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The city of Bozeman’s Building Department is getting a little more customer friendly. (We are not customers! We are taxpayers. A customer relationship is a voluntary one. Customers choose to make their purchases as they see fit, but not with government. Government is a coercive relationship. One must get a building permit only from government, there are no other choices.)
City Manager Chris Kukulski said this week that the department is now open during lunchtime and will soon have software to allow people to check the status of building permits online. He said the department will also allow people to schedule inspections before or after business hours upon request. (This is what constitutes being "customer friendly?" No streamlining of procedures? No relaxing of requirements? No improvements in workflow? So in other words, the onerous processes imposed by the city are exactly the same, we just have more access to it. Amazing.)
Previously, the department was closed from noon to 1 p.m. Now, it’s open Mondays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Chief Building Official Bob Risk said the city will install a computer program in a month or so that will allow people to check the status of building permits online.
He said contractors will be given a pin number, and with a click of a mouse they’ll be able to see whether they passed an inspection and what went wrong. (*Sigh* It must be wonderful to be able to access that much more easily how the government is preventing you from proceeding on your building project.)
This fall, Risk said the city hopes to have additional computer systems that allow inspectors to upload their inspection results directly from the field. (Which will be nice for inspectors, I suppose. But how is this "customer friendly? And by the way, the private sector has had remote connection capabilities for decades.)
The typical turnaround time for a request for a building permit is about three weeks, Risk said. (This is a different topic. The "customer friendly" aspects touted earlier have to do with existing permits, not the issuance of new permits. But can you imagine? All you want to do is get the piece of paper that says you can start building. 30 seconds to type in the builder info and where the project is. Another 13 seconds for the laser printer to print it out. Where is the rest of the three weeks being spent?) The city had been so busy it was sending out some inspections to a hired third party. (Swerving into yet another topic, we find out the inspectors have been very busy. But the two changes mentioned above do not address this problem.)
The city of Bozeman’s Building Department is getting a little more customer friendly. (We are not customers! We are taxpayers. A customer relationship is a voluntary one. Customers choose to make their purchases as they see fit, but not with government. Government is a coercive relationship. One must get a building permit only from government, there are no other choices.)
City Manager Chris Kukulski said this week that the department is now open during lunchtime and will soon have software to allow people to check the status of building permits online. He said the department will also allow people to schedule inspections before or after business hours upon request. (This is what constitutes being "customer friendly?" No streamlining of procedures? No relaxing of requirements? No improvements in workflow? So in other words, the onerous processes imposed by the city are exactly the same, we just have more access to it. Amazing.)
Previously, the department was closed from noon to 1 p.m. Now, it’s open Mondays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Chief Building Official Bob Risk said the city will install a computer program in a month or so that will allow people to check the status of building permits online.
He said contractors will be given a pin number, and with a click of a mouse they’ll be able to see whether they passed an inspection and what went wrong. (*Sigh* It must be wonderful to be able to access that much more easily how the government is preventing you from proceeding on your building project.)
This fall, Risk said the city hopes to have additional computer systems that allow inspectors to upload their inspection results directly from the field. (Which will be nice for inspectors, I suppose. But how is this "customer friendly? And by the way, the private sector has had remote connection capabilities for decades.)
The typical turnaround time for a request for a building permit is about three weeks, Risk said. (This is a different topic. The "customer friendly" aspects touted earlier have to do with existing permits, not the issuance of new permits. But can you imagine? All you want to do is get the piece of paper that says you can start building. 30 seconds to type in the builder info and where the project is. Another 13 seconds for the laser printer to print it out. Where is the rest of the three weeks being spent?) The city had been so busy it was sending out some inspections to a hired third party. (Swerving into yet another topic, we find out the inspectors have been very busy. But the two changes mentioned above do not address this problem.)
“But we’re kind of caught back up now,” Risk said.
From April to June, the city issued 362 permits for building projects valued at $6.6 million. Last year during the same time, the city issued 1,018 permits for projects valued at $7.9 million. (But the inspectors are busy, with only a third of last year's workload.)
Amanda Ricker can be reached at aricker@dailychron icle.com or 582-2628. She is on Twitter at @amandaricker.
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