Grant County talks of speeding up permitting time

Carter says two-week duration is target

GRANT COUNTY — In Grant County, it can take longer to go through the permitting process than it does to build a house.

So said Grant County builder-developer Dennis Ferguson, one of more than 30 people to speak before Grant County Board of Commissioners LeRoy Allison, Cindy Carter and Richard Stevens in a special meeting Wednesday afternoon. It was requested by the Grant County Economic Development Council.

During the nearly two-hour session, representatives of the area's business and building communities voiced their frustration with a permitting process which could take as many as 16 weeks, used an ambiguous amount of time which made it hard to plan for and allowed those who submitted incomplete building permit applications to leap ahead of those people who had turned in completed paperwork.

Grant County Department of Community Development Director David Nelson explained the length is due to an increased amount of building activity countywide and a shortage of employees within his department to handle the workload, creating a backlog.

Efforts are under way to help reduce the duration time, already dropping down from 16 weeks to 11, with hopes to go from 11 to the target duration of six weeks, he said.

Commissioners recently allowed Nelson's department to hire on an additional staff member to help address the need, which is an addition to staff members already brought on board to meet increased activity.

"We're getting it turned around," Nelson told the audience at the meeting.

The lengthy duration impedes economic development and creates a loss in revenue, members of the audience told the commissioners.

They compared Grant County's length in permitting process to the process durations of other counties, and municipalities, also comparing the number of employees working in those locations.

Beginning July 1, the department implements new criteria in order to further cut down on some of the delays, removing those people submitting incomplete applications from the line of people seeking approval until complete paperwork is turned in.

Ideas offered during the meeting included creation of an additional line to receive county approval, making members of the public fill out all their own paperwork before submitting their requests for a building permit, putting permits online so builders can check on their status, increased fees to pay for additional employees and creation of an expedition fee.

Many in attendance agreed the situation is manageable, and said they were willing to work with the commissioners to help create a solution, but said it was up to the commissioners to find one, noting the building department is doing its best to meet the county's needs.

Carter said near the closing of the meeting the commissioners would make it their goal to target a two-week duration for the permitting process.

Allison said the commissioners will work with Nelson on requested improvements and review changes made in the last few months.

"What I heard today is people don't want to have the one permitting line with incomplete permits in it, and that's one of the major changes (Nelson) is implementing July 1," Allison said. "That's going to shorten that 11-week expectation, maybe in half."

Commissioners have to decide whether a second line would be created or not accepting paperwork until completed, Allison and Carter said.

"We really did get planning department working on it," Carter said. "Planning department is just flooded."

Allison said he prefers a lower number of weeks as a goal.

"Even if we can't get there, you need to be targeted, because if your goal was eight, you don't want to stop at eight," he said. "You want to continue to improve."

Nelson said the hiring of another individual helps his department during the summer peak crunch to allow plan reviewers to continue to work and cover the department's inspections.

"Keep the plan reviewers busy, keep whittling away at the number," he said. "I was hoping we could be down to nine weeks by Friday. We may make it, I don't know."

Nelson felt the meeting went fine, and said the county realizes there is a problem.

"It's one of those things where you balance how you throw the employees' money at things, how permit fees are collected," he said. "The building community is willing to step up and pay more for permits, that goes a long way to hiring people. But it's kind of hard to hire people if my staff needs exceed my budget."

Nelson said discussions would have to start in order to hire more people to carry through peak seasons.

"(The meeting was) very good, because everybody was in the same boat," Ferguson said following the meeting. "Everybody's looking for a solution."

"I think it's great they had the meeting, I just think we should have done this last year," builder Bruce Preston said.

Last year's permitting process would take 10 to 12 weeks, Preston said, and he was floored to find it would be even longer this year.

"It's caused me to give people vacation time even though we have more work than we can possibly do this year," he said. "It's OK if I make a mistake, but if it's an outside issue causing our work to stop … You can't do it just because somebody can't get through a plan review, it's very frustrating."