County approves expedited rebuild guidelines in aftermath of Tassajara Fire.

For families who lost everything in the Tassajara Fire, county officials are offering an expedited permitting process to help them rebuild their homes.

The Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 Tuesday to approve “2015 Fire Incident Recovery Guidelines,” which lay out a sped-up permitting process for people who are replacing the 12 homes and eight outbuildings destroyed in the fire. (These rules also apply to the two outbuildings damaged in the Laureles Fire.)

They have a year to do it: People who apply for permits to rebuild or repair structures by Oct. 6, 2017, would get priority over all other pending building applications.

The county will also waive fees that aren’t paid by insurance companies—so long as the structures were legal to begin with.

In a report to the County Board of Supervisors, county planners acknowledge the open secret that there may be unpermitted structures in the rural parts of the county—like Cachagua, which was affected by the fire.  

“In responding to…the fire incident it is important to balance the desires of property owners with the need for good land use and hazard mitigation planning,” according to their report.

“A proper balancing of these sometimes competing concerns will ideally result in both a streamlined process for applicants, as well as a regulatory system that ensures the rebuilding occurs in a [safe] manner.”

Replacement structures (for either illegal or legal buildings) will need to adhere to county policies on things like grading, zoning and building size.

To qualify for the fee waiver and expedited permit processing, replacement structures can be no more than 10-percent larger than the ones they replace.