santa Monica will be anything but easy — the city’s eight square miles are becoming increasingly more dense each year and new laws are passed routinely.
“The process in Santa Monica has definitely evolved, because it is a special city to a lot of people — a small beach community significantly denser than the other communities (in the study),” planning commissioner Darrell Clarke said. “Quality of life has been very important.”
“The process in Santa Monica has definitely evolved, because it is a special city to a lot of people — a small beach community significantly denser than the other communities (in the study).” — Frick said. — DARRELL CLARKE Planning Commissioner
Still, Clarke said local residents and merchants shouldn’t be left wondering what the next step in the process is. He said part of the problem is the conflict between residents and business, while another part is the relationship between the various boards that review the projects — the City Council, the Planning Commission and the Architecture Review Board — and city staff, who structure the recommendations and can therefore limit the “visibility” of board members.
Clarke said comparing Santa Monica to other cities isn’t exactly fair.
Frick agreed. “The study did not go into depth or detail about the philosophies of the varying cities, nor did it really look at the success of businesses within the city,” she said. “So Santa Monica may have a more rigorous approval process, but that’s related to a number of factors, related to the quality of life and the type of environment we’re trying to create in Santa Monica. Which then, in turn, leads to businesses becoming very successful.”
Students said the bottom line is that more information needs to be gathered — from merchants, residents and City Hall.
“You’re talking about five MBA students for one class over the course of one semester,” DePaulo said. “Obviously, there’s more work to be done.”
Still, Frick, who said many of the suggestions were already being worked on by City Hall staffers, added it’s a useful part of the process.
“What the city will be doing — and hopefully the evaluation will contribute to — is stepping back and looking at the processes, and looking at improvements, in both the processes and the regulations,” she said. “Staff will be pursuing that objective in the course of developing new regulations and presenting recommendations to the City Council.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 14, 2004. Read the original PDF.