Council fails to amend the code on appeals decisions

By Kara Chalmers

Since January, Community Development Director James Walgren has tried to clarify the roles of the community development department, the Planning Commission and the City Council, concerning appeals procedures. At the April 19 council meeting, he hit a roadblock.

The council failed to pass an amendment to the city's appeals procedures ordinance that Walgren said would make the Saratoga city code internally consistent and clarify what kinds of decisions can be appealed and to which government body.

The ordinance now allows any administrative, or discretionary decision made by the community development director to be appealed to the Planning Commission. What the ordinance fails to make clear is that the Planning Commission decision is then final, and cannot be appealed to the City Council. The amendment would clarify this restriction by inserting an additional sentence into the "right to appeal" section of the city code.

The amendment also would clarify that only discretionary, not ministerial decisions can be appealed to the Planning Commission in the first place. Ministerial decisions, such as those approving a water heater in a home or the removal of a tree, are made by the community development director and are final. The amendment would add a clarification to the city code that if a decision does not involve the 'exercise of administrative discretion or personal judgment' it cannot be appealed at all, even to the Planning Commission.

As it stands, the city code is unclear, according to Walgren, and an amendment would serve to clear it up, not change the city's existing processes.

"It's just a clean-up," Walgren said at the council meeting on April 5.

In January, Walgren brought the amendment to the Planning Commission, which voted to recommend it to the City Council.

The council voted 4-0 on April 5, to make the changes and amend the code, but Mayor Stan Bogosian pulled the agenda item from the consent calendar on April 19.

Bogosian said that he thinks people should be able to appeal decisions all the way to the City Council. He said the city has not yet had a problem with the way the code stands, so he did not see the need to change it now. He said that people are willing to spend money to appeal a decision to the council, they should be allowed to do so. Councilman John Mehaffey agreed, saying that perhaps all discretionary decisions should be allowed to be appealed to the City Council.

After some discussion, the council decided not to take the action recommended to them by staff the week before. They voted 5-0 to table the item.

According to the staff report prepared on the ordinance amendment, a consequence of not adopting it is that the city code would remain internally inconsistent.

"Furthermore, it would remain unclear as to whether or not certain administrative decisions could be appealed to the City Council," the report reads.

The City Council will explore the issue in the future.

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