Santa Barbara land development oversight committee reviews permitting dashboards, preapproved ADUs and stormwater updates

The Land Development Team Oversight Subcommittee met Sept. 19 to review progress on process improvements tied to the 2020 Novak report, including a new public building-permit dashboard, expanded on-demand permits, digital plan review and a preapproved accessory dwelling unit (ADU) program that now lists 10 designs for public selection.

The meeting provided implementation timelines and operational details and included a public comment on permitting delays. The subcommittee approved the draft minutes from an earlier meeting by unanimous vote at the end of the session.

The Novak report prompted the committee’s creation and includes 31 recommendations for improving the city’s permit and development review processes. “The land development team is the staff that review and manage all aspects of the land development process,” said Debusk, the staff lead introducing the presentation, and she summarized the committee’s role in advising on procedural changes and municipal-code amendments derived from the Novak recommendations.

Raven Rutledge, Business Analyst in Building and Safety, described the city’s new building permit dashboard, which the department launched on June 17, 2025 and built using Power BI. Rutledge said the dashboard connects to the city’s Accela permitting system and provides an interactive, public-facing timeline for each permit that displays the number of days a project spent in city review versus applicant response time. “Now we can see that,” Rutledge said, referring to claims that a permit “can take over a year” and noting the dashboard breaks down the city’s share of that timeline.

Rutledge also summarized new on-demand permits,…