Improving Development Review

This report studies the city's development permitting process, which involved up to 14 city agencies and could take up to more than 1,000 days, and explores ways to improve the overall process in concert with adoption of an electronic permitting system. The first phase of the project surveyed 33 peer cities for best practice identification and created process flow maps for all of the city's permitting processes; the second evaluated the permitting process and evaluated different electronic permitting systems; the third will implement the recommended process improvements and test the electronic permitting system software. The report provides analysis and recommendations for improvement for seven departments, including the city planning commission and the zoning board of adjustment.