Building Permits

The Jan. 24 column by Dick Farman and Steven Soboroff on the need to overhaul the building permit process in Los Angeles and encourage job-creating development hit the proverbial nail on the head. Bogging down the building permit process with unnecessary red tape is not the way to manage the growth in our city. But it surely is the way to hinder the economic growth of our city!

As a professional urban planner, I know that carefully written and fairly implemented specific and general plans address issues of growth, while the building permit process is basically an administrative action. Streamlining the building permit process will not encourage unmanaged growth; it merely facilitates development that has already been envisioned in governing plans and ordinances. The current process (not the city staff!) only serves to unnecessarily delay projects from being built, people from being employed, and housing and commercial uses from being provided. Taxes generated by these uses are also being delayed from entering city coffers. The bottom line is that the city’s economic recovery is being stymied by a burdensome process.

Steps to improve the building permit process put forth by organizations such a Progress LA will help to carry the economy of Los Angeles up an entire flight.

WENDY M. BROGIN

Sherman Oaks