good afternoon everyone welcome to this workshop meeting uh related with the it's the discussion clarity and direction regarding the development services related approval process this september 22nd uh if the clerk please call the roll deputy vice mayor marker here commissioner malica here
commissioner cassell here vice mayor burns here mayor carney here we have a quorum great um i'm
going to i'm just going to make a brief remarks to start us and then i'm going to be turning it over to commissioner malica whose idea this was you know the first portion of this meeting is going to be public comments and this is where we really expect the public to come in and give us their ideas i'm not looking for people to come in and say it took me this long to get this that this done this permit done or this that that's not what this is about what we're trying to do unless it's in context of a proposal that you're going to be making as to how we can improve the process because this is really all about how we can improve the process so with that in mind i'm going to turn it over to commissioner malica whose idea this was uh and if you would like to have the city manager say anything well yeah but i was going to have you just introduce what you're trying to achieve and then
we're going to have public comment hi and if you'd like okay hi judy malica so the spirit of this meeting is to help get us to the best place possible for the consumers of our services and for all of the employees nothing said or done here today is for the purpose of blaming anyone for anything nothing said or done here today is for the purpose of complaining about the past because we all know no one can unring a bell so let's focus on how to move forward from here whoops i broke my pencil the goal here for me and i think the commission is that our residences and our businesses that we serve view the building services department as somewhat inviting generally cordial and most importantly efficient and responsive um yeah i've got a few questions that as we go along we can address thank you very much i'm sorry i'm
eating my fritos here um thank you clerk um this is open this meeting is now going to be open to the public any members of the public wishing to address uh the commission on this subject please come to the lectern give your name and zip code for the record and you will each have three minutes now you the staff will go after we have public comments okay so the podium is open for public comments for anyone who wishes to address the commission on this matter surely some of you have something to say now's the time to
say it don't be shy we want your input good afternoon uh james williams aw architects boca raton florida 33487 i just have a short comment and this happens in a lot of places where we submit plans and do projects the site plan approval process almost everywhere these days requires a lot of detailed information when the architects are working on the site plan approval they don't have a fully developed permit set for the building itself so we're giving you an idea what the building's going to look like there's a lot of site civil engineering and landscape work the things that are generally not going to change over time but when we when when we go from that design development set in the site plan approval to permit drawings things sometimes shift and change a structural engineer gets involved he needs a column where a window is we have to move a window over 12 inches those kind of things shouldn't force you back to the beginning because you change something pretty minor in the elevation of the building i just think there's got to be a way of stating how much of a change will draw a new review of everything and like i say it's it's happened to us in a lot of places it's not just
delray thank you great thank you very much good more people hello steve michael 33483 thank you so put something down i might as well read it so i've been a resident and developer here for 26 years i've been involved in uh quite a few projects and have a lot of properties in delray and i have a you know we've always had a good history with delray um uh but you know but i i've seen you know we've been involved in the historic district quite a bit uh and the historic district is you know it's about protecting the historic district and having you know an efficient permit process and and not and and this and this city needs really to deliver both our experience particularly within the historic district really has been slow to unpredictable and too willing to move the finish line and that's really very difficult for developers especially uh you know we want really consistent decisions and accountability and standards um even we're we're doing the doc city center we've experienced multiple review holds you know we followed staff guidance committed time and money and then faced different directions we received an approved site plan in 2024 as jim said uh which is not the complete construction document set required for a building permit detailed architectural and engineering coordination comes really afterwards minor adjustments have to happen it's just not possible that there's no minor changes and that work should should not become an excuse to reopen an approval process our revisions really have added no height no density really no square footage um and no change of use we were told that they'd be handled administratively when we went through the process then faced with shifting requirements and to this point it may be having to go to the boards again really we should not be amending or we should not be submitting a new site plan application it's really it's not appropriate and i've never received any any of the backup legally why we should have to do that we've been given you know specific legal basis for escalating these minor changes um but the city really must distinguish the difference between limited administrative amendment and restarting a new approval process if a requirement is mandatory on us we should get the code that's cited that would back that up if a staff if a staff if it's a staff preference um then identify that as a preference not a not a code not not based on code an application should not have a fight have to finance months of uncertainty and really creates a lot of undue costs for us not every delay in the cities is the city's responsibility responsibility but avoidable delays impose real costs
did i stop okay keep going yeah i'm gonna can i just summarize quickly what you're saying i mean
may i ask him a question before you summarize and you tell him to keep going will you some of your comments no mr markerts i keep going some of those comments seem general and some seem specific to an application can you tell me which application you're referring to because i don't know even city center okay city center oh you're coming back with that are we coming
i thought it was permitted um well the site plan we're going okay speak to you know what let let's
let the staff they have site plan approval they got site plan approval several years ago right um then there was a plat the plat is done and i understand it's been recorded um even though weirdly the papa doesn't show it but they have recorded it okay um there's no permit in for positive work so it's a little difficult for us to say what changes would require without a permit revisions i mean you could put it in and then we'll we can tell you and then the other aspects of the permit could be reviewed i don't know oh do you have a certified set yet from the approval you had
there's a there is a building permit application that's been in since march do you have a certified
plan set for the approval we do okay because i don't know we weren't seeing a permit application
if you've probably not gotten through sufficiency respectfully i really i'm trying to stay away from individual applications and we've been through 120 comments i'm trying to encapsulate a little bit what you were saying and if if what you're saying is that there needs to be a better process after a review is done to not bring things back to a board or something or resubmission and that things can be done administratively is that what you're trying to push yes gotcha it's what was
told to us initially and then it changed but i i'm not i'm confused about not having a
i don't want to get into a specific application mr michael staff will be in touch with you to follow up accordingly you followed up with my office arrangements are being made to address your specific concerns and we have a good experience in that regard otherwise mr mayor i think you summarized it quite nicely the intent to do what we can to consider administrative authority and other opportunities per this discussion so that we can get to the place of productivity so mr michael provide us that opportunity and i think we'll be well on our way thank you okay well mr cavelli i've
heard you a number of times saying i wish they did this i wish i did this you have nothing to say because this is your this is the moment this is you know this is the moment i want you yes i want you to tell offer suggestions on how you get some of the problems thank you thank you mr michaels and i'm going to come and i'm coming i'm coming to roger coke next okay mike cavelli 33344 hi just in
anticipation of you calling on me i prepared this was not staged by the way but when i saw it in this i didn't i haven't talked to anybody this is this is something related to the way the comp plan and the ldrs are so i sat down and i and i wrote it because this has been an issue with a lot of ambiguous comments that come up on on projects so so here you go city of delray beach comprehensive plan establishes the community's long-range vision goals objectives and policies for future growth development redevelopment and preservation land development regulations include the city's zoning code serve as a primary implementing mechanism for carrying out the enforcement of the comprehensive plan through the establishment of the zoning districts permitted and conditional uses and development standards design requirements and review procedures the zoning code translates the broad policies objectives and goals um of the comprehensive plan into the zoning code so um we get into this gray area that in our staff comments we have all of these things related to the comprehensive plan and and the comprehensive plan doesn't really give staff the the authorization to put more personal i guess if i if i could say um design things into the thing you know if if the things you're asking for aren't included in the zoning code then change the zoning code but you can't put all of these things into a staff report that that really doesn't have any substance in terms of like a setback uh you know a height restriction a floor area ratio all of the things that are in the ledrs so the the point of that is is that you end up with comments that that are you don't know how to answer them because it's like you say it's blue and i say no it's turquoise and it's a discussion but that's kind of an exaggeration but just you get the point so if there could be a way to draw the line i guess a little bit to further define what you actually have to comply with in the zoning code that that honors the goals objectives and policy of the comprehensive plan and not use the comprehensive plan as a way to create all these other standards that that really should not be done then i think that would be a big improvement thank you very much
okay mr mayor i wasn't going to speak but if you're going to name and zip code though roger cope uh 33483 i think um i should probably yield another three minutes to mike because he's very smart guy i've always liked uh doing projects with mike but i just want to say from a philosophical standpoint and i'm i'm going to speak specifically to the historic preservation aspect and its review process and and it's it's i i've been practicing historic preservation delray for 40 years and i love everything that's historic in this city and i and you know two percent of the real estate out there is historic so in my opinion we're you know preserving that two percent should be held of uh dearly to all of us and so i also want to say that architectural is a liberal art it's not an exact science so when staff is tasked with addressing and assessing an application they're they're quite excellent at distinguishing uh the black and white of it the ldrs versus the philosophical interpretive and subjective part of it and and i sit on p and z think which i'm very uh uh flattered to do and i see our p and z staff they they get into some extremely excellent architectural dialogue in their staff reports and their live presentations when when when we have them and i am it's refreshing to hear how intelligent our staff is in in in in analyzing the the styles of architecture that we ask these applicants to come forward with and so i i you know that we have a process in place it's working excellently it you know we're trained we transitioned the past year into this electronic service so that's a that's a learning curve for everybody and i hope there's a little bit of dialogue on that by somebody far more intelligent than me but i love our staff i love what they're doing both on on on the the p and z end of it and the historic preservation end of it um can we get a little bit more efficient of course we can uh but um the system that's in place is working we just have to refine it a little bit perhaps that's it thank you very much i see people who represent
builders in here they're not saying anything so if in a few if you name is sam caliendo three three four
four four five can you get closer to the mic thank you so much no problem thank you if i may say i've been a developer for many many years and i've developed a couple pieces of property in delray and in boca raton and i'm also a palm beach county zoning commissioner for many years and you ask for input i've watched staff with our projects and other projects take weeks and months to get a just a a nas built out the door and and when they're just piled up with work they're understaffed they i don't think you can resolve anything here until the until the city's willing to put up some money and hire more people because we you can come up with all the systems you want but there's not people to operate them even though you've you're i've from my understanding from some staff you've gone to ai and some areas to help out and some of their inspections but um i don't want to sound mean about this but palm beach county went through some of the same issues so did boca raton and boca has automated its system and have done a beautiful job with it i've done several projects down there but and palm beach county has also we have another commissioner that's also in here and he can tell you we hardly ever hear a complaint but every time i turn around i've been willing to develop some other properties here but as soon as i think of the thought and the process and the expense it's not just that you're waiting for everything you have opportunity cost you have money that's going out mortgages and everything else as developers everybody thinks we're a bottomless barrel of money and that's not the case so if this city is never going to grow if it doesn't go out and you were learned by example and one of my suggestions would be don't be afraid to go to palm beach county go to boca raton find out what they did good what they did bad we're not the enemies here these counties or cities we should all work together so basically you need to get your act together because it's very difficult to come into this city and and develop anything the processes take weeks and months
for the simplest answers thank you thank you mr kalienda i'm charged 33483 staff and commissioners i've had the honor uh over the last 15 20 years to be on sprab planning and zoning and hpb and i agree with the earlier comments that we have a smart dedicated staff but still we have complaints and we have issues and i think the purpose of of this session is to find out some things that can be done to improve that one of the things i think we need to do is have specific goals around increasing historic preservation buildings very specific goals that then the staff is tasked with achieving right now the applicants come before staff before the city and they have to do what they have to do but we don't have a process where we as a city serve as advocates for historic preservation and keeping that identity that we from where we came and what we are today and one of the examples that i would give is 46 marine way which you're all very very familiar with but not only 46 but 48 and 50 and 52 those buildings should be a core historic area just like bankers row we should be out there working with the owners to encourage them and and try to keep them from putting in demolition permits uh we also have something like the blank house which i believe is the second oldest house in delray on federal just south of atlantic that is a building that we should go out of our way as a city as an advocate to preserve that to repurpose it uh and to preserve it that has been in process for there's a building on federal that is now an automobile repair place building is totally intact and they have pictures inside of what they were when the main highway going north was federal and it shows the coconuts outside and the flamingos and so forth they would like very much to be designated historic and refurbish the place in that fashion but we don't go out to them and ask for that and one other thing i want to mention is i believe historic preservation has not to be only man-made but natural historic preservation as well uh a prior city commission uh and a prior uh hpb we made a presentation the staff augmented it it went to the city manager and the city manager at least twice sent it to the commissioners nothing ever happened so i think we can all work on this together and try to expedite things and serve as advocates thank you thank you very much you left out you were also on the city commission during that time that was also a problem christina morrison 33483
thank you commissioner mollica for calling this meeting very important um i do get grapes from now now and again from my client saying how long things take so thank you for this um just a few ideas i'm throwing them out there um we have a great staff we just need more of them uh there are pre-submittal meetings i believe for permitting and for projecting um at those pre-meetings perhaps there should be a warning if something's going to delay a project tell the developer then and offer an alternate path maybe um true expedited permitting when you go to boca you get a clear path you get a timeline you get a path to success and you get a building permit um perhaps we could copy boca in that um it really works um have a no way policy for example when someone comes and presents uh to the staff that they want to build a shooting range next to a senior project in two blocks from a school maybe it should have said no way that's going to take staff time it'll never be approved i mean that is really a stretch and maybe cut things off at the at the bud before they're taking up staff time and and that they're never going to get passed okay um i believe that planning and zoning is the only department in the city that can be self-funded and mr manager you can correct me if i'm wrong but i think that they it can be fully funded by the permit charges they charge so maybe we could expand no oh i thought that
was true okay well isn't it funded by this the fees partial okay the building the division yes is a self-funded entity and so there are opportunities in that regard however the aggregate development services much of it is general fund dependent so it's a bit more complex than you've outlined but i believe if you take under consideration the building the vision yes those particular functions
and operations are self-sustainable so maybe we could add somebody to help the staff because you do an excellent staff i've also served on everything jim served on except for historic preservation and the staff is excellent um but we just need more of them so thank you for listening thank you very much
ms morrison mr mayor and commissioners my name is ann gannon my zip code is 33444 and excuse the voice but it's what it is um and i'm here in two capacities one um as a palm beach county tax collector and also as a client of the developmental services department and i can share with you i'm still working with them because we're not finished with adding 1100 square feet to my house which is one of the best 1925 mission examples within delahida park historic district we're almost done we have another month um and i can share with you that the staff has been exceptionally helpful suggestive the only real conflict we have was about whether i needed a landscape plan because i had so many trees in my backyard there was no more area for landscaping um but they they have always been professional and have worked with me very well but i do believe the city needs to update their ldrs and give the staff the authority to make clearly make administrative suggestions or rulings rather than having to go through a hearing at the board um an additional uh staff i believe is well needed in city hall but i can't say that and neither can any of you because we don't have any data any information to be able to say here's your workload here's what it takes to do here's what you need to do and i would also suggest to the city that that they find a person who does process mapping because you do have some issues challenges with your process mapping we use process mapping in our agency in fact we have three a green belt a yellow belt and a black belt that looks at every transaction we do and how we can save money we have just recently purchased a new software um a new piece of software that we're looking at how we can save time by our clients and coming into the office and where we need to change what we're doing so that the client comes in and they're out of there in three minutes or four minutes or what other options we need to look at i'll be glad to help you get those black belts and green belts because they're not easy to find and it took us a year to find one of them um the the other thing i think you need to start with and we all own that in the city you start with exceptional service is the goal and all of you have to buy into that to the lowest janitor that works in this place and it's a long process um and i'm gonna brag but the first
week i'm taking another minute um are you saying that as a constitutional option yes yes so we have
to say yes yes you do and and i'm gonna brag because we are on our way the first week in october to louisville kentucky to get a national award um on uh government customer service professionals um and we applied for this award we had no idea we would get it but and it's really based on what we've done in our operations department and then we are also getting another team of the team of the year award for our client service center and research center which is our call center um we and i would love to volunteer to work with the staff to sit down and talk to them how we set this up and how we began our journey um my staff is excited and would love to do it this is what they live for every single day is how to make exceptional service and to serve the clients in this county of which we're growing
every day thank you so much thank you very much ann's on our agenda today too she's on our agenda
today too oh yeah nobody ever claps for me uh commissioners uh judy thank you for calling this meeting on uh developmental sciences uh dr allen costello big out stakes atlantic avenue and member of the dda board no one has a more vested interest in enhancing the economic vitality of the downtown business sector than the downtown development authority it's in our charter and it's in the literally our mission statement in the state charter the dda responsibility is to recommend and advise the city on many levels one of which is to review of all business downtown business development projects in our geographical district it is the reason the state made us a taxing authority to provide a greater responsibility through that financing to the constituents of the delray beach downtown it's a responsibility that dda takes very seriously in the first 53 years of our existence the city honored the dda relationship in the charter and all developmental business projects in our district came before our board of directors for review and any recommendations the project development science team took a few moments at our meeting once a month to describe their project benefits and requirements for the board and for our review and recommendation the dda board advocated for the city and the business owner for the advance enforcement of the very economic vitality of our downtown two years ago under the guise of increased state busy work the city manager advised us that he would no longer allow the developmental sciences employees to present at our monthly meeting and now that responsibility has been relegated to a we're too busy to include you in the process relationship and further when there is a hiccup in the process we're advocating for the business in a catch-up situation which often becomes almost adversarial i've had the opportunity to work with many of the planners and management of the developmental sciences and i find them to be delightful and well directed and to deliver excellent results however all processes have issues and all processes need review advice recommendations and best efforts for those parties designed to be part of the process i believe that the process that worked for 53 years was a good one i believe that the city has a responsibility to better the economic vitality of our downtown the very economic backbone of our city the dda should continue to provide the advice and guidance under a program that presents these projects from both the city and the business owner's viewpoint to be part of the solution as the process proceeds and not forced into a potentially adversarial role advocating only for the business when a difficult situation occurs mr city manager please reinstate the process it was a good one
and well founded thank you thank you very much doctor well that was my talk um may i pass the um rick castor emailed me i don't know if he emailed everybody if you would like to read you would like to read it's a it's a long one i'll let you read it but um i got a copy for everybody and anthony i'll bring one
over to you i got this yeah he emailed us you printed your own give it to the clerk yeah you may have more than
three minutes if you need i i didn't save myself a copy so it's all yours no here i did um alexis get one she did okay for the record okay need to read it well if you wanted to as long as anthea has
a copy we're good i mean i'm sorry it's in the record and and and if you need to highlight did you
at once anything you wanted to have and then synopsize it or something it's all good ideas and it's in the
right hands with um because i got a number of emails also on this subject which i was going to win and it's our turn um kind of discuss you know share with what some of the ideas were so anyway so are there any other members of the public wishing to speak no okay okay public comment is closed to the city well i guess mr moore would you like to introduce um sure thank you so i appreciate the
opportunity and quite frankly since commissioner malica introduced the concept of a workshop meeting to this effect the commitment was made to engage her today what tuesday september 22nd 2026 working with multiple members of staff and supervisors in various departments who's a part of this process the interest is to constructively and productively secure feedback to work as graciously and magnanimously as we possibly can to be the absolute best service provider we possibly can so we very much welcome and support the feedback and expectations of the city commission to that effect and in the spirit of truly getting to a place to achieve objectivity i felt that it was important for the city commission to have a sense as to how the process works who has responsibilities for what and that level of clarification will yield a productive opportunity to to define realistic expectations so that we can get to the best place possible quite frankly i appreciate the public comment session being in advance of staff presentation because a number of the points that were highlighted are consistent with the goals and objectives for which we aspire so thus far this is a productive exercise however as we continue between now and five o'clock it shall be even more so so mr mayor commissioners thank you very much for the opportunity in that regard likewise i'd like to introduce director of development services anthia geniotis she's accompanied by director of utilities hassan hajimiri fire rescue chief ronald martin director of public works missy barletto as a part of the package and chief technology officer jay stacy and steve tobias i did not forget you sir as chief building official it was important that you all are here as well in addition other members of staff from the department of development services are here to witness listen and learn as well as have the opportunity to be supportive of the expectations to be outlined in this regard so with that i think we're in good company ladies and gentlemen miss geniotis i'd like to begin with you ma'am if i may please
thank you okay so good afternoon um some of you have been building in the city a long time i'll recognize some of this um in 2018 we had a failed implementation of the software system that we were trying to build uh in 2019 there was a leadership change there were many leadership changes but among them i became the development services director that year uh which on the heels of that came covid which was a great experience steve and i would be the only people in the building with uh i think chris busing and a couple of permit people and we would stick um tables outside the doors with buckets and people would put their paper plan sets in and we didn't know whether the virus was transmitted that way initially and we it was it was a whole thing the upside of anything that came out of that was that our customers really came to the commission and said you're the last people on paper this is taking so much longer than when we go to voca you know you've got to move forward we had the good fortune of getting jay stacy as a new um it director and he likes a challenge so um we um were able to start moving towards um modernizing the system at that point um i think we also know that that maybe the surprise from covid was how much the population continues to grow um coming after being able to be outside in the fresh air and those things uh year round um so in 2021 we started our effort um with uh we started we so the software had been selected in through a previous bid before i was the director um boca raton and wellington have the same system so we were meeting with them and they were telling us the pitfalls to avoid and how to do it better and you know learn from their mistakes uh we resolved some issues legally with the vendor with the help of the city attorney's office and we started working on an implementation that is a multi-year build out that started with project docs so in 2021 we're passing paper it was literally a bucket brigade of one reviewer at a time looking at the plan set that was moving between soc and city hall and going to fire station 111 for the fire review going to utilities over at the utility building back to city hall and then once you were here you were taking a little slip and going to the cashier and getting a little receipt to prove to us that you paid a permit fee that could be tens of thousands of dollars with a little receipt and then you would get your permit um so we've made a number of service improvements at this point um so again this the tech improvements were a multi-year build out and i think what's important is i don't think that everyone realizes that this wasn't j stacy's team building this out this required um all of the staff from the reviewing departments to participate in building the library of comments and and figuring out the system um and then also code enforcement is on the same software and so they had to build their process out as well so we were kind of eating the elephant one bite at a time we started with the building department's plan review so that we could get that simultaneous review done first and foremost to have our residency a an improvement in um service kind of quickly then um we needed a break they shipped it to epl for code and then ultimately uh the planning and the um site plan um approvals over planning and zoning came in with project docs and the full integration launched in july of 2025 um at that point we have offer our customers a portal that is open 24 hours a day seven days a week and i know this because the one thing we didn't expect was to come in every monday morning and find anywhere between 80 and 147 permits waiting for us that were submitted over the weekend so mondays have become um something of a uh of an inbox organization for the permit admin team we have also made improvements for our people power um when i became the director we had one mechanical inspector two one plumbing and one electrical that meant when uh those employees wanted to go to a wedding out of town or got sick or anything happened we had to rely on um outside services the problem is those outside services don't tend we have the money to pay them but they don't tend to be available even if it was a planned absence we were having trouble booking somebody to keep the permits and inspections going when that staff member was out of town and we're really running a burnout situation with them i mean they didn't want to take vacations they dreaded how much was going to be back when they came in and we were we were running a burnout situation um those positions have been doubled up um which increases coverage increases speed and makes for um we're holding on to i think um employees that might have otherwise moved into retirement earlier and they're difficult to replace these these um licenses are difficult to find sometimes um our staff has uh multiple licenses they're dual and triple license that means that they can move between the disciplines when needed if someone is sick um we have uh established a development permit manager she's behind me miss madison um that position was created specifically to try to unstick the projects that are in permitting but now have a problem with their site plan approval so you know that's something that we're moving towards that um sorry increasing customer service with that uh we have a dedicated it strategist that is paid for by the building fund the entire uh mr fernando rosa has been and is continuing to build and fine tune the system and um when miss malica has shared with terrence um and and then to me all these metrics that some of our other communities are uh publishing um i sent them to him and he got to work on trying to create reports that would provide that kind of data there's a couple of handouts at your seats um that provide some of that i didn't even know we could get the call data support you know information on how long somebody waits on hold things like that and he's began to pull that he's amazing um when i inherited btr i think about three years ago um there had not been a btr inspector for almost four years so having that person in the field who has i think gotten to know our businesses but there's also been a real revenue change that we're seeing with having a person in the field checking on everyone we've also made um process improvements and this is i think some of what you've heard from the comments right does everything have to go to a board well it did for a long time it did even doing um having a tenant go into a space that was already built with a use that was allowed you had to go to scrap 500 it took a month we have a zoning certificate of use process now excuse me it's um 150 it is done administratively there's a new option that we've created that lets you move that zoning certificate of use through to a btr um to try to um you know capture that process we have administrative approval if there's no waivers uh for up to five units and 15 000 square feet of commercial we consolidated two years ago the projects that have relief requests into a level four so they stay under one board historic preservation board is now a one-stop shop they're the only board that can approve both waivers and variances including waivers to the central business district without having to go to commission that saves their applicants time they can have one action there are different findings related to preserving um historic preservation um there's some small things we've done but i think they're a big deal for our residents um if if one of our residents wants to ask a question chances are they want to pop over during their own lunch break so we um now have the planning and zoning window open all day it used to close at lunch so we figured out coverage um we have a planner on call assigned every day to handle walk-ins or phone calls that are not scheduled and that person has a backup so when they're at lunch there's somebody else that can take the people who pop in so we're trying um i think to just improve our customer service in that manner um the changes actually are measurable uh so a single family house on paper used to take about 30 days for the review and the processing took another 20. a single family house now is taking 30 days and that includes paying the fees and you can just print your permanent home and you know those things like that so we're able to to measure that improvement and i think there are a lot of other opportunities we can talk about but to do that we need to figure out where we are where we really are using data and the great thing about the software is it's a very transparent and accountable system and we can get the time dates time stamps and the durations and everything that it's taking so we're going to start with the smallest division first i handed out a handout of sort of the larger report that is you're not going to read this but i handed you like to look it over later so our business services team has a supervisor two specialists an inspector and one part-time specialist they are responsible for all of the btrs they're responsible for alcohol licenses business licensing sidewalk cafe permits start there even though they involve other divisions they do alarms and false alarms it's a system that's coordinated with the police department so in the adopted budget the anticipation was that this the revenues collected would be about 1.4 million dollars to date they have collected over 1.5 and so how is this working so we've had when i drew this one i did first so it's a couple weeks old we've had three thousand nine hundred and sixty eight new applications we issued more and that's because there were some already in the process but also when we start talking to you about your business you might need more licenses than you thought the zcus that start the zoning certificate of use i'm going to open my business here and then move straight to pay play uh paying the btr there's been 711 of those applications to date so what does this mean the zcu to btr means that that application even though it originates in this division also involves a planning review and quite possibly a fire review because if you are opening a bar a restaurant a school a daycare there are certain um uses that then require life safety plan review by the fire department and so then they are involved in some of those online renewals this is the first year our online renewals were taking off so we um issued uh emails we sent links to the people that um neither btrs reviewed uh and at at the two weeks ago one thousand seven hundred and eighty five of those businesses had just followed the links paid their btr they didn't have to come down to see us they didn't have to go find a stamp to mail a check they didn't have to call us they could do it online now staff renewals what does that mean um that are the that is the number of renewals that were done with direct customer service um someone called on the phone they gave us the information over the phone they weren't maybe quite as comfortable using uh the technology so they got direct support or they came to the window um i remember big al um was uh one of the folks that he's hadn't been in business a long time and he did not like the change told everybody on the dais at dda and then by the time the meeting was over and i went to tell btr oh you know he's having a problem they're like oh he already came in like what and he said yeah yeah no he's good it took five minutes he's good so um we are still small enough town that we check on check on each other so um we've heard recently uh that it takes eight weeks to do this process which startled me because i had no idea that and no one asked me for a metric so let's not deal in an anecdote let's see what the data tells us because it's all tracked in this new system so that's what we heard so when we break down the zcu to btr application the data is telling us it takes about six and a half days to get the zoning approval then forward it to btr okay it's taking 23 days once it gets to btr so what's going on there that is where we are confirming the information that the applicant has uploaded or we are asking for more we're checking your sun bills registration we're checking the state requirements for your specific business um great you want to open a nail salon do you have the license that's required by the state to have a nail salon are you also planning to sell nail polish and files and things because then you need a retail one different details however 23 days is still a lot even if we're going back and forth with applicants and we're waiting for them to pay fees so in the budget that you are going to be considering at the next regular meeting tonight at five there is one position that is in this fiscal budget to try to improve the level of service in this division this is a general fund division and i'll make the distinction as we're moving through let's talk building permits um so the building official is here um and um again this is made up of about 33 staff members half of them are the administrative part um folks that are our permit expediters our techs our clerks they're doing um all of the administrative part calculating fees making sure you have everything you need routing to the correct reviewers um but the full work flow for a permit for a new building includes um our partners in engineering which is the public works department um the fire department is on most most reviews as well and then utilities which is um of course mr hadji mary's um i pass out this chart to you so to date um we are um we deal with um nine to ten thousand permits are in flux they're either applied for recently issued and the staff that is comprised of these departments um are managing around um you know six to seven hundred thousand dollars six to seven hundred million dollars worth of permit value at a time um and the other thing just about this the team that we've built um you know we have a plumbing plan reviewer and inspector it's fully licensed as well in hvac we have an hvac plan reviewer and inspector who's the floodplain manager these people are dual and triple certified and so that's great because it provides a lot of flexibility with the staff and with managing the workflow every building permit results and inspections to date this team including fire and utilities and engineering have done 39 500 inspections to date it's funny the only real dip we have is right here and i'm like wondering if it's thanksgiving i don't know why there's a dip okay so when we look at the new system and like new systems are hard i'm not one of those tech people that likes change i don't like to get a new phone i don't like when stuff changes so i get it and i started architecture school where we were hand lettering and i graduated being like the first group taking autocad so it's hard um but we can see sorry a measurable improvement between a month into the new system where intake just getting your plans and your documents sorted to be routed for review was taking about six and a half days you know it was taking a city staff was taking a little bit less than five days some of our average with our applicants was over 11 days this is now fast forward to the august that just passed we had more applications 629 versus 583 and we're going almost two days faster the city staff is doing it a day faster taking 3.7 days and our applicants have cut their time by two-thirds they're down to 3.85 they're getting a hold of the system now they need to be providing sufficient applications so that's an issue all right a year ago august this is one month into e-services we had 495 permits issued only 15 of them were done within 10 days last august we had 563 permit issued 43 of them were 10 days and this is you know issued from start to finish so building permit review is extremely regulated by the state every step has a time frame attached to it you have 10 days to decide if it's sufficient if it's a single family house less than 15 000 you have five days is it using your private provider or city inspectors is it residential how many units is it commercial how much square footage and all of those when they come back for their second review it's a 10-day turnaround so the system is set for a 10-day target even if there's more time in the beginning i think we're all nervous about letting any of our reviewers miss the recent middle date so it's it's a 10-day target so here's everybody in the system and this is pulled from 916 so we can see if they're yellow it's not development services it's other reviewers in the department but they have a significant workload that's part of why i wanted to be sure they were here today engineering for example had done 2609 reviews this year today and they've done all of them in two days or close their average is two days you hear a lot about historic they've had 532 permits they've done 98.9 of them in less than three days so you can see these hassan's team sorry hassan's team is still doing it in half of the target time they're taking five a little over five days the applicant is up here they don't have a target like don't they can take as long as they want but i mean they can't because then it gets closed after 180 days but so the system is a tennis ball only one side is control in control at a time okay so and all of those reviews are happening at the same time so when the last review is done and review complete then then it goes back to the applicant and they can start uploading plans otherwise it would be a complete moving target and you would never know what the latest plan set was right so it goes to them when they respond and resubmit and they hit complete it comes back to us and it populates onto the dashboard anybody had unresolved comments the clock starts 10 days when i tell you that you can see everything in the software you can see everything so this is a permit that at one point got a lot of attention and you can see in this review how long it came in how long it took somebody to grab it and then where it went so staff is generally taking three to four days but look what happened here why did electrical take almost 15 days we only had one so i took this data i'm able to show mr moore data and say i really need to hire a second person in this position you know he got sick we couldn't get a sub things backed up um whatever and so that's really great for us for managing our staff needs um but then i'll also show you that the applicant took 15 days to resubmit the second time and then took 40 the third time there's nothing wrong with that they're doing work they have to change the plan set they have to find a missing document they have to hire a gc of some sort or you know to get licensing done but this is where we can see where there's a slowdown and where there isn't so specifically what we can see is if you go in a little further you can see the comments you know so excuse me so we can see here that mr garrison who i picked because he's enjoying retirement now um mr garrison noted on february 21st at 7 33 a.m that you need a plumbing application and here's the florida building code provision that requires it so then we can see the first round in the first resubmission uh mr for chair wrote back that's the permit runner um we will do that when the gc is awarded when when the business when they choose who their gc is going to be it came back for a second round this project this comment was not resolved and so then uh in this one he's he responded for the third round on may 28th we've provided the appropriate application because we got him so we can see that we made this comment on february 21st and the comment was not resolved until may 28th and that's fine if that's how long the applicant the owner want to take but to be clear this delay is not related to staff so it's just part of the process of building things out and hiring your folks so we decided um that i would keep going because it's maybe less chaotic to switch so i'm going to give you um a set of examples of why things slow down for utilities um which is the longest stop which is taking five days in a 10-day target right um so the water utilities department is receiving hundreds of development applications and what they're finding and what is slowing their review and their approval down and i have had applicants tell steve or me that we should issue a permit and we will not do it if our colleagues and our other departments that are review stops have resolved all their comments like we don't have the authority over them i'm not a fire reviewer i'm certainly not a utilities reviewer and neither is steve tobias so um what they're seeing over and over again is that their site verifications of where the utilities are is not done um there's incomplete incomplete um plans and metals um the designs are deficient um people do not want to connect to the reclaimed water system i don't know if you know that but that is a common pushback um and then shop drawings that should have been submitted with the original permit are missing and so that's going to send them immediately to a second round um so when they do not have adequate site verification of where things are you really run the risk of having a conflict with the utility line during construction which has ramifications to our residents and it can slow everything down so we think there's an opportunity to i don't know if there's a way to require site visits in advance or somehow to get that part of the permitting system sorted plans are frequently embedded within landscape which i can understand you want to make sure you're not planting a tree over a line but utilities could move faster if there was a standalone utilities that required for projects and that's something that i think we should consider um we have city standards and if you don't use our city standards you aren't going to pass your review so maybe there's a way to increase awareness of that and then ultimately reclaim reclaimed water which i think in concept we all agree is a better source than using potable water on landscape um there are definitely um issues with um folks wanting to not connect and and how do we promote that moving forward and if you have detailed questions on this part mr hodge mary is going to answer them so and then finally like the shop drawings are submitted late um and they should be reviewed prior to permit issuance and that delays things commonly as well so how do we increase coordination how do we make sure we're getting complete submissions to make sure everything goes faster um so it would reduce the number of times something goes through review it would you know minimize construction conflicts or worship you know impacts so now we're going to move to planning zoning and historic planning zoning and historic is 23 people um five plus a part-time planning or in training are assigned to the current planning that's your building permits development applications that are going to go eventually to pz scrap ultimately city commission or be administratively reviewed and appear as an appealable long-range planning they do a comprehensive plan plots land development regulations abandonments rezonings and then historic preservation which is only three people and they do all of those functions for the properties that are historic there are five boards in the mix plus city commission plus special magistrate because we actively participate in code enforcement monthly so we have the review we've got the applicant in their time schedule and how well they're providing complete or incomplete information you've got city staff right the ldr which are the state statutes but also our comprehensive plan and our ldr that are supposed to realize what our residents expect from redevelopment and then boards and officials um so this is the process and it's all organized under the same system with the same commas and the same timestamps that you can see the planner that is the project manager coordinates how the project is in the system in terms of moving it forward making sure the right reviewers are there but they don't control the input they don't control how fast someone resubmits they don't control a public decision so ultimately if the board denies it you see things as an appealable because any final action by a lower board is reported to you on the appealable report and also you can reach down right and then appeal a decision i think they got it wrong they shouldn't have approved that i think they got it wrong they shouldn't have denied that once it's moved into this body this body's decision is final so if you deny 46 marine way they're back to the starting line again and there's nothing staff can do to change that so here's the here's the state mandated review targets now for attack 10 days to say that the submission is is sufficient 30 days to do the review right they have to reply in 60 days because we're supposed to get them within 180 days to a quasi judicial meeting if they do not want to go to the board yet because they're not ready um they need to ask for an extension in writing and that relieves the city from the mandated time frame so year to date we've had 394 development applications in addition to the 711 zcu to btr reviews that the planning and zoning team reviews or historic depending on the property we have had 195 free application meetings with people who are thinking about doing a new project in the city those pre-application meetings include engineering utilities sometimes fire depending on the application we're able to try to get the right staff in the meeting at the same time so now let's look at the tack review so here's the project planner now the project planner is also doing the zoning review but they are in the system and they are saying oh this project meets the threshold for green requirements i need to include you know christian cheetah sir in the review and then you have so if they're in yellow they're in a different department so the police department is in the mix sanitation for how are you going to locate your dumpsters are the rollouts is it big enough utilities uh fire engineering and um so where are they um here we go the thing is is that all of these people are also doing those building permits i just showed you these are the same people so the historic team that's doing these building permits are also doing this tack review the same three people it's the same thing for the planners and the zoners it's planning and zoning fire it's the same two plan reviewers that are doing these 2 000 reviews that are doing the tack review all on 10-day targets so your planning and zoning and historic staff is juggling all of these deadlines between all of these projects depending on where they are so what happens is that they sit down at their desk and they're going to do the building permits first they've got to knock them out they know they're a 10-day target the tax stuff is on a 30 month a 30-day target so that's automatically shifting to second priority but i'm just going to point out everybody's getting it done they're all under the 10-day target nobody here is hitting a 30-day window bpa bpoa design review is done by an outside architect by the way so they take a little longer which is good we don't want that in house okay in addition to that we have five monthly meetings plus two commission meetings plus special magistrate occasionally that's not me it's my spirit animal so the same team is is watching this because there's notice requirements for some of these boards meetings there's resolutions that have to be reviewed by the city attorney's office anything that goes on your agenda is reviewed by the city manager's agenda you know at agenda review and then ultimately the finished part so we're doing a lot of work looks like we're killing it right we're not i'm here to tell you we are not killing it um while pc staff is is focused on meeting all of those mandated targets for permit review the deadlines for posting on one of five different meetings if not city commission the reality is that the other applications are starting to drag and take longer every zoning verification letter that is sent to us now is a million dollar question with the way property values are we cannot afford to get it wrong so zoning verification letters that used to be done in 10 days are taking longer and again development review is behind permits which is slow tack i think it's measurably of um taking a few days longer than it did in past years meetings with our customers they have to be booked way in advance because even with most of them wanting teams or zoom it's a lot long-range efforts are lost in line this is the work that most planners truly love ldr updates that help define the vision for the residents things like designating the cemetery i think i even said to you in a meeting nobody's going to develop the cemetery like it's fine and it's only because we're just constantly on these uh these deadlines and things like that um i don't think i would be a good leader if i didn't say this um the planning and zoning staff is burning out the workload and the pace expected of them is always taking longer than 40 hours in addition they are assisting applicants learning the new system sometimes they're uploading plans that are emailed to them um and we are still tweaking and building and adjusting so that also takes time so it's not just processing keep in mind the staff reports and the things that are prepared they represent the residents that's what the ldr and the comp plan are supposed to do is represent the expectation of the form of growth for the residents and that's what their job is you have a great staff i'm so proud of our staff we have our planning staff is representative of multiple universities we have the five um aicp we have five of our planners are lead certified so ultimately if christian's out of town they can handle the lead the green sustainability review if needed with seven master's degrees 18 bachelors and just a host of specialties wrapped up in that staff we're still adjusting the system so we are looking at exploring ai for we met with one company that scans applications for sufficiency naming conventions things like that we've met with another that can pre-certify florida building code compliance um i in in fairness to the it department i just do think i should say publicly we're a small town i'm sort of of the mindset that we wait for boca to test all this first and then whatever works we grab um but we can we can start moving into this as well um we are looking at trying to get some of the submissions smoothed out um and then there's little glitches that are happening that we want to do and i think that when i was doing this hang on bear with me this is what i forgot as i looked at you steve so when when the tack review is is creating the staff report that was my comment they're really looking they're representing the residents right because that's the comp plan that's been adopted that's the ldr that's been adopted um resolutions consent items preparing for the board meetings and then code enforcement are all things that these same people are doing with 895 free application meetings for people who want to do business in the city mixed in and you need them because they're the ones that are going to tell you you can't do that you're going to need a variance or a waiver or this is you know going to be a complicated application or hey this is administrative you'll sail right through as long as you meet xyz the other thing i don't know that you're aware that we do and that's all of us that are in this review is that we offer page turn meetings for our applications that are stuck or nearing particularly the big ones we get everyone into the first for conference room and we're going over to cross the t's dot the i's make sure they understand those final comments that are keeping them from moving forward so that they hit it on the next final review we also have monthly construction meetings with our large-scale projects atlantic crossing has had a monthly construction meeting for four years now so sunday village is another one and while yes we want our developers to be successful the reason we're doing that is to try to get the construction over or implemented in a way that is the least impactful to the neighbors that are surrounding those sites they're having to live with construction on those big projects for a long time and we're trying to get it to go through as quickly as possible they need to close roads because they're going to do some type of equipment on the roof that's got to be brought in we're working with engineering and everyone to to get the you know the different things so all of this is what's going on and uh let's see so if you want us to go faster i mean we have joked for years that we offer concierge level so the idea that we're not already was we were chuckling about because our our folks know us but if we want to go a little bit more um in the budget you're about to vote on there's a btr position that is general fund um one planner is in the budget um the other thing that we've done with since mr moore has been here is that we have um taken those of us that are touching building permits under the florida statute and moved as much of um the planners that are involved in building permit review including the historic planners a percentage of them is now paid for by the building fund we've split it like 35 you know 30 70 35 we've tried to like hold on to those dollars in a in a way that we can also steve buys all the paper but um we if we could um go faster i think one of the other things that we would need and i believe that building fund could pay for this because under the last iteration it said software and things like that we need a publicly facing help desk for the e-services portal fernandoi rosas is very helpful but he has um larger issues i think to do and i believe it it was bokeh or wellington who told us we would need two and not one so i do think that would be helpful for our residents and our customers that are trying to use the the portal if we had another planning and zoning manager over btr and current we could elevate that service perhaps more and that could provide some of the support to the code enforcement efforts that are participating in and that would be a position that i think would have to be split um i do want to we've talked about doing this for a while but i do want to reorganize the permit administration team i would like to use boca's model of promotion that is tied to years of experience with certification rather than having the clerks have to wait for a tech position to open to move up um this is 100 building fund and mr moore has been supportive of this change it's just trying to find the time to work it out and i think that would improve retention as well we also have the new impact of private providers private providers are when a developer hires a firm to check their work check their own work the state has very aggressive deadlines for how fast that goes and it limits the amount of oversight that the building official or our staff can do to construction sites they are supposed to tell us when inspections are happening and provide the certification within days they don't always do that and they come raining in at once and someone's yelling for a ceo and we need to organize those it's just a new part of construction and we do need another tech for that um mr moore has already um we've discussed two building inspectors that would help focus on unsafe structures work without a permit and again the private provider issue those would be 100 building fund i don't know where they're gonna sit that's another constraint some of you have talked with me about it um but that's mr moore's issue and then because i've never given a presentation without a drawing in my life until today um i'm just uh i was actually on the downtown master plan back in 2002 my hair was very short um but um so i just included that one um this is i just think for the metrics we need to deal in the data i think that's fair and it's all um defensible and i would also say that when something is stuck and i think some of you have experiences when you've reached out and asked through mr moore why something is stuck and we're able to print out the exact deadline where it's hung up why it's hung up and what needs to happen next so and that's kind of where we are for now
great thank you thank you very much um i'm going to i have a lot of different comments that i'm going to make but i'm going to i'm going to a new commissioner malica has been calling around and talking to a bunch of other people i know that because when i would call them they said oh yes i've already spoken to commissioner malica so i know you've been making these calls um but you have a variety of comments you should like to make because you've done a lot of research on on first of all thank you very much for the presentation i mean it was very enlightening to see all the numbers and i do agree with all those numbers i do think that some of the questions that i have are unrelated to actually when you get there it's how we could fashion the the application process different or something like that which would improve the process i'm going to give you one example you know having a master permit for example when you're building four of the same houses the city requires you to have four folio numbers four uh four separate addresses four separate uh everything and so you end up with four separate inspectors and that's just the way it goes i and and i'm going to use the example of mr castor who last year had that process and either four separate inspectors four identical houses four sets of comments you know so i think the concept like i spoke down i actually had a good conversation today with the mayor of miami beach they've created this master permit concept when you're doing the same kind of things which is something we could consider which would speed up the process you know but anyway i'm going to turn it over to to commissioner malica because i know you have lots of actually i don't really have a
lot of comments that i've collected from everybody just sort of a general thing and everything that you've just shown me well first of all i don't know anything about buildings so thanks for the education but like i'm exhausted right um so really quickly i mean do you have requirements for um time frames for returning phone calls and emails is there any guideline that you implement and i know
especially mondays right so generally it's um supposed to be uh if it comes in and building is a little different than um planning it's supposed to be within 24 hours but building has it that came in in the morning it gets called back in the afternoon if it came in the afternoon it gets called back by the morning and um planning and zoning is supposed to be able to do it within a day um you know okay so you do have
those i didn't know if you had any guidelines in it or not and btr is faster there was a system that said if you want to call back or they were on hold for two days well i do want to thank you though
because it never occurred to me i could get those metrics until you were showing them to me from another place and so i know fernando has just started figuring that out um the call grouping is for building planning is the phone number that everyone calls where rochelle sits i love being able to get metrics
because if you can measure you can manage right and you probably don't have time to look at it but if you had a some system whoever your it person is that can run it every week then you as a supervisor can go uh-oh or yay or whatever mostly yay right um who is in charge of that you stuff that charge of the the um the technology the what's it called project docs jay's here oh is it jay i thought you had fernando fernando is our dedicated person but i know that when there's some like comments or whatever that it sends out an email to the client first of all i want to make sure that it's not just the architect that it's also the owner because i know that the development services subs well the architect isn't responding to the owner it's like and i know that's probably captured the application
but do we send a text also or no are you able to do you want to talk do you want me that's a lot i know don't i mean ultimately the comments are going to whoever the applicant has listed it goes to the applicant so if the applicant is the contractor it is not also going to the owner do you see it should i don't disagree
i mean let's yeah well if we can change anything we haven't always we can make technology work the
way we want it to right jay okay that's a great idea so to add the order repeat that summary because my interest is to offer directions that affect administratively so the applicant is typically
the contractor or the architect who is going to be responsible for building the project um and i think commissioner malika's idea and i think it would track for pz applications as well is to include the owner on any any um notification that is sent out regarding their application and i think that's a great idea
the email and i love the text idea because the emails because it's a do not reply might kind of
get lost somewhere i don't know i just want to confirm because we uh we did look into this um a few weeks ago but i anthea correct me if i'm wrong we don't always have the owner information in the
application no you don't we don't but we control the application so we can adjust the application to
require that perfect then yeah yeah that'd be good for you because then when the architect messes up the owner can find out right sorry just okay that was one of my questions and then um i think that was it also um i know that the employees that that or the staff or whatever that's working through this process might see some kind of bottlenecking within the the do you have a place where they can make suggestions or that that their observations can be maybe improved we do we actually have a shared um
file okay with fernando and a monthly meeting with building and with planning to go over where we're seeing things that can happen um or that could possibly be addressed so we are doing that internally
yeah because the boots on the ground is what knows the problems are right they know much better than i do yes yeah i'm sure the public might have some rubs that they run into but okay um okay that's what i was asking dependency with a text conditions email their text oh one more thing um with your inspections i've heard that some other cities give you like i'm going to come friday two to four and that del rey goes i'm coming friday do you narrow those windows down do you know that no we we have an a.m. p.m.
option that's what i'm being told and it's within a four-hour window okay good enough they should quit whining what's that well but it's not guaranteed but we aim for it no obvious and we should be able
to measure that too so we're gonna work on that well and maybe give them the inspector's cell phone so
they can check with them or something but yeah um yeah they're the cell phones are provided at the when the inspection is scheduled so they should be able to reach them can i tell a quick story i shouldn't
but i will i was getting my door inspector my windows and doors inspected and i didn't even think about it but i answered in my nightgown right and my of course i passed right my husband's like
what what did you wear i'm like hey we passed sure you did sure you did i know that rule yeah it doesn't work for me i wear my nightgown and they and they deny me so they run exactly they run
can you finish no i mean i just i'm gonna sort of readdress your needs because it was a big things
but please no no i just have a few things i want to i mean god because i'm the only one actually up here that's actually sat over there and talked to you while you were up here and and try to get stuff accomplished and mr dubias you and i worked together for i don't know 20 years or so um um there's one of the complaints we hear that i experienced personally is it's just an awful lot of hands you know they'll send the document out and i'll get in i'll look at the email and there's like 25 names on it and this department won't work until they hear from this department which really this department may be a de minimis kind of a thing but the the process kind of halts until such time as you get this and it's not not so much in building as it is in planning but i mean it's in both it's in both well because you'll send it to the fire i'll get these comments back you're going to wait to hear from fire but meanwhile back at the ranch it's really a building project and what fire may come back with something or somebody police may come back with something and you know and all of which is understood all i'm saying is it sometimes slows up the application and in the building department the same you wait for these small little you know you well we can't do anything until we get the landscape plan back you know sometimes the landscape is such a small component of the 12 million dollar construction project that i don't really think i think we need more flexibility in that regard and in that vein you know you talk about things coming to and there's an awful lot of board meetings they have to come to and it's really it can be burdensome which is why i happen to think and i i had a great conversation today with the mayor of miami beach talked about ai generated applications for permitting and all this was a great conversation they're going to actually send me the resolution they passed two nights ago which i will share with everybody here to at least start looking at it's something we could possibly do um but many of these little tiny waivers that we're looking at in many jurisdictions do those as almost like internal adjustments and they make them administrative i really think that on some of these stuff you do they you have somebody have this wonderful project they're coming because they got one waiver and you know if and and the commission meanwhile will have passed that waiver 599 times you know and and and so you know it's it's going to be something that it's done it should really be something whereby you can do that administratively and just alert in your in approval process that a waiver was granted for the reasons and then maybe someone can come back and look at it as opposed to you not being able to move forward because i think staff who i do believe is extremely talented should have the ability to discern whether or not a waiver is one of the ones that should make it to the commission or not just not blankedly bringing something to the commission and in the processes that that i that we said i mentioned about the master permit but we also have this issue of you know requiring a plat get started before you can start construction really that's on the builder if they don't get the plat because the plat doesn't come into play until such time as you get ready to sell the property so requiring a plat to i'm just saying what what the the thing says um i've talked about the minimus waivers application fees now when you when you the application fees that you pay those do go into your fund correct no there's not the permit fees so i do i think that the application fees should be looked at because i mean but but with the understanding that in order people should be doing pre-application meetings to understand whether or not it's going to be worth their money to file the application fee because they don't want to file
the application fee and then get denied so did we do a study and didn't we have they can but i'm just
saying but i thought we did it already we need to better explain the risk factors that you may not get approved when you do your application fee without going through a pre-app meeting that's
all i'm so i know it's not right i know we do go ahead i'm so sorry i'm just i'm making a list and you're going to you're going to keep going so i am going to keep going i just want to give you feedback so i play it back the next day so um the uh application fees for planning and zoning i'm going to start there because it's easier because it's in front of me um so we had a budget for just over uh 539 000 in revenue in the adopted budget that's ending now um and to date we've collected 300 000 so we have collected 130 now keep in mind that's great it's revenue every one of those applications comes with a task for all of us so um just to be mindful of that we do not charge for pre-application meetings at this point is that something we're we should be doing yeah i mean i i
mean they yes i think that a day minimus charge to before someone files an application most of your builders would like to come in and understand that what they're going to do you know propose or architects would be and it doesn't need to be an onerous amount but it should be covering the time of the person because it requires you to do i mean we charge for these these zoning application the zoning letters at 275 dollars would probably cost us 500 to do in terms of time so i mean i i think that i'm not trying to make you a profit center but i don't want to make you a loss center either we
require a pre-application meeting if you're going to submit a level two three or four you have to have learn with us so but right now we're not charging for that time so that 189 meetings i think that
okay it should be i think we should we need to consider that because it is your time and trust me when i've done these projects it's really great to come out of the three application meetings that they said i could do this this this and this and was it worth the time because they i assure you my client got billed for the time so well they did that's the reality of it so you know that that's that you we we should be trying to as i say i don't want to make you a profit center so much but i don't want to make you a loss center um can you ask meetings last well the yeah the the pre-app meetings the pre-app meetings my average pre-app meeting took about an hour they will have circulated the of this is required what kind of that is required and it gives a very good idea of the person leaving there if i think to to apply for the app to to make the application fee which i think in some respects is also light in some areas because i think some of the applications are far more complicated and i know you have a staggered payment um schedule but i'm just saying if i look at if i go to boynton for example and i love boynton but they have that sage sage application process i don't know how good that is i mean i i've used it i found it very difficult to understand once i once i understood it it was a pretty good process because they would come back to me said i'm missing this this this and this and i got that back in two days and that was yeah and and so it's kind of good to know when you make an application i get two days later oh i'm missing this as opposed to waiting 10 days for your review so to speak and then say oh well you're you know you're missing this well i just lost eight
days so usually what's happening in our system is that the applicant can see the comments coming in they can see that they're getting made the fire flag something but that landscape's not done yet now i just want to go back a couple of things missy reminded me the discussion you're talking about is i can't look at it until landscape's done that was the paper process where there was only so many plan sets that were in play all of this is happening at the same time now that was going to be one of my points yeah all of it is happening at the same time once it's released for review you can see all the reviewers but i want to be really clear so fire knocks out their their thing first the sans team is knocked out but you're waiting to hear from another one you can't upload any changes until every one is done but every one is done well within the 10-day target there are five days if the longest one is taking five days then in five days you could touch the application again in the tent it's like a tennis
ball it logs back to the other side you can jump in anytime you want my quick question was um with
regard to the several different disciplines making comments let's say fire was beautiful they don't need anything when it comes back around again is fire omitted from that or did somebody have to look at
fire they don't need me or is it blocked from that i mean it typically their comments are resolved but if and this is they shouldn't get it again right they shouldn't unless something got changed that now so so if hassan is saying here's the utility pipe you cannot put a tree within 10 feet of it right and then the landscape plan gets updated and you've cleared utilities but now you put trees on top of the utility pipe it's going to get sent back to them to say get your trees off the utility
pipe again yeah it's kind of happening a lot but you can't if you fix something and then make another
problem then someone is then one of the reviewers is having to then clock it and share it with their colleague that then needs to make their comment thank you sorry number of meetings um some of
these projects are big projects shouldn't we i mean i i know our boards are volunteer and i know it works staff and everything but you know my my view is the faster i get things approved the faster they get built the faster they get on the tax rolls that's just i'm a real simple it's a real simple equation for me do you think that you know planning is only meets once a month is that should we have it twice a
month i mean is there a reason why it used to be twice a month so i i don't know how if what you think of this but they are volunteers and so i think the question is then to our volunteers would you rather meet twice for four hours or would you rather meet once because we used to have you know what i'm going to say we used to have quorum issues as well when there were too many meetings and then we try to divide them up but we didn't get enough people at the meeting to actually make a decision anyway so it's a balance so i i don't know i would defer to what yeah which is why i think there should be
greater administrative things and by the way in the approval process when you go to your first set by your second set of comments i really think that if the issues have not been resolved at the second set of comments the application should get moved on to the these committees and let make them as
conditions of approval make you know okay we used to do pages of conditions of approval but i will tell you then all you're doing is putting there's two things the city attorney and i'm not trying to speak for you but has made it very clear to us that if you require a waiver and you did not submit for a waiver keep in mind the other option is we just deny the application and save everybody the trip if you need relief and you didn't give us the relief application then you don't go to a board because it is not over the board's purview to grant some of those things great so if you're not going to give it to us but you're letting we're letting them sit where the other option is we could just deny it
this doesn't meet the code you're actually talking about two different things we're talking about a few if right i'm talking about creating in your application speed up the application so that people don't have to go through a third and fourth set of comments well then it just shifts it to where
it was before which is we're arguing at certification and then here's the real issue when you approve something with a laundry list of conditions sunday village is a good example of this and you sell it to somebody else and you haven't necessarily resolved all these issues the person who bought it thinks they have a shovel ready project right and then we all find out together that you don't and i mean mr cavalli worked hand in hand with our team and the pep folks to to figure out the laundry list of conditions that were approved for that project that did not work once somebody was trying to build it and if it's not well thought out and there was another gentleman who talked like why is every city requiring all this detail at site plan review and it's because of the deadlines the state is putting on us that is why we are getting everything worked out when you have gone through tack utilities engineering fires comments it should all be done and then you should just be going through building permit with florida building code now and and you should be running because we're on those deadlines so we don't have time to say in your 10-day turnaround for resubmission i don't know if the window is right there maybe we should take it back to someone you know like no if it doesn't match it gets goes back into a site plan review now are there opportunities for more administrative review yes absolutely previous commissions it took a long time for us to get any kind of administrative authority over those five units um or the zcus like we those there have been different perspectives over the years but that's why it's not happening that's why when he's when he's commenting every community is doing this it's because we're under the or else from the state when it comes to permits everything is supposed to be done with florida building code by the time you get there
look i agree i mean i was like pulling teeth to get you to get administrative review for these lots where the the pin would have moved an inch and instead it was 49 and 11 and a half inches and you would have to end up coming in because it wasn't you know 50 feet you know i mean we finally did it but there are other situations like that where some of these stuff are de minimis or they have been they are routinely approved they're not a matter of public safety you know utilities is happy with them everybody's happy with them that it would speed up the process i'm just trying to speed up the process and so i think you could come back with some kind of a you know recommendation of things that you could do administratively which because if if we have the good planning staff which we do you want to be able to figure out which you can whether or not this really is something that that should move forward or not move forward that's all that is anyway i i think i i got more but i'm not
going to go and this extends to historic right i just want to ask this board if you're comfortable with staff having more administrative power over historic okay it's okay i'm not i've not i i didn't limit
i wasn't discussing historic per se i was discussing general application i mean you know so i'm going to
ask the idiot question here which i'm good at so if we make these things you're requesting these diminuous changes um and all of a sudden aren't we thereby just telling everybody the codes changed and now instead of being 11 inches from x you can now be eight inches from x or is that not what happens
when you do that i think it's probably best if we take your input and come back and we have a different yeah that's what i'm saying yeah i think we would maybe we'll try to pull together some options and meet with you individually so that we can good idea because mr marker is correct i mean we
we're not i'm not trying to change the code here right but i'm going to say sometimes with the design because you already know that's an irregular shaped lot we already know what's this we already know it's that that they the whole thing lends itself to that waiver because of the particular circumstances of the property as opposed to just a blanket thing where we're giving waivers you know willy-nilly so to
be that's good that's good point i think we still there's three of us that i'm sorry the girls can go
i split personality first of all i just want to say thank you to our uh smart dedicated staff i mean i agree with that as well um and i want to uh acknowledge all of the service improvements that that have been made and the process improvements and this uh presentation really did a lot and gave me a lot of information and i i want to thank you for that but i wanted to ask um when someone is stuck in the process is there a red flag or something that comes up and a staff person addresses that if someone has had an application in for more than the 10 days or more than the 30 days
is it flagged and then someone addresses that right so after 10 days or when it gets close enough we kind of look and we monitor all those things so at when it does turn to a red flag we know that's a priority if something is stuck within the system they call us we have literally hundreds of permits in the queue so are we looking at everyone not necessarily but we will help so if it is stuck with a group or it's stuck with a plan reviewer we will make sure that we help them through that process is it up to the applicant to contact you not always not always yeah we can see some things but
the applicant usually contacts us okay and then um what if if we can't i and i appreciate your slide on what your needs um and i and i totally get uh staff burnout but if we can't do everything at once that's on your on your list which positions would have the most um immediate impact on uh turnaround
time and customer service so i think um i think the planners which can you go back to that slide yes ma'am hang on sorry we're gonna watch this for a second the song had the best graphics i think it was the last one um so if i think for our customers having another position in the it support that is intended to be partially a customer service you know listen fernando is wonderful and he helps our customers when they get stuck but he's he's doing other things and so if we had you know fernando jr that is intended to answer the phone because what's happening now is when someone gets stuck they're going to their reviewers we have a structural inspector too mr lyons who's probably in the back row somewhere and believe it or not because you wouldn't think of it but our historic staff is extremely strong at the technical aspects and when someone gets stuck they will end up emailing plans and then they're putting them in in the back end and guess what they're not doing then they're not doing the reviews they're not moving forward with the cemetery they're not doing because they're helping so if um if they everyone could go back to their regular jobs because we had a person to pass those issues off to i think it would be very helpful and to teach our applicants like what they're missing with the portal of the applications that is a building fund position so i don't think it's something that should
give you a lot of angst right okay so ladies and gentlemen and mr newton's presentation she shared with you all a little bit about the discussions she and i have had with respect to offering these considerations moving forward so in the first quarter of the new fiscal year i'll be recommending specifically how do we get to that place because that's pretty easy we ran the analysis in that regard in addition to other resources having been committed for the upcoming fiscal year proposed budget so i think we're very much in alignment in that regard and we look forward to proceeding forward in terms of recommendations from the office of the city manager and i just would also like just to
advocate while you move it to the next meeting which is budget that you know the btr position otherwise you need to be okay with the 23 days i mean this is part of it right what is the level of service you're comfortable having because i have a great staff it's not that i need better people working here we either need to relieve the process or we need to get more people in it so btr position that is already programmed and one of the planners is already programmed and then i think we would get to the um it position and then we've looked at trying to get building inspectors to assist with the unsafe florida building code violations and the private providers those are not the planning and zoning manager was just which is that concierge's idea of having somebody else we do have our development permit manager when a project is stuck she's the one that's looking into it um so i think it's a matter of time frames you know we have we can have a whole cadre of people waiting for the phone to ring or we're trying to balance it with how much is fast enough could you make that clearer so you need an
it front desk person i need an it which is paid for by building yes you need two planners one's already
paid for or one's already budgeted three would be great um one is already budgeted i need btr one is
budgeted what's a btr i mean that's where the i know but like what's their qualifications um it's
plan is that a planner no no no um in fact it's i'm trying to think the grade is lower actually
right it is slightly but still it covers the need and btr can't be through building no that's the
problem is that it's very easy to support the building people if we can find seats in the in the building literally um but then it's also the general fund ones are the hard ones right so btr is a general fund position the three planners that i would love to have that one is budgeted those that's a split position a planning and zoning manager to have another you know person um higher up looking at that um that's a split position so um my my job is a split position because i gotta watch him but um so um and the same thing for the um assistant director so four people yeah well i just you know you know
my i'm thinking about the budget as well and you know when we talk about attrition as a savings uh strategy we also have to distinguish between positions that we can afford to leave vacant or and ones that will um ultimately cost the city um service delivery so um thank you for your that's
that's all i have thank you he's on his phone um so thank you for the presentation but it's nothing surprising i think the gentleman the lovely gentleman in the plaid shirt who got up here and said we need to hire more people we could have ended the meeting then because you gave us this report 24 25 accomplishments for the fiscal year and it's quite an amazing amount of work for 78 total employees it's almost shocking and uh at the end of the day with the mayor we started making some of these modifications to speed the process up like the lots that were slightly smaller than 50 foot i think it was a foot or less we said we would let that go through and not have to come in front of us because it would have to be workforce i'm in in agreement that we should try to find those things but i also like to find them after we've seen them a number of times so we're sort of testing the process um and and definitely um we did discuss having that somewhere on our agenda but back to the money there is the money she needs two people two more planners and she has one uh btr in the budget a percentage of the building fund will go to the planning and zoning manager and some portion of the general and she also a portion of the and the rest are building fund so let's just agree to it and get it in this budget tonight because at the end of the day listen this is this is a lot of our time we have had so many meetings on this subject and if our people are experiencing burnout because they need more people then we need to get more people now not after the first quarter not after another conversation and not after a whole host of other complaints let's get the people in place to do the job that helps make the process simpler and serves our employees well we have the money mr moore may i um
ask one quick question are we allowed to charge expediting fees do we i know other cities do i mean i'm just thinking of another way that perhaps you could fund your positions we have policies to
expedite affordable housing anything that um is brought to us by the business development um kelly's i i'm not remembering kelly smallrich's um department's name um and um historic that's part of why they have a dedicated team um it's it's hard to say like if everybody's special nobody's special and then you're all going to be on the same no i know but i know yeah people like these builders or whatever
they hire expediters and so instead of them i don't know yeah tossing an idea about it yeah what no they
do they have these concierge type services where they where they they speed up the process and you know we
need to talk about that i mean that's part of why a planning and zoning manager would i think help with
so um commissioner casal were you asking for a consensus yes yep we don't do that at a workshop
but no no we we did turn it over to the city manager and i think if you for a show of hands i think we need to hire the people on that slide that are necessary especially immediately the building fund people because we have extra money in the building fund ladies and gentlemen we're even talking
about that turn yet so before you make my turn okay you go and then i'd like to respond on the
budget piece please i need to respond and offer clarity regarding the budget piece associated
therein i will please so i've been to this meeting before in the corporate world and i did my my preparation before the meeting i met with a lot of the developers um a number of them yelled at me over the weekend it was fine um i've also had a chance to meet with anthea's team and and listen it was good education for me and um without a doubt what what's missing for me here is we do not have good information flow back and forth just yet uh i think that's apparent i mean we just saw anthea present a lot of data i think a lot of the folks that i met with uh last week and over the weekend weren't aware of some of that data um and i'll be curious to see if that influenced any of your opinions but i would say um this situation is screaming for ai this this will be solved by ai in the not that distant future i've introduced jay and anthea and mr moore to a couple of companies in in the ai space um that is going to be that is going to be a part of our future this is not going to be a real hard um application for ai because we have the raw ingredients to make ai work that said you don't just flip on a light switch and have ai overnight it's going to it's going to take some work by our staff to get that ai where we want it to be that that that will take an investment and anthea and i talked about that jay and i talked about that it will take an investment we are going to need a human being to help us find the right the right ai software customize it and build it to our specs that that is something that we're going to have to do um however in the interim for me it's it's a pretty simple equation i think we have to put some human band-aids on this situation because it's it's troubling and i i think the folks the couple of people that anthea is asking for um makes sense to me i think adding a help desk person right now makes sense to me um i you know i i know we have a tough budget meeting coming up but i think those ads to me make sense but i also think it's time now for us to dig our heels in a little bit on ai and start to find the applications because we're falling behind on that um and there's companies out there that can do this i haven't seen what boke is doing but um ai has a lot of risk but it also does a lot of good and i think for the situation that we have here we've got the data and i think if we could pass that data seamlessly back and forth between anthea's department and our builders and our developers i think that information flow will will help a lot not going to solve everything but in the meantime i'm totally supportive of the human band-aids that that you're asking for i think that that will get us over the hump and at least we can at least we can uh uh you know get ourselves in a situation where we're not offside with the people that are coming into the department because i i think your staff's amazing off the charts amazing uh tough jobs they do it they do with a smile they're there all the time and i i i compliment you and your whole department for
that i think we need to give you a little bit more so that you can be successful i i am along those lines i am going to i got my email for at 318 from steve minor who's the mayor of miami beach on his whole ai thing that just approved the other night i'm going to forward it to you we all so we can start looking at it because you're absolutely correct they're they're look it's an investment no question it's an investment but they say it will you know it will pay it's one of those things that will pay for if i not just in time to response at customer service but it will get things moving and so i'm going i i am i am i am going to say that to you and the other thing is looking at sort of a plug-in which
reviews it kicks back what it needs then the real people get a look yeah i mean it just it just will
speed up to but you know the the the and one of the reasons i talk about these fees and things is because we and i've and i've said it's about parking i said about every single thing i talked to we should be having the little old lady in lake ida should not be paying for the thing so we need to be pricing our applications based on the amount of time that it takes and and we haven't been doing that we've been generally we've been very good for a lot of years we did raise them i know we raised them a couple years ago we did that to help offset some of the stuff but we do need to reflect on on what i mean you can pay the same fee when you're doing a small little job or a much larger little job so i know the impact stuff is going to be different that's going to bring money and that's going to be but that's not going to help pay your salaries so i'm trying to get the money into the coffers of the people that are actually doing the work so that right and to that end there are fees
that have not been touched in a long time once i started digging into fees because i'm actually going to have to drop building permit fees right at the same time there should be a utility plan review fee the right of the right-of-way fee for engineering's team is only what forty dollars
fifteen dollars sorry so this is what i'm saying this is the review that i'm looking for i'm looking to we need to we can't afford to be so magnanimous these days and we can measure the time now and i tell you someone's building a three million dollar house they'll pay a couple hundred dollars more you know because really it's not going to affect anything i mean you know they'll pay it so let's get it let's get it and i know the developers back there saying i can't my steve michael saying you can't charge me a hundred dollars but i am going to charge that two hundred dollars so yes one real
quick question because i know we're out of time first of all thank you so much for everybody for being here and and thea for like going through all that i appreciate it very much um do you find a value in the black belt process mapping that and gannon spoke about i have a note that just has talked to to
ann because i don't know what that is so i need to find out what she's doing letting the auditor
come in and take a look at the prop but i don't want to hinder i want to help i don't i just need
to see what it is there's the idea i know a lot about that there's people that have a specific skill set she's right and and they can break they can come to bear on almost any kind of issue they they have a skill set and they can do it and i it would be helpful i let me understand it and then see how
it plays into yeah no fair enough i think it's it sounded interesting thank you thank you mr mayor
i'm sorry one other point and this is very important so given the commitments and interests in the ancillary positions mr yodas and i have already spoken about that nevertheless because of advertisement requirements etc that would have to come back in october as a budget amendment to incorporate that so that's the cleanest approach we spent our time in that regard i've been supportive however two of the positions as you discussed in your presentation ms genio this is actually included within the proposed budget consideration so given the interest and consensus i'll take it as we'll be back before you all in october with those couple of other opportunities cross-referencing building fund resources to get us to where we need to be please understand that to
keep it clean likewise we're prepared and thank you um thank you all for participating today and listening to us uh this meeting is adjourned uh this meeting is adjourned uh we will come back at 5 15 to start the uh the regular commission meeting we are adjourned