Special to the Town Crier
Capping months of discussion, Los Altos Hills City Council voted 3-2 last Thursday to adopt the "fast-track" ordinance.
The ordinance will allow applications for new homes or remodels which follow all guidelines and cause no substantive complaints from neighbors to be approved more quickly.
Council Members Bob Johnson, Toni Casey and Steve Finn voted in favor of adoption, while members William Siegel and Mayor Elayne Dauber were opposed.
In their review of the town's design guidelines booklet, Dauber and Casey determined a sentence in one section of the fast-track ordinance needed clarification, since it used the unclear term "specific design and architectural features."
"There are lots of different interpretations of what this means," Dauber said. "It will be a problem until it gets clarified."
The council decided to adopt the ordinance and amend it later, after further discussion and experience.
"It's been admitted ... we're breaking fresh ground here - we'll do what's needed if some sticky problems come up," Johnson said.
The adoption of the ordinance results from months of debate among residents about the town's regulations over housing applications.
The town planning commission, in particular, was criticized frequently for being too subjective with applications. Finn and Casey were elected to council last year on the strength of a campaign that called for taking the planning commission out of the housing application process.
The fast-track ordinance was adopted as a compromise, allowing clean applications to bypass the commission and go to the council.
Also at the meeting, Dauber requested the town's Household Hazardous Waste drop-off program be better publicized. Approximately 100 residents use the program each year.
"I bet that's because the other (residents) don't know about it," Dauber said.
Dauber also asked if town records are kept on computer disks as well as microfiche. Interim City Manager Bill Norton said he would check, but he didn't think the records were kept on a disk.
Dauber recommended records start being saved on computer disks, so "in the event we decide to abandon microfiche, we will still have (the files)."