By Tuesday evening, the substandard zoning dilemma in Half Moon Bay could be over - at least temporarily.
Planning Director Jack Liebster will be presenting the City Council with an urgency ordinance at that time, which he says will adopt proper zoning in the impacted neighborhoods.
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And the planning department believes it can avoid the Coastal Commission's lengthy approval process by adopting the urgency ordinance.
Because the typical process for changing zoning can take years, city staff has come up with this temporary solution that it hopes will please property owners in the meantime. The long process will get underway July 8, however, when staff will be presenting the new zoning to the Planning Commission for comprehensive review and process.
"It's been really bugging the council," Mayor Mike Ferreira said. "We're going to take a shot at bombing something through the council on an urgency basis."
Zoning changes trigger environmental reviews and a series of public hearings - not to mention approval by the Coastal Commission. "It does take a long time to do a rezoning," Liebster said.
"I imagine there's going to be a kind of war at the Planning Commission," he added.
Along with the urgency ordinance, the council will be asked to vote on an exemption for lots that fall below the city's minimum residential zone of 50-feet wide and 5,000 square feet total. Liebster said this is being done to give those property owners the ability to develop smaller additions such as tool sheds to their lots.
Liebster said he reviewed at length the zoning and ordinances that require property owners of substandard lots to pay $3,760 in non-refundable permit fees and have a state-licensed architect approve the design and conduct a topographic survey on even minor development on their land. He found that the source of the problem was that all the changes were done piecemeal, with each new set of city officials unaware of the impacts those changes could have.
Ferreira said the architectural stamp requirement is what bothers him most. "If the stamp was a critter I'd shoot it," he added.
When he was on the Planning Commission in 2000, an ordinance was passed that developed a set of design guidelines, which include that architectural stamp, but he has changed his view of that ordinance since then. "There was no intention to ensnare all these other neighborhoods into this. It's a trap we never ever wanted to put people in."
He and Liebster hope this expedited change, although temporary until a finalized plan is implemented, will be well received by the growing number of discouraged homeowners on these substandard lots.
Liebster admits that their plan is complex, so its popularity will be contingent on how well it's understood by property owners and explained by city staff. To help with that process, Liebster said the city might have to hire some temporary employees to field the growing number of queries his department is getting at City Hall.
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