Two years after a Berkeley man spent $2,000 and seven months trying to drain his neighbor's hot tub plans — ultimately losing before both the Zoning Adjustments Board and the City Council — District 8 Councilmember Mark Humbert has advanced a proposal to scrap the cumbersome approval process that made the fight possible in the first place.

On June 9, 2026, the Berkeley City Council took up Agenda Item 22, a referral authored by Humbert directing city planning staff to replace the current discretionary review process for residential hot tubs with ministerial — over-the-counter — approval in nearly every zoning district. If staff follow through and the Council adopts the resulting ordinance amendment, most Berkeley homeowners would be able to install a backyard spa the same way they pull a building permit: no public hearing, no neighbor appeals, no Zoning Adjustments Board. The move is a small but telling example of Berkeley's broader struggle to right-size a permitting bureaucracy that, critics say, has grown so elaborate it can turn a backyard spa into a civic ordeal.

Berkeley is the city that gave the world the Jacuzzi. It is also, apparently, a city where installing one can require a seven-month administrative battle, a $2,000 filing fee, hearings before two separate bodies, and a trip to the City Council — all before a single drop of water hits the jets.

That paradox is what Councilmember Mark Humbert, who represents the Claremont and Hills districts, is trying to fix. At the June 9, 2026, regular City Council meeting — confirmed in the official eAgenda posted at berkeleyca.gov — the Council considered Humbert's referral (Agenda Item 22) directing the City Manager and Planning Commission to draft amendments to Berkeley Municipal Code Section 23.304.070(D). The goal: replace the current discretionary Use Permit requirement for unenclosed outdoor hot tubs, jacuzzis, and spas with ministerial, over-the-counter approval citywide, with a narrower Administrative Use Permit pathway retained only in environmentally sensitive ES-R zones such as Panoramic Hill.

The referral is procedural — it does not itself change city code — but it sets the Planning Commission to work on a formal ordinance amendment for the Council's eventual adoption.

The backstory is pure Berkeley. In mid-2023, UC Berkeley engineering professor Homayoon Kazerooni applied to add a hot tub to a backyard renovation at his Claremont District home. His neighbor, Richard Spohn, launched a formal appeal, arguing in often colorful terms that the proposed spa would destroy the serenity of his home. Spohn wrote that he feared the prospect of "several jolly hot tubbers whooping it up over a long soak," according to Berkeleyside, which first reported on the original dispute. Spohn spent $2,000 over seven months pursuing the appeal through Berkeley's Zoning Adjustments Board and then to the City Council, which unanimously rejected it in February 2024.

That episode crystallized a problem city officials had long noted but not acted on: Berkeley's permitting rules treat a backyard hot tub as a discretionary land-use decision subject to neighbor challenge, a standard that neighboring jurisdictions handle with a routine building and safety code check.

Humbert has been direct about his reasoning. "It's a waste of time for [the] council, it's a waste of time for the Zoning Adjustments Board," he told Berkeleyside. "This is not a major, major thing, but in this budget-constrained time we want to give as much relief as we can to staff in terms of the time they spend on unnecessary items."

Under the current framework, ministerial permits in Berkeley typically take under 30 days; Use Permits requiring public hearings can stretch six to 24 months. The proposed reform would move virtually all residential hot tub applications into the fastest category.

The June 9 referral does not set a deadline for the Planning Commission to return a draft ordinance, and as of mid-July no public staff report has been posted. The timeline for a final Council vote — and any potential pushback from neighbors who have used the current appeals process — remains open.

What is already clear is the political valence: the proposal passed a council that has grown increasingly impatient with permitting delays, and it arrives as Berkeley navigates a budget crunch that has officials scrutinizing every staff-hour spent on administrative review. A hot tub permit fight may be small stakes on its own. As a window into the city's regulatory culture, it is something else entirely.