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PC recommends time limits for general plan
By Joe Naiman
The Alpine Sun
SAN DIEGO — A May 30 hearing and vote
by the county's Planning Commission sent a recommendation to the
San Diego County Board of Supervisors in favor of placing limits
on requests for initiating General Plan Amendments and on
appeals of decisions denying the authorization to proceed with
such an initiation.
The Planning Commission had initially discussed the
issue April 18 and had opted for a continuance to incorporate a
discussion of how the process would be integrated into the
context of the county's general plan update, although the May 30
hearing did not include any discussion of integrating the
amendment process into the new general plan under consideration.
The May 30 vote was by a 5-2 margin with Planning
Commissioners
Michael Beck, Leon Brooks, David Kreitzer, John Riess,
and Bryan Woods in support and Adam Day and David Pallinger in
opposition.
"We just basically put a two-year expiration date and a
ten-day appeal if not initiated," said Joe Farace of the
county's Department of Planning and Land Use. "That's just
consistent with the way we do business now."
The Board of Supervisors policy which covers General
Plan Amendment and zoning guidelines sets procedures which
require property owners or other interested parties to initiate
a request for a General Plan Amendment. Such a request is called
a Plan
Amendment Authorization, or PAA; approval of a PAA does
not approve the General Plan Amendment but gives the applicant
the authority to proceed with the request for a General Plan
Amendment.
The current policy does not include a time limit for
filing the request for a General Plan Amendment once the PAA is
approved.
Thus a General Plan Amendment may be filed based on
PAAs initiated years earlier and relying on information and
analyses which may no longer be accurate and might not be
supported by a new PAA review.
The proposed policy would place a two-year limit from
the approval of the PAA to file a request for a General Plan
Amendment.
Any PAAs approved more than two years prior to the
supervisors' adoption of the new policy would be allowed one
year from the date of the policy revision's adoption to file a
General Plan Amendment request.
When a PAA is requested, the director of the county's
Department of Planning and Land Use has 45 days to provide a
decision approving or denying the PAA. The applicant may appeal
that decision to the Planning Commission, and the Planning
Commission's decision may be appealed to the Board of
Supervisors.
The current policy does not stipulate a time limit for
an appeal of the previous decision, and the proposed change
would add a ten-day limit for appeals.
"It was just really loose, and now it's really
structured," Farace said.
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