By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
Make it simple. That’s the plan for a Snohomish County Economic Development Council committee that’s trying to develop one streamlined process for making land-use permit decisions countywide.
The group is working on sort of a “how-to” guide for cities interested in overhauling their permitting processes, said Diana Dollar, the EDC’s public policy analyst. In time, the hope is for each jurisdiction to have the same application process and the same attitude – helping developers come into compliance with codes, rather than punishing them if they fail.
“How can we work with you to make your projects complete – that’s the mentality,” Dollar said. “That doesn’t mean the codes go away.”
But if the long-term goal is to standardize the process across the county, the short-term goal is to get just two cities to adopt a model process, which the committee is working on and hopes to complete by November.
Developers routinely complain about how permits are handled. “That’s what we hear,” Dollar said. “Applications go into this black hole and they disappear for months.”
The process is “painful, to say the least,” said Doug Burns, the director of facilities and environmental health and safety at ICOS Corp. in Bothell. He’s a co-chairman of the committee working on the EDC’s streamlining proposal.
A decade ago, when he was in another job, he had permits hung up at the Snohomish County planning office for a few weeks short of a year, he said. Things are better now, but it’s still slow. His sense is that “the municipalities don’t realize what they’re doing by not responding to a fairly significant request for a permit.”
Time is money, Burns said. A delayed permit can cost a company millions if it means a missed contract deadline.
Officials at the Boeing Co. pointedly said last year that regulatory reform was one of three areas that must be addressed – along with transportation and technology education – if the company is to continue in business around Puget Sound.
Insiders say company officials still are irked at the time and money they had to spend a decade ago to get permits to expand the Everett factory so that 777s could be built here.
Against that background, “everybody and their brother is now talking permit streamlining,” Dollar said.
Several cities, including Everett, have started streamlining their own processes, Dollar said. Both the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties and the Snohomish County Labor Council are working on permitting proposals. The EDC is trying to work with those groups to avoid duplicating efforts, she said.
The development council’s effort is aimed at the process. It would not change any environmental or safety standards, Dollar said, although the group does plan to review city development regulations to look for areas where separate ordinances conflict or overlap.
The goal is to help the planning departments for Snohomish County and the cities establish one-stop permitting centers, Dollar said, from how best to lay out the front counters of permit offices, to ways cities can cross-train employees so that workers can answer a wide range of questions.
Attitude is a big part of it, Dollar said – “not viewing business as the enemy, but as a customer.”
The group is working toward a permit system that would help planning staffs track where an application is at in the process. That way, if a business owner calls to ask about an application, staffers will be able to tell the caller what’s going on and how long it will take to get it completed.
Along with speeding the process for businesses, smoothing out the process should make things easier for planning staffs, Dollar said
She said she thinks the idea of regulatory reform will gain broader acceptance now that the economy is bad and more people are worried about jobs. Local governments are “much more open to looking at ways to work with the business community, and this is one of the ways they can do that.”
The business community, in turn, must be willing to work with local government, Burns said. That means fine-tuning permit applications so that they’re not submitting “unreadable drawings or ridiculous specs.”
Some companies feel strongly enough about it that they’re willing to help cities pay for changing their processes, Dollar said.
“How can we work with them to make it happen?” she said. “If cost is a barrier – let’s not make it a barrier.”
You can call Herald Writer Bryan Corliss at 425-339-3454
or send e-mail to corliss@heraldnet.com.
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