City Attempts to Untangle Land Development Codes

For the first time in almost 70 years, San Diego is updating land development regulations in the Municipal Code, in hopes of simplifying a process many consider confusing, lengthy and tedious.

Under the direction of the City Council, the city Planning Department has begun to revise the more than 1,000 pages of land development regulations in the Municipal Code to make it more “user-friendly.”

The existing process is often a waste of time for those involved and is inefficient, said Karl ZoBell, chairman of the new Zoning Code Update Advisory Committee, working in conjunction with the Planning Department.

“We have three main goals,” ZoBell said. “We want to streamline the process so it is user-friendly and understandable to the average homeowner. We want to create more predictable time lines for project processing. Most importantly, we want to rid the system of unnecessary redundancies and contradictions so that the right land-use decision is made--based on the merit of the project and not a procedural snag.”

ZoBell said homeowners proposing an addition to their house, or even those remodeling, may have to attend two to nine public hearings before receiving approval to start building, depending on where they live.

“There are some matters that are so unimportant that they don’t justify going to the City Council, like the height or color of someone’s back-yard fence,” ZoBell said. “Yet those are all matters, depending on where in the city, that can all be appealed to the City Council. Some matters should just plain stop at a lower threshold. . . . We need to relieve citizens and property owners of the prospect of multiple public hearings.”

He said the disparities between building regulations in different areas of San Diego will be addressed by the Planning Department.

San Diego’s original Municipal Code had five zones and was only nine pages long. Today, the code consists of more than 200 zones and 1,000 pages concerning land development, according to Betsy Weisman, senior planner with the Planning Department.

On top of that, there are more than 125 different sets of possible processes for developers and homeowners and, in addition to the Municipal Code, more than 175 other documents consisting of 20,000 pages related to land development.

“The community is always raising issues about the complicated land development process,” said George Arimes, assistant planning director with the Planning Department. “We have just as many problems with it as the community does. And we have a great desire to simplify the types of regulations and the process.”

Land developers proposing a major new building project in San Diego are not exempt from the lengthy ordeal--or the confusion that comes along with it.

“Once you go through the system, you think that you understand it, but you don’t,” said Bill Miller, president of McKellar Development of La Jolla. “You just realize that it changes every time you go through the system.”