2024-04-08-minutes-public-works-study-session

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The clock starts when a government determines the application is complete and ends when it issues a final decision. The law says the 120-day deadline is for "time periods for local government actions;' but does not specify whether the 120 days should include or exclude "applicant time, which are the days when the application has been returned to the applicant for revisions or additional information. State law thus allows local governments to establish for themselves whether applicant time should be included or excluded from the 120-day period. The six audited governments (listed in the sidebar) have clearly stated in their city or county codes that applicant time is not counted toward their 120-day deadline. This audit analyzed six local governments' performance against the 120-day deadline for land use, civil and building permits Three broad categories of permits affect different phases of development projects. First, confirming the proposed project can be built on a specific piece of land. Second, preparing the land for building. Finally, ensuring that the proposed structures will be safe £or occupants. While each local government might use slightly different naming conventions, this report calls the three permit categories land use, civil and building. To understand how the six governments performed across the three permit categories, we reviewed their permit data from 2019 through 2022. Although the data each government collected varied, the data they supplied allowed us to assess broadly how they performed. Appendix B. contains a more detailed explanation of our analyses and data limitations. We found significant inaccuracies with the approval dates in Bellingham's land use permit data, so we applied a different method to judge whether it met the 120-day requirement. Instead of analyzing the full data set provided, we used a random sample of 25 of the city's land use permits. Specific details about the Bellingham data inaccuracies can be seen on page 53. All sic governments specify in their city or county codes that only government processing time is counted toward meeting the 120-day deadline. (See Appendix D for relevant passages from city and county codes.) However, only two - Snohomish County and Vancouver - could produce reports from their systems for dates when work was paused while staff waited for information or revisions from the applicant. The data reports from the other four governments showed only the dates they received an application and issued the final decision; in a few cases, we also received the date the government deemed the application complete. Therefore, their performance is probably better than their own data indicates. Unless otherwise specified, the analyses and exhibits in this chapter discuss the total time a government took to complete the permit, including both government processing time and applicant response time. To see how total time and hands-on government time differed, we performed a separate analysis on data provided by Snohomish County and Vancouver (see pages 19-21). Local governments included in this audit City of Bellingham City of Richland City of Shoreline City of Vancouver • Kittitas County • Snohomish County Growth Management Act - Audit Results ; 14