Administration cites automation and dashboards as fixes; council presses on staffing gaps for electrical plan review

In response to developer concerns and council questioning at the Feb. 10 hearing, Justin Williams outlined the technical steps the city has taken to stabilize the Accela permitting system and the operational next steps the department plans to take.

Williams said the team has deployed over 30 targeted technical and workflow improvements since October, including automated reviewer assignments, gating rules to prevent problematic amendments, improved intake forms to reduce front‑door errors, and a systemic cleanup of stale records. He testified those changes contributed to a sharp reduction in permits awaiting city action and to a fall in median issuance time for residential permits from 12 days to 3 days. Williams also said about 20% of permits are now auto‑issued, "which represents 1,300 permits that are not backlogged waiting on human review." (Justin Williams, Director)

Councilmembers asked for more public transparency: a dashboard that shows step‑by‑step review times and which reviewer is assigned to each application, and a message board so applicants can communicate directly with assigned reviewers. Williams said the message board is being built in‑house and is in beta testing with a spring target, and that the department is working with the Office of Performance Innovation on integration.

Staffing gaps surfaced repeatedly: housing staff said interviews were underway for one electrical and one architectural reviewer and that the department is pursuing a short‑term contract to provide temporary engineering review capacity while hiring continues. Vice Chair Odette Ramos and others said a single electrical reviewer is insufficient and asked for firm staffing counts in the FY27 budget submission. Administration agreed to include staffing requests and estimates in follow‑up materials to the committee.

The hearing closed with commitments to an advisory group and to provide follow‑up numbers and timelines. Committee members said they will continue oversight until they see consistent user experience across the system that matches the administrations improved metrics.