County officials have responded willingly to a top economic
leader’s recommendations to ease the permitting process here, which
has maintained a reputation as overbearing and restrictive for many
years, while they have laid out a worthy set of strategies to
immediately address areas of concern.
County officials have responded willingly to a top economic leader’s recommendations to ease the permitting process here, which has maintained a reputation as overbearing and restrictive for many years, while they have laid out a worthy set of strategies to immediately address areas of concern.
County Administrative Officer Susan Thompson chose the right man for the job, too. Assistant CAO Rich Inman, an action-oriented official, two weeks ago presented an initial plan to supervisors meant to address problems recently pointed out by the Economic Development Corp. of San Benito County.
EDC President Nancy Martin had charted out specific pieces of the permitting that, if improved, could help streamline the process.
Ultimately, if followed through on, it could change the county’s anti-developer reputation. If county leaders are going to spur economic progress, which they all tout as a primary goal, then it’s necessary to fix this glaring series of roadblocks to an efficient process.
Permitting, in a sense, is the starting point. If builders find it overly tedious as the outset, there’s a much higher likelihood they’ll walk away from prospects to do business here.
Inman’s approach – which are areas he targeted that officials can address in the short term – includes such ideas as creating a database available to all permitting players that tracks projects’ progress, developing educational tools, holding workshops and communicating with a pool of contractors as an “arm” of the government agencies.
It’s a start, and we encourage county leaders to continually build on this first step. From here, the county must establish a set of tangible goals to show how the changes improve the permitting process. They must follow through on Inman’s initial plan.
And they must build on the new approach and continue to make the process as transparent and least obstructive as possible.
