Consultant to review planning department
CITY HALL — Local officials expect to spend up to $75,000 to figure out how to fix City Hall’s planning department.
A private consultant will be hired next year to review the department, which has already launched an in-house effort to shorten waiting times and improve customer service.
Residents and merchants have long complained that City Hall’s planning process is too slow, burdensome and costly. They said the bureaucracy is unfair to businesses and residents suffer extensive delays on minor projects.
In October, the Planning Commission suggested an outside consultant be hired. That recommendation received broad support when it went before the City Council Tuesday night.
“I hope we can approach this now in a very positive way, that we can look to increase the effectiveness of our process (and) certainly aim for absolute fairness,” City Councilman Kevin McKeown said. “And fairness in this sense is not an absence of favoritism. It’s more a presence of consistency.”
McKeown echoed comments from City Councilman Ken Genser, who said he has been inundated with horror stories from residents. Many say they go in for a small fix and find themselves confronted with a massive bureaucracy.
Genser, himself a development consultant, pointed to Los Angeles, where he said staffers seem to be more knowledgeable and solve problems more quickly. Fellow City Councilman Herb Katz said getting through the planning approval process needs to be simple, fair and fast.
Spokeswoman Judy Rambeau said the in-house effort to address the community’s concerns has so far included focus groups and staff interviews, among other research. The report calls for hiring an outside consultant before the end of this fiscal year to examine various aspects of permit processing in the department, including workload and workflow, and compare it to those in other cities.
A total of $75,000 has been set aside for this fiscal year, but Rambeau said City Hall may hire a consultant for less money after officials review bids from consultants early next year.
In her report earlier this month, City Manager Susan McCarthy said the plan-ning department has recently made vast strides in improving customer service.
She said with new performance standards now in place and vacant positions recently filled, even more improvements will come early next year.
That’s welcome news to area businesses. The Chamber of Commerce recently commandeered a handful of students to conduct their own study of the planning department and compare it to other cities. Preliminary findings released earlier this month showed Santa Monica lags behind its inland neighbors in project approval times and customer service. Final results aren’t expected until next month.
In the meantime, planning department head Suzanne Frick has said she welcomes outside critiques. Not everyone has been critical, she added.
City Council members Mike Feinstein and Pam O’Connor stood up for the department Tuesday, saying because Santa Monica is almost entirely built out and situated in a desirable location, plan-ning issues tend to be more complicated.
“Our staff has been professional to high standards,” O’Connor said, pointing out that it has “layer upon layer upon layer” of ordinances to enforce.
Genser offered this suggestion to his colleagues: “Maybe we need a chapter of ‘Ordinance Adopters Anonymous’ in Santa Monica.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.