An initiative the San Clemente City Council started more than a year ago ticked another box towards becoming official Thursday night, Sept. 14, with the council voting to introduce an ordinance meant to expedite noncontroversial development projects in San Clemente.
The council also approved the Planning Commission’s own recommendation to designate itself as the appeal body for Zoning Administrator decisions—a vote Mayor Pro Tem Steve Knoblock expressed his opposition for in the 4-1 decision on the item.
Councilmember Victor Cabral said the sticking point in working to streamline the city’s permitting process lay in a conflict the public faced: residents and contractors doing their own projects want the process to be quicker, while simultaneously desiring a slow system with which to review their neighbors’ potential projects.
“The builder wants (a project) and the neighborhood doesn’t, so how do you get (the review) done quickly?” Cabral asked. “It may not be that those kinds of projects are done quickly, but I would think that having the Planning Commission as an intermediary before us might actually help expedite the process.”
The discussion over the commission’s role was the main factor in Thursday’s meeting, as councilmembers didn’t make any significant changes to the zoning amendments staff presented to them.
An errata, or a list of corrected errors, concerning items that followed council direction to increase permits for businesses’ special activities or that needed to be “cleaned up” in staff’s words, was the only addition to the ordinance.
The council also followed staff recommendations to amend the fee schedule and maintain the current permits appeals process and fees for the discretionary review of zoning permits. Applicants will still need to pay $1,447.67 to file an appeal, and members of the public must pay $628.08.
Staff has worked since August 2022 to bring the council’s initiated amendments to “clarify, consolidate and streamline” the permitting process to fruition, including five meetings with the Planning Commission, between January and June 2023, to review the proposed ordinance.
New Commission Chair Cameron Cosgrove spoke about the group’s work during the public comment period Thursday, highlighting the ordinance’s inclusion of objective standards aimed at reducing subjectivity and mistakes.
“That’s why we were at this for six months,” he said. “As you know, your packet’s over 200 pages. We went through every red line, one by one—and discussed it.”
Cosgrove said the commission supported the zoning amendments and advocated for a second phase. He also explained its rationale behind wanting to become an appeal body, in that in the rare event of someone filing an appeal, the city’s focus should shift from that of streamlining to quality projects.
“Since projects tend to last for decades, we’d rather have a higher quality,” he said.
His stance was backed by Councilmembers Rick Loeffler and Mark Enmeier, with the former referencing Deputy Community Development Director Adam Atamian’s statement that only one similar appeal had been filed in the last two years.
Given that the Planning Commissioners are subject matter experts who live in the communities that are being debated over, Loeffler said, their knowledge would offset any extra time added by the appeal process.
Knoblock, in opposition to designating the commission as an appeal body, spoke of the previous council’s original goal of expediting a “slow and lethargic” review process.
“I don’t think that we’re jeopardizing quality by having a thorough staff review with appeals that come here,” he said. “We can always get experts (such as) members of the Planning Commission speaking publicly, like we had today.”
Cabral introduced the motion to approve the staff recommendation for the ordinance, including the errata, as well as the updated fee schedule, maintaining the appeals fees and making the Planning Commission the appeals body.
Knoblock asked Cabral for a friendly amendment to the motion, which was to reduce the appeals fee to $100—a Planning Commission recommendation. Cabral declined.
Knoblock then introduced a substitute motion to include the commission’s recommendation for a reduced appeals fee that failed to receive a second, paving the way for Cabral’s motion to succeed in a 4-1 vote.
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