Supervisors approve time limits for general plan amendment initiations, appeals

Requests to initiate General Plan Amendments or to appeal a decision denying the authorization to proceed with such an initiation will now have time limits.

A July 23 vote by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors established a two-year limit from approval of a Plan Amendment Authorization to file a request for a General Plan Amendment and a ten-day limit on appealing a denial.

“It just established timelines for how long they’re good, they’ve valid,” said county Department of Planning and Land Use interim deputy director Jeff Murphy.

The Board of Supervisors policy which covers General Plan Amendment and zoning guidelines sets procedures which require property owners or other interested parties to initiate a request for a General Plan Amendment.

Such a request is called a Plan Amendment Authorization, or PAA; approval of a PAA does not approve the General Plan Amendment but gives the applicant the authority to proceed with the request for a General Plan Amendment.

The previous policy did not include a time limit for filing the request for a General Plan Amendment once the PAA was approved. That created the scenario of a General Plan Amendment being filed based on PAAs initiated years earlier and relying on information and analyses which might no longer be accurate and might not be supported by a new PAA review.

Any PAAs which were approved more than two years prior to the supervisors’ July 23 adoption of the new policy will be allowed one year to file a General Plan Amendment request.

When a PAA is requested, the director of the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use has 45 days to provide a decision approving or denying the PAA. The applicant may appeal that decision to the Planning Commission, and the Planning Commission’s decision may be appealed to the Board of Supervisors. The previous policy did not stipulate a time limit for an appeal of the previous decision.

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