(1265) Building and Planning Division

The mission of Resource Management Agency (RMA) Building and Planning division is to provide high-quality customer service in the areas of land use, development and resource protection to residents and business operators throughout the unincorporated areas of San Benito County. The team ensures that projects comply with the General Plan, County Code, State and Federal law, and are implemented in a way to achieve good planning standards that are safe, healthy and legal.

• Activated civic portal for online application status and inspection scheduling.
• Began interoffice electronic plan review through permit software
• Created electronic archives of all Subdivision and Commercial Building Plans.
• Provide online plan submittal and permit issuance.

• Parks being run through Building/Planning- It consumes valuable permit technician time; it breaks their concentration and directly effects productivity of permit processing. Separate parks from the permit tech’s duties/create a Parks Department or reassign the task.
• All agencies need to use the permit software including Environmental Health and the Assessor. There is a lot of inefficiency manually routing plans with EH and the Assessor could benefit from having access to the permit information.
• Timelines in customer service and application processing.
• Improving the quality of planning analysis and recommendations.
• Cost recovery and formalizing administrative accounting and billing systems.
• Writing Planning Division and RMA procedures that incorporate best practices.
• Repairing broken and outdated code sets.

(See Matrix on “Administrative Fixes of Broken Things and Code Updates)

• Improved Intergovernmental Coordination especially with City of Hollister.
• General Plan Implementation.

(See Section on General plan Implementation and Long-deferred County Responsibilities)

• Economic Development Strategies.
• Planning Commissioner and Planning Staff education, conferences and associations.

(See Matrix Section on “Expected Purchases and Supplies, and Planning Commission Training an Stewardship”

• Provide 100% online plan submittal, payment, review and permit issuance service.
• Permit Tech’s to provide “over the counter” plan review for small projects and issue same day permits.