TO:
Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
THROUGH:
Bruce Moe, City Manager
FROM:
Talyn Mirzakhanian, Community Development Director
Lisa Jenkins, Human Resources Director
Julie Bondarchuk, Acting Finance Director
SUBJECT:Title
Consideration of Community Development Department Staffing Levels and Authorization to Over-Hire by One Permit Technician (Community Development Director Mirzakhanian and Human Resources Director Jenkins).
A) APPROVE
B) APPROPRIATE FUNDS
Body
_________________________________________________________
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends that the City Council approve proposed staffing within the Community Development Department to include the addition of one Permit Technician (full-time) as an over-hire for an unspecified duration and appropriate $102,067 from the General Fund.
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
The annualized cost of the proposed Permit Technician over-hire is $102,067. Funds are available from the available General Fund balance.
BACKGROUND:
Prior to the current fiscal year, the position allocation in the permitting section of the Building and Safety Division of the Community Development Department included two Permit Technicians and one Senior Permit Technician since the 2013-2014 fiscal year. This position allocation restored the staffing level in this work group that had existed prior to the economic recession of 2008 and resulting impact on building and construction activity, years in which the staffing was reduced to one Senior Permit Technician and one Permit Technician. A Building Service Analyst was added to the Building and Safety Division in the 2017-2018 budget to oversee the entire permitting process and implement efficiencies, and the position was reclassified to a Senior Business Services Analyst in the 2023-2024 budget process. Also in the 2023-2024 Budget process, the City Council authorized the addition of one Permit Technician to the Community Development Department, bringing the total count of Permit Technicians to three. In April of 2023, the Senior Permit Technician retired, and one of the Permit Technicians was promoted to this position in May. One new Permit Technician was hired to backfill the vacant position in June, and the newly approved Permit Technician was filled with a new hire in July of 2023 due to the ability to plan for and hire from the existing eligibility list (qualified candidate pool).
DISCUSSION:
The accuracy of and processing time for Building and Safety permits is a priority of the City and the City Council. During the 2023-2024 budget process, the metrics for permit processing times were discussed with the City Council, as well as planned staffing and improvements to aid in further expediting the review process and enhancing the customer service to City residents and the construction community. As explained during the discussion, each round of permit intake, review and resolution involves multiple employees in different departments and divisions of the City, and can take upwards of 10-14 weeks, depending on the type of permit. The building review process has increased in complexity over the past 15 years, due to California Building Code changes, which now requires significantly more information that must be screened by Permit Technicians. This also results in each permit requiring multiple rounds of review. This directly impacts the workload of Permit Technicians.
Given the size of the permit team historically, any vacancy or leave of absence with an employee can create a backlog of work, increase employee burnout, necessitate overtime, and cause other employees to take on the workload to try to keep up with the volume. The vacancy created by the retirement of a long-tenured member of the permitting team resulted in a great loss of technical and institutional knowledge that will require sufficient time and investment to train and develop incoming employees. The training for the two new Permit Technicians (one newly approved and one resulting from the retirement) is currently underway, which is a significant time investment on the part of the Senior Permit Technician, whose typical duties include intake and processing of complex permits. The estimated time to fully train a new Permit Technician to complete all types of permits is one year.
In order to be responsive to the desired outcome of reducing permitting time and to avoid future backlogs associated with turnover or leaves of absence, staff has identified an opportunity to utilize the existing candidate pool for Permit Technician to onboard and train a new Permit Technician to further enhance the staffing support for permitting review. It is requested that this over-hire be authorized with no end date so that staff can be fully trained and management can evaluate the impact on processing times. Staff will request that the position be added to the permanent position allocation in the budget if the added resource is warranted and necessary. Specifically, the hiring of additional Permit Technicians has the potential to reduce the timeframes associated with the “intake” and “issuance” portions of the process, steps that are completed solely by the Permit Technicians.
Community Development staff has reviewed and analyzed the impacts of the period of vacancy within the Permit Technician work group, and identified the projected impacts of additional staffing. The following illustrates the impacts on timelines for the most complicated types of permits as related to those aspects of the process that the Permit Technicians are responsible for:
Average Processing Time for Main Set of Building Permits*
|
|
Permit Intake |
Permit Issuance |
|
FY 2022-2023 Fully Staffed levels |
1-3 weeks |
1-2 weeks |
|
(prior to retirement/vacancy) |
|
|
|
During period of vacancy/transition |
6-8 weeks |
6 weeks |
|
Current |
3-4 weeks |
3 weeks |
|
Projected goal with 2023 fully |
1 week or less |
1 week or less |
|
staffed and trained employees |
|
|
*Building Permits included in this chart include new residential, new commercial, residential addition/remodel and commercial Tenant Improvements (T/I)
Additionally, using existing salary savings and part-time dollars, the Community Development Department has piloted the utilization of a part-time Office Assistant to have a dedicated focus on fielding phone calls about the permitting process and answering customer questions. Having a dedicated part-time resource in this position improves customer service for Community Development customers and allows other staff members currently answering phones to focus on training and developing new staff members and completing technical duties associated with building and plan review.
LEGAL REVIEW:
The City Attorney has reviewed this report and determined that no additional legal analysis is necessary.