Read and Considered*

Permit Sonoma is not able to factually report permit review and approval throughput because its workflow tracking systems are not capturing data on a consistent and reportable basis. We disagree with this finding. Permit Sonoma has completed an update to its dashboard that includes built-in workflow tracking based on AB 2234 (2022) deadlines, including warnings for permits that are in jeopardy of missing the required timeline. This dashboard is displayed in the office and on the department's intranet page.

Permit Sonoma has made excellent plans to implement all of the Berry Dunn management review recommendations, but its reports overstate the actual progress observed by the Civil Grand Jury. We partially disagree with this finding. Permit Sonoma worked extensively with the consultant team at BerryDunn on the recommendations in the final BerryDunn report. The report was intended to result in meaningful process improvements for customers. Permit Sonoma achieved the goals of the report by using resources as efficiently as possible, and prioritized achieving process improvement results rather than documenting internal steps toward attainment of those results.

Other than compliance with California Assembly Bill 2234 (2022), Permit Sonoma senior management has not established objective expectations for staff performance regarding plan review or timely permit issuance. We partially disagree with this finding. Permit Sonoma agrees that objective expectations are an important aspect of organization efficiency, particularly for compliance with regulatory processing timelines and conformance with adopted fee studies. However, not all processes or permits can be reduced to quantitative expectations for individual staff performance that can be applied equally across the department. For example, staff that focus on complex discretionary projects such as visitor serving commercial uses or subdivisions with significant environmental constraints are going to have different work product expectations from staff that process intake for ministerial permits or perform field inspections.