City planning department hopes to streamline operations in
2006
Morgan Hill – The delays and taxing restrictions that have dogged local developers for years may soon be history.
For the first time in more than three years, the city planning office is fully staffed. In addition to dedicating more time to downtown, head planner Kathy Molloy Previsich intends to spend 2006 streamlining city building codes for the benefit of builders and planners.
“We need to remove artificial obstacles from the zoning ordinances,” Molloy Previsich said. “We have to look at where we have requirements and ‘shalls’ and see that it really needs to be a requirement. There are a lot of ‘shalls’ that could be ‘shoulds’ ”
And problems with the codes have been exacerbated by staff shortages. Without a full complement of planners, the city has not been able to deal with projects as quickly as builders would like. Molloy Previsich is hopeful that hiring an experienced planner to focus on downtown will help drive economic development in the city’s main artery.
“For some reason, it’s been hard to find quality planners,” she said. “I’m excited that we’re at a full complement. We’ll have a great team.”
In the spring, the city will conduct a series of workshops with the local development community to work out changes to the zoning code and architectural review handbook.
The goal of the workshops is to eliminate regulations that may be outdated or overly restrictive and strengthen and clarify the codes so they can be easily applied to a variety of projects and changes in the city’s development goals.
“We can’t know every project that’s going to walk in the door,” Molloy Previsich said. “If we have a lot of ‘shalls,’ there are projects when nobody thinks these guidelines makes sense. We need clear expectations, but we don’t need to create obstacles either.”
Any reforms require approval by the city council, and Molloy Previsich hopes there will be numerous changes in the fine print. She mentioned several instances where the zoning code has exacting requirements that might not serve any real purpose, including one commercial ordinance that requires 30 feet of landscaping with particular type of buildings.
“Those are pretty hard standards,” she said. “Is 30 the right number? Maybe 25 is the right number for certain projects.”
Rocke Garcia, a developer of both commercial and residential real estate, said city planners are generally cooperative and helpful, but are too often at the mercy of outdated planning rules.
“They’ve done a great job in the past and I think this will take them to a higher level,” Garcia said. Sometimes they get hampered by code issues from the past that aren’t really pertinent to the project”
Garcia said city planners were especially helpful on a housing project in the Madrone area in north Morgan Hill. As it was approved, the project was supposed to include homes that were connected to one another, a problem for builders who were hit hard by insurance rates that were much higher than those for detached houses on individual lots.
“There was perceived liability by insurers and we worked together (with city planners) to separate some units,” he said. “In certain cases we were allowed to do that.”
But even minor requirements can cause long delays. Tony Villafranca lost six months because the city required that his building on E. Third Street be reviewed by an historical architect.
“He said it was just an old building, that it wasn’t anything special,” Villafranca said. “But I understand why they did it. They want to preserve the integrity and the old-style flavor of Morgan Hill. They’ve done a really good job of preserving the history of the town so overall, it’s a good thing.”
And the addition of senior planner Eric Marlatt, should mean good things for downtown. Marlatt has 15 years of experience, most recently in Santa Cruz, where he worked on mixed use developments and acted a liaison between the planning office and the city’s redevelopment agency.
“I think it will help to have a single contact for downtown business owners and have one staff person focus on what’s going on down there, seeing what works and what doesn’t,” Marlatt said.
