Development Services Review. Final Report. Zucker July 2016

(e.g., have potential impacts that can be mitigated to eliminate impacts) can be processed by staff or should be outsourced to qualified consultants for further study and development of appropriate mitigation measures. 154. Recommendation: The Community Development Department should continue to engage qualified environmental consultants to prepare Environmental Impact Report and/or Environmental Impact Statements for projects with significant impacts.

12. Projects are most often found to have no significant impacts or no impacts with appropriate mitigations and a Negative Declaration (ND) or Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) is proposed.

13. A Notice of Intent (NOI) to adopt an ND or MND is provided for a 20-day public review and response period, pursuant to state law (e.g., direct mailings, property posting, newspaper, etc.). If comments on ND or MND are received the consultant prepares a response. Completion of this step various depending on number of comments received. 14. Following the 20-day NOI, the project is placed on a Planning Commission Agenda and a 10-day public hearing notice is provided. The City uses “Notify Me” software to alert those who have signed up for the service, which is good. In addition, notices are posted on the City’s website, mailed to surrounding property owners within 300’, placed in the local newspaper and may also include property posting. Staff indicated that the 20-day NOI and 10-day public hearing notice are combined where possible, which is a good practice that provides interested parties with advance notice of hearings.

See our above recommendation regarding the City assuming the public notice responsibility as part of the TRAKiT launch to facilitate the online submittal process.

The assigned project planner uses Legistar software to prepare a draft staff report. Staff creates a single page cover in Legistar and uploads the staff report created in MS Word as an attachment to Legistar for PC reports. The report, PC resolution and Development Agreement DA (when applicable) are written using templates. Once complete the draft documents are forwarded to the Director for review and finalization. The Director edits the documents and finalizes the staff report and staff recommendation. This process, which

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