BURLINGTON — City officials hope a newly created “one-stop” shop for building permits will alleviate headaches for residents undertaking construction projects.
In an effort to address a “complicated” system, the city opened a new office Wednesday that combines building permitting functions previously spread out across three different departments and locations.
A window at the Department of Public Works, located at 645 Pine St., will have cross-trained staff to handle all permits relevant to a construction project.
Residents previously had to obtain permits from three different offices located across the city, and a lack of coordination led to complications in projects and a high likelihood of making a mistake along the way.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said three city departments — Planning and Zoning, Code Enforcement and Building Inspection Services — have now been unified into the new Department of Permitting and Inspections.
The new department will be led by Bill Ward, who was the director of code enforcement. Its Pine Street location features a newly renovated entryway with one window for residents to process all the permits they need, which city officials say will increase the success rate of completing a project the first time.
Weinberger said the permitting process has been “a complex and fractured and challenging system for a long time.”
Under the previous system, for example, a homeowner doing a kitchen remodeling or a small business owner making some renovations would have had to obtain a zoning permit at City Hall, then a building permit at Pine Street. Finally, after completing the project, they’d have to go to Code Enforcement, which was also located at Pine Street but in a different part of the building. This process is now simplified into one window with staff from all departments that can guide residents through the correct forms for their projects.
Ward said that due to the complexity of the previous system, residents only had a 22% success rate of completing the permitting process from start to finish without making any mistakes along the way. Common mistakes included typos or errors on permit forms or not obtaining the correct permit for the project, he said.
Ward hopes to increase the success rate by 40% by the end of the year.
“I think the biggest beneficiaries are going to be the homeowners, small business owners, who only experienced, only engage, with the system occasionally once every few years, once a decade maybe, and have a very challenging time navigating it as it was,” Weinberger said.
The leadership structure of the new department was a topic of discussion at past City Council meetings. The director’s position will be appointed by the mayor and approved by the council on a yearly basis. In December 2018, City Council voted 10-2 to put a charter change before voters at 2019 Town Meeting Day. Councilor Sharon Bushor, I-Ward 1, and former Councilor Dave Harnett voted against it, arguing the mayor doesn’t need to gain appointment power. Other councilors argued it makes the city more democratic and would increase accountability.
Voters ultimately approved the charter change.
Weinberger said the increased efficiency with building permits will save taxpayers an estimated $100,000. He said the annual savings would come from eliminating one position that is currently vacant and other operational efficiencies over time. The new department will have 20 staff positions. No employees will lose their jobs as a result of the restructuring.
“During my service as a city councilor, I will say, bar none, the biggest complaint that we hear from constituents was really frustration with the permitting process,” City Councilor Chip Mason, D-Ward 5, said. “We also heard unequivocally the frustration at the staff level, and feeling they were not able to serve Burlington residents to the best of their ability.”
Celia Daly is the chair of the Permit Reform Advisory Committee, who worked with the council over the last two and a half years to bring about this change. Daly said this idea had been around for decades but was harder to bring to fruition than anticipated. She stressed the amount of human resources that went into creating the new department, but said there is still more work to be done to improve the process further.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly indicated that Mayor Miro Weinberger’s had not provided specific ways in which the permits center would result in annual savings of $100,000. He said the savings would come from eliminating one position that is currently vacant and from other operational efficiencies over time.
