Jury Out on City Planning Reorganization
The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has recently announced a reorganization plan which includes the following: 1) Assigning staff to four geographical teams in order to more efficiently process discretionary actions, such as variances, zone changes, conditional use permits, and subdivisions, from “cradle to grave.” 2) Reassigning remaining Zoning Administrators to the four geographical teams. 3) Expanding the Citywide Planning Division to include Historic Resources and the Urban Design Studio. To assess the impacts of these changes, we should consider the following. At this point there is little evidence that this reorganization plan can address three significant planning issues faced by Los Angeles: First, the Department of City Planning is painfully understaffed. City Planning’s long-term staffing trend has been downward for nearly 25 years. At the end of the Tom Bradley era, the Department of City Planning had 350 employees to serve a city of 3.2 million people. From th