How do we decide what, where, and if something gets built? In this month’s housing policy feature, we are spotlighting local boards and commissions.
Local governments play many roles, determining the physical environment in which we live, work, and raise our families is amongst the most important. The local planning process is how local communities determine the kind, location, and amount of growth and development we need and desire to enable the future we intend to have for our families, friends, and neighbors.
Our city councils and county board of supervisors have the power to make the final decision on land-use matters. Local governments have also sought to expand participation and transparency in the process by creating advisory boards and commissions. Entities like planning commissions, design review boards, and historic preservation or cultural heritage boards, are local examples of how cities in Sonoma County, and many cities across California, have approached land use decision-making.
These local planning bodies offer both an opportunity to enlist local citizens to serve as appointees who can lend a measure of expertise to land-use decisions while also providing the community a chance to participate in open hearings that serve to better inform the public about projects that impact all of us.
The most common local planning body across cities is the planning commission. It acts as an advisory board to the governing body on all planning and development matters. For example, if a developer would like to build 42-new homes, they would likely need to receive approval from the planning commission. The commissioners would review the details of the proposals, with support from city or county planning staff, and they’d deliberate on the consistency of the proposal with local plans, policies, and ordinances. If, in the event that a proposal is denied, individuals can appeal the decision to the governing body, either a city council or county board of supervisors, who retain the final authority on all land use decisions.
Boards like the design review board and cultural heritage boards, which are optional, offer an additional opportunity to provide input on the planning process. These bodies exist in some, but not all cities in Sonoma County, and sometimes have decision making power and other times are advisory in nature. The appointments are generally made with an eye toward leveraging expertise from on matters of architectural design and historical preservation.
All of these boards and commissions are by law open to the public and offer an opportunity for all community members to learn, participate, and voice an opinion about how we grow and plan our communities. If you are interested in learning more about the planning process, visit your cities website and look for your local planning commission. Currently, because of the shelter in place and social distancing measures, public meetings are being held virtually. If you want to get even more involved, consider applying to serve on your local planning commission or other local planning bodies.
While boards and commissions can offer important input to the approval process, they can also delay projects, add cost to projects, and sometimes even spell the end of a housing proposal that may benefit the larger community. A 2018 Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley found that “delays and uncertainty in the approvals process can be costly for developers, and add to the final cost of housing.” Research from John M. Quigley, Steve Raphael, and Larry A. Rosenthal at UC Berkeley (2009) found strong evidence that regulatory restrictiveness, which is largely impacted by increasing the number of governmental reviews required to entitle a residential development, leads to increasing property values that, in turn, make the prospects of building affordable housing more and more costly to build. Lastly, Michael C. Lens and Paavo Monkonnen at USC and UCLA respectively (2016), found that “levels of income segregation are higher in metropolitan areas where local governments are considered to be more involved in the process of residential development and where there are more factors pressuring local governments to control growth.” In other words, additional layers of government review and approval can delay a housing proposal, add project costs, artificially inflate local housing market prices, and ultimately make projects unfeasible while deepening income and racial inequalities.
A recent example of a local city moving to reduce the layers of governmental approval required to build housing can be found right here in Sonoma County. The City of Cotati converted their Design Review Board into a Design Review Administration that is led by city staff in consultation with local architects on a need-be basis. In a report to the city, one of the heralded benefits in making the move stipulated that reducing the number of government reviews would create a more efficient process. By doing so, it would reduce costs for both the City of Cotati by reducing staff time in staffing a Brown Act board and for homebuilders by reducing project delays and increasing certainty about the approval process.
All of these factors should be weighed and balanced as local governments seek to advance housing goals while also ensuring public participation and input in advancing an increase in the supply, diversity, and affordability of housing in our communities.