Honolulu residents whose building permit applications are not approved within a year would receive a 75% refund under a bill that passed first reading Wednesday during the last City Council meeting of the year.
Bill 58, introduced by Council member Andria Tupola, is just one of more than a dozen that she is considering to help streamline the permit application process and improve operations at the city’s troubled Department of Planning and Permitting, Tupola told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Currently, building permit applications are no longer valid after a year, but applicants are not informed that they have to go to the back of the line and pay a new round of fees, Tupola said.
To fix the backlog of permits at DPP, Tupola said, “We need to have this (reform proposals) on the docket every month. We have to change the law.” With new DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna on board, Tupola said, “Now is the time before we get entrenched. She’s a very optimistic person, a very collaborative person. Whatever I can do as a legislator, I’m going to do that.”
DPP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Star- Advertiser about Bill 58.
Tupola estimated the permit backlog on Oahu at 8,000 in August. “Now it’s 6,000 — 75% are residential,” she said. “We’re not talking about big commercial. We’re talking local people putting up a fence, putting in solar.”
She thinks DPP should divert solar permit applications into a separate category that can be handled through a solar app that could help homeowners expedite installations, thereby helping meet Hawaii’s energy goals.
Based on a June town hall meeting at Kapolei Hale regarding DPP and feedback she received, Tupola maintains that people whose permit applications expire after a year without notice run the gamut from big corporations to solar panel companies, architects and residents just trying to build a fence.
She suspects the majority are everyday Oahu residents trying to fix up their homes or make basic improvements, including former Gov. David Ige who told the Star-Advertiser that he has waited for months for a permit to move an interior wall “a foot” as part of the renovation of his home in Aiea.
Some people seeking building permits also have spent up to $2,000 to hire a DPP “special assignment inspector” to expedite the permit process, only to have their applications expire after a year — often without the homeowners’ knowledge.
Asked about the cost of typical fees that applicants have to pay again after a year, Tupola said, “The guys I’m dealing with, it’s in the thousands.”
Earlier this month, DPP’s Takeuchi Apuna told a Council committee that software had begun to partially screen applications and was being improved to expand items it can screen, freeing up DPP staff to handle more technical review work.
Takeuchi Apuna described near-term, midterm and long-term plans that include expanding automated review work, hiring additional staff and reengineering workflows that could include separating residential and commercial permit applications from the same system channel.
She said it takes on average 298 days to issue a building permit after receipt of an application. Some of that 10-month timetable is caused by applicant deficiencies or time an applicant takes to make corrections.
Of the 298 days, 175 on average are within a preliminary screening phase where software is now handling some of the workload. If successful, the automation should reduce the 175-day average time for this stage to under seven days, Takeuchi Apuna told the committee members.
DPP has 24 residential code examiners and two vacancies. In addition to adding six workers from screening, the agency aims to hire 15 additional staff and also has been using interns from Honolulu Community College. For commercial projects, DPP has 17 examiners and six vacant positions.
Throughout DPP, which does other things including land-use planning and regulation, there are 80 vacant positions.
