Week 8: Up to Bat

August 20, 2018 Maddie

Tomorrow night is the climax of my internship — the Planning Commission will be hearing two continued projects which reached a stalemate at July’s meeting. Since my first day here in late June, I have followed these two projects closely, and most of my energy has been spent preparing for tomorrow night’s meeting. Wednesday and Thursday of last week were dedicated to preparing the staff reports for each item so that they could be delivered to the Planning Commissioners for review over the weekend. Each report consists of:

A memorandum describing the essential details of the project.
A copy of application documents.
Correspondence from the applicant and/or architect describing any changes made to the project.
A copy of the previous month’s staff report.
All community correspondence concerning the project, received after the last meeting.

The memorandum is the most time-consuming component of this report. Although it is not a technical document and is usually only 2-3 pages in length, the writing is supposed to be concise, and presented as neutrally as possible. This task was challenging but fun for me; I consulted previous staff reports to help get a baseline for what information to include. However, I also used my own judgment and understanding of each application’s controversies to help me refine the memos and highlight what I perceived were the most essential facts for deciding each case. For example, on the project I will be presenting tomorrow night, a community member raised a concern that the architect calculated the structure’s gross floor area incorrectly. After consulting the Municipal Code and reviewing the plans myself, I determined that the space in question could be subjected to more than one interpretation. What I mean is that the definition of gross floor area in the Municipal Code is subject to some degree of interpretation, so the project’s true gross floor area is contingent on the manner of interpretation. I had to capture this debate in the memo so that the Commissioners were aware of it before the public hearing, but I had to write about this debate in a neutral way that was fair to both the applicant and the appellant.

Organization was a huge problem in preparing the staff reports. After I’d drafted the memorandums, I reviewed them with the planning consultants and then with the Director of Community Development. We made some slight changes to my verbiage and formatting and finalized them. Then came the task of sorting all the correspondence. This got me into some trouble this morning with a community member, actually. The general procedure for correspondence is that all submissions are due on the Thursday immediately before the meeting. On Wednesday and Thursday, dozens of letters came pouring into City Hall that I had to stamp and sort for each project. There is one notoriously vocal community member who always drops off her materials just a few minutes before closing; we received a printed out letter from her, as well as a flash drive with a powerpoint on it. In my rush to finish putting together the staff reports, I placed her letter into the packet and uploaded her powerpoint, but forgot to print out her slides to accompany her letter. I just got back from speaking to her at the counter and she was not pleased! I apologized for the mix-up and assured her that the Commissioners would receive her slides via email today, as well as a printed copy before the meeting begins. Now I’m furiously double-checking the staff reports to make sure no one else’s slides were omitted–I think we’re in the clear now. I will admit I am a little bit frustrated right now with the unorganized way that the City processes incoming correspondence but I guess I can chill out because my last day is Wednesday anyway.

Since Elizabeth’s departure, it is unclear to me who the true leader of the Planning Department is right now. On paper, it’s Ken Rukavina, Director of Community Development. But functionally, he is just the last person we go to if we can’t find an answer to a question or don’t understand how a policy should be applied. I want to say Aaron, the senior consultant, but he’s here less than I am–25 hours a week at most. That leaves Jeffrey, the junior consultant, who is here 40 hours a week and fulfills all of Elizabeth’s functions. But he is somewhat new to Planning and is less familiar with PV Estates than I am. My point here is that I am realizing that I have no one to fall back onto for tomorrow’s meeting; I am among equals, more or less, and I will be held to the same level of scrutiny as Jeffrey or Aaron. My status as intern will not protect me from my mistakes. I have decided to be proactive and highly involved in this meeting, so I will also be expected to bear the consequences of doing things improperly. The confrontation with that citizen earlier this morning is my case in point.

I did get to do some cool stuff last week. I did my first-ever final inspection of a mega-mansion seated on a cliff, overlooking the entire South Bay. A final inspection occurs after a home has been constructed; our job as Planning staff is to ensure it was built to the specifications which were approved by the Planning Commission, and to ensure any conditions of approval have been met. In this case, we found two deviations from the approved plans–the spa had been moved to a new location in the yard, and an outdoor cooking center had been installed without a permit. These are very minor deviations and the City can easily process them after-the-fact. This final inspection really helped solidify for me the kind of perspective held by residents and employees in this City. The level of affluence and power displayed so nonchalantly here is something I don’t really relate to. Planning has captured my attention as a career opportunity, but the types of projects occurring up here not the kind of big-picture, long-range planning activities that are my priority. They are small, mostly residential projects designed to allow the members of a highly elite enclave to flaunt their wealth. I’m not prejudiced in any way against the upper class–it’s their money, and they are entitled to spend it in whatever way they please. I just don’t get much personal gratification for helping someone get their 3,000 square foot master bedroom approved by the City; I’d be much more personally invested in projects that help improve California’s water infrastructure, for example.