Council Members:

Thank you for your hard work this year at what is essentially a volunteer job.

In response to the latest of John Boyles excellent 'Your City .' newsletters. A problem which is growing worse and impacts small business and small homeowners most seriously is the amount of time and expense it takes to get a use permit for a residential or business expansion. Staff has significantly increased the requirements for a use permit submittal and, once accepted, hearing dates are now averaging four months from the date of acceptance. Staff will no longer accept what they consider an incomplete submittal, allowing the applicant to make the submittal complete while they are waiting for their hearing date. Instead every little detail must be correct and complete in the package first. This adds at least a month or two to the process.

Many small businesses who happen to be 'conditional' rather than 'permitted' uses pay rent for months in spaces they can't occupy because of this problem. Small home owners, most of whom are in the R1U zone, pay thousands more for their projects just because they live on small lots. Many, if not most, of these projects have absolutely no neighbor opposition or even comment.

My theory is that staffing is just not adequate to keep up with the work load. Use permit applications should be reduced. Consider defining more business uses as permitted and reducing the number of substandard residential lots by changing their definitions.

Thank you for accepting these suggestions.

Sam Sinnott

Samuel Sinnott and Company,
Architecture and Construction Inc.
558 A Santa Cruz Ave.
Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 325 5560 x801
(650) 325 0138 (fax)

sam@sinnottandco.com
www.sinnottandco.com Received on Fri Dec 7 19:15:26 2007