Property owners in Ventura County who want to develop their land outside of its current zoning and permits can face long waits, fees that pile up by the minute, and an often confusing system that can shuttle them from one county office to another, according to an outside report delivered Tuesday to the county Board of Supervisors.

The consultant the county hired for the study, Tom Berg, was once the manager of the Ventura County Resource Management Agency, which includes the Planning Division.

He interviewed 75 people who have dealt directly with the county's land-use planning, including planners and other government employees and the lawyers and consultants who represent property owners.

Berg's assessment, which cost the county $12,000, was that the basics of land-use planning are "not fundamentally flawed," but there are many ways in which the county could be more "transparent, predictable and accountable."

His suggestions include: appointing an executive-level ombudsman to handle all complaints regarding the planning process; creating a system by which the public can monitor the progress of a land-use application online; hiring more planners and clerical workers to keep the wait down at the Planning Division's public counter; creating a separate division to enforce planning and building codes; and updating the county's written planning policies so that all planners are operating under consistent guidelines.

"The problem is not the people," Berg said. "I didn't find bad actors; I didn't find people who aren't committed to making the system work, but the system has some problems."

Chris Stephens, the head of the Resource Management Agency, said he agrees with Berg's general diagnosis and has already put some of his suggestions in place.

The policies that county biologists work under when analyzing a project's impacts were recently rewritten, Stephens said, and other policies will follow suit.

The Planning Division is also working on an online case-tracking system and is looking for a training program to improve customer service at the public counter, he said.

The Board of Supervisors assigned a committee of top county officials to study Berg's recommendations and return to the board with estimates of what they might cost and how they might be implemented.

"We've got a great report here, we've got the public's support and we've got our staff's support, so we shouldn't sit on this," Supervisor Peter Foy said. "Let's keep the ball rolling."

One obstacle, though, will be money.

The county's current policy is to pursue "cost recovery" — to charge property owners the full cost of processing their applications. That means the county bills applicants at $158.50 an hour for a planner's time, more than what most other cities and counties charge, Berg said.