City Commissioners will again discuss the future of the Design Review Board during their March 3 meeting.
Staff is presenting a resolution, that if adopted, would dissolve the DRB.
The city has suspended the board for a year from November 2018 to December 2019 while the city planning department had a heavy workload and was understaffed.
In December, City Commissioners voted unanimously to reinstate the board with changes to the process proposed by staff. At the time, commissioners directed staff to come back within a year to report on whether those changes have been helpful to the process before the city codifies the new process.
Commission reinstates Design Review Board, with process changes
In February, Commissioner Rick Tryon asked staff about revisiting the DRB. He joined the commission in January.
Tryon raised the issue of the fee increases that had been proposed as part of the updated development review process, including a new $500 fee for DRB review.
City planning staff calculated time spent on certain types of projects and based proposed fees on that time. The planning department is funded by a mix of revenue sources, much coming from the fees, and City Manager Greg Doyon has directed the department to work toward reducing its reliance on the general fund.
Doyon has been vocal about his belief that the DRB is an unnecessary additional hurdle in the development process and that staff can handle the level of project review that the board does.
The $500 DRB fee, which staff has said they won’t be pursuing, “demonstrates the concern that I had about the amount of staff time involved with that process,” Doyon said, but allowed staff to keep it in proposal because it’s up to the commission to decide.
Design Review Board discusses its process in case suspension ends
Doyon said for now he’s directing staff to focus on the cost of newly created community development engineer positions, which are essentially a shifting of engineers from public works to the planning department. Doyon said staff believes moving those engineers will improve the process, but the department has to figure out how to fund them.
The commission isn’t going to get a recommendation from staff about the other fees, you’re going to see a recommendation to support the planning engineer positions, Doyon said.
Commission to consider another 6-month suspension of city’s design review board
During the Feb. 4 commission meeting, Tryon asked staff how to go about revisiting the DRB decision from December.
Staff indicated that if there was a consensus among commissioners, they could direct staff to bring a new resolution back to the commission.
Commissioner Owen Robison, who voted for reinstating the DRB in December, said that it the issue was revisited, some commissioners might say “just drop it.”
Commissioner Mary Moe said she thought there was a policy that commissioners couldn’t revisit their decisions for at least six months. City Attorney Sara Sexe said she’d check but since the decision is being brought back to commissioners within three months, that policy doesn’t appear to exist.
In December, Moe said that it could likely be said about most boards that they aren’t necessary, but that it gives the public access to the process and allows for input from design professionals. She said the staff proposal improves the DRB process.
Mayor Bob Kelly said in December that he wasn’t really supportive of continuing the DRB since the city had gone a year without it and that the city planning department had “created a culture of flexibility.
For the year that the DRB was suspended, there were no complaints received by the city on staff’s performance in reviewing site plans and administering the guidelines and standards under city code, according to the staff report.
