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Item No. 17 <br />memorandum <br />TO: Mayor & City Council <br />FROM: John Godwin, City Manager <br />SUBJECT: DEVELOPMENT PROCESS & PERMITTING <br />DATE: February 6, 2017 <br />BACKGROUND: Our development and permitting processes have been in flux for over a year. <br />This is due to two factors: a majority of the city staff in charge of this function, including the <br />chief building official and the building inspector, left city employment; and we have made an <br />attempt to update our processes and enforce the standard codes we have in place. For the most <br />part things have gone well, but we do get complaints —some legitimate and some not so much. <br />Of course, one usually only hears from those who are unhappy. <br />We discovered for example, that we were not doing a thorough job on gas inspections. The <br />council changed its own standard (set in 2012) on that matter in any case, from 90 days to twelve <br />months. We are now required to perform far fewer inspections, and those we do perform are <br />completed thoroughly. <br />Personnel has been a continuing problem. We have never been able to find a new chief building <br />official, so we use Bureau Veritas for all of our plan reviews. BV is very good and very <br />thorough, but they are located out of town, so turnaround is not as fast as we or our customers <br />would like. In addition, because of the type operation this national company runs, they are more <br />thorough in their review than many local builders are accustomed to. Over time, this can and <br />should improve the quality of local construction; in the short run, it understandably frustrates our <br />customers who are often not used to that level of specificity. <br />We had a recent project on which an applicant was unhappy because of issues we had with a type <br />of interior foam that was used. It had been used by others on other projects, so he felt like he <br />should be able to as well. However this product is clearly not meant for this type of use, since it <br />emits a poisonous gas when a fire occurs. Our problem becomes: do we enforce the code to help <br />ensure safety, or do we grant an exception because others have gotten one? Similarly, fire <br />sprinklering has caused us problems, because in the past some city staff apparently did not <br />