Santa Barbara County Planning and Development

AGENDA

· Introduction of Members

· Recap of Kickoff Meeting

· Coordination

· Ministerial vs Discretionary

· Key Areas to Focus On

ISSUES/CONCERNS

· North County intake different from South County

· Difficulty of determining conformance with policies/ordinances

· True list of ministerial permits vs discretionary

· How to make our systems simpler

· Conflict between comprehensive plan and community plans

· Policies in community plans being applied generally, e.g., Toro Canyon Creek setbacks

· Further complication added by internal, administerial policies

· Community plans have policies that are too complex; only comprehensive planners understand them; they then enter into the permitting process making judgments and further complicating the review

· Same problems year after year (one productive activity may be to go back and review prior analyses)

· Clear, easy to implement ordinances; we don't need so many additional staff policy papers and interpretations

· We don't have checklists of criteria, consistent format (include COPs)

· Any interpretations (e.g. tree grading and slope determination) should go to the BoS

· The trade-offs of countywide versus community-specific ordinances and policies; minimum standards (e.g. Santa Ynez grading)

· We need countywide objective-criteria based approach to key issues relating to ministerial permits, for countywide needs (e.g., agriculture)

· Standards for residential (e.g. slope) development are different from those for agriculture

· GPACs should not be impacting countywide standards and zoning

· We should pull resource protection policies out of community plans and use the appropriate General Plan element

· Complexity due in part to overlays of federal/California/county requirements. For example, why should the county have its own Tiger Salamander protection policies where the feds and state already have theirs?

· Resource protection is trumping ordinances

· There is a disconnect between Comp and Dev Rev (e.g., in small communities it's the same person, so the community's vision and goals are consistently supported by permitters)

· There is enough discretion that applicants who object are being penalized

· Review the process flow chart (the "you can't make chicken soup with chicken s---" analogy)

· We need better coordination with Board of Supervisors

· Option: "Ministerial" => "Administrative"

- Remove discretionary and the findings

- Without creating third category

· Case processing problems:

- Transfers of planners

- No accountability

- No time limit adhered to

- Changing interpretations

· The system and its components have to work for the contractor, s/he needs to know if a project is permitted. One option: turn over plans by licensed architects to Building and Safety

· Not legal or fair for BoS to delegate its discretion to staff

· Bare minimum criteria

· Benchmark

· Zoning Ordinance definitions of what should be ministerial

· Order of required approvals: Dev Rev => B&S => PW Roads => EHS

· Intake log

NEXT STEPS/AREAS OF INITIAL FOCUS

· Review the process flow chart (Jack, Tom)

· The ordinances and policies that we have to work with in designing the process (Paul)

· Bare minimum criteria (Mark, Anne)

· Benchmark (Dave, Laurel)

· Accela categorization of current permits, if needed (Florence)

· Zoning Ordinance definitions of what should be ministerial (Jessica, Trevor)

· Order of required approvals (Laurel/Peter L./Cathy) Dev Rev => B&S => PW Roads => EHS

· Intake log (Florence/Petra/Paul)