2007-03-02 TGP AMENDMENT - Laserfiche WebLink

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seven months from the time the Council wanted to move on something to the time when they actually got it back and could vote on it. So the Council initiated this bill. Under the General Plan procedures you have a comprehensive General Plan review which happens every ten years and then you have interim General Plan amendments which can happen at any time, in which it can be initiated by either the Council or the Planning Director. The Planning Director initiates and conducts a comprehensive review. The comprehensive review is really supposed to end up with a revised General Plan. And we did one, the Planning Department started the last comprehensive review around 1999. It got sent up to the Council at the end of 2001 and was passed by the Council in February 2005. So the next comprehensive review should be done around the 2015 period. Frankly, revising the amendment procedures would not have been a priority for the Department at this time; but because the Council initiated this bill we looked at the amendment procedures anddidanalternativebill.WewerentinfullagreementwithsomeofproposalsbytheCouncil for the procedures and the timeframe. But we believe that the current amendment procedure could be improved, there could be more clarity to it; and so we have a proposed amendment. Now the bill that came to the Planning Commission from the Council has, the time for the Planning Commission to review that bill expired, and it has gone back to the Council with a negative recommendation from the Planning Commission. The County Council has not acted on it again. Our request would be for the Council to wait for this bill to come up and to look at them both together. And, you know, the bottom line is that our request is that the Planning Commission send the Council a favorable recommendation on the bill that you have before you to amend the General Plan amendment procedures. So let me just walk through the changes that are proposed in this bill from the current procedure. And you have the proposed bill in light yellow in front of you. First change deals with the comprehensive review. And if you have any questions about this raise your hand and stop me because its probably easier to deal with them as we go through them. The current language sounds like the Planning Director initiates the comprehensive review ten years after the last General Plan has been enacted. Because the comprehensive review takes a couple of years from the time public hearings, Planning Director formulation, going up to Council, this results in the General Plan getting revised actually every 12 years or so, best case scenario. So we wanted to change it. So its said that the Planning Director has to, it doesnt give a time for the Planning Director to initiate the comprehensive review, rather it gives the Planning Director a deadline for getting the amendments to the Council ten years from the time of the last enactment of the comprehensive review. So the Planning Director has to plan a little bit and work backwards from that date and figure out all the timeframes. And what it is going to result is, is the comprehensive review is going to start sometime in probably 2013 and the package of the revised General Plan be forwarded to the Council in February 2015. Thats how that would work. The next meaningful change is that this gives an opportunity for the County Council to put amendments into the comprehensive review. The current process says that the Council can initiate interim amendments, but the Council cannot initiate amendments during the comprehensive review. And this can be a little frustrating for the County Council because theres this comprehensive review going on for which they had no opportunity to directly submit 2EXHIBIT B