Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "nestl"

Bottling water: City report Thursday

2010-08-03T00:39:36Z

On Thursday, Sacramento planning department staff will recommend against requiring a special land use permit for water and beverage bottling companies.

However, city officials and staff will continue to consider creating tiered water rates that could take effect in 2012 or sooner.

Staff from the city's Community Development Department will report to the City Council's Law & Legislation Committee, in response to requests made by council members Kevin McCarty and Lauren Hammond involving Nestlé Waters North America last October.

Bottling plants are permitted in zones approved for light industrial, heavy commercial and heavy industrial businesses in Sacramento. A staff survey found that conditional use permits, which are subject to approval from planning commissions and city councils, aren't required by 28 other California cities with at least one bottling operation. Nestlé operates in only one other city on the list.

"Planning staff finds that a beverage bottling facility is not unique in its water consumption when compared to other commercial and industrial uses and the land use impacts of the use in an industrial zone do not warrant the need for a special permit," staff wrote in a report to the committee.

Officials with the city's Department of Utilities have indicated they'd like to collect water-use data and hire a water rate consultant to help develop a tiered water rate fee structure.

Such data could be available by 2012 as 45,000 residential water customers — about 36 percent of residential clients — transition to metered water rates, according to the report.

McCarty said he will press to implement a tiered structure before 2012 when he soon meets with the city manager's office and utilities department.

"The real issue is what do we charge for our water?" McCarty said Monday. "Water is an increasingly valuable and diminishing commodity, and we ought to be making smart decisions on what we do with our municipal water."

The City Council was not involved in the decision to approve Nestlé opening a plant in McCarty's district in South Sacramento.

The council discussed the plant for the first time Oct. 27 after McCarty and Hammond proposed an emergency ordinance to consider amending the city's zoning code to immediately require a special permit and thus, environmental review, for bottling companies to operate in the city. McCarty also recommended the council consider tiered water rates for such companies.

City Attorney Eileen Teichert told the council that night Nestlé's plant was legal under the city's zoning codes and that a special permit requirement wouldn't apply. At the same time, the Community Development Department's Facilities Permit Program was suspended after the council and city officials learned work had started on the Nestlé plant without a formal building permit or a start-work authorization.

Save Our Water Sacramento, a group formed to oppose the plant, had sought a temporary City Council moratorium on beverage bottling plants in Sacramento at that time.

Hammond, who is on the committee, could not be reached for comment Monday.

The City Council's Law & Legislation Committee meeting will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday at City Hall, 915 I St.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Facilities Permit Program raises controversy

2009-12-16T06:09:39Z

Questions and concerns — as well as support — have been raised over a city of Sacramento planning and building department program suspended after it was illegally used to fast-track the Nestlé water-bottling plant.

The little-known Facilities Permit Program came to light in late October when Nestlé's renovation of a South Sacramento warehouse was temporarily halted and a city investigation revealed work had started without legally required building permits.

Many people, including those criticizing some aspects of the current building approval process, said city staff have worked hard in the last few years to become more developer-friendly by improving the building approval process and resolving issues with developers earlier in their projects, which is especially needed for urban infill projects.

The FPP is intended to speed up approval for tenant improvements or renovation of existing buildings by businesses already established with the city.

Developers view the program as an "entrepreneurial" effort between development professionals and city Community Development Department staff to accelerate the building approval process, said Michael Heller, who transformed a former state agency building into the MARRS Building on 20th Street.

"It's overall a very worthy, innovative program. If there are some modifications to make it better, we would all support that," Heller said. "But we certainly would not like to see it disbanded."

While builders praised the FPP for streamlining and hastening the building approval process, others expressed confusion over the program, how it works and who benefits.

Chief among those expressing concerns was former Mayor Heather Fargo, who said she knew nothing about the program, which was adopted while she was mayor, until the city suspended it Oct. 27. During her administration, she was not aware of city staff giving the kind of verbal approval that was used to expedite the water-bottling plant without a formal building permit, which is illegal.

"Not with my knowledge and not with my support. I find it outrageous," said Fargo, who said she would have required the FPP be put on the city council agenda and discussed publicly if she'd known anything about it.

"It's a very public process — development is. It should be," she said.

Several people, including architects and developers who have worked on infill projects, said they didn't know or understand the FPP.

"I don't think anybody is familiar enough with that program — including the city itself," said one person.

Under the FPP and a similar program known as the Matrix, one team or building inspector is put in charge of a project from the beginning of a builder's effort to win a building permit. The Community Development Department's building division reviews construction plans, provides feedback and approves building permits.

"This program is designed to expedite the plan review and permitting process to facilitate a timely process," according to the department. "The most significant differences between the FPP and the normal building permit process is the ability to begin a project at the time of plan submittal and perform inspections with concurrent plan review, by using a team doing both the plan review and the inspections."

Those eligible to participate in the FPP have included building owners or management companies, tenants and contractors, according to the department. Participants must register each year. The size and cost of a project or building has no impact on participation, according to the department.

While mayor, Fargo had supported creating "permit-free" zones in areas that desperately needed to be redeveloped, but not without public knowledge, she said. She also worked to get the "pain" taken out of the building approval process for small business owners after her own experience in the 1990s. She and her husband, a general contractor at that time, had to go through more than 100 people who gave conflicting directions to get a permit to build a small shop and driveway on commercial property in North Sacramento.

Some business owners have given up on business projects in the middle of building approval processes that were going nowhere, she said.

Others who have opened businesses in rehabbed buildings within the last two to three years said their businesses were in danger of failing because of the costly delays and other problems involved in getting permits from the city. Some would not talk on the record for fear of retribution by city staff, they said.

"You put some people through hell and other people don't even have to get a permit? It's ridiculous," Fargo said. "It sounds out of control to me."

Some criticized the city for not issuing permits in a "rational" way.

"We have been concerned with what we've seen for years as a real disparity — a grossly unlevel playing field in terms of how the city handles different kinds of applications. People who are well-connected and have lots of money behind them get lots of favors, and have for years, even before the FPP," said one source. "On the other side, folks who aren't well-connected, who don't have a lot of money behind them... cannot get the city to issue them a permit for the simplest things.

"The FPP seems like a way of formalizing this verbal-agreement approach that has been going on for awhile," according to the source."You don't want it to be a free-for-all where the guys who have the juice get whatever they want and the other people get screwed."

Working through the FPP, the Swiss company Nestlé and its local contractors began construction work on an existing warehouse at 8670 Younger Creek Drive with only verbal approval from a building inspector who coordinates the program. The contractor, Panattoni Construction, is a participant in the FPP, rather than Nestlé, said David Kwong, acting head of the Community Development Department.

"Plans were submitted and verbal approval was granted on this project because of the plan's limited scope (i.e., work only included demising walls and pluming in an existing building)," according to information provided by the department.

Building permit applicants must pay fees to support the FPP and inspectors' time. Nestlé has paid $175,494 in fees for all three phases of the warehouse renovation, according to the Community Development Department.

Nestlé's water-bottling operations are expected to begin in January. The company had protested the stop-work order by saying the city's established process had been followed. The stop-work order was lifted in three business days.

Before the program was suspended, all FPP participants were given start-work authorizations or verbal approval as soon as plans were submitted to the city, as long as the work would not impact buildings' structural integrity, according to the department. The work was later inspected for compliance with city and state building codes.

While state law may not prohibit verbal approvals from replacing building permits, California Building Standards Commission Executive Director Dave Walls said he's not aware of any cities that allow building inspectors to issue permits verbally or in the field.

"I don't know of any local administrative procedures that would permit such a thing," he said. "Most will say you don't start work until you get a permit."

Various state agencies have oversight and can cite for violations of state code regarding the building of homes, schools and hospitals. The state legislature hasn't given any agency, including the Building Standards Commission, the power to enforce codes for commercial construction, Walls said.

Under state law known as the California Building Standards Code, the use of a phase permit program to fast-track a project is done so at the applicant's risk. Permits may be issued for phases of a project before another phase is designed or approved. But the applicant — not the approval-granting agency — takes all the risk for any work done before full approval is given for the entire project, Walls said.

Developers and other business people — including those who recruited Ray Kerridge as an assistant city manager — have met in recent weeks to strategize how to support the FPP and Kerridge, who brought the program from Portland and is now the city manager.

Developers once ranked the city of Sacramento as the worst place to do business in this region. Projects were stymied by the involvement of numerous departments with different agendas, which made developers feel like "a mouse on a treadmill," said Sotiris Kolokotronis, who developed the L Street Lofts.

"By 2005, it (Sacramento) was one of the best places to do business," Kolokotronis said. "I saw in the city some really good things happen."

Developers who seek a speedier process to renovate buildings or make tenant improvements under the FPP know they still must build to code and be in line with the building permit, and that they are assuming all financial risk, Heller said.

"I think that's fair," Heller said. "If a developer is going to benefit from an expedited process, they have to be willing to take that risk."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Nestlé can legally set up bottling plant, city attorney says

2009-10-28T05:35:56Z

Nestlé has a green light in Sacramento, according to the city attorney’s office.

The Nestlé company’s work to set up a water bottling plant in Sacramento is allowed under the city’s existing laws, City Attorney Eileen Teichert’s office said Tuesday.

It was clear at Tuesday’s City Council meeting that the City Council and city staff are on-board with the Nestlé company’s plans to bottle and sell tens of millions of gallons of Sacramento’s water.

The city had placed a stop-work order on Friday at the plant on Nestlé intends to use for its operations. The city said it wanted to verify whether Nestlé had broken any of the city’s permitting and building laws. In turn, Nestle had said the city’s decision to release a stop-work order may have been illegal.

The stop-work order will now be removed. Some of the work that was being carried out at the site can continue as soon as tomorrow, according to Acting Community Development Director David Kwong. He said the company must still follow a process and timeline with the city to start work on other tasks to retrofit the plant, which is located at 8670 Younger Creek Drive.

The city is stopping the Facilities Permit Program that Nestlé was accepted under. City staff officials told the City Council Tuesday that the permitting program is not up to date with city building codes. Councilman Kevin McCarty indicated in a phone interview after the meeting that there may be significant problems with the program, calling it a "can of worms that's being opened."

During the meeting, Shaina Meiners of Sacramento spoke against Nestlé’s water bottling business. “I am aghast that Nestlé can come in, in this very secretive way,” Meiners said.

Matt Mahood of the Sacramento Metro Chamber was in favor of Nestle’s plant. He noted that the unemployment rate in Sacramento is approaching 12 percent. Rules cannot be changed on companies mid-stream, he said.

Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell said staff did not inform the City Council about early developments with Nestle’s plans to build in Sacramento. She asked, “Why weren’t we briefed?”

The discussion at the City Council meeting changed in light of Teichert’s analysis that Nestlé did not break laws. Councilman Kevin McCarty had proposed an interim urgency ordinance to mandate special permits for beverage bottling plants in the city. The ordinance would enable the Planning Commission or City Council to examine plans to expand or build beverage bottling plants. Nestle’s plans were not considered by the Planning Commission or the City Council; the city’s current rules did not require Nestle to go through that step.

McCarty’s proposal no longer applied to Nestlé after Teichert’s legal opinion.

However, McCarty’s proposal is not dead. Instead, it will consider future water bottling plants. The proposal will be moved to the city’s Law and Legislation Committee.

Along with McCarty’s proposal, the council decided it also wanted Law and Legislation to examine the issue of tiered water rates.

Photo by Anthony Bento.

Staff reporter Suzanne Hurt contributed to this report. Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.