Saying community planning advisory groups provide valuable input to the County’s land-use process, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Wednesday to keep the groups unchanged.
The Board did vote to increase training for the current and future members of the County’s 26 community planning advisory groups to increase their effectiveness.
Supervisors also directed land-use staff to return in the future with a plan to combine and re-organize the County’s multiple land use departments into one new organization and to convene a group to re-examine one of the County’s environmental ordinances, the Resource Protection Ordinance.
All of the actions were taken as the Board considered recommendations made last year by a special task force created to find ways to cut “red tape” in the County’s land use and development process. The Board previously directed County staff to begin implementing several other task force recommendations Feb. 29.
The task force made dozens of recommendations, including eliminating the community planning advisory groups, or limiting the types of development projects they could review and imposing term limits on their elected members.
Those suggestions drew a large crowd of planning advisory group chairpersons, members and people from unincorporated communities to Wednesday’s meeting. They told supervisors that the groups were important eyes and ears who provided valuable insight into their communities.
Supervisors agreed.
“Planning groups are not red tape, but an integral part of the planning process,” said Supervisor Dianne Jacob, echoing the testimony of many of the speakers.
Supervisors also voted to direct County staff to:
Some of the recommendations the Board ordered land use staff to immediately implement at its Feb. 29 meeting included: