The new director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting has requested $34.6 million to hire and train more staff and for technology fixes to alleviate the city’s months-long backlog of building permit applications.
For its 2024 fiscal year budget, which begins July 1, DPP is requesting a 33% increase over its current budget of $26 million. It also includes 10 more full-time employee positions — amounting to 406 total. The department further projects a 35% increase for its salaries and wages, to $27.19 million from $20.08 million.
DPP projects its total revenues in the next budget to be $24.4 million, of which $20 million is expected to come from building permit fees alone.
The department is integral to residential and building development on Oahu and also is critical to the success of Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s goal of building more affordable housing and included in his $3.41 billion budget released March 2.
“Consistent with the mayor’s executive program and budget, DPP and our proposed budget seeks to modernize and streamline government operations for greater efficiencies and transformative government,” DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna told the City Council’s Budget Committee Wednesday.
She added that her department’s strategic objectives include the overhaul of the building permit process “by adding capacity through staffing, training staff to be consistent and efficient, creating career pipelines, and succession planning.”
She said DPP’s budget provides a significant amount of money to deal with technology issues, including overseeing the modernization of the department’s permitting software.
Takeuchi Apuna added that the budget provides for clerks to assist in the permitting process. “This is important because we don’t want engineers or plans examiners doing work that can be done by clerks, which is all part of the overall permitting and will help streamline processes in that sense,” she said, adding another planner would also help DPP process fines, “because we are very much backlogged and short-staffed in that area.”
DPP has approximately 105 vacancies to be filled.
“We expect to fill 15 before July 1, and 45 to be filled in fiscal year 2024,” Takeuchi Apuna said. Among the positions waiting to be filled are 50 engineer and plans examiner jobs. “Those are now open, and we are now trying to quickly hire for those as part of the commercial plans examining process,” she said.
Curtis Lum, DPP’s spokesperson, confirmed that “vacancies vary throughout the year.”
“As an example, on June 30, 2022, we had 81 vacancies,” Lum said. “We have consistently had between 70 to 90 vacancies over the last several years. Our goal is a net reduction of 15 vacancies by June 30, 2023, and another net reduction of 45 in FY24.”
DPP’s objective toward the goal of affordable housing includes administration of grants.
The Blangiardi administration in 2021 earmarked $10 million toward developing 1,100 affordable rental units. Based on developer interest, Takeuchi Apuna noted that DPP’s latest budget includes grant money for more construction of apartment-type affordable- housing projects.
“So it’s an increase from originally $300,000, and we’re estimating $3 million over the next year,” Takeuchi Apuna told the Council. “I think we have maybe 40 projects currently within our process for permitting, and we are hoping we can get a lot of those through. We would expect … a portion of them would be eligible” for earmarked grant funding.
Meanwhile, DPP is looking for an archaeologist.
If hired, that person would be attached to the yet-to-be-installed Oahu Historic Preservation Commission, created by the Blangiardi administration in November. Once started, the commission’s mission would be to oversee, advise and protect Native Hawaiian historical sites.
Takeuchi Apuna said the archaeologist would serve as administrator of the program, which requires federal certification. The commission itself — to comprise nine members — is still being assembled.
“We’ve also collected all of the interested people who are applying,” she said, adding that DPP, by this month or next, could bring potential commission nominees to the Council for review and possible confirmation. “So we are definitely rolling along in trying to get this set up as quickly as possible.”
Much of the Historic Preservation Commission’s work would directly assist DPP, she said. “We’re hoping that they can do a lot of the work pre-permitting (and) really set out what different areas of the island would mean before people think about developing,” she said. “So just trying to assist us … to figure out how we can improve the process and have a much stronger voice in cultural and historic preservation.”
Council member Andria Tupola said she is concerned about DPP’s high number of vacancies, and suggested the department use “relief workers” — possibly through the Hawaii Government Employees Association, which represents state and county-level workers — to assist on things like the processing of building permits.
“No doubt, your department is super hard to recruit and retain for because of the load level,” Tupola said, asking whether DPP would be interested in such hands-on help. “My concern is burnout; my concern is workload.”
Takeuchi Apuna said a proposal (Bill 6) introduced in February by the Blangiardi administration is meant to relieve DPP’s backlog of building permit applications via the use of third-party reviewers.
“(Bill 6) is the path forward because it would allow us to have these outside reviews for temporary use until we can have the backlogs down,” Takeuchi Apuna said. “So, definitely, we would be supportive of that.”
