All right.

Mayor commissioners, as you know from previous conversations, we've been working on permitting for you know a number of years, but with some real great intensity and creativity these last two to three years.

It has been a you know permitting, um, plans review, plans examiners has been a national challenge.

The state of Ohio, we've even talked with them about what they're doing with regards to filling plans examination positions.

And so it um these last couple of years have been a little uncomfortable for our team because they've had my size nine and a half on their necks trying to figure out how we solve this, how we provide better service, because this is so important to the work we do in attracting invest uh uh investment into the city, right?

Um, our permitting um process is um real uh real time and and time delays costs a lot of money to our businesses.

So we know how important this is, and I uh first of all commend Emily and the team because you know they have been uh very um deliberate and intentional and and really looked at our processes and how we are accomplishing our processes.

We've talked and held focus groups with our um frequent customers at the uh one stop shop and who submit plans to get their feedback and um talk about what uh could be helpful for our process.

So we have done this with our customers, and uh I am really pleased.

We have made some major advances, and so I won't see any of the teams thunder, and I'll just turn it over to uh Emily to lead us in the presentation.

Mayor Manager.

Thank you for having us here this morning.

Um I have um Houston French here with us, our zoning administrator, Chris Nash, um, our chief plans examiner, and Scott Adams, our chief building official.

Um, this is the team that has been working diligently over the last year to work on our modernization of our party meeting processes.

So I'm actually really excited to share with you this morning the progress that we have made.

Um because of the importance of permitting.

It is kind of the gateway to development here in the city of Dayton, and it really impacts the speed and the pace of success for us across the city.

Um, it touches all parts of that built environment.

So from housing construction, small businesses opening, um, our neighborhood reinvestment efforts that have been quite in depth primary adaptive reuse of the buildings in our corridors and our neighborhoods and in our downtown, um, and then all of our new development efforts are all hooked in with the permitting process.

And in addition to the permitting, we are also responsible for the inspection.

So we go from the concept of what is going to be built, and we go through those inspections and then ultimately issue those certificates of occupancy so that those new businesses and homes can be safely.

So, as the city manager indicated, um, in with COVID and all of the other um changes, this is an industry where we've seen significant retirement in the professionals that do this work.

And as a region, we have about a generation of um you know, not heavy building and development project.

So we are kind of experiencing a surge in this area while at the same time we don't have the personnel in this region who are skilled in these things.

Um, and so it has been an internal strain.

Um, and the team that sits up here with me today um is you know, who has kind of pulled us through this time.

Um, we because of that staffing shortage, we have relied on outside consultants, and we continue to do so to essentially make the most of the capacity that we have.

We have tried to use another strategically to help us with inspections as well as significant projects in the plan examination process.

So some of the other things that have contributed to the comments that we get or the challenges we have faced in permitting have been that we are still on a paper-based process.

And so I'm going to share with you all a bit more about where we've been, where we've gone, and where we're headed in the next few months.

That is because not only do the folks from planning neighborhoods and development and building services have to touch the permitting process, but we also need to be coordinating with our other departments.

Water, civil engineering, and oftentimes fire are involved in the permitting process.

And so making sure those paper copies get distributed across we get reviewed.

We also were experiencing some permitting backlog in 2024.

And that was partially because of the paper process.

So permits would come in, then they would get distributed around.

And so there was often a lag because we were waiting on a copy of a plan to go somewhere.

And that also contributed to limited process visibility.

So people were having to call to find out where their permit was in that review process.

And it did cause delays in those permit issued because even when we were communicating and letting people know they had revisions to complete on their submissions, it was sometimes unclear to them and sometimes to us where we were in that process.

And so we did last year in early May, we met with our group of development partners and really wanted to listen to them so we could hear what their specific concerns were.

We kind of knew what was going on, but we really wanted to hear from them what was their customer experience like.

Again, that paper process, we were seeing things stalled.

So they would get comments back from one reviewer, but they wouldn't always get comments back from all of us at the same time where they were able to address them in an efficient way.

And those communication gaps that kind of merged in that process.

And so what we really identified through that endeavor was that we had a need for predictability, transparency, and how we coordinated that process and were communicating back out to the customers.

So one of the first things we did is we took a look at how we were processing the permits as they came in.

And one of the things we were noticing is we would accept a permit, and then it would sometimes sit at the counter for a few days before it would actually get entered into the system, making it even more difficult for us to track it.

So one of the first changes we made was those plans did not sit on a counter for longer than one business day.

So if they came in, we needed a clear counter by the next afternoon.

We also started doing a sense of centralized tracking.

We started using our Silla product at a higher level.

We started putting the comments from the different reviewers into the system the way it was supposed to be used.

That meant that any of us could pull it up and we could see what was happening.

That increased the process transparency dramatically because now increasing the process transparency was really essential, and that was something that we were able to do without really any staffing changes.

It was just using our tools better.

That also led to improving that review visibility.

So those comments were going back and forth between the reviewers and the applicants much quicker, and we were able to coordinate between our partner departments as well.

In the early part of the summer, so June, July, um, we really focused on cleaning up our backlog.

And what I mean by that was we had some larger projects and some smaller projects that had been submitted quite some time ago.

We had reached out to the applicants and said, you know, we need revisions submitted for this, and for whatever reason, because we were not following up consistently like on a weekly basis, um, either they had not replied back to us, they had never resubmitted their revisions, and so their permits were sitting essentially in the review chain without approval.

And so through that, we were able to restart SOL projects and also cleared out anything where the the applicants had decided they were no longer pursuing those permits.

So I believe we cleared up somewhere in the range of around 80 to 100 permits that had kind of been in that review process where we were waiting to hear back from the applicants, and they just maybe didn't know where that process stood.

So that was a significant improvement.

One of the other things that we were able to achieve this year, or 2025 was refilling that plans examiner position.

So I mentioned that we had some retirements, those happened in early 2025.

Um, we were not able to refill that plans examiner position until June, July of 25.

But as soon as we had that third plans examiner back in full-time staffing, we immediately saw an increase or decrease actually in our time for permit issuance.

So that dramatically increased our plan review capacity.

Um, and one of the other things that we have noted is how important it is to have that in-house capacity.

So while we do really appreciate the support that our contractors have been able to give us, it's not the same thing as having a person here that our applicants can call and talk to and walk through whatever changes need to happen.

And so the additional plans examiner has helped us tremendously in our customer service.

Um, this also helped us in that review turnaround.

Because we were now actively going back through the backlog projects, we no longer were letting things sit longer than two weeks without a response from the applicant, and so we started driving that process.

And because of that recovered capacity, we started to be able to carry a higher volume of permits.

So this was all focusing on how we did our jobs and using our tools better.

One of the other improvements we made mid-year last year was although we didn't have our full electronic plan revis review system set up, we did start accepting digital revisions, which this sped things up dramatically for our applicants because now they didn't have to get their full sets of plans reprinted, come in, drop them off.

They could just shoot an email to our plan reviewers.

It also sped things up with our contractors because we were able to email them those digital plans, they could start the review, and then we could accept the hard copy after the fact.

This again shortened review cycles, and I'm going to show you the progress of how we decreased our time from acceptance of a permit to time of issuance of permit.

But this is a point where once we had all of these things running, we saw a dramatic 20-day decrease in the time it took to issue a permit.

So that's what this is showing here, and I apologize that the graphics aren't showing the way they should.

But um, so what you see here in this first column is January of 25.

We were at approximately 62 days from the time permits that were issued in January of 25 had come through the door as an application to the day that we issued that permit.

So that meant we had re accepted the application, gone through a plan review process with revisions, and then issued the permit so that they could start work.

And that was an average.

So there were time, there were permits that turned around quicker, but there were permits that were into 90 days because we I was monitoring this data.

So this is an average of 60.

Right.

Right, and that is of the permits that we issued in January.

So if if a project had say five sets of revisions that they had to go through, those were the ones that probably took longer to get through that process.

So you can see in January, February, and March, we're over 60 days on the permits that were issued.

This is around the time when we started really examining what are we doing?

How is our workflow working?

Where are the gaps?

What are we doing that is holding this stuff up?

And in March, that's when we really put a focus on getting that same day permit into the system and also starting to think about hey, can we take a digital submission here?

Um at that point in April, we dropped down to just over 50 days.

And by May, when we actually were able to get an intern on site, um, the intern started helping us go through the backlog.

And when we started going through the backlogs, we started clearing things out, and days dropped dramatically.

So we dropped to about 41 days on average in May.

In June, we had a little bit of a spike, but we were also going through staffing changes then as well.

So we were onboarding the new plans examiner, and what we saw throughout the summer, May, June, July, we were heavily pushing those revisions.

We were following up on our communications and we were getting the permits in the same day.

And so by August, we've had you know four months of really implementing that.

And then in September, we see a dramatic drop again to below about 25 days is now what we were seeing.

And then October, um, we had another drop.

And you can see by December, we had only six days on the per the permits that we were issuing from the time we had they walked in the door until the day that we issue them.

Now, there's a lot of variables in there with the projects.

So we may have only issued, let's say 15 or 20 permits in December.

So if they were simple things, they may have gone through the process more quickly.

But as an average, overall, there is a dramatic decline in that time.

And so our goal right now is to maintain this until we get to our new stuff, which I'm going to share with you kind of the next steps.

So can you or your team just clarify for the commission the seasonality of the permitting?

Because that also has an influence here as far as when you get the most permits and that.

Yeah.

Um I'd be having the most application.

Kirsten, if you want to kind of take that, because you sure.

I I mean, I think on the building department side, they're constantly seeing permits coming in, but there is a seasonality to construction.

And so once you get some major projects actually underway, and you're having a lot of inspections going on towards your coming into winter.

Um, but of course, people it seems like everybody's kind of chilling out by the time they're hitting the holidays, and then they remember all of a sudden the next year will happen, and we get a spike again in January.

And I will say I have gone back and we've looked at 24, 23, also at these statistics, and that seasonality is reflected annually.

So we see those spikes here and there.

And also you're looking at seasons when there's a lot more vacations and people have time out of the office, and so that will affect the timeliness of some of that.

So our next major step here is to remove our system from a paper-based system and go online, which we have been working the whole last year to fix our digital environment so that we are ready to do this online permitting.

Um, so one of the first things will be that there will be a portal and there will be an online place for applicants to go.

They can submit their applications, which means we'll get more complete applications than we currently do.

Because right now, if I just fill it out on paper, I can submit whatever I have, and then we have to review it and determine does this have everything we need to process this permit?

So this will reduce our review time, but also make sure that the applicants are getting us everything they need up front, and it'll be clear to them what they need to submit.

Um, at the same time that they're submitting the application, they will also be able to upload their digital plans.

So this will save them from having to come down to our office.

Now we will still accept paper plans and paper submissions, but the applications will all be online so that we will make sure that that is complete.

Once we have everything accepted, it will enter into our electronic plan review, which will mean that there's no more versioning of that paper copy that has to go from Kirsten's desk to Chris's desk, and they can't review the same thing at the same time.

Now everyone will have access to the plans on day one.

So if they can get to it faster than someone else, it'll get reviewed.

Um, another big milestone for us will be the acceptance of online payments because right now we either accept cash or check, and in some cases, we can accept credit cards.

Um, but you I think at this time you either have to call in or you have to be here and we process it.

Um, so this will be a huge convenience for our applicants, and it will make things easier for our staff as well.

Um, and then part of that online permitting and the portal overall will be that there's real-time permitting tracking.

So applicants will be able to open up, they'll see their permit and they will see where it is in the process and who has made comments on it, and can they start working on those changes?

Um, we are very near launching this, so we fully anticipate that in quarter two, so next month, um, we will start accepting zoning permits and site plan applications online.

We're not rolling out everything in one go.

Um throughout the summer, we will start issuing some of our simpler permits.

These are vendor certificates and licensing.

Um, and then by quarter three, we should be fully integrated and accepting our building and zoning permits online and doing full digital review.

One of the other significant improvements, and this one is slight maybe slightly less transparent than the process itself, but we have used a honor-based permitting fee collection system where the applicant self states the value of their project.

And so we did inconsistent valuations on that, and that is what our permit fees are based on.

Um we might see one dollar amount and news stories about how much of an investment this is, but then on the permit, it says a different amount so that that permit fee is lower.

Um we have just verified to our the best of our ability when when those come in.

Um, our solution to this is to move to a hybrid fee structure.

We will still use the ICC cost standards, um, but it will actually be calculated when the applications are brought in, and it'll be based on the square footage and the class of the construction that is being permitted.

So this should remove some ambiguity for us as well as our applicants, it'll be easier for them to know how much is this permit going to cost me because it'll calculate it for them up front.

Um, also as part of this, we will be implementing it.

It has always been something that we could do, but while our system was not significantly efficient and we were we felt like we were contributing to delays, we had removed the revision um fees.

So it is traditional that after the second set of revisions that an applicant brings to us with a permit, that I would say probably 95% of communities will charge them an additional plan review fee.

We had been waiving those for the last several years.

Um, and it's time to bring those back because we have had some projects that have gone through five to eight sets of revisions, um, and that's a lot of time on our team, but it's also a delay to the projects because the more revisions they have to go through, it just takes longer and they can't get the construction started.

So putting some of that back on the applicants and making sure they're using architects and engineers that are doing their jobs to make sure this meets code.

Um, one of the other things, and I did share with you all several weeks ago about the housing policy projects that we are working on.

One of the key focuses for PND is increasing our housing supply and doing what we can to as the city to really support the development of housing in this community.

And so a couple of the things that we are working on that do impact permitting is we are working through the concept and how we make this work to have pre-approved housing plans.

That would be for up to three unit buildings.

But making it easier to build a home here in Dayton.

Some of the other things are simplifying residential repair permits, making it very clear to applicants of what we need to do.

And so to help support that, we will be doing what we can to streamline workflows, provide um FAQs, walkthroughs.

We're working on a website.

But we will be actively doing builder outreach initiatives.

So the Dern network, the Habitat for Humanity, County Corps, all of those partners that we work with.

We want to make sure they understand what that permitting process looks like and how we can help them get through that as quickly as possible.

And then also again aligning with all the other work on the housing policy.

Something else that I think is really key in this conversation is the support of our small business community.

With redevelopment, we have so much existing building infrastructure.

The adaptive reuse improvement.

So whether it's converting a church to a community gathering space or an arts teaching facility, all of those things have special nuances and challenges that those small businesses face.

And so anything we can do to make faster occupancy, we have to follow the Ohio building code.

But the more we can facilitate our applicants understanding that and give them pathways to a quicker resolution.

We want to try to find that because it is clear that it is particularly burdensome to a small business that is trying to get open and operating because you can't pay for building improvements if you can't generate revenue from your business.

So we want to do our part to make sure that that process is clearer and simpler.

We are actively working on the adapt Dayton project, which is primarily zoning, but I think we have the opportunity to look at our other codes as well to make sure they are in alignment with the policy and direction that we have to build faster, be more business friendly, be more home builder friendly because we need these things to happen here in Dayton.

We are working on that housing policy coordination.

And then continuing although we have been able to make a dramatic shift, we're not done with those process improvements.

So anywhere we can, we're going to continue working on that.

And we now have better performance tracking options with our reporting.

And so I look forward to being able to provide to the city manager and to you all regular monthly updates on how we are going forward with this.

So once we get that digital plan review in place, we'll see.

We'll see how this changes our numbers.

And then we'll continue adjusting as needed.

So with that, um I thank you all.

And it's kind of kind of exciting.

And it I think Commissioner Fairchild, you said this stuff keeps you up at night, but really, but it this is what keeps us up at night, is um making sure that we're doing our job to really make sure that development is happening at the speed it needs to here in the city.

Thank you.

I think Folly and I know a number of these time that we want to rush during the process because it is something that keeps up in mind that we have this very exciting.

This is something that keeps us in mind that we have signed about this very exciting.

It is very exciting.

That kind of is like kudos to you and the entire staff of uh the work that you've been able to do from the phone call.

Oh, that's fun.

Um, this is excellent work.

Um definitely sharing the excitement.

Um it absolutely is excited.

Um really quick.

Um, so it sounds like 60 days was kind of our average um in 2025.

Yeah, I believe I read that correctly in terms of you know um application to like issuing.

Okay.

Um I really want to understand, you know, what we anticipate when the full system is on online, um what we imagine that new window will be.

So what I want to say is the 60 plus days was our average in early January over the year.

I am not sure.

I didn't actually calculate an annual average that I have with me.

I know I did check it, but our goal would be that on the commercial permits, which is what those numbers reflected, is that the time from acceptance of a permit to the date is issued, the average should be under 30 days.

Okay, but our target is to issue permits much faster than that because not every permit is going to have a 30-day window.

Because there is a wide variety of things that fall in there.

So I believe, and I will look to Scott on this.

I think we are supposed to be under 30 days for that.

We can talk about this KPIs too with the sizes of the plans.

Yes, what we'd like to do is get it under 20 days, and it depends on the complexity of the project.

You know, your larger scale projects uh those might take a little bit longer.

Um more for that top end 20 days, but it all depends on um our comments that we send back to the architects and engineers and wait for them to respond back to us.

If they respond back to us in a timely manner, we should be able to get it down to 20 days.

Thank you for that clarity.

And I'd love to just continue to track that so we can really be able to say, you know, we can cut right that wait time by X number of days.

So we'd love to keep track of that.

Um I I know we are transitioning uh to a whole new ERP system, right?

So this uh digital process, which I think is going to really make a lot of folks um happy, right, including us.

Uh I just want to understand how how it integrates with the new ERP system, uh, you know, given that that's coming online too, or will it so right now they are um finalizing so we have our main ERP that has the the team has collected responses to evaluated, they've narrowed it down to the top two, they're in demonstration, or they're now in follow-up.

They've done demos now, they're in and and follow-up to select the provider, but there are also components that are gonna come alongside it.

And one of those components is permanent licensing, and right now we're finalizing the uh the actual work process scope because we have to make sure we have that nailed down to include all of these improvements and the vision here.

So when we go out with that RFP, we'll get respondents too.

So that's coming that that is hopeful to be done, you know, here let out soon, and then have the selection by the end of the year so that it is rolling alongside the main ERP.

Okay.

And if I can add to that a little bit, just some of the software names you've seen so far.

So we use Excel.

We are integrating e-plan software to take in those digital plans, and that is that's what we have procured now.

So we have everything in place.

We don't need to do the RFP in order to make this transition happen.

This is a first phase, and the ERP can further improve because you might be more integrated with the rest of the city systems at that point.

That excuse it, thanks, City Manager.

Um very brief uh comments.

Um clearly, right?

I think revisions have been a pain point.

And I'm I don't want to assume this, but it almost sounds like we may see less revisions happening, uh, given that the communication will improve.

And that's that's something I'd love to really understand moving forward as well.

Just, you know, all revisions happening at the same frequency.

Um, you know, versus our paper process formally, right?

Um lastly, the pre-approved housing uh the point about you know, uh trying to uh develop those plans.

Uh that that is also very exciting, and I just want to understand you know, timeline when when should we expect to hear more about that?

So uh that is part of both this permitting improvement and the housing policy implementation.

I believe we we have done a little trial pilot with a few plans that were approved at the state level to see what that would look like.

How would we get those through our process and then where do those live?

So I think we did a set of three.

Yeah, there were two house builds.

Um the it was the planning division that led that.

And what they did was they took um they took a set of plans that were available from the Ohio Housing Network, um, and they they submitted them through the regular plan review process with some communication to us.

Um, and when those get fully approved, revisions were spared, I'm sorry, comments were sent back.

We needed some additional information.

They're making some revisions, which takes a little longer when you're not an actual applicant with a site to build right now.

They're they're modifying those plans.

So those two plans are narrow lot plans to do in-fill housing within the city, and they would live at the building department as a possible selection for people you know, those plans.

We want to further improve that by saying, hey, you got a set of plans.

How much does it cost to build that house?

We need a we need to have um a materials list so that people can price out the cost of those homes that finishes kind of so you know, additional options, and then we're also that's one way to make housing easier to build.

There are many other ways, like pre-um certified lots that the city owns, whether you're certifying them or just at least making transparent exactly what it would take to build on that lot.

Are there your services there already?

Do you have to pay the tap fees there?

Um, you know, what other environmental hazards have we tested for?

And then also just a simple transparency how-to guide from start to finish on I see an empty lot there.

What does it take to get through construction?

What are the common things that happen during construction?

And how do I put those pieces together or hire a developer to do that for?

Okay.

Commissioner, if I can add as well, you know, with regards to the um reduce reduction and um resubmissions, right?

Revision.

One of the things that we're also very hopeful to see is um a higher so one having a fee come alongside that will help drive revisions down.

But one of the things that we recognize, and again, oh, because of our processes and because it's taking so long that I uh the applicants were rushing to get into the queue.

So they may not have spent as much time getting high quality plans in, which then put the onus on some of our team to you know, identify those deficiencies, give them a revision because they were just trying to get down the path of getting the permit.

You know, when it's taking two and three months to get a permit, there are workarounds that our applicants are absolutely doing because they have deadlines and and expectations to meet, right?

So we owned that um and and and recognize that that's contributing, and we're also hoping that because we're getting back to a more normal processing um productive processing timeline that then our applicants will not feel the pressure to get into the queue.

They'll spend a little bit more, be able to spend a little bit more time making sure they have high quality plans, which will also improve our whole pipeline for permit approval.

Well, yeah, and I just want to congratulate all of us uh because this is this is much needed.

I heard a lot about this over the last 12 months.

Um I'm just uh grateful uh that this work is getting done and appreciate everyone's thoughtfulness in terms of uh these much needed updates.

So thanks, city manager, thank you, Sad.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Um I have a few questions and gives her apologies.

She had to another commitment she had to step up for.

Um Commissioner Beckham's question.

Is there an industry standard in terms of permitting timelines?

Will we be within that?

Yeah, the 20 days gets us within that.

Great.

And how are we doing in January and February of 26?

Because you know, if I understood the conversation around the seasonal nature of this work, December looked really great, but part of that was impacted with seasonality.

Um we are we are still holding the line under that 20 days right now.

There are some fluctuation.

We've had some staffing turnovers again, and we we had one of our consultants late last year that we haven't fully replaced yet.

So again, we are gonna see fluctuations, but overall, we have we are much lower in terms of the number of days um than we had been this time last year.

Do we have any resources for people?

I don't know, term you might use, but I would call them dreamers.

So I mean, you have a set of professionals who come in and know how to submit and you know they know what's expected, but then you also have a group of people who small business owners who come in about what they want to do, may not be realistic, maybe with a little bit of help.

Do we have some tools to help them?

So we've got we've got two, there's two things that are going to improve that side of things.

We've we have uh second residential plans examiner who is now filling a position.

So that's good on the residential side of like the nest bolts of construction.

Um we are also maybe not mentioned, and we've got we've got building plans examiners, zoning is also stuck to the side of building, and we're in the one-stop center.

We're pretty good at communicating with people who don't know what they're doing and trying to put the pieces together with them.

So we went from basically one and a half full-time staff to almost we are about to have four full-time staff members, including myself.

Um that means more upfront counter face-to-face discussions, and it also means we have the ability now to build out the website that um Emily was talking about, which is called the Plan and Build Guide Book, so that you can say, I want to paint a mural somewhere.

What are my steps?

I want to put a sign up.

What are my steps?

I want every project you can think of.

There's no reason why we shouldn't have a transparent step-by-step process to get from here to there.

So you're not guessing and too nervous to interact with us, so that you just go ahead and do the thing, and then now we have this added issue.

Um, so we're trying to improve people's comfort level working with us through that process.

Great.

And the additional part of that is what I mentioned in terms of the workshops, like the permitting workshops and doing work with our partner organizations who can help like reach out to the people who maybe are less likely to come forward and say, you know, I really am thinking about making some improvements to my home, but I don't know how to do that.

Like I'm not a professional architect.

I don't know what I need to do.

This is for the people that this is gonna be a one-off or that small business owner that says, I really love this building in my neighborhood, and I would love to be able to put a coffee shop in here or something like that.

Like that's the only time in their life where they're gonna have to go through this process.

And so being able to provide both people that they can come talk to as well as a website that helps walk them through that process, kind of demystifies it, but then we're also gonna be working with our partners to make sure that the outreach is happening on a person-to-person basis.

Yeah, it's real helpful.

And as you're talking, I was realizing just the wide breadth of people who need a permit for something, right?

And homeowner who wants to make an improvement at their house is one, you know, an experienced person, person wants to start a small business.

I was curious if how our partnership is with some of the you know the business ecosystem we have, the entrepreneur center, the um think of some of the other ones out, the West Dayton Incubator, most of those.

And we're catching kind of entry-level business folks.

Sure.

And it's it's very strong because the people that are doing that outreach also sit in PD.

And the people sitting up here, we meet regularly weekly.

Um we talk through these things.

And and so we're we're kind of touching that issue from multiple perspectives.

Um, whether it's the community engagement aspect of it or the economic development side of things, we're we're we're helping these businesses and homeowners from that front end through the permit.

Yeah, and the hub has hosted some how-to permitting sessions, and so we come and speak at those things.

Um, and you get there are it's it's crazy the depth of things and the range of things that people have on their minds that we get into that you it's helpful feedback for us to figure out where people are mystified.

Um, and I really think uh for me, this this transition from paper to digital is we needed the staff in order to, we can't run the system and build the system at the same time, it's really tough.

Got the staff, got the tools.

Um, when we transfer to this electronic system, which is actually up right now, I'm just not we're just testing.

Um you will be as a small business owner able to see where your permits act rather than having to rely on your professional to be the go-between between the city and you.

So you may be getting calls from a small business owner who's saying, I don't know what's going on with this project.

And the answer might really be in their architect's lap, and that architect might have 10, 20 projects going at the same time, and they can't really manage all that communication with them.

Um, and they can call us up too, and we can say, we actually delivered comments to that a long time ago.

Did you your architect is going to need to respond to that?

You kind of need to poke them.

Um, so while we also have our our issues, just the basics of communication and transparency into the same system, everyone knows what's going on at the same time, is so big for us, and no one's more excited than we are to not get those phone calls and to be able to have like a real working system for people.

Yeah, but I think the developers will be really happy with that too.

Might be happy.

I don't know.

Yeah, you know, I was telling you that I was a month ago, I was at the chamber, and there was a developer, and our business like we spent the most time on is like, and then I have to call and I have and then I have to get to this person and then that person and is you know, yeah, streaming like they can go on and see where it's at and then act without having to it's gonna help you, but it's gonna help them a lot too.

Absolutely.

And many of us have worked in other jurisdictions and know what things could be like and want those things for us here in Dayton.

We're we're on Teen Dayton.

So it's it's great that we're making this progress.

And I think in some ways we do get the ability at the very least.

I mean, it's it feels like we we could have done some of these things in the past, but now we get the opportunity to leapfrog into AI and leapfrog into the ERP system.

So we we are going to catch up very quickly.

Um I was curious given the um changes that are going to take on the on the fee.

Um you know, determining the fee, I guess, calculation.

Have we back tested that?

Do we know kind of how many people this is going to impact and to what kind of magnitude we have examined it, we have done some best practices, like we definitely spent time looking at where do we sit in the Ohio region, where do we sit kind of in pure city size in terms of what our fees are in comparison to others.

So we we've done that work and we we sit at a very affordable, like we're like in the top three communities of our size, like we have low fees in relationship to that.

Um, to talk about specifically how it's going to impact one of the things that we are looking at the scalable kind of tiered system for the fee structures.

So if you have a big, you know, multi-hundred million dollar project, that is that is dealt with in one way.

But when you have a small business or you have an individual homeowner who has to make repairs because they have violations to the property maintenance code, there are different nuances to that.

So our fee structure already reflects some flexibility in there, but we will be continuing to work and refine that so that it is as equitable as we can make it.

So that again, we don't want to penalize a small business and make it really expensive to get a permit because we want them to get the permit.

We want that safety stuff, we want to do the inspections, we want to make sure that that development is done correctly.

Um, but I don't want to make it so expensive that that's not possible.

So there'll be some adjustments that we're making.

Um they're already kind of baked into the the process, but by right sizing that process that we're calculating that fee up front, we will know the applicants will know up front what it's going to cost them to get through the project.

And the impact won't be anything extraordinary, it'll be what they're already dealing with in other jurisdictions because of the way that we are mirroring the standards.

No, my question wasn't so much our B structured, because I think you know, a couple of years ago I remember we adjusted that and gotten more in line with market.

And so that's not my question.

My question is having been an honor system, there's probably some people who have gotten used to an honor system that is their honor system as we impact with uh calculated amount.

I'm just curious how big that gap is, how much it's going to impact someone who honor system will be different than this, you know, and how big that gap is.

So are people going to be like, oh yeah, no, didn't clean up shop, and that now it's going to be more expensive for us and rightfully so, right?

But I'm just kind of have that data right now, and we that's something that we will look at and we will certainly socialize and process as we continue to go back to our customers.

Great.

I appreciate it.

I mean, there's gonna be some heart room for some folks, but the more they know it's coming, the better for all of us, and um I was curious around the plan examiners.

I understand the FTE and the capacity's gotten there.

Does the is the plan examiner?

Is there just one in just trying to think of the capacity and the redundancy there around the plan examiner?

Pat, do you want to talk about it?

Yeah, um right now we have three plans examiners in-house.

Okay.

Um, and then we contract with an outside agency.

Their one plans examiner that was working for us primarily.

He was based out of Cincinnati.

He recently took a job with uh a city city of Westerville.

And so now uh we're setting up where we're gonna be FedExing our plans to them, uh, and they're gonna distribute their plans to more plan reviewers in their system that are not in this area.

Once we get electronic review, then we'll be able to blast it out to a number of people that are not in this area, and they'll be able to do the review for us.

So we'll have more access to additional plan reviewers.

The mayor gave me a couple of questions before you left.

That was one asking around the capacity of the plans examiners, and then um if I understood you right, you said paper would still be accepted.

So it's oh yes, correct.

And then one last thing, as we get all these uh upgrades, changes made.

Where do we think the choice the choke point will be going forward?

Um, I think the the next improvement that you know, we so we have done a lot more, given the capacity, we've done a lot more pre-application meetings with the business owner and the design professional involved.

Um, that's helped.

We'll be able to do more of that.

Um, we are bifurcating the system a little bit to try to model it after other jurisdictions where you might be in a different city where they don't have a building department.

And so you submit civil drawings to the zoning department who distributes to water, civil engineering, fire, and then you'll submit building plans to your county.

Um, we might as well manage our plan systems that way too, so that you're focused on the building with the building department.

There's a manager of those plans.

Um, and then same thing over here, zoning can manage your civil site plans.

So that's something that we want to do because we don't want to put the onus on the applicant to check in for their own progress.

We want to say, I haven't heard from you in a while, or you know, we received a package set of comments.

Here they are for you.

Um, and by the way, do you need anything?

So really we what we're gaining is the capacity to have the communications with people we've always really wanted to be able to have.

Um, I think that's gonna help.

Uh choke point line.

I think this modernization is addressing the majority of the choke points that we have.

You know, again, there's gonna be fluctuations because you know, for instance, back in the day when Premier was building this big new tower, you know, that was a lot of capacity that was sucked out and whatnot, but we've now got these outside contracting things.

So the idea is for us to level out as much as possible.

And I think that this work has addressed the majority of the choke points that I have been dealing with, you know, since you know, for 30 years.

I mean, as I've done development work, right?

You know, and I think one of the other things that um will help with the choke points is after your second revision, we're gonna require you to come in as the building owner and architect to sit down and talk with us about what the correction items are so that you don't submit five or six revisions.

We sit down and have a meeting with you face to face and go over what our concerns are, what our comments are, so that you can address them one last time and get hopefully capture everything.

And so then that eliminates future revisions and hopefully will speed up that revision choke point of you know five or six revisions.

These revisions not only improve our communication with applicants, they will improve communications between property owner, building owner, and applicants, because a lot of times there were gaps there.

Sure.

Sometimes intentional, right?

So I think that that this is this is just stellar work.

Um I want to thank the staff for um the great work and for you know continuing to persevere uh and and deal with all of my you know challenges uh with regards to um you know correcting and and really again, commissioners, we will continue to work with our um frequent customers and those clients so that we are are they come are coming along with us and they know you know all of these improvements that we are making.

And you know, I've already received positive comments about you know experiences from the last quarter.

So I'm really excited about this.

Great.

Well, I'll just echo commissioners' thanks, gratitude for the hard work for Team Dayton, but also Kirsten, Emily, Scott.

Thank you for your work.

City manager, thank you for your leadership.

Commissioner, any other comments or thoughts?

I don't have any.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Well, I think that completes our side of things.

City mayor, can I turn it back to you?

Yep, thank you.

We're all done.

Thank you.