Chino | Permits and Fees

Chino, California Permits and Fees: Who Decides, Completeness and Appeal Deadlines, Permit Life, Planning Fees and Development Impact Fees

This page covers how a Chino housing project moves through review and what it pays. The approval steps are in Series 600 of the 2026 zoning code, posted as the City's Zoning Ordinance dated August 2026. The map steps are in Title 19, and the impact fee rules in Chapter 3.40 of the Chino Municipal Code. The fee amounts come from two City documents: the impact fee schedule of Resolution 2025-030, effective August 18, 2025, and the Approved 26-67 User Fee Schedule, effective July 1, 2026. An impact fee pays for the public facilities that new homes use, such as streets, water lines, parks and fire stations. The Chino overview has the summary.

Who Decides Each Approval

Source: Chino Zoning Ordinance Table 20.601-1 and Section 20.603.090 (August 2026).

A zoning clearance is "an administrative review procedure for a ministerial approval", limited to objective standards such as measurements, with no public notice or hearing. It covers house additions, accessory buildings, walls and fences, and "Affordable housing projects that qualify for ministerial review." The City's SB 9 units and starter home subdivisions also go through a zoning clearance. A site approval is the Planning Commission's review of the building layout, parking, access, landscaping, drainage and objective design of a project. Section 20.603.070 requires it for a new building or a physical change to a lot, but not for buildings "permitted by right or ministerially approved unless specifically required by this Code", and not for single-family homes, ADUs and junior ADUs.

The fee schedule shows how costly the steps are. A site approval applied for separately costs $11,370 and a residential administrative review without design review costs $787, so the route matters for small projects. Ask the Planning Division early which route a project takes; Section 20.102.020(F) notes that "Some permitted uses require Planning Commission site approval or design review oversight."

Deadlines in the Review

• Preliminary review. Optional for most projects, and required "for all projects that involve a density bonus and/or other incentives." The Director answers in writing within 45 days. The answer is advisory and binds neither side.
• Completeness. "The Director of Development Services must determine whether an application is complete within 30 days of the date that the application is filed with the required fee." If not, it is deemed complete under state law. An incomplete application gets a written list and at least 30 days to fix it; the finding that it is incomplete may be appealed to the Planning Commission.
• Site approval completeness. Section 20.603.070(C) repeats the 30-day check, and each resubmittal starts a new 30-day period.
• Appeals. A Director decision may be appealed to the Planning Commission, and a Planning Commission decision to the City Council, by "any applicant or any interested person" within 10 days. The Planning Commission hears the appeal within 60 days and decides within 30 days after the hearing.
• Effective date. "A final decision on an application for any discretionary approval subject to appeal is effective after the expiration of the 10-day appeal period." No building permit or business license may issue before then.
• Permit life. An approval with no stated time "automatically expires if it is not exercised or extended within two years of its issuance." The Director may add one year if the request comes before expiration.
• State clocks. ADUs: 60 days from a complete application (30 for a pre-approved plan). SB 9 units and lot splits: 60 days. Starter home maps: 60 days. Each is deemed approved if the City misses it.

Housing projects can also use two state routes that Series 600 writes out. An SB 330 preliminary application under Section 20.603.130 holds the project to the rules in effect when it is filed, if the full application follows within 180 calendar days; the City charges $2,108 for SB 330 application review. Streamlined ministerial approval under Section 20.603.120 applies to qualifying affordable projects, and Table 20.601-1 notes that these decisions "are not appealable because they are ministerial acts."

Planning and Map Fees

Sources: City of Chino Approved 26-67 User Fee Schedule, Development Services rows, effective July 1, 2026; parcel map check from the FY 2026-27 User Fees, Public Works.

On July 21, 2026 the City Council adopted Resolution 2026-050, which amends the Master Fee Schedule. Its Exhibit A adds new fees, including an affordable housing compliance monitoring fee of $458.27 for a project of zero to nine units and up to $2,553.77 for 201 to 300 units, effective August 1, 2026. It does not change the planning fees listed above. Building permit and plan check fees, school fees and water and sewer connection charges are set by other schedules and agencies, and this guide did not read them.

Development Impact Fees

Source: City of Chino Resolution 2025-030, Exhibit A, "EFFECTIVE 8-18-2025". A 3 percent administrative fee is added to the impact fees, not to the parks fee.

Chapter 3.40 sets eight fee categories for homes outside The Preserve: law enforcement, fire, circulation (streets, signals and bridges), storm drainage, water, sewer, general facilities and public use facilities. Resolution 2025-030 raised each category by a cost index for Fiscal Year 2025-26 and cut the administrative fee "from 12% to 3%." The parks fee comes from Title 18 and is shown separately. Homes in The Preserve Specific Plan pay a separate schedule under Chapter 3.45, which starts at $42,163.06 for a detached low density home, and projects in East Chino and the Eucalyptus Business Park areas pay added area fees.

Section 3.40.070 says fees are figured from the "fee schedule in place on the date that the fees are due, or the date that they are paid, whichever occurs last." For homes, fees are due when the building permit is issued, "unless the developer elects to pay the fees at the time of final inspection pursuant to Government Code section 66007." A developer who chooses that option must tell the City before the project is approved, and a project with several homes then pays all of its fees when the first home passes final inspection. State law sets a later default date. Government Code 66007(a), as amended by SB 499 effective January 1, 2026, says a local agency "shall not require the payment of those fees or charges, notwithstanding any other provision of law, until the date of the final inspection, or the date the certificate of occupancy is issued, whichever occurs first", except as subdivisions (b) and (h) allow, for example where an account has been established and funds appropriated for the facility. The statute controls, so a developer may ask to pay at final inspection without having elected it in advance. Get the City's answer in writing.

By VanPlex arithmetic on the schedule: one detached low density house pays $18,387.08 plus 3 percent, or $18,938.69, plus the $20,428 single-family parks fee. A fourplex of attached high density units pays $45,305.28 plus 3 percent ($1,359.16), plus four multi-family parks fees of $15,839, for $110,020.44. ADUs under 750 square feet pay no impact fees, as the ADUs and SB 9 page explains.

These amounts may change soon. The City's impact fee page posts a public review draft of a 2026 Development Impact Fee Nexus Study Update dated August 28, 2026, and the October 6, 2026 agenda said the public hearing on it "will be postponed to a future meeting date and will be re-noticed." Ask the City for the fee schedule in force on the day fees are due.

Other Charges Named in the Code

Parks fee. The parks and recreation fee comes from Title 18, not Chapter 3.40. Resolution 2025-030 explains that it has two parts, one for buying park land and one for building parks, and that each part multiplies the number of dwelling units, a dwelling factor, 3 acres of park land and the fair market value of land. For Fiscal Year 2025-26 the resolution sets that land value at "$880,000 per acre for development outside The Preserve" and $1,140,000 per acre inside it. The results are the per-unit amounts in the table above. The 3 percent administrative fee does not apply to the parks fee.

Yearly changes. The impact fees move each year with published cost indexes. For Fiscal Year 2025-26 the resolution used a 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index for the law enforcement fee and a 4.8 percent rise in the Construction Cost Index for the circulation, water, sewer and storm drain fees, among others. The new amounts apply to permits and entitlements "deemed complete and accepted for processing on or after" the effective date, which the schedule gives as August 18, 2025.

Tax on new construction. Chapter 3.36 of the Municipal Code charges every person who builds a new building, an addition or a mobile home space "a sum as stated in a resolution adopted by the city council." It is a tax for the general fund and is due when the building permit application is filed, with a refund if the permit is not approved or not used. An addition or remodel that "does not create an additional unit and is under six hundred fifty square feet in size" pays no tax. This guide did not find the current amount in the fee schedules it read.

Putting it together. For a rental fourplex on an RD 20 lot, the City steps are an optional preliminary review ($4,106, answered within 45 days), a completeness check within 30 days, a zoning clearance or a Planning Commission site approval ($11,370 when applied for separately), a 10-day appeal period, and a building permit within two years. The impact and parks fees in the example above, $110,020.44, come on top, with school, water, sewer and building permit fees from other schedules.

Where to Go Next

Related on VanPlex: the Chino overview, the California impact fees page and the CEQA and permit streamlining page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Official sources (checked October 2026)