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01/23/2008: "Builders Question Building Department on Timelines"

(SJC Builders Association meet on Orcas with County Staff)

The San Juan Builders Association invited County Administrator Pete Rose and Community Development & Planning Department Director Ron Henrickson to a county wide meeting to discuss some of the issues the Association had with the CD&P, and specifically how permitting could be improved.

Past county wide meetings have been fairly well attended, but there was standing room only as the meeting took over Bilbo’s Restaurant on Orcas for the meeting. Former County Commissioner John Evans led the meeting, while Rose took notes with a promise to “get back with answers” to the questions and issues that were raised.

Evans started off by presented a study he had conducted of the relationship between the number of employees/hours departments in other counties spend per year, and how that relates to the number of building permits issued for single family residences in those counties.




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Using nearby counties as examples, Evans told the group that the number for Island County was 2,700 hours; 12,800 for Whatcom; 4,000 for Jefferson; 4,200 for Skagit; 3,840 for Clallam, and a total of 16,800 hours for San Juan County. Evans said this shows “It takes four times the staff hours to process a permit in San Juan County as it does in the other counties.”

In response to questions of how to get around the current time lag in the building department, it was agreed that it may be possible to allow a private plans reviewer to process building permits, if and when the wait at the County is over six weeks. It was said that Currently it can take 16 weeks or more for the County to process a permit.

Another area of concern was the “disconnect” between the regulations and how they are interpreted by the current administration. Two examples given were water availability and septic.

The Health Department grants permits based on the number of bedrooms a home has, but the building department has recently developed a new way of defining a bedroom that is contrary to the way it has been done by their department in the past, and how it is defined by the Health Department, which is the only department that has the authority to issue septic permits.

This “disconnect” has resulted in the rejection by the building department of valid septic permits that have been submitted to their department as proof of septic availability for a project.

The time that it takes for planning staff to review permits for land use requirements was pointed out as one of the bottlenecks in the system. It was suggested that it should be possible to check the land use issues for compliance at the front desk when turning in an application, so that it can go directly into plan review, or be turned back for lack of required information, instead of accepting it, and then weeks later asking for additional information.

There were a number of comments that staff is limited in their authority by the Director. Henrickson was told this results in questions and projects being put on hold until “someone” in a back room renders an opinion, which is then communicated by staff to the applicant. It was suggested that Hendrickson needs to delegate some authority to the staff to avoid not only wasting the applicants time, but also staff time, so that an application is not reviewed by staff, then reviewed again by the administrator, then conveyed to the applicant.

Complaints were made that even when a submittal is found to be complete, it can languish on someone’s desk for weeks; and this was given as another example of the disconnect between the departments: one department is not aware of what the other is doing, why they are doing it, and when they will be done doing it.

CD&P had commissioned and paid for a $20,000.00 study of the department in 2005 that included recommendations on how it could be improved. Hendrickson was asked why many of the recommendations had not been followed. Hendrickson responded that lack of funding and lack of staff have been an ongoing problem.

There was a general agreement that overall the staff if hard working, responsive, but there was an ongoing need for improvement and more open communication. Staff said they would come back to the Association with responses to the issues raised.