More time given to pay parking tickets, water bills
CITY HALL — Starting next year, Santa Monica City Hall will be open when the rest of the working world is.
Part of City Hall, anyway.
Responding to complaints from residents and merchants, and heeding the advice of a private consultant, city officials announced last week they will keep the beleaguered planning department open even when the rest of City Hall is closed.
That means diverging from City Hall’s “9/80” schedule, when workers take every other Friday off, but work longer hours during the other nine working days. The schedule is touted as an environmental consideration because it reduces the amount of car trips made to and from City Hall.
Under the new plan, a limited number of staff will provide building permit, plan check, public works and business license services. The city also will accept payment for parking tickets, and will issue permits for parking and filming. In separate offices on Fifth Street, City Hall will take payment for water bills.
“While our 9/80 work schedule has been very beneficial in terms of reducing vehicles on the road and cleaning up the air, City Hall’s closure every other Friday has resulted in some inconvenience to those whose service needs don’t match our schedule,” Assistant City Manager Gordon Anderson said in a prepared statement.
“This pilot program will help us serve them better and still maintain our commitment to clean air.”
The suggestion to keep City Hall open five days every week was put forward in a 262-page report delivered this past summer by the Matrix Consulting Group. Matrix was paid more than $70,000 to evaluate the often criticized planning department.
Matrix had a host of suggestions to reduce bureaucracy at City Hall and improve customer service. Acting on the suggestions is expected to cost an additional $500,000 a year.
The pilot program for limited services on what City Hall calls “closed Fridays” begins Jan. 7, the first Friday of 2005. Shortly after announcing its new hours, City Hall closed its doors at noon on Dec. 23 and remained closed through Christmas Eve Day. It was scheduled to reopen today.
City Councilman Bobby Shriver lauded the move to extend hours at City Hall and said he was looking forward to other planned improvements, like making the city’s Web site a better resource for planners and architects who use it regularly. He recalled a time he visited City Hall on a closed Friday and encountered several disgruntled people who hadn’t realized it would be closed.
“It’s tough for people to sort of manage their lives,” said Shriver, who during his campaign criticized City Hall’s relationship with its users. “Some people just need access to the city, so it’s good that people have access.”
Local architect David Hibbert, who frequently uses the planning department for the last 30 years, said he was encouraged to see City Hall act on recommendations from the Matrix report.
“There are so many things that cause delays in this city that anything that can help a contractor is a good thing,” he said. “They have so much turnover, we used to joke if you went three different days and got three different people, you’d get three different answers … It’s a very complicated place.”
While the efforts to make City Hall more accessible, along with ongoing efforts to have more knowledgeable, helpful staff interact with the public, have led to significant improvements, merchants said plenty of work is left to be done.
Syrna Glasser, who was delayed some 20 months in opening Schmerty’s Gourmet Cookies on Pico Boulevard partly because of complications at City Hall, said she hoped officials would focus next on simplifying the approval process.
“It’s a matter of them being able to actually get the work done if they’re staying open,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s going to help with the process, but let’s hope and pray, and keep our fingers crossed. That’s all you can do.”
“I don’t know if it’s going to help with the process, but let’s hope and pray, and keep our fingers crossed. That’s all you can do.” — – SYRNA GLASSER Merchant
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 27, 2004. Read the original PDF.