BRADENTON BEACH – City commissioners discussed curtailing the free use of the city planner’s time as a consultant for developers.
“They’re just calling our planner out of the blue,” Building Official Rob Perry said during the city commission’s March 31 building department work meeting. “We’re letting people have free rein over our planner and I don’t think they should be talking directly without interaction with the city. We have a system in place where they’re able to talk for the first half hour.”
Perry said those who are designing a project should hire their own planner.
“We’re not the consultant and we need controls here,” Perry said.
He said the fees that should be charged to developers and their clients are not being charged.
“I’m just trying to put the processes we already have in place so that we can get some costs back to the city,” Perry said. “I want to create a process of accounting for these fees. I want the applications paid up-front, before we ever start talking to clients. We shouldn’t be consulting without getting our permit fees, our forms and everything in place.”
Perry said he would like to implement a standard operating procedure (SOP) that establishes how planning fees are processed.
“When I get a bill (from the planner) that I’m signing every month, I don’t know who’s talking to who? How do I know if someone calls our planner on their own? I don’t. There’s no control,” he said.
“If someone calls and talks and talks to the planner, he’s going to bill us for the time he spends on that call,” Commissioner Debbie Scaccianoce said.
“A lot of these projects should be through their own planner,” Perry said. “They’re calling us as a consultant because they’re not getting charged for it. Until this stops, they’re going to keep doing it.”
Mayor John Chappie said, “Maybe the place to put that is in the application form. Here are the guidelines, rules and regulations. Our planner isn’t your planner to design and do your whole project.”
City Attorney Erica Augello said permit fees, land development fees and application fees are required to be posted on the city’s website.
“If you want to charge by the hour, you can, but that has to be a scheduled appointment and people have to understand that they’re going to be responsible for paying for that time. They’re using the city as their planner. That’s not what it should be for,” Augello said.
Commissioner Scott Bear asked how people were obtaining the phone number for the city planner.
“I will tell you they were circumventing the city and going directly to him. And I saw email chains with applicants reaching out to Luis (former city planner Luis Serna) and Luis having full-on conversations with them,” Augello said. “That’s something that should have been charged back to the customer.”
It was announced during the work meeting that Serna is no longer serving as the contracted city planner. Serna accepted a position with another company and his Bradenton Beach successor has not yet been named.
“With the new planner, we can put this behind us and move forward with the proper procedures,” Perry said. “It’s going to stop this circumventing us to the planner and then us getting a bill for 40 hours about a five-foot setback that should be a half hour.”
The commission directed Perry and Augello to work together on developing an SOP for city planner services.
