Usually city government spends its time putting up roadblocks and hurdles to job creation, rather than cutting red tape and helping to find ways to attract and grow businesses in San Diego.
That’s why I am proud to announce seven major reforms and proposals to encourage job growth in our city, as well as the creation of a fifteen-member Jobs Task Force made up of local business leaders. I will be developing these initial proposals, as well as developing additional reforms through input from the Task Force, a series of Town Hall Forums, and the launch of a Job Creation Hotline at (619) 236-6210 to hear exactly what kinds of problems business owners are having with the City and their ideas to solve them.
Over the next two weeks I will be outlining my seven initial proposals here on SD Rostra.
In business, time is money – and uncertainty can create so much risk that businesses decide not to pursue projects. That’s why the City of San Diego must dramatically reorganize and overhaul its entire process for handling permits to become “faster, better and cheaper.”
By streamlining regulations and “cycle time” for permit decisions, the City can remove cost and risk from projects – and in doing so position itself as an attractive place to do business.
To achieve this goal, I am proposing the following:
- Fixed Price Fee Structure: Instead of drawing down on “deposit accounts” which only encourages the city bureaucracy to take more time on permit processing, the Development Services department should switch to “fixed-price” permit pricing.
- Time and Quality Guarantees: For each permit category, the City will commit to a hard deadline by which the permit will be completely processed. If the City fails to meet the performance standards promised, the customer (applicant) will receive their money back, and the City will pay to put an extra project team on the permit application to expedite processing.
- Self-Certification Program: To streamline the number of permit actions that require a full-scale city review process, I propose “Self-Certification” Permitting for select projects, with liability transferred to entities that certify compliance with city codes.
- Employee Incentive Program: To encourage city employees to meet turn-around times, an incentive program will fund performance bonuses and training in key skill sets such as project management, customer service, etc.
- “Innovation Labs” for Process Redesign: Instead of trying to overhaul the entire DSD department as a whole all at once, I would like to see DSD broken down into four units: The existing City team, the CCDC team, and two outside contract teams. By having four units working separately over a 2-year trial, the goal is to encourage competition and innovation in process design and management. At the end of the two-year “Innovation Lab” period, results will be assessed and a final DSD structure will be implemented based on best practices from all four units.