Dear [city commissioner]: I'm a [local] homeowner experiencing extreme frustration with the [building department]. My address is [blah blah blah] and my phone number is [blah blah blah]. I am not sure if at this point there is anything you can do to help me, but I think you will definitely want to hear my tale of woe. I could summarize it by saying this: I have been working for 2 months trying to get a building permit for a renovation to a tiny 300 square foot garage, and despite the involvement of an architect with 25 years experience and a professional structural engineer, it is still not over, and there is much doubt as to whether anything approved will even be worth building. The plans approval process has not just compromised the aesthetics of the project and wasted thousands of dollars of everybody's time -- it's also compromised potential tenant safety and the property rights of neighbors. But the real horror is in the details. Sorry if this email is rather long, but there's no other way to communicate the way things work .. or, rather, fail to work. When it comes to city living and home renovation, I'd like to think of myself as one of the good guys. Since I've bought the place, I've insulated my house, changed grass to native plants, and generally spiffed up the place to the approval of neighbors. I was one of the first clients of [the local car sharing business] and for a long time lived with no car. When I decided I wanted to change my 300-square foot detached garage to a "granny house" or "accessory dwelling unit" (ADU), I knew I was doing something the city was interested in -- creating infill housing without changing the character of my neighborhood. So far so good. Many of my acquaintances have done bigger projects without getting any relevant permits, and which are far below code standards, but I decided to go legit. It's a decision I am sad to say I am now starting to regret. I did not approach the project in an amateurish way. I hired an architect, [name], with 25 years experience in both residential and commercial buildings. He in turn engaged a structural engineer. We produced plans that the neighbors were excited about -- it turned a slightly disused garage into a genuinely cute little house that fit precisely with [our neighborhood's] mix of older homes. It also was an environmentally sensitive building -- its extremely small size, efficient appliances, and proximity to transit was likely to provide a dwelling with a very small energy footprint. The plans were also quite detailed for such a small place -- 3 sheets of architectural plans plus five related to structural details. The Architect thought he could walk the project through the [building dept] in a few hours. He had long before looked into the maze of ADU regulations and concluded there should be few if any barriers to the project. He recalled how one city councilor had once encouraged the Bureau to respect the experience of people like him and, for 1-or-2 family projects, speed things through. That's where he was wrong. When he walked into the [building dept] in mid-June of this year, he began a journey of contradiction after contradiction, in department after department, some of the most arbitrary nature. Problem 1: the comedy of the pre-application inspection First the architect and his assistant were told that no pre-application inspection of the property would be required. This seemed sensible because the architects had made their own drawings and measurements of the property that documented the topics typically evaluated at that inspection -- which is oriented towards do-it-yourselfers, not architects. Then a few days later another inspector changed their mind and ordered the pre- application inspection. The architect quickly got a check from me (made out to the city) for this pre- application inspection and turned the request in. But no one in the [building dept] seemed to know how to schedule it or even what a pre-application inspection for an ADU was. Though the [building dept] promises a return call on inspection requests in one day, I heard nothing within a week. Finally after calling about 20 people, and doing some detective work on my own, I managed to talk to an inspector who was willing to do the inspection but couldn't find my file. He was generous with his time and did the inspection on July 7. He then promised to send us a letter in a few days documenting any recommendations or requirements. That letter has never arrived (though my check was quickly cashed). It was clear at that point that the [building dept's] systems were not working. What makes everything more absurd is that after all that drama, yet another Bureau staffer told us we could proceed without the letter. Example 2: Arbitrary evaluations about design. The whole pre-application inspection brouhaha wasted time. Nobody got anything positive from it... not even the Bureau. But things really got excruciating for me as a citizen when the design was being evaluated. Part of the architect's plans for making the ADU fit in with the surroundings was the inclusion of rounded elements in the design. The existing house on the property features a strong semicircular element in the facade and a matching semicircular front stoop. It's why people call the house "cute." Accordingly [the architect] put a circular detail window in the ADU's facade... a nice connecting element clearly echoing the style of the main house. However, a [building dept] staffer ruled that a circular window was not allowed because the drawings showed no circular windows on the main house. I had to take digital photographs of the far side of the main house -- a side nowhere near the ADU, but featuring a semicircular window -- and [the architect] had to make another visit to the staffer to argue that there was some precedent for the shape. It was all completely absurd because [the architect's] circular window was a perfect stylistic echo of the facade and stoop, and everybody could see that -- including the neighbors who loved and approved of the design. Only a bureaucrat couldn't see it. In the meantime, another week or two had been consumed. Example 3: regulations trump safety Bureaucracy's lack of imagination turned sinister when it came to a key interior element of the design: a storage loft and a way to climb up to it. As you recall the ADU is quite small and efficient with materials - about 300 square feet of footprint. The architect and I studied the design of prize- winning small houses and realized that a storage loft was absolutely necessary. Fortunately there was enough headroom to make one possible. Unfortunately there was not enough room for a standard stair. Now traditionally the way to get into such storage lofts is a ladder, but we thought a ladder was too dangerous. We found a perfect solution in an "alternating tread device", a ladder with dual handrails and special treads, especially designed to walk up and down safely and acceptable by code in many industrial environments. We included this device in our drawings, fixed sturdily to the loft. It was rejected by the [building dept]'s examiner, who viewed it as a stairway and said it was too steep and narrow. We appealed and were rejected there. Okay, we were rejected. But here's where it gets really sick: the examiner suggested both verbally and in writing that the plans could be passed if they featured an unfixed ladder, because code does not regulate unfixed ladders. That is, our safer device was rejected, and we were encouraged to use something considerably more dangerous because it fit a loophole in regulations. This was a situation where the examiner seemed more interested in regulations than in safety. Example 4: demands compromise property of neighbors When it came to the Environmental Services review, the architect got a clear command: despite the fact that absolutely zero new roof was being added (in fact we were removing hardscape and increasing the permeability of the nearby driveway) we had to disconnect the downspouts of the ADU's roof in order for our project to move forward. This imperious command disregards the water bureau's own standards for disconnecting downspouts: they do not recommend it if the downspouts are in close proximity to a neighbor's property. Well, these downspouts are about 2 feet and 1 foot, respectively, from property of neighbors. It is not respectful of the neighbors to disconnect them, and it ignores my other dutiful efforts and offers to address runoff in a more appropriate way, through hardscape reduction, etc. Example 5: "safety" demands ruin aesthetics without improving safety. Just today I got the decision that just might kill the project completely: the plans examiner (who previously said there were no issues to deal with besides the alternating tread devices) has required that the south and west eaves of the building be removed for the purposes of fire control. The south eave doesn't matter, but it's a very symmetrical old-fashioned building, a mix of craftsman and cape cod. Removing the west eave will be an architectural travesty -- like someone took a chain saw to the building. Now fire is a serious subject, and I absolutely want to be safe in this regard. We have fire-rated the west wall of the building. We could offer to fire-rate the eave as well, making a continuous fire-rated surface. This should be the safety equivalent of a project that WOULD be approved, in the architect's experience: a building with no eave where the wall came up much closer to the property line. But by this point he is not sure it's even worth trying to make that argument. All that seems to matter is a senseless application of regulations -- not fulfilling the spirit of regulations and the actual purposes of safety, aesthetics, etc. Conclusion: beaten into submission. Everybody knows that the city is full of unpermitted projects that don't come close to any standards set by the [building dept]. I decided to take the high road and do things right, even for my little 300-square foot project. But me and my very patient, reasonable architect can't seem to get a break. We've spent two months dragging our drawings through the [building dept] and getting rebuffed on a weekly basis. With another appeal raising its ugly ahead, we're getting worn out. I'm thinking of giving up and moving elsewhere -- and I'm one of the people the city government seems to want. I'm concerned with the environment, work in "creative" occupation, and I like density. I want to contribute to that kind of community. But the [building dept] doesn't want to help me. The [building dept] has beaten us down. There seems to be no hope that we can get our highly professional design approved with its aesthetics, respect for neighbors, and safety devices intact. Can you help with that? If that's impossible, maybe it would be a slight satisfaction to know that somewhere in the bowels of the [building dept], somebody is getting a break for something -- maybe a tool shed or a dog house. Thank you so much for your time and concern. I know reading this has been a job. I appreciate your service to the community. Sincerely, [bottleman]