MBA students study planning department
Propelled into action by complaints from residents and businesses, a group of area graduate students is studying the planning department here and comparing it to a handful of those in other Los Angeles cities.
The idea is to find out if Santa Monica’s planning department is really as slow and burdensome as many say it is.
“It’s always bothered me because the war stories about, ‘How can we get through the procedure?’ have been as many as wild,” said Dr. William Crookston, professor at the University of Southern California. “If it’s common in Southern California, then we’re just following the rules together. If it’s dramatic, then we might ask for a change.”
Crookston’s initial interest in the issue goes beyond his five students working on the project. Crookston also is former president of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, the organization overseeing the three-month study, which is expected to conclude with a report in December.
Chamber officials have long lambasted the department for being overly bureaucratic, which negatively effects local businesses.
“It became quite personal for me, because I keep having small businesses come forward who want to open in Santa Monica, and get halfway through the process and run out of money, time,” said Kathy Dodson, the chamber’s executive director. “You can’t go into the planning department and say, ‘OK, if I do everything right, when can I open the doors?’
32B,“There should be a transparent process,” Dodson added. “There’s just so many question marks right now, and I get so many complaints from existing businesses and from new businesses coming in about the planning process that we felt it was important to step back and take another look.”
The study is a two-part analysis. The first phase, now completed, involved meeting with managers in the planning departments of Santa Monica and three other cities, as well as reviewing budgets, caseload and other public documents. The second phase, which students are halfway through, includes meeting with a handful of merchants that have either made their way through the process recently or are in the middle of it. Throughout the three-month study, the students are meeting bi-weekly with chamber officials, Dodson said.
3E5,“They’re coming across some very interesting things. Real interesting,” Dodson added, declining to specify what exactly the students have uncovered. “Until they’ve completed all their interviews, maybe something that looks real interesting won’t be after they talk to a few people.”
Crookston said the other three cities will remain nameless until the report is released, so as not to compromise the study. All three are West LA cities and Crookston said a fourth city may be added to the study.
Meanwhile, members of the Planning Commission recently agreed that an independent audit of the planning department should be performed for the same reasons. That recommendation will go before the City Council at an upcoming meeting, which will decide whether to proceed with the audit.
City Councilman Bob Holbrook said he has been pushing for reform for years, adding that when he was mayor he asked planning department officials for suggestions to streamline the process, but none were forthcoming.
3CF,“I can predict what they’ll find out: Getting through our planning department is extremely ponderous and time consuming,” Holbrook said, adding he thinks there are too many ordinances and the system has become too arcane. “You’d think that there’d be some discretionary power somewhere.”
With one study underway and the audit on the horizon, planning department assistant director Andy Agle said his 100-plus staff member department welcomes the attention it’s receiving.
“We regularly solicit input from the users of our system,” he said. “We’ve held workshops, we solicit comment feedback cards, those types of things. So if there are opportunities to provide constructive feedback to improve our process, we certainly welcome them.”
Kathy Dodson
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.