CHC 1979-06-12 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MR. FUKE: If like what was suggested earlier that the Planning Director be delegated some responsibility in terms of granting variances and when a guy is displeased with my decision he runs to the Planning Commission, then under that setup, Commissioner Schutte, I wouldn ' t think there would be a need for the Planning Board of Appeals. Because in a sense you would be having the Planning Commission providing this kind of so-called review function. MR. SCHUTTE: You know the reason I asked that --I don ' t mean to cut you short, but on page 12, item (d) says it gives the Planning Commission the authority to adopt rules and regulations having the force and effect of law pursuant to the subdivision and zoning ordinances. So I would assume with that in mind, they would have some authority to move on anything that would come up before the Board of Appeals. MR. FUKE: In my understanding of the scope of review for the Board of Appeals , given the current language, is that the board would principally look at procedural matters, whether, in fact, when the commission or the director had made a decision, all of the procedural bases have been touched. And the other concern would be whether in fact the Planning Commission or the Planning Director had acted arbitrarily or capriciously, you know, rather whimsically. And only under those two circumstances, would the Board of Appeals be in the position to overturn the original decision. But if you are dealing with situations where there is a lot of value judgment, where, for example, if the code would say for maybe the parking stall requirement for an apartment would be 20 stalls for a 20 unit apartment and the Planning Director then would impose 30 and if a guy wants to have relief from that requirement under the current setupbecause that is a discretionary imposition, they would have to go directly to the Planning Board of Appeals. But what the Board of Appeals would look at would be, as I mentioned earlier, those two considerations. One is the procedural and the second one whether_the-director had acted arbitrarily or capriciously. But on the other hand you may want to have a body which would look at the real I guess the guts of the issue and say, hey, planning director, maybe it shouldn ' t be 25 , maybe it should be 20, or maybe it should be 21 , or 22, because of an x, y, and z kind of circumstance. They would be actually looking at the case as if they themselves were the Planning Director. Right now, I don ' t think the language of the charter allows the Board of Appeals to look into the substance of a matter that has been disposed of by the Planning Director or the Planning Commission. And I think what at that point in time, Commissioner Ishida was trying to convey when he made the suggestion, was just maybe there ought to be a body--not the Board of Appeals , well call it the Board of Appeals, or the Planning Commission, a body that would take a look at the substance of decisions made by the Planning Director. And I 'm saying if that is the case and if the commission is going to assume that function on decisions made by the Planning Director then maybe it may be somewhat duplicative to have another Board of Appeals. -12-