Homeowners, contractors and developers can look forward to a simpler path to getting Bakersfield building permits thanks to a new \u201cone-stop shop\u201d that was the subject of a small celebration Friday morning downtown.<\/p>\n
The new Development Permit Center brings together personnel from several city departments, and at least four different addresses, to a single location at the northwest corner of Chester Avenue and 17th Street.<\/p>\n
Instead of \u201cbouncing back and forth\u201d to different offices, people can now get questions answered on the spot and take care of permitting needs faster, Development Services Director Phil Burns told reporters.<\/p>\n
A primary improvement is better collaboration and communication among city departments that, in the past, may have sent away frustrated customers, Assistant City Manager Gary Hallen added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Team We,\u2019 and no longer \u2018Team Them,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Almost a year and a half in the making, the center\u2019s opening follows other efforts the city has made in recent times to streamline the services it provides individuals looking for permission to undertake projects as simple as electrical work to installation of rooftop solar or even complex construction jobs.<\/p>\n
Feedback so far has focused on physical changes at the building that houses the center, where visitors now have to be buzzed in before entering what used to be a more easily accessible permitting department, Burns said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s change,\u201d Burns said, noting not everyone has been happy with the new setup. He pointed to the overlooked benefit of staff who have moved to the building\u2019s ground floor instead of working as far up as the third-floor, which sometimes delayed service. He said data comparing response times is not yet available.<\/p>\n
Also new at the center are two small conference rooms where staff can meet individually with architects and contractors to go over building plans.<\/p>\n
Another adjustment that came with the consolidation is that employees have been reassigned from a division of the city\u2019s Public Works Department that carries out construction inspections on storm drains and other right-of-way matters. Two dozen such employees now work at the new center housing 130 city employees.<\/p>\n
Representatives of the Bakersfield Fire Department will be stationed at the new center on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help customers gain approval of their plans. Burns said people who need the department to sign off on projects are being told when is the best time to come in.<\/p>\n
Not available yet but coming soon is a supervisor who will guide customers through the complexities of permitting. The Bakersfield City Council recently approved the position, Burns said, but it has not been formally filled.<\/p>\n
When the one-stop center was first proposed, developers familiar with the plan expressed a mix of reactions. There was wide support for introducing new efficiencies, but some said they didn\u2019t see how moving people to a single building would change much. But others agreed face-to-face communication among departments would help solve problems that take too long by email.<\/p>\n
Last spring the city made a separate but related change intended to speed up permitting by instituting artificial intelligence. A third-party service called Symbium reviews relatively simple permit applications, checking for errors and asking relevant questions before issuing approvals within hours, or even minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost instantaneous,\u201d city spokesman Joe Conroy said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeowners, contractors and developers can look forward to a simpler path to getting Bakersfield building permits thanks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,73543,73542],"class_list":{"0":"post-148061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news","11":"tag-building-plans","12":"tag-phil-burns"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}