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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1978-02-07; City Council; 5306-1; Request ofr reconsideration of action - Kamar/.- e. - .- DATE : February 7, 1978 DEPARTMENT City Attorney C. Mgr. 5, -- Subject : Peest for Reconsideration of Action on the First Phase Sewer Allocation System by Kamar.Construction Ccanpany. Statement of the Matter The City Council at their January 17, 1978 meeting directed the City Attorney to prepare a resolution granting 30 sewer connection permits to Kamar Construction Company pursuant to the First Phase Sewer Allocation System. The resolution is attached. Exhibit .. Resolution No. LA - Staff Memo dated 1-20-78 Recommendation If the City Council concurs, your action is to adopt Resolution No. . Manager ' s Note Although the Council instructed the City Attorney to prepare the attached resolution granting 30 sewer connection permits, new information has been developed by the staff in its memo dated January 20, 1978. Based on that information, it is recommended that the sewer permits not be approved. Council action " 2-8-78 After reconsideration of th:, matter, .the request for sewer permits was denied as they did not quali.fy under the. sewer. allocation-system due to not having filed a final map. .. .. i - MEMORANDUM January 20, 1978 TO : Paul Bussey, City Manager FROM : James Hagaman, Planning Director @ Ron Beckman, Public Works Administrator S UB JECT : Kamar Construction Company's request for 30 residential units in the first phase of CT 77-2, PUD-8. On Tuesday, January 17, 1978, the City Council, in considering the appeal of Kamar Construction, made a finding that they qualified for 30 sewer hookups in the First Phase Sewer Allocation System. This finding was based on an interpretation of qualifying item 4b which stated in effect "that the project proponent had made contributions to public agencies in order to develop which cannot now be refunded." At a subsequent staff meeting, the staff in reviewing the application found that the proponent appeared to have not met the Council's intent in another qualification. Qualification No. 2 in a staff memo adopted as part of the allocation system states as follows: "With the exception of City building or sewer permits, all approvals including City Council action and other agency approvals, such as California Coastal Commission and Sanitation and Water Districts, must have been issued and proof of such approval must be submitted with the applications. The applicant must demonstrate that he is ready to commence construction of the project upon receipt of the building permit." This condition was abbreviated in a questionnaire, which was attached as part of the application, to state: "Have all discretionary actions including all City actions, Coastal Commission, Sanitation and Water District action, been completed? (Proof will be required with submittal of application.)" The applicant in his application answered in the affirmative. In order to ascertain what happened in terms of the staff review of the application, since the final tract map has not been processed through the City Council, we investigated the review process followed by staff in December. All projects were reviewed by staff members of both the Planning and Engineering Departments as to their qualification related specifically to the application as submitted. During that process the staff was asked to recheck the applications for final tract map approvals. It is our finding that at that time only those applications which in fact qualified in all other aspects were checked for final tract map approvals. This abbreviated procedure was not made known to others in the review process at that time. The assumption from that time on was that all projects had been reviewed. The information was not again questioned. It is also apparent that based on the administratively established parameters affecting time and productivity, no allowance was made for the independent checking of the staff work during that process. In fact, staff was hard put to meet the deadlines for the Council meeting of December 20, 1977 even with evening and weekend effort. This is not presented as an excuse for the lack of complete staff work, but rather an illustration of a weakness in the system and what was demanded on those involved. Staff in fact performed very well under the constraints that were placed upon them. 1 r- Subsequent to the Council allocation of December 20th, an appeal was received from -mar Construction Company based on qualification condition No. 4b. The arguments for qualification were not presented with the allocation application but developed at the Council meeting of December 20. The staff produced several reports directly responding to the appealed condition but did not recheck the entire application for compliance with each qualifying condition, relying entirely upon previous staff work completed in December. Subsequent to Council approval of the Kamar Construction Company appeal, the question of a final tract map was brought up by the staff and upon investigation oar error was revealed. We found one other application which fits the same category as Kamar Construction and that is SSAl 016 Bryan, Applicant. This application had not finalized its tract map. The project also did not qualify under the fourth qualification, and, therefore, did not receive sewer. In addition, we checked the applications in terms of whether or not the final parcel map and final boundary adjustment maps were in. had not completed City approvals. These three projects were, however, approved under a contingency allocation. area. The contingency category in the allocation system is "handled on an 'as needed' basis by a case per case evaluation by City Council" which did not necessarily require compliance with the criteria in the allocation system. Three projects had no final boundary adjustment maps and therefore The projects were in the Village Redevelopment Study Having investigated the reasons and events that took place and recognizing that when we push and pressure our staffs, we are assuming a higher degree of risk in their work performance than we would have under normal working situations, we must personally accept the responsibility of any mistakes resultant to such administrative procedures. In the December 20 report to the City Council, we indicated a problem of reviewing applications in that evidence was not submitted to establish a claim of qualification. Subsequent to December 20, when we reviewed Kamar's appeal for the one condition, we should have, in fact and in hindsite, reviewed the entire application. Our bottom line after investigation of the matter revealed that no one was trying to frustrate Council policy or act on the applicant's behalf. It was an error and one which we have found. We are responsible for the error, and via this memo, are bringing it to your attention. JCH : RB/s