2005-10-12 Board of Ethics Minutes Regular mc

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wants to put up an additional farm dwelling on his or her property. They need to get —they need to write an application. They need to justify why a farm dwelling application is needed. And so they ask me. So, you know, I know the process. And so I write the application and I process the application. I have interaction with the staff, I have interaction with—as needed, with the planning director or the deputy planning director, to discuss the situation, to discuss the application. And in the end I get compensated, you know, like whether in this particular situation, whether it's a $300 gift certificate from Long's or Safeway, whatever have you, it's in excess of $250, and so technically, you have to do it. I've also gone before like, Tax Appeals Board, where people want to make a case that their property should be assessed at a lower value because it's agriculturally zoned, and so on and so forth. I have to prepare the petition, and you know I get compensated for that. I'm not a lawyer, you know, but I do likeI do have an understanding of the process. I do have an understanding of what some of the land use implications are. There are other people who also do that, too. You know, there are people like —you know, in large engineering firms, for example, like , what have you. They prepare construction plans that are needed for the review and approval by different agencies, whether it's Public Works Department or the Water Department, and that's all needed as part of your subdivision approval process. And they must interface with the staff. They must also at certain points interface with the director, who makes the decision, who signs off on it, and they get paid. They get paid for it. And so the question is like, then, are they then subject to the ethics requirements, too, you know. Because I would think that under the broad definition, they probably would. Then I was just going to pass these out. These are just illustrative of how —you know, what a typical rezoning application looks like. And what it is, it's like -- an application form, I'll just direct you to that. And if you look at the applicant— you know the applicant signs off on it, the land owner has to sign off on it, and then you have like their agents. And like in this situation here, whether it's a lawyer or myself, or like any other person, they would serve as an agent. And see, then, like the last column. Who is the correspondence supposed to go to, the original and the copies, and so you indicate like who they go to. You look at the back page, and it says these are all of the things you need to do before a rezoning application can be filed. And a lot of times you have people that come in and feel like wow, this is overwhelming, I can't do it. And so they seek out people like myself, or they seek out people like —who are attorneys, who are conversant in the land use process, and then they ask, can you do it? And so, what I do is then I prepare applications like what I just shared with you, which would then kind of to discuss the potential environmental effects, you know, of the nature of the project, and try to look at the general plan and related codes and try to justify why this project should or should not be allowed. And if you go on —you said the Board's not going to render a decision today —but as you go through the literature, you'll find that there are correspondences between the department or different agencies and myself. And they all get packaged together. And so there is definitely a public disclosure relative to my role as an agent or representative of the applicant, and everybody knows that —that this application, for example is Janice Oshiro. She's the owner of Floral Mart, and she wants to have her property rezoned. And she doesn't know, she's , so she asks 7