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No problem! I'll tell you, I am dealing with one right now, and I won't name the jurisdiction, and they publish 1 month turn around times, and they hold to that. They won't do it quicker, it is 1 month, period. They are costing their citizens in this case likely hundreds of thousands of...

Lets talk about zoning analysis reports for a bit. These are the least known and quite frankly one of the biggest benefits in planning in your community. These are comprehensive reviews of applicable zoning laws, building permits, C of O's, and code violations to determine if a property is...

Unfortunately this is a question for an attorney and not a permitting forum. I would recommend consulting a local real estate / contracting attorney for a consult. They are usually free or very inexpensive. I would also recommend speaking to the insurance company as they may just take this...

Unfortunately I can't begin to tell you the number of phone calls and meetings that I have had with contractors and permit companies who use the phrase "the county/city is delaying your permit" when in fact it is the contractor or permit companies poor work. When we instituted this, we saw an...

100% We knew who was good and who was bad. That is why communication with the owners at the same time as the consultants was vital! It removed us from being the "bad guys" in the equation.

So here are my two cents. On the customer side of the equation, have someone else, anyone else, look over your work before submittal against a simple check list. Did you address all of the little things that will get out bounced out. Are the notes, the right jurisdiction, setbacks shown...

You may not have the IPMC adopted, but the State adopted building codes would still apply. At the end of the day, you have a structure that is dilapidated, and probably unfit for occupancy. The trouble with investigating these is that you have a high likliehood of making everyone complaining...

Stakeholder engagement is 100% critical to the success of any software adoption. When I brought in citizenserve, I mandated that all of the employees would take an active part in its design and implementation. If they didn't do that, they didn't get the right to complain. At the end, we had...

The problem with why som many governments like Energov and Tyler is that the software acquisition is driven by the finance departments. So they know Tyler and that it will integrate. That is it. They don't know the functionality beyond that, so most jurisdictions are left with inferior...

What is frustrating for clients on the air quality side is that they are penalized for minor changes to permits. For instance if they have a diesel generator on site and it dies and they have to replace it, a permit modification is required for an additional $500 (same fee as a new permit)...

So I will add my two cents. When I ran a large county in Arizona, I had to make the cutover to new software as well as raising permitting fees. I was directed to go to 100% cost recovery on the fees and the software I was building with the devleoper to be tailored to our needs. First of...

Some are better than others. Smartgov and Acella I was never impressed with. I do like citizenseve, but I also custom built our application with their team and made it an industry leader. Tyler products tend to be very expensive and flashy, with lots of little bugs on the back end. Smartgov...

So this is really difficult to validate. But the truth of the matter is that no one can expedite your permit, it is simply out of their hands. What they can do is ensure that the permit application is complete and accurate, based on knoweldge of the local jurisdiction and best practices as...

So I have worked with a few of these over the years and some have been good, and some bad. They work on a super accelerated schedule which always poses problems. What I did, was have inspectors onsite, paid for by the production company, so that they could work at the productions speed. We...

As a former 911 dispatcher from many years ago, I am OK with this. I think that tracking the systems is a good thing. Now, I will say I believe it should be free or minimal cost, mainly to obtain contact information for the permit itself. In the jurisdiction where we were at you were allowed...

Glad I could help!

Good afternoon. I am so sorry to hear about your experience with them. I would be happy to talk privately with you and see about giving you some advice. I understand not wanting to talk in the open about it. For background, I am a former Development Services Director and currently work...

Well it never ended in fines from me. I was too compassionate for that, and figured that what was going to come from their insurance company and spouses were going to be lesson enough not to do it again. It ended in their insurance companies denying coverage for the loss for unpermitted work...

I agree 100% with this. Had to write many reports over the years when fires happened because of unpermitted work, and it always ended poorly for the home owner.

A lot of the smaller counties are looking at leveraging tech to do this research. It is low hanging fruit to get more tax dollars into the coffers versus increasing the tax rates. This is why cooperation between the building departments and the assessors is so critical. A permit isn't just a...