Here is a free-market solution to speed up the planning and building permit process that costs builders and city money

Counselor Jerry Thorne, in each of his runs for the city council, promised to speed up Pleasanton’s planning and building permit process. To date, he has presented nothing. The process takes as long as ever.

City Manager Nelson Fialho has recently tinkered by consolidating departments. This mostly window-dressing-move will not budge the bureaucrats.
What will, however, is a financial incentive. Notice how bridge and road builders beat their deadlines if bonuses are involved. Well, planning and building department personnel should share in the fees paid for development if they meet deadlines. For instance, if a project gets from the counter to the Planning Commission in 90 days and to the City Council in 180 days, the city staff receives 25 percent of the city fees to divvy up among the entire staff. If it is 180 and 270, the bonus is 10 percent.

The will be a penalty to the staff if a project takes more than a year from counter to council presentation. If a project takes more than a year, a 10 percent penalty will assessed and subtracted from a 25 percent reserve fund established to award the bonuses.
We know this will put city bureaucrats at odds with their no-growth agenda but it will put them in line with the wishes of the business community—the lifeblood of our economy.

This idea is free to anyone on the council. Let us see who on the council is for a free-market approach to this bedeviling problem. We can infer from those who do not speak up that they are for the status quo and the gridlock in City Hall and the resulting expensive projects that eventually ending up being expensive dinners, expensive mom and pop specialty stores, expensive apartment rentals, and very expensive homes.