The Park City Planning Department has tightened its policy about walk-in conversations with staffers, limiting the period when someone may approach a planner without an appointment.

A planner will be on call between 8 a.m. and noon Mondays through Fridays. During that time, anyone may walk up to the department and request to talk to a planner, according to Tom Eddington, the department’s director. People may make appointments with planners outside the 8 a.m.-to-noon window as well. Eddington does not expect there will be opposition to the tightening. He said an estimated 65 percent of the people who visit the Planning Department without an appointment visit in the morning.

Eddington said the new walk-in hours will allow staffers to spend more time in the afternoon working on broader issues the department is handling. As an example, he said, the department expects to delve into City Hall’s General Plan, an overarching document that guides growth.

The Planning Department has started what will be an ambitious rewriting of the General Plan. It will eventually be brought to Mayor Dana Williams and the Park City Council as well as the city’s Planning Commission. It is anticipated that there will be a series of hearings about the General Plan when the rewritten document is presented.

Eddington said the staffers could also make progress on City Hall’s environmental initiatives, sometimes known as the sustainability program. The initiatives entail a range of growth and development issues that involve the Planning Department and staffers from elsewhere in the city government.

“It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort,” Eddington said.

The Planning Department is among the busiest of the departments housed at the Marsac Building, and there are often developers, house designers and architects gathered around the department’s main level front desk chatting with planners.

There has been occasional grumbling for years within the department that the planners have little time to work on broader issues and instead handle a workload heavy on developer applications.

To make an appointment with a planner outside the hours of 8 a.m. until noon, call the Planning Department at 615-5060.