The Morgan Hill planning commission unanimously approved minor changes Tuesday to the city’s extensive growth control ordinance, but some doubt that the changes will end up “streamlining” the process that requires home builders to compete for housing allocations and meet a series of deadlines.
The effort to make the system more efficient even as it has become increasingly confusing since the 2008 real estate crash and vanished financing opportunities will have to wait.
The commission voted to appoint the committee that made the changes approved at Tuesday’s meeting to continue looking into how to make the residential development control system more efficient and easier to understand.
Changes approved at Tuesday’s meeting have to do with the points system the ordinance applies to applicants of housing projects, based on amenities and improvements they offer in their proposals. These have to do with making pedestrian walkways and outlets more visible from the public right-of-way, making landscaping more visible from public areas, and positioning security cameras in certain locations in the multi-home residential developments.
Dividend Homes president Dick Oliver, who was not on the subcommittee who suggested the changes, said in efforts to improve the growth control system in recent years, the city has “made it more complex.” Plus, he complained that builders’ fees continue to climb with the city’s push to encourage higher-quality housing through the competitive points system.
Those builders’ fees now surpass $15,000 per home, he said.
“It’s going to eventually strangle us,” said Oliver, who has built homes in Morgan Hill more than 30 years.
The City Council hopes to give the 35-year-old voter-approved system an overhaul, and is expected to do so as part of the general plan update process that is likely to start at the end of this year. The goal will be to make the system more efficient and easier to process, and any extensive changes will go to the voters, council members have said.
One complication of the system is since 2008, nearly 1,100 homes that have been approved through the competition system have been approved but not built, though that’s overwhelmingly because of the unavailability of financing and credit since the 2008 recession, builders and city staff have said.
