HR Green Rate Fee Survey Report - Manual (Page 8)

Site Plan Review
Survey Results
7
In addition to the procedures and entities summarized in the questionnaire, respondents were asked to identify other procedures
commonly associated with the site plan review process. The summary below highlights the responses.

Board of Adjustment;

Notice to adjacent property owners;

Subject to administrative review;

No site plan review required;

Projects that are of a significant size or impact can trigger the Development of Regional Importance Review. This enables
potentially impacted counties to review a proposal;

May involve more meetings if issues surface with the project;

SDP are reviewed weekly at interdepartmental meetings;

The city council only participates if the applicant is appealing a decision made by staff;

Landmarks and Design Commission;

Site Plan and Architectural Review Committee.
Full Time Equivalent Staffing Levels:
While knowing which agencies are involved in the review process, it only provides one dimension of the types of resources needed to
fulfill the responsibilities of site plan review. To this end, the questionnaire also sought full-time equivalent (FTE) numbers to
associate the number of staff within each department or agency tasked with this responsibility. As a point of reference, the
questionnaire did not provide a definition for FTE and many of the respondents cited whole numbers versus fractions of personnel
time committed to performing site plan review. Readers should be careful in concluding that all FTEs cited in the following tables are
only responsible for participating in site plan review. To the contrary, it is very likely that representatives from the cited agencies
have additional responsibilities beyond site plan review.
The results of this study indicate that many communities engage several departments and sometimes external agencies in site plan
review efforts. The table below provides a breakdown of staffing levels corresponding to communities based on population. The
analysis cited below uses the median, mean, mode to illustrate the average FTE
’s assign
ed this task. In addition, the table includes
the lowest and largest number of FTEs tasked with site plan review responsibilities for a respective population range. While the
column headings reference various departments involved in the review process, the findings suggest that the organizational structure
of cities vary. For example, a common remark shared by respondents is that the Planning Department is part of the Community
Development Department or vice versa. In addition, many of the respondents indicate that professionals participating in the review
may vary depending upon the type of development being proposed and the associated technical needs linked to the plan.