Fifteen years of building businesses in this valley means fifteen years of permit counters, plan-review corrections, and inspection sign-offs. Manny has personally been in the line, early, fluorescent lights overhead, waiting on a decision that a payroll was riding on. That is the whole credential here. The people who fix a broken counter best are the ones who have actually had to stand at it.

 

Almost every business that opens in the unincorporated valley walks through a county counter first the county licenses it, and the county permits the building it operates in. That makes small business a county duty, not a state or federal one, and it's a duty the District E seat votes on directly: licensing, building permits and plan review, and the zoning decisions that decide what can open where.

The county already publishes its *target* review times 21 days for a commercial plan review at $250,000 and up, 14 days for smaller projects, 7 days for a streamlined project under $100,000. What it doesn't publish is whether it actually hits those targets. For a small business, that gap isn't abstract: the lease clock starts the day the keys change hands, not the day the doors open, so every week in plan review is a week of rent on a dark room and wages for a team that can't work yet.

Manny has personally stood in the 6 a.m. permit line, fifteen years of payrolls behind him. His first ask is a public dashboard showing median time from application to decision, by permit category targets next to actuals, so owners can plan and the county has a public reason to improve. He also wants the correction process fixed so a project gets caught in one pass instead of bounced back four times, with a single point of contact instead of a relay between desks.