Council Moves to Rid Itself of Planning Load : Government: City hopes to improve efficiency by shifting control of the Planning Department to the city manager.

Hoping to streamline both the Planning Department and its own legislative agenda, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday tentatively agreed to relinquish direct control of the department and place it under the city manager’s authority.

Adopting one of the chief recommendations of a sharply critical management audit of the city’s beleaguered Planning Department, the council voted, 6 to 2, to bring the department in line with most other major city agencies by shifting it--and the authority to hire and fire the planning director--to the city manager’s jurisdiction.

With land-use decisions being among the council’s most critical and politically sensitive tasks, the council has exercised considerable control over the department and its director.

However, an independent audit released last month concluded that the present organizational structure is seriously flawed, primarily because the council, given its myriad other duties, is ill-equipped to provide effective day-to-day management of the department.

Echoing a frustration shared by many current and past council members, the audit also noted that the council’s own weekly docket has been overburdened by its proclivity to become more deeply enmeshed in planning issues than most other local legislative bodies.

Of the council’s two weekly meeting days, one is devoted primarily to land-use questions--many of them appeals of Planning Commission decisions on small private projects sometimes as parochial as requests to build a back-yard fence.

“The City Council reviews private projects at a greater frequency and level of detail than in most other cities,” the audit said. “In (a) random sample of projects, 50% of those heard by the Planning Commission were also heard by the council. This has reduced the effectiveness of the Planning Commission hearings and burdened the council agenda, since the City Council acts as a de facto Planning Commission.”

Tuesday’s action, several council members said, could mark the first step toward restoring balance to the city’s planning procedures, so that only major planning issues involving policy decisions reach the council while most others are settled within the department.

“We waste a lot of time on appeals that have nothing to do with policy,” City Councilman Bob Filner said. “The reason that’s happened is that it’s difficult to say to your constituents that they don’t have the right to appeal to the council. But we’re going to have to bite the bullet if we’re going to streamline the process.”

Because the administrative shift approved Tuesday necessitates a change in the Municipal Code, the issue will return to the council next week for formal ratification. At that time, City Manager Jack McGrory will outline a proposed organizational chart that, in keeping with a council recommendation, is expected to show that the future planning director would be on the level of a deputy city manager in order to facilitate access to the council.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor, a strong proponent of the proposed change, argued that many of the morale, management and ethics problems that plagued the Planning Department this year might have been avoided if the city manager, not the council, had overseen its operations.

“The manager’s in a much better position to provide strong day-to-day control,” O’Connor said.

Earlier this year, the Planning Department was racked by a scandal that saw its former director, Robert Spaulding, being forced to resign after it was revealed that his affair with a city planner had cost the city nearly $100,000 in a once-secret deal.

Amid growing dissatisfaction with the department’s operations--in particular, some council members’ contention that its budget had increased even as its workload decreased because of a recession-spawned slowdown in development--the council reduced its $13-million annual budget by $3 million.

Because of those and other problems, including the lack of a coherent planning vision--over the past five years, the audit said, the council made 667 changes to planning and zoning guidelines--the low morale among Planning Department staffers worsened.

Saying that the proposed changes could “insulate the Planning Department from political forces,” City Councilman Bruce Henderson argued that shifting to the city manager’s control could begin to remedy the morale and other problems.

Since Spaulding’s May resignation, the planning director’s job has remained vacant pending the audit. After the legal formality of next week’s vote, McGrory would assume responsibility for finding a replacement to fill the $100,000-plus job.

Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who was joined by Councilman John Hartley in opposing Tuesday’s action, expressed reluctance to see the council “sacrifice our policy-making authority” and concern over how the shift would link the Planning Department’s efficiency to the quality of the city manager.

“We have an excellent city manager now,” Wolfsheimer said. “But, 10 or 15 years from now, we could have a miserable city manager.”

Councilman Ron Roberts was absent for the vote.