At its last meeting on Jan. 18, the City of San Clemente’s Planning Commission reviewed a zoning amendment intended to streamline the permitting process for residents and contractors, and it will do so again in March.
Back in June 2022, the commission reviewed staff ideas for opportunities to speed up the process. The list of ideas eventually reached the City Council that later initiated the streamlining plans that would reduce the level of review for numerous types of projects.
“In some cases, it would be reducing a public hearing-type process from maybe a Planning Commission review to zoning administrator review, or zoning administrator review to an administrative-type process,” Christopher Wright, an associate planner, said during the meeting.
A major factor to determining what should be eligible for streamlining was the level of anticipated public concern based on staff’s prior experience. Officials also spoke with City of Santa Barbara staff while developing the potential ordinance.
“We consulted with their staff to figure out what they do on administrative reviews and borrowed a lot of their ideas, and made them our own as well,” Wright said.
The zoning amendment would allow for more staff approval of minor projects near historical structures and nonresidential properties, consolidate planning applications, allow beer and wine sales for on-site consumption at businesses with licenses for food service, and clarify permit review procedures.
City officials added it would continue to put all staff decisions in the commission’s packets to ensure transparency and give decisions to the council as well.
Commissioner Karen Prescott-Loeffler expressed concerns for restricting public access to the decision process within a community that emphasizes historic properties.
“I still think, because we are a small community and we have condensed spaces, that the public needs to have an opportunity to weigh in,” she said.
Prescott-Loeffler also said she saw how applicants would benefit, but she didn’t want to “usurp” the public from the process, which includes review from the commission.
Deputy Community Development Director Adam Atamian added that staff wanted to clarify that administrative approvals are specific to items generally not of public concern. He said staff are not making major changes to the scale of projects they want to streamline, such as projects that won’t be visible, that will be screened, or that are not visible when standing in front of historic property.
“What we’re trying to do is create better definitions of what could be approved by staff,” said Atamian. “Generally speaking, those recommendations are made from staff’s experience working on a lot of these types of projects.”
Commissioner Brent Davis asked for clarification on why the zoning project was initiated, saying that he saw significant value in having the commission review items. Atamian responded, saying that the council directed staff to remove obstacles from the city’s ability to issue permits.
Davis said he’d also like to see staff provide more clarity, or “hammer down,” all the possibilities that could occur within each of the scenarios staff presented regarding applicants’ projects or proposals.
After the staff presentation concluded, Vice Chair Cameron Cosgrove requested that staff include information that better frames the project overall, something he did not see in his report.
Framing was the most important aspect of the discussion, according to Cosgrove, more than the minute details of the proposed changes. Staff needed to explain to the council what trade-offs streamlining would bring.
“Those trade-offs are, ‘You want to go faster? Here’s an avenue: cut out public input,’ ” Cosgrove said. “ ‘Here are some options. Here’s your pros and cons. When you cut out public input in San Clemente with historical structures, you’re going to eliminate this.’ ”
Chair Pro Tem Steven Camp said he didn’t disagree with Cosgrove, but mentioned that there was a difference between what he believed Cosgrove was referring to in staff time and the amount of time the commission spends on projects.
The commission has no control over staff time and no ability to streamline the staff’s process, said Camp, just control over whether certain items come in front of the commission.
Camp added that he was shocked by the number of projects the group has to review when he first joined the commission and the Design Review Subcommittee, especially ones that have minimal impact.
“In general, that’s the direction we need to go: let’s give staff a little more leeway on these smaller projects,” he said.
Scott McKhann, Planning Commission chair, pointed out that it was best for the commission to use its best judgment that the council would likely accept, in response to Cosgrove’s comments. Davis countered McKhann’s point that the council essentially subcontracts the commission to handle planning matters, saying that the streamlining efforts would cut them out of the process.
McKhann gave an example of the commissioners addressing an unnecessary assignment that happened during one of his first meetings.
“We had to (address) a remodel of a triplex that was 299 feet away from an Ole Hanson house way over there,” said McKhann. “And I’m with (Camp), I’m like, ‘What the heck are we doing? Yes, they’re going to remodel it and make it better. Why are we slowing them down?’ ”
Commissioner Gary McCaughan spoke to another factor that was missing from the project’s discussion, in that the council needed to put more money into hiring city staff who could help process plans faster.
McCaughan added that his biggest concern involved the potential lack of consideration for the public and neighbors of proposed projects in terms of removing items from commission review and public noticing.
Commissioner Barton Crandell and Prescott-Loeffler weighed in to remind the panel of the conversations that were held before the city’s Centennial General Plan was last updated in 2014. Those conversations already approved the current system, they argued, and both were reticent to change the review process that could impact the look of “Spanish Village by the Sea.”
To clarify what exactly the council wanted to address, Atamian informed the commission that the zoning amendment was a refined interpretation of all the items on which council told staff to progress in streamlining in 2022.
“(The list of items was on) a New Business item (for) the Planning Commission last year,” he said. “It was the first time we talked about permit streamlining with the commission (in 2022). That list was provided to the City Council, at their request, for staff’s recommendations of ways to streamline the code.”
Permit streamlining has consistently emerged as a topic for the council to tackle for years, Atamian continued. The amendment included items that either haven’t been addressed to date or have presented themselves in recent years.
Prescott-Loeffler said she preferred to wait until upgrades to the city’s permitting software, TRAKIT, were completed to see whether that had positive effects on the process. She affirmed, however, that she did not want to see any alterations to reviews concerning historical structures and expressed a need for more time before going further with the amendment.
Commissioners expressed a desire to view metrics displaying how much time each project spends in each department, what kinds of permits get held up the most, and other statistics. Davis added that “data-driven decisions” were easier to make.
The commission also mentioned reviewing the council’s previous discussions of streamlining to better understand what the council wanted.
Camp summarized the commission’s sentiments as favoring simplification but having concerns over measures that affect the character of architecture in San Clemente. On that note, Cosgrove suggested having separate conversations apart from streamlining to determine how the city wanted to approach projects relating to historical structures.
McKhann made a recommendation regarding how the commission should move forward with the zoning amendment.
“I’ll make a suggestion that we give maybe six weeks … or maybe four weeks, I don’t know, (for us) to get through it in light of this conversation. Then, if anybody has specific issues and things that they want to really drill down on, they can contact staff, meet with staff, and then come back at a future meeting a little more informed,” he said.
Crandell reminded the commission to consider that if applicants come in with a sound project, having done their homework on design guidelines, they can get their project approved the first time. That isn’t always the case, according to Crandell, referencing times when people are forced to have their projects reviewed on numerous occasions, leading to delays.
“There’s some architects that don’t do the homework as well as they should,” said Crandell. “Does that mean our system’s wrong? I don’t think so.”
As the commission agreed to continue the discussion to another meeting, McKhann asked his colleagues to consider the antiquated and expensive nature of story poles in relation to the amendment’s section on the design tool. To that subject, Prescott-Loeffler disagreed and felt that the tools do have significant value.
The commission unanimously voted to next address it at its March 8 meeting.
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