I intended to go to City Hall bright and early (8 AM) on Thursday (2/18/20) to talk to a City Planner about my dreams of building an ADU in my backyard but instead went on Wednesday after lunch (1:30) and only had to wait 5 minutes or so.
I brought my ADU Universal Check List, Site Plan, and list of questions.
I talked to a Planning Technician, a very nice young woman named Danniella Halici.
Here are the questions and the answers:
Easements: PG&E and Comcast run their lines on utility poles in my neighborhood. The poles are located on my neighbors' backyard property, but the lines run through my property on the property line plus or minus a couple of feet.
I was told I need to find if my property has an easement but likely does since I have overhead utility lines. Since I'm certain I have an easement it's a question of what type of easement I have. My neighbor who tore down his garage and built a new one mentioned he needed to provide a setback of 5 ft from the utility pole that's on his property. Since I need to go back to City Hall and talk to Building and planning about my solar requirement, I'll ask them about the utility easement requirement.
Historic Designation: Since I live in a historic district, I need to provide a "simplified" design, but the planner said since I'm not adding an ADU in the front of the house but in the back yard, I'm good, meaning it shouldn't be a big deal. But I'm going to use a simplified design so I don't see a problem with this. I think it's more for the person who wants to put a modern design on a historic house built in the early 1900s.
Setbacks: This was the one question that I was concerned about. Daniella said that as long as I'm using an existing structure and not increasing its size, then my current zero setbacks on the rear and side yards stand. I asked for the documentation and she said to check the municipal code section 10.30.4.5 but when I did it came up blank. I'll need to investigate this further, but at least the answer is somewhere in the municipal code library, at least I hope so.
ADU Address: Daniella asked the Building Planner Tech who then went and ask someone higher up the totem pole who said you place the address on the building. I then asked but you're not going to see the address from the street since it's behind a gate and Daniella said you could put it on the gate on down the driveway. This is something I'll ask the Building Department when I drop by on my next visit.
ADU Access: This ties back to setbacks. Is the distance from the street curb of the lot to all portions of the proposed ADU no greater than 200 ft as measured along a minimum 3-foot path to all sides of the ADU?
It's not the 200ft that's the problem, it's the 3-foot path to all sides of the ADU. Daniella said this wasn't a problem. Again, on my next visit, I'll ask the Building and Planning Department because I think it may be a problem when you tie in the easement requirement.
Solar Requirement: Starting 1/1/2020 solar is required for all new homes constructed in California which includes ADUS. My question was if I install solar on my home while building my ADU does that cover my Solar ADU requirement.
This was a question that required an answer from Building and Planning. They weren't available so that's when Danniella said it would be best to come back tomorrow since the line for planning was long, hence the reason to get to City Hall by 8 AM on my next visit.
Overall it was a good experience with the caveat that I talked with a planning technician, not a city planner or a building planner/inspector. For the harder questions, you're going to have to talk with the building and planning department, so that's what I'll do on my next visit.
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