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Home My WebLink About02-03-2015 PH2 SchmidtSubject: FW: PH2 -- solar and rainwater storage COUNCIL MEETING: 2- ITEM NO,:2_ From: Richard Schmidt [mailto:slobuild@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2015 10:16 AM To: Marx, Jan; Ashbaugh, John; Christianson, Carlyn; Carpenter, Dan; Rivoire, Dan; Subject: PH2 -- solar and rainwater storage Dear Council Members, 7FE I�'.r_ i 2015 +S_Vy i Mejia, Anthony As one of the community's premier sustainability advocates, I'd like to comment that this ordinance is ridiculous in most respects. It should be shelved. Why does staff keep bringing ordinances to the council that haven't been vetted in public while being prepared? 1. Solar permits. This mainly affects PV as solar thermal has become unfashionable, for some reason, while PV is sexy. • The crux of the "problem" the ordinance seeks to "fix" is the time required to get a permit. Time, however, has to do with administrative practice rather than with ordinance provisions. There's no reason a solar permit cannot be delivered over the counter, on the spot. There's only so much the building official has to check, and it's not complex. Years ago, my PV permit was issued in precisely this way and rapidity. Then staff came up with ways to "get fancy" and dawdle for all sorts of bureaucratically -compelling reasons that do nothing to promote the public good. The planners are particularly a problem -- they get you to adopt all sorts of ordinances and policies, and then make up others of their own, giving them license to sit on non -controversial minor permits (things like solar and fence height exceptions) for months instead of just issuing them. THAT'S THE PROBLEM! YOU DON'T NEED AN ORDINANCE TO FIX IT. Fix bad management and poor behavior by planners, and the "time problem" goes away. • The ability for staff under the proposed ordinance to deny a permit, or to require an admin hearing (which is costly to the applicant and a total waste of time and effort) because of dangers to the public health and safety leaves me puzzled, and wondering what sort of loopholes to granting permits this opens up. What are dangers that would merit denial of a permit? They're not even hinted at in the ordinance. Some elucidation in the ordinance is needed lest this just become another administrative shakedown for applicants. Failing to be able to provide elucidation suggests there is in fact no such likely problem. Since a permit that endangers public health and safety can always be denied, this provision in this ordinance simply invites suspicion as to its motive and potential for abusive "interpretation" by those who do the "interpreting." • The staff report mentions an exception to quick permitting for historic properties. Did I miss that in the ordinance? I don't see it. Certainly, if there is an exception, the grounds for denial based on historic designation need to be spelled out clearly someplace lest that too become another administrative shakedown. There need to be, in other words, specific criteria for denying a permit based on historic designation. Where is the prohibition in effect? What justifies such a prohibition? Does it apply to an entire property (if so, why?) or to specific designated features of the property? This isn't Disneyland -- our historic properties are living parts of the community and while conserving the resource the city also needs to allow them to be updated for current living, not frozen in some mythical past status of time. Etc. Solar seems like a reasonable update, albeit, perhaps with some knowledge of solar design alternatives probably not fully understood by city staff. • The ordinance states that for arbitrary reasons of its own creation the city may jack up the cost of a solar system by a "reasonable" amount, which is defined as $1000. Really? Is that reasonable? My PV system, which has made our home net zero electrically for more than a decade, would cost -- sticker price -- today about $4,000, reduced by a 30% federal tax credit and a state rebate of several hundred dollars -- maybe in the high $2000s ultimate out of pocket cost. Is jacking up that cost by $1000 really "reasonable?" Just because some bureaucrat doesn't like the looks of a solar system on my house? I don't think this is reasonable. It's another roadblock to solar installations for persons of modest means who'd like to do the right thing by the environment. 2. Rain Water Storage This ordinance is in every respect over -regulation designed to stifle rainwater storage. It purports to do something good, while actually doing mostly the opposite. • Why is any kind of permit required for domestic rainwater storage? These systems are entirely independent of household plumbing. These are not large systems, and they don't involve any serious dangers. Typically they're a collection of modest -sized tanks -- typically 1000 to 3000 gallons each. They sit on the ground. What in the world danger do they present, and what would cause anybody to require a permit for these? (And if you answer mosquitoes, your permitting process would have absolutely zero impact on that! That has to do with proper operation, which is beyond the permit process.) • Rainwater storage and use is one of the best ways to reintroduce urban water into the biosphere while also accomplishing something useful -- irrigation of plants while relieving pressure on our domestic water supplies. The city should be doing everything it can to encourage this practice, not to limit it with an ordinance of this type. • While the city gets in the way of rainwater storage for irrigation, more progressive jurisdictions are promoting it. Even locally, the federal resource conservation district is offering grants of up to $999 for domestic installations (though there's a ridiculous amount of red tape that will probably limit the effectiveness of their program). On the other hand, your ordinance, which prohibits visibility of such storage from the street, would apparently thereby make city residents ineligible for the resource district's grants since their intent is to promote public visibility for PR reasons, to promote the acceptance of domestic rainwater storage by making such systems visually commonplace. Did the persons who wrote this ordinance even consider this contradiction? • By limiting permitless rainwater storage to 600 gallons PER PROPERTY, your proposed ordinance sounds as if you're doing something good while in fact you're doing something evil -- limiting rainwater systems to a ridiculously small size that requires waste of most of this resource. For example, I probably live in a house smaller than any of yours (980 SF). If I were to save all the rainwater from my little house's roof in a typical winter, I'd be able to save more than 16,000 gallons of water. YET YOUR ORDINANCE WOULD PROHIBIT ME FROM SAVING 96% OF THE WATER I COULD POTENTIALLY SAVE. Does that make any sense at all? THIS IS A TOTAL JOKE OF A "PERMISSIVE" ORDINANCE THAT'S IN FACT DESIGNED TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO OF BUREAUCRATIC OVER -REGULATION OF DOMESTIC RAINWATER SYSTEMS. I think this city could be run a lot better if stuff like this wasn't just incubated by staff and brought to the council, but rather involved residents who know what the heck the stuff is about -- and the interested public in general as well -- in studying first, whether any ordinance is even needed, and second, what sorts of provisions that ordinance should contain. The current staff -driven origination processes are consistently delivering faulty goods. Sincerely, Richard Schmidt