Rebuilding Sonoma County: Permit Sonoma’s Wick at helm of recovery efforts

When Tennis Wick reflects on the past year, he sees a “pretty extraordinary recovery” in a community blindsided by an unprecedented disaster in late 2017.

Wick, 58, is the director of the Permit Sonoma, the county’s land use and planning agency that’s been at the forefront of developing policy and processing applications for the rebuild of thousands of homes lost in the unincorporated county. As leader of the 150-employee department, he’s experienced the most “challenging and rewarding” year of his professional career.

“There’s a level of urgency and focus that didn’t exist before the fires. It’s our job … to maintain that level of urgency,” he said. “It’s changed the way we communicate and what we expect.”

The fires in Sonoma County wiped out more than 5,300 homes, deepening the region’s housing crisis. More than 2,200 of the burned homes were outside city limits, many in rural areas with greater complexity than more urban rebuild projects.

In the wake of the fires, Wick and his department developed a slate of policy changes for approval by the Board of Supervisors, first drafting urgency measures, including a ban on new vacation rentals to preserve that housing stock for residents, and allowing for temporary use of RVs and trailers in burn areas. In the following months, polices intended to ease construction of granny units and other housing and to create new categories of housing were brought forward by Permit Sonoma and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Sonoma County has also retained an outside firm to manage a permit center dedicated to handling rebuilding permits, an effort that’s cut processing time from weeks to days and reduced fees by about 35 percent, Wick said. So far, ?737 permits have been issued for the reconstruction of single-family homes in the unincorporated county, with 588 under construction, according to county data.

“Expediting permits for fire survivors has been our primary goal,” Wick said. “We are respecting people’s property rights that lost their homes in the fire and want to rebuild and get through the process quickly.”

Keith Woods, the executive director of the North Coast Builders Exchange, echoed Wick’s sentiment about the sense of urgency that’s driven the rebuilding process. In the new year, the department faces challenges processing a wave of permits, he said, while those rebuilding will have to contend with a shortage of materials and skilled laborers.

Woods, who meets regularly with city and county building officials and contractors, described Wick as a “consummate professional.”

“Tennis and the Board of Supervisors and everyone involved after the horrific fire realized the magnitude of this incredible disaster and they didn’t want to be in any way responsible for the delays in rebuilding and they were going to be a help and not a hindrance,” he said.

Woods said Wick has bolstered efficiencies in the department in his leadership role.

“He was tasked with the turning around of a battleship,” Woods said. “It’s a huge organization that in the construction industry’s mind was less efficient and less customer-service oriented than it should have been. I admire Tennis but I don’t envy him and the task he had to reinvent (Permit Sonoma).”

A Boston native, Wick holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Santa Barbara and a law degree from San Francisco’s Golden Gate University.

Wick has worked in both the public and private sector, and he co-founded Sonoma Vermiculture, which diverts food waste from landfills for breakdown by worms. He also served on the Petaluma Planning Commission and as in various roles in Marin County’s planning department. The Petaluma resident was appointed to head Permit Sonoma in 2013.

David Rabbitt, an architect and chairman of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, praised Wick’s approach to directing the multifaceted department.

“Tennis has really taken it to heart that we need to make sure we’re advocates for the fire survivors and victims in order to get results, knowing that the clock is ticking and lives are on hold in some cases,” Rabbitt said. “He’s followed through on that in terms of both the policy suggestions he’s given to the county and the implementation.”

Wick said his department is further streamlining processes, creating mechanisms for the electronic submittal of applications and a digitalization of records. The department in 2017 saw 208 applications for permits for single-family and mobile homes, and in 2018 saw 1,072, according to county data.

The agency also issued an unusual call to the public to submit ideas for housing sites, asking residents to help identify vacant or underutilized properties that could be rezoned to allow landowners to build future projects.

As of last week, the department had received 60 nominations, 34 of which meet basic criteria, a spokeswoman said. Those eligible sites encompass an estimated 130 acres, with the potential for approximately 2,500 housing units.

Wick said he’s looking forward to continued progress in the county’s rebuild.

“A year from now we’re going to be, at least in the county, three-fourths of the way through with reconstruction,” he said. “But, two years out, there are a lot of factors that could come into play that impact that - another series of natural disasters here or outside the area and the cost of construction materials.”

You can reach Staff Writer Hannah Beausang at 707-521-5214 or hannah.beausang@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @hannahbeausang.