How many employees does DPP need to hire to address your staffing shortages? What about recruiting?

Yes, a major source of DPP’s problems are due to the lack of staff or capacity to sufficiently meet the level of services we provide to the public in a timely manner, particularly in the building permit process.

Specifically, the hiring of 15 engineers — five mechanical, five electrical and five building — will double the current number of 15 engineers, to meet the necessary capacity for code review of commercial projects. The current 15 engineering positions is the same number of engineers for the last 20 years, even though the number of permits and the complexity of projects and codes have increased over that period. This lack of capacity to perform commercial building permit reviews has been a major source of the permitting backlog. We issue approximately 15,000 building permits annually.

Similarly, in residential code review, we currently have 11 residential plan reviewers, and are looking to hire three more, and will need to ask for additional positions. Residential permits make up approximately 80% of our total permits.

We are developing a more robust recruiting program by engaging with community colleges, trade/tech schools, the universities, local professional associations, separating military members and law enforcement officers, and other jobs organizations, and are reformulating our position descriptions to better describe the good and interesting work that we do at DPP.

We are developing scripted milestones for promotions, and will offer various work schedule options when feasible for work/life balance.

It is difficult for us to compete with private industry when it comes to salaries. For our critical, hard-to-fill positions requiring specialized skills, we are requesting authority to recruit and hire above the minimum salary level.

The solar industry has criticized delays in granting permits for solar energy installations, which are needed to reach the state’s renewable energy goals. How are you addressing this problem?

With the understanding that energy projects are of important public benefit, we’ve been meeting and communicating with the solar industry to better understand their permitting challenges. It seemed that solar developers were unable to receive automatic residential PV permits due to a glitch in our POSSE permitting software. With the end of 2022 looming, we directed a team of staff to manually pull these permits out of the system for approval. For larger commercial solar projects, we work directly with developers to help shepherd their projects through our system.

Explain how automation and other changes will reduce the backlog and wait times.

Back in November, the average time in the prescreen queue was five months. We’ve since developed and implemented artificial intelligence, or a bot, to automate some of the prescreen review of plans, which checks for basic formatting of building plans, prior to the code review by plans examiners. The bot is now capable of reviewing four of 11 prescreen checklist items, which has shortened the average time in the queue to four weeks.

We continue to develop the bot to review additional prescreen checklist items, and to automate other phases of the permitting process, e.g., the issue to pay phase when a permit has been approved and requires submittal of payment and contractor statements from the applicant.

What are your plans to strengthen enforcement against illegal vacation rentals and permit violations from monster houses?

For short-term rental enforcement, we are in the process of hiring four investigators, two planners and an administrator to run the STR enforcement branch. Currently, we’re pulling inspectors from our housing code enforcement branch as we worked on creating the seven positions. This team will have greater focus and expertise to seek out and enforce against illegal STRs.

For monster homes, we will continue to review and revoke building permits for homes that violate the monster homes ordinances. While we have used building and zoning inspections to inspect and issue Notices of Violation of alleged monster homes, we have implemented a review process in the earlier plan review stage to check that building plans properly comply with the monster homes ordinances.

For enforcement in general, we are establishing standard operating procedures for consistency and to evaluate the effectiveness of our enforcement programs.

How will you weed out corruption and keep it out of DPP?

By directly addressing the core dysfunctions of the department, we can reduce corruption and the opportunity to exploit the system. The development and implementation of standard operating procedures and staff training, which have been sorely lacking, will provide the necessary structure and guardrails to ensure that staff are properly performing their duties. By reducing the backlog through automation and building necessary capacity to perform plan review, we eliminate the market for improper alternative methods of getting permits. We continue to investigate all alleged misconduct, and issue disciplinary actions if necessary. We report to the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs any misconduct by design professionals and contractors. We are developing checks and balances and internal audits to ensure that processes are correctly followed, and we will modernize our permitting software to better able us to quickly analyze data and records. We also need to hire and promote the right people who will manage, supervise and lead their staff to always do the right thing, and ensure that supervisors are proactively monitoring for any suspicious behavior.

THE BIO FILE

>> Current position: Director designate, Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP)

>> Previous positions: DPP deputy director; deputy state attorney general; chief planner, Hawaii

Public Housing Authority; deputy city corporation counsel

>> Educational background: B.A. in political science and M.A. in urban planning from University of California, Los Angeles; J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of the Law

>> One more thing: My family’s roots are on the Big Island, where my great-grandparents immigrated to work on the plantations.