Utility permitting in Cape Coral may get a tad more expensive but city officials say if you pay more, it\u2019s going to be on you.<\/p>\n
Cape Coral City Council said Wednesday they would like to look further at a proposed administration fee for utilities permitting resubmissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The presentation resulted in one proposal that needs council direction \u2014 to add language to implement an administrative fee for each resubmission after the first of $20.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Laurie Lehmann said if the contractor is \u201cscrewing up on an application, we need to examine what the actual cost is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s face it, it\u2019s a pain when you have to go through multiple reviews because of a contractor error. I think it needs to be covered,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn said the permitting is for a property that currently does not have water or sewer as the city expands to utility service area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a service that the water and sewer fund is providing customers. We want to make sure you get connected \u2014 abandon the septic and connect appropriately,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are providing a service to our future customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ilczyszyn said some of the issues for resubmission is leaving out the owl affidavit, or a typo in the STRAP number. He said they are getting rid of the ability to make those areas cause a delay in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also need to make sure the system doesn\u2019t allow unnecessary waste. Since we have made the system fool proof it doesn\u2019t make sense for water and sewer ratepayers to subsidize. We need to make sure our system is tight. Now if they make a mistake, it is a bona fide issue on their end,\u201d Ilczyszyn said.<\/p>\n
He said the $20 may not be a full cost recovery fee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would have to come to council to make that implementable fee. We can look at the actual cost,\u201d Ilczyszyn said.<\/p>\n
The utilities permitting Kaizen presentation began with Team Lead Myri Del Leon sharing that the scope of the work was weeks of dedicated effort committed to make service faster, more accurate and consistent for residents and contractors.<\/p>\n
The event scope was to reduce the overall utility connection processing time by 25%, improve permit completion and closeout time by 25%, create a system to expose process stops to sustain and improve, create standard work and train office workers on the new processes and create a sustainment system to answer \u2014 are we improving.<\/p>\n
The first issue was to improve documentation accuracy, as there is no penalty for making errors, as well as submitting incomplete or incorrect affidavits.<\/p>\n
The solution is to eliminate the separate paper Wildlife Affidavit by incorporating it directly into the online permit applications, which will prevent common issues such as incorrect addresses, STRAP errors, and unsigned affidavits.<\/p>\n
A minor change was converting all user entries entered to capital letters, which reduces the need for staff to manually change for standardization.<\/p>\n
In order to address the issues with not having the correct STRAP number, or not submitting it at all, it is now required before an application is submitted.<\/p>\n
Within the next two weeks, ITS will implement STRAP validation in the online applications within the next two weeks to ensure they are valid.<\/p>\n
Avoidable delays were also addressed with the solution of consolidating two permit types \u2014 utility connection and septic abandonment \u2014 into one combined permit.<\/p>\n
In addition, it is now required that permit fees \u2014 meter installation fee and septic abandonment fee \u2014 be paid before the permit is reviewed. There is also an automatic calculation of fees based on the applicant\u2019s selections.<\/p>\n
The review steps are now standardized to provide real time information for employees in one dashboard in two hub cards, so staff no longer has to research, which increased the review time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the kind of changes that make changeable impacts,\u201d Councilmember Keith Long said.<\/p>\n