Half Moon Bay seeks ways to ease building

For 2026, for example, there are Measure D 70 allocations available, staff said. 

In late 2025, the state asked Half Moon Bay to bring a ballot measure to voters that would exempt accessory dwelling units from Measure D entirely. Although approval of the city’s housing element could be contingent upon that request, councilmembers resoundingly denied it. 

They did acquiesce to reducing ADUs and junior accessory dwelling units to .5 of a Measure D allocation or less, a move that would ostensibly allow for more to be approved. During a joint City Council and Planning Commission study session Jan. 13, commissioners and councilmembers alike generally continued to express support for that proposal. 

“I definitely agree ADUs should have a fraction of a Measure D allocation,” Vice Mayor Deborah Penrose said. “Whether it’s a half or not, I don’t have a strong opinion on.” 

Community leaders were also in agreement that the city should reevaluate the criterion by which applications are graded and prioritize fire safety in design. The grading standards currently include design for walking and biking, home size, design for safety and diverse households and landscaping, among others.  

Although new State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection standards have yet to be finalized, the city could begin incentivizing fire-resistant and native plants and properties with fire breaks by giving them extra points in the review process, Planning Commissioner Rick Hernandez said.  

“I think those are highly valuable and we should strongly encourage them,” he said. 

A variety of suggestions were also proposed so that Half Moon Bay could expedite the approval process and make it easier for staff and customers, some of whom wait multiple years to receive development approval. Presently, the city takes applications up until Jan. 30, and the scoring process takes until April of that year. From there, applicants have a year to file for a building permit. 

“I’ve heard tremendous feedback from many, many people that it takes too long,” Hernandez said. “It is one drumbeat I hear, that it’s never fast enough.” 

Going through such an extensive review process for each application — which takes months of staff time — is untenable both for staff and for customers, Penrose said. 

“If we’re trying to be efficient in government, we don’t want to have a system where it takes a year to be able to start building on something,” she said. “It’s too long.” 

An innovative solution to this problem would be to create a lottery for the majority middle of applications, many of which are extremely close together in scoring, Planning Commission Chair Steve Ruddock said. Highest-scoring applications, which provided fire-safe properties or deed-restricted developments, for example, could still be pulled out of the lottery and awarded. 

“These scores end up being so close together, they depend on such qualitative things, it’s a fiction, really, that one project is a quarter of a point better than another,” he said. “I think we should throw this out the window.” 

This proposition wasn’t unanimously supported — Planning Commission Vice Chair David Gorn, for example, said that projects were only so close together in scoring because staff spent personalized time working through the process with each applicant. 

Councilmembers and commissioners also voiced concern around applicants that are awarded Measure D allocations but don’t pursue them, essentially letting those allocations slip through the cracks. 

Also at issue is the current map used to determine the downtown and out-of-downtown boundaries for development. It would be best to align the map with the town center map in the city’s land use plan, councilmembers and commissioners said, which would require a ballot vote. 

“I think the map is problematic,” Mayor Debbie Ruddock said. “It’s not consistent with the existing downtown map staff is using, and we should have maps that are consistent with all of our different purposes. I would support putting the map on the November ballot.”