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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, How you doing everybody? Welcome to this edition of Sonoma County in the 90s, we're gonna be talking to ken Miller, ken Milham is the Sonoma County planning Director. Well, he was, he's right now the acting director of the developmental

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services department. Something new, something very important to all of us, which you're going to learn a lot more about in just a few moments first, I want to meet my old friend. Hi buddy, how you doing? Nice to see you here a long time. Yeah. And

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we got to find out what's happening. So we had to have you back over here. How long you've been with us now, ken the county? I think it's red just over eight years. Is that right? How time flies came from director where Eldorado Eldorado County. Right,

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okay. Planning Director for almost eight years and now is the, as we said, acting director for developmental services department. You can find out more about that in a minute. Um Let me throw this question out the county is going through some rather significant efforts to reorganize

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and consolidate the various departments. But why are we doing that well. Rich. The main reason is the board of supervisors has given us an opportunity a fresh start if you will to reorganize county services. On one hand, we're talking about downsizing and consolidating services. On the

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other hand, where the main emphasis in this development services department is to provide services better provide especially permit services. And then let's take that subject permits have been a sore spot with our people throughout the county for a long time. Right. Right. Well in other words

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in the past, I know they go to the planning, they go down the building and have to go to public health, uh maybe to the public works department of water agency, all of these various agencies and all in different locations. Right, right. So I, this is

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one department reorganization is long overdue. You're you're directly involved with the effort uh concerning planning and building and permits. Now, tell us about this proposed change, ken, well, what this is rich is a unique opportunity to create something totally new in California. Local government, we've got

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something very special here. The board of supervisors opened the door for us to put all of our permit related services in not only one location, but in one department. Now there are other examples around counties and cities where they consolidate departments and put them under one

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super agency or super boss or something like that. But this is new. This is uh putting everybody together in one department where everything is coordinated and channeled towards an effective presentation and improve public access. Is this the name here is just uh what will the new

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department be called? Is this department, what is the developmental development services department that was gonna be called? Yeah currently we're calling it the development services department and within that we will have the permit center. The permit center is more of a physical location where 11 place

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for people to come for the permits. A little bit of an aside people typically say either development or developmental services. Well developmental with the two A. L. At the end has another connotation has to do with social services and people who are in need of special

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but I have made a pledge that we can drop those two letters that we will not compete in the special olympics. Yeah well no no no offense taken. Men are taken but but actually development services department. So if that name states it would be the development

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services department permits center so to speak. Yeah that's okay. Uh Are all of the functions that you will perform in this new place related to permits? Not yes let's let's turn that around a bit. All of the permits that are issued for any kind of development

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in Sonoma County will be issued out of this one department in one location, there are other services that will be included in the department. They will have the enforcement team will have other things that general plan staff really, that surveyor's office. And then you'll be incorporating

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many of the functions that were in your former planning department into this too then, won't you? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. All right. Um will they now, positively and for sure be located in one place after the changeover. What we're planning riches, we've got a new another kind

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of opportunity. We've got a vacant building that will be remodeled for our, for our new department and this is something again, it's not building a new building. It's taking the old education building that used to house the county Department of Education and remodeling it to put

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all of these about 130 employees in one place. That's the building where I guess personnel is now located on ventura drive between administration and fiscal and that's a that's a large building back to that. That'll give you a chance to get everybody in there. That's right.

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Yeah, that's beautiful. Um You said you're taking a building that, that is not being used right now except for the section of personality up front. They're going to move to I think. But is there or will there be anything unique about this new proposed location? We

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have a concept. We keep saying one this and one that we we have a concept called one to the fifth power. That means one location to come to for your service? One permit that you need instead of a very uh scattered number of permits, one Department

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to deal with with one lead person and one fee to pay rather than running to scattered locations paying for parks or fire protection or traffic mitigation fees. Uh this will all be collected in one place. So it will involve, it will involve less time and less

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frustration for the public to come get that service. Will that be possible ken to unify all those different permits? You people have determined that it will be I guess. Right. Well, it's a real challenge. We're actually still going through the process of consolidating the various permits

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were taking What now amounts to about 94 different permits. You can imagine neither did we until we sat down together and counted them up, classifying them into three different types were just for now calling them type A B and C. But one type A would be

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the kind that are available over the counter in one day. Second type B would be those which are available again over the counter that is administratively but which involved more of plan checking. So take longer than one day. Then the third type are the public hearing

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type permits that are now like you use permit in your your variance or your subdivision map. Those would take longer. I mean because there's more to be a lot more to be considered. Um When will the new center actually be in operation? Well, the remodel our

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architect tells us will take until about June or July of 1995. So that's some time away. Wow. I was just gonna sit here. That's 18 new. Well, that's quite a way. It's over right away. Okay June 1955 does seem quite a long time. What are you

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doing in the interim? Absolutely. We uh there's such a such strong interest in doing this not only in the public from the board but also not surprising on the part of the employees were moving together the building department and planning department in Toto into one department

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along with the land development unit in the public works department that would include all the permits people again and the surveyor's office into one consolidated department a year before that. Now that would be coming up in july or june of 1994. That coincides with our change

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in our fiscal year. Actually, let me pose a question here. Now you also have to have public health permits. Right correct from now, will they be incorporated with your operation there? Yes, actually let me, let me go over there. We've got not only the ones I

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mentioned planning building and the Department of public works staff but also the environmental health folks that deal with septic tanks and wells. And we're including a plan checker from the old fire services department so that all of the plan check takes place in one place. In

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addition, we're bringing over people from the water agency, which now is not only a separate department but a separate agency and folks from that department will come in to do the drainage design and review. Oh, that'll be great. Uh, this is something as we said earlier

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on in the program that I guess you would say is long overdue. Although if you say it's a pilot project in the state of California is first county that's really trying to do it just this and this should be a pilot for 57 other counties. If

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it, if it works as successfully as it looks like it will. You've had nothing but favorable response. I'm not sure all the employees are Behind it. 100%. But I think is the more that as I see it over there and listen to people, the more they

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understand what's being done there, the more they're in favor of it. That's right. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, it's just normal human behavior for people to become a little anxious when their jobs are changing they're comfortable with what's going on now. They're familiar with it, but

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this is a whole new process we're talking about and actually they're apprehensive on the other side though, all of these ideas for change have come from, have been supported by and the detail has been provided by the employees. We've made up five or six subcommittees that

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are, are working meeting every week for several hours to fine tune this process. And the folks are very excited about it frankly. Yeah, feeling I get and I talked to a number of people that will be involved in your new deal is that they really are

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looking forward to it. Now, first, as you say, everybody's a little apprehensive about what kind of changes, but now that they see what is being proposed, I think that they, first of all, they agree with it, that it's high time we got this all centralized and

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it looks to me like more and more of the employees have been won over by the idea that, hey, this is really needed. And we'd like to be a part of it, employees are, are concerned because they deal with frustrated customers every day. People, they have

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to send hither and yon to get permits and it's, it's much more comfortable for the public employee that has to deal with someone's problems to be able to deal with it all there in one place, you know, or call in someone from another department that has

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the expertise to solve a problem. Can another point here, you know, the board of supervisors over in the past has been concerned over a lack of a coordinated zone enforcement program for lack of a better other phrase. Are you doing anything about that in this area?

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We have. Yes. And that's part of the early startup. That is the one that's occurring now in a few months. The board has long been concerned about this issue of consolidated enforcement. We have each department doing their own enforcement and trying to funnel it through the

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county council's office of the court system. The new unit will be in this department again and it will consist of all the enforcement people from environmental health building and planning departments. Currently, that's this whole thing to me been having been over there all those years is

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really interesting because uh as I said earlier, I repeat myself, but it's high time something this innovative was tried and I'm glad our county and you and the people who are involved with decided to do it. one of the special units are being organized if any,

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well one in particular, that comes to mind is the environmental processing unit. Now that will be charged with um doing the environmental review on public projects, public works projects like roads, airport changes and improvements, county building functions and the like. Whereas now it's in a scattered

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series of locations. We hire a lot of consultants at, at a fairly expensive rates to do environmental impact reports and the goal here is to do it with greater efficiency, greater coordination among the departments and at less cost by doing much of this ourselves. We'll also

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be reviewing private projects when they get to be uh complicated environmental issues Last year, the state picked our pockets if you will for about $10 million bucks in tax revenues is that the primary reason for the county's reduced fiscal resources and smaller budgets? I would say

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it's not the primary driving force here. The primary force is really the board of supervisors wanting to deliver service better. However, you can't ignore the fact that we do have limited resources with the state taking away so much of our property tax. Now, what we're doing,

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we're considering this and a new opportunity. Again, always looking for the positive side to deliver services better. In spite of the fact that we have these diminished resources. Uh You seem to be saying two things at once right there, deliver services better or better services with

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less money. Can you do it? We sure think so. We're gonna find out, we're gonna find out very soon. How will this particular reorganization? The new Development service, Development services Department, uh save me or the other taxpayers money. Good question. Now, we think we're probably going

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to do. There certainly will be some efficiencies by sending say one inspector out to do what we used to send out two or three different individuals to do long trips in the field. It's a big county. So there will be naturally some efficiencies. It'll be more

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efficient in terms of management style, will have probably fewer managers and under one leadership. Um but we think moreover, there's gonna be a great savings on the part of the public where they don't have to run all over the county and deal with a number of

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different individuals to do their permit processing or get information on someone else's permit. If you're a neighbor or a concerned citizen concerned about an environmental impact, you can come to one place and find that out. You just can't do that now. So the great savings and

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efficiency will really be realized in the private projects to build anything. You you really have to Go to like we've been repeating this and we'll repeat it once more. You've been in the past, you had to go to like six different locations to get the material.

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You needed the permits if you will in order to proceed with that job. And that while I was a public information officer for accounting for 25 years that was one of the most grape about factors that people would relate to me at the information desk up

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there in front, you know, why can't you get these people next door to each other or something of that nature? You know, So your product project that you're talking about right now is extremely well timed. I think We're gonna pause right here and let the station

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bring the audience a public service announcement after that 10 mil um the acting director of the Development Services Department, the new permit center and I will be back to talk more about this new facility. That's my dad and that's mom. Dad's got an idea a way

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your free recycling action guide, right? Recycle Environmental Defense Fund to 57 Park Avenue south new york new york To keep a friend from drinking and driving. Just explain things to 6:45 and parties at night and I still got shopping to do. But if you drive, you'll

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have to drop me off and pick me up and then I'll be late and you won't be ready. So I'm gonna drive and drop you off and then I'm gonna do all the things I need to do and I'll be back in time to help you

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set things up. Okay, take the keys, call a cab, take a stand. Friends. Don't let friends drive drunk. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County. In the nineties were talking to ken Milam, who is presently the acting director of the development services department and the

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new permit center that's being created over in Sonoma County. We've been talking about why this is necessary, what they've been doing to try to bring it about and we're gonna carry on with more of that right now, ken, will this a new emphasis on, let's say

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streamline permits. Uh, mean more development in the county. No rich. The county has a very strong and very specific county general plan. It has some very strong agricultural protection features in it. In fact, were one of very few counties that has an optional agricultural element. And

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we do a lot of agricultural protection and farm worker housing accommodation there. We also have a very strong open space easement that's backed up by the open space district and its activities and, and that, that end of things. So we don't foresee this changing the way

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the growth patterns or the rate of growth occurs. It simply means better customer service. We were talking to David Hanson and your former planner Maria Cipriani recently about a few weeks ago about the uh, open space district And they've done an amazing job to have grabbing

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off land that was available at a rock bottom price if you will for all of us to enjoy in the future. And I'm glad you mentioned that general plan too because that we'll probably put a lot of people's minds at ease that if I could comment

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on that open space district is another unique feature in this wonderful county of ours, Not very many, hardly any counties that I'm aware of have such a unique district to acquire open space for the people and protected. And that's a big part of our quality of

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life here and they have gotten their hands on fortunately for all of us, a lot of really great land throughout the county and it's consistent with the county general plan. Yeah, that's right. That's right back to the plan. How about a balance with environmental concerns and

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protection? Will there be less attention pain to the environment now? Certainly not now. We have very strong again with the general plan and other measures. Very strong. Environmental protection uh, features in our planning activities. And this eliminates any real giving up on the environment type of

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thing. Yeah, we've in fact, currently we're working on several environmental issues. One is uh, protection for the valley oak tree, which has been declared a statewide problem actually. The disappearance of those over time. Big Stately oak trees were working on a special tree protection ordinance to

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to deal with that. Another feature we're working on is the protection or or regulation of small timber harvest plans. This is an area of three acres and smaller where the state doesn't, doesn't regulate in our opinion very successfully. And it's something that the county can do,

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can step in here and adopt its own regulations. So that's another measure you'll see coming forward pretty soon here. That's good. That's very good. Let's go back to the permit process for a minute. Will the process work the same old way Actually, no, we're developing as

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I said, a process where we take those old 94 old permit types and consolidate, we're gonna consolidate them. We don't think we're going to consolidate them into three simple permits necessarily. But certainly whereas again the scattered departments, you have to take your application to one place

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and then go to five or six other places and get a sign off. You can do that in one place. We're setting up a counter where the the applicant, the citizen will come to one place and actually stand in one place while the county public servants

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come around to you and actually give you approval or information at the same place. That really is a beautiful, it's wonderful. Will it take a lot more staff to do it this way? No, we're actually going to talk about the same number of staff. Again, any

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staff savings or efficiencies hopefully will be turned into either savings or into greater public service. That's good. Everything about this seems good. What's the bad side? That doesn't seem to be so far does there's no, there really doesn't seem to be a bad side to this.

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That's good news. We talked a little bit about the county employees, you know, and I'm wondering about, is that how do you feel the county employees are supporting this move, are they? And do you feel most of them are, How do you feel about that? We

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get various reactions. Um you talk to people in the hallway at the county government center, you you see them around in meetings and my general impression is clearly that they're anxious to get on with it. They're supporting it. They feel it's a better way to provide

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services. And again, they're naturally a little uncomfortable with the new process. But I'll tell you, we have some amazingly supportive employees in this county. Again, they're they're frustrated as much as anyone by having to send customers all over the place. You know, one thing we want

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to do right now, we'll do it in the program to we're getting down towards the end here. Now the phone number where they can reach you about more of this is what I write. My phone number is 5 to 719 to five. All right now, the

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planning Department, there's another number. Uh that's right. If you can't reach me at that number, if I'm out of the office, there's a general number for the Planning department At 5-7 1900. Okay, Alright. As the public expressed its support for the new center. Actually very much

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so. We've got a group of citizens, we've asked to help us out, we've put together something, we're calling the development services advisory panel that's made up of people in the industry, engineers, surveyors, environmental consultants, realtors, people in the finance industry, people from the environmental side and

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with broader uh public issues to address the league of women voters who I think you've interviewed here recently about some of their activities they're involved. Um the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club variety of folks are all in one panel helping us react from the public side

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to these changes we're proposing. Yeah, that's great because that's really getting a group out there spread out through the all the different publics, plural. If you will to find out just what you're thinking of, most of them are in agreement with you that this is a

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good idea. You know, you're well on the way to a successful reorganization in that respect. What changes will the public actually notice after you move into the new building? You said one thing about, he'll come there and people will revolve around him, but maybe one of

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the changes might they notice they're gonna definitely notice a different approach, a different attitude by the employees, not to say that every county employee is, is difficult to deal with or doesn't give all the answers. It's just that they have a separate set of answers now

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and in the new department will have specially trained people to give a wider range of answers. Be able to direct people through the process. It's uh, we're going to do some customer service training on a big scale with the employees and this is something we hear

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a lot about. We're down to a couple of minutes and one more thing I want to ask you, um, do you really think this reorganization move will improve things for the public and for the county in the long run, definitely what you said this evening. That's

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a silly question. But go ahead and reiterate what you feel about. Let me try it this way. Even if we were only to put all those permit related people in one place, there would be a massive improvement on the way we serve the public and everything

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else we achieve in a way of improved process, streamlining convenience is just a bonus. Yeah, it sure is one thing you mentioned earlier. I think it was interesting. First of all, it was the fact that you're going to combine the permit which in itself is fascinating.

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A new idea and it is a pilot project and I wish you all the success in the world, but you also mentioned that you're going to combine the fees right now. That that's amazing you can do it. We're coming into the information age, we're buying a

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computer tracking system catches, it'll actually the one cashier you have to go to will be able to use that system to calculate all the various fees and put them into one amount to be paid by one check. That's amazing ken it really is and I commend

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you and the board of supervisors and everyone who's involved in this process. I know the employees have been meeting in groups to deal with the problems that exist and how best to solve them and all of you people have put your shoulder to the wheel, so

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to speak and and it is happening It will be like you say June 1995 and it will be over there and everything. But even some of the things are being done now and on behalf of everybody, I commend you and all the groups working, we're running

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out of time. We always do when we get talking. Ladies and gentlemen, I've been talking with Ken Miller who has been our planning director for the past eight years. He's now the acting director of the Development services department is gonna be the permit center is going

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to be a very interesting place and a new pilot project. It's going to make it a lot easier for you to get permits simply. My name is Rich McGlinchey, the program Sonoma County in the nineties. I'll be back with you next week with another member of

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the county government, family or related agency until then. Good night, good luck, good health. Each and every one of you