By Jorge Casuso

With a steady stream of projects - many of them major -- coming through the pipeline, the city's Planning Department is overburdened with work. In addition, citizens are complaining about increased noise, traffic congestion, the dearth of parking and a general change in the city's character.

At Wednesday night's Budget Study Session, the City Council spent more than two hours sorting out the top priorities it wants the city's busiest department to tackle during the upcoming fiscal year.

Following, in order of importance, are the top issues identified by the council. (The number of council members who identified the issue as a top priority is listed in parentheses.)

Stricter Code Enforcement (4)

Citing resident protests that code violations are ruining their quality of life, the council directed the city's planning staff to aggressively enforce city codes rather than waiting to respond to complaints.

"I don't think we're doing it in a consistent proactive fashion," said Mayor Ken Genser, who said he received half a dozen emails last month from residents complaining that codes were not being enforced.

"We should not do it just on a complaint basis," the mayor said. "We need to look at what is the need for inspections and develop a protocol for inspections. These are the things we have to concentrate on first."

Councilman Paul Rosenstein disagreed. "I have not heard much of a case made to seriously beef up our enforcement," he said. "We have huge demands on staff. Their time can be better utilized."

Councilman Holbrook echoed Rosenstein's concerns. "A handful of people are complaining about something next to them. We have serious big time problems."

But Councilman Kevin McKeown said more enforcement was needed. "We live in a community of rules and we must follow them," he said. "We need to talk about what we need to do to initiate prompt and fair enforcement."

Stemming Short Term Housing (4)

Spurred by a state law that allows landlords to charge what the market will bear for vacated rent-controlled units, more and more landlords are charging exorbitant rates for furnished units rented on a short term basis. (See "Rental Units Go Corporate to Cash In on Visitor Boom," Nov. 3, 1999.)

On Wednesday night, the council made curbing the trend one of its major priorities.
"Rental housing is being converted to vacation rental," Genser said. "Should we be regulating this in some way?"

Three other council members agreed the city should explore what they consider a disturbing trend that is replacing long-time residents with visitors.

Defining a "Project" (4)

In order to get around environmental regulations that kick in when a project reaches a certain size, developers are dividing their proposed structures into smaller projects.

"What is the definition of a project?" asked Council member Pam O'Connor.

The council made finding an answer a top priority.

Other Priorities

In addition to the top priorities - which also included continuing a multi-year effort to address childcare issues as they relate to new development - the council also cited the following issues:

• Applying the size standards adopted for north of Montana homes to other parts of the city in an effort to stop the spread of monster mansions.
• Analyzing the impact of auto dealers in the city's central corridors.
• Constructing a ramp to allow visitors to the pier access to the beach lot.