County Simplifies Permit Maze for Builders

Responding to the growing clamor for relief from burdensome regulations, San Diego County this week streamlined the permit process for major building projects in the unincorporated area, hoping to reduce delays by 30%.

The recommendations adopted by the Board of Supervisors are expected to cut the approval time for residential, commercial and industrial construction from an average of 418 days to 294 days, said Randy Hurlburt, the county’s deputy planning director.

The effort parallels the city of San Diego’s continuing attempt to refine its permit process by updating zoning codes, officials said.

For the building industry, time saved is money in the bank; the longer the approval process drags on, the more a builder pays in interest on loans.

The new regulations will “save in those areas where time is really critical--on your loans, on interest costs. It will save on insurance costs, because you won’t have them as long,” said Frank Panarisi, president of the local Construction Industry Federation.

To county planners, under heavy pressure to reduce delays as the building industry suffers through its worst slump in a decade, the streamlining will make government more efficient, without significantly affecting the public’s ability to comment on major construction projects.

“People in the (building) industry, in particular, feel that the process takes too long to get these decisions made,” said Deputy Planning Director Randy Hurlburt. “We were thinking there must be a way to get things done faster but not to lose the quality of the decisions.”

But some members of the task force that drew up the plan over five months believe that the new rules will limit public input, particularly by the elimination of a public hearing that is now held before county staffers.

“In their streamlining, they are streamlining an opportunity for good public input out of the process,” said Linda Michael, a member of the Sierra Club’s conservation committee and a task force representative. “There are early decisions made about a project, and you should have the broadest input early in the process.”

Key changes in the process include:

* The imposition of time limits on various phases of the process where none existed, and shortened timetables for others.

* Creation of a “pre-application assistance program” for builders. In many cases, builders are unclear about the wide variety of information they must file on a site’s biology, archeology, ground water, traffic and noise, and are sent back time and again to provide additional reports, officials say. Sometimes they file too much, causing needless delay and costs.

Similarly, builders will know in advance how much the permit process will cost, Panarisi said. Now, they are repeatedly required to make additional payments as the process grinds forward.

In the current process, builders and planners “are adversaries immediately,” Panarisi said. “This (new process) causes and allows for the discussion and the back and forth immediately, without making it complicated.

* A decision to bypass administrative hearings for controversial projects such as junkyards, gravel pits, amphitheaters and certain kinds of residential projects that are inevitably appealed to the Planning Commission. Such projects will automatically be heard by the Planning Commission.

* Greater use of private consultants to help county staffers during periods of heavy workload.

The new rules come at a time when construction in unincorporated areas is at its lowest point in more than a decade. Home construction fell to 1,232 units in 1991, down from the most recent peak of 8,313 in 1985 and lower even than the last building bust year of 1982, when 1,395 homes were built. County projections show that even fewer homes, 1,130, will be built this year.

No statistics were available for commercial and industrial construction in unincorporated areas, but those segments of the building industry generally account for about 30% of the total, Hurlburt said.

Speedy approvals can be critical to capturing what little interest is available during a down year, said David Kreitzer, a planning commissioner and longtime environmentalist.

“I think there’s been too much delay,” he said. “There’s something wrong when government takes 14, 15, or 16 months to come to a decision on a project.”