Planning Department to refine permit tracking and qualitative outcome measures

The Planning Department told supervisors it is in a rebuilding phase and is rethinking how to measure performance for planning processes. Director Mr. Macris said roughly 30% of planning staff are new and the department has completed redesigns of fee schedules and financial procedures; he described efforts to integrate permit tracking with the Department of Building Inspections and to reduce delays by logging time attributable to project sponsors rather than the department.

Macris said some long-range outcomes (for example, whether a neighborhood plan results in the intended land-use changes) are hard to measure immediately and may require qualitative surveys of participants and multi-year tracking. Supervisors asked the department to consider a metric that compares the department’s annually adopted work plan with what actually gets accomplished.

The department agreed to work with the Controller’s Office on developing qualitative measures and to return with proposals before the February budget deadline.