City Takes Steps to Speed Up Building Inspections

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

October 6 -- Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being wasted in critically needed housing projects due to delays in building inspections, City officials acknowledge. Now builders of large developments will soon be gladly paying more out of their own pockets to keep their multi-million dollar projects on time and on budget.

City planners last week said they will take the unprecedented step of allowing builders of large developments to pay time-and-a-half to keep City building and safety inspectors on schedule. And a longer-term fix could give developers what they have been asking for for years -- paying more in permits to cover the cost of hiring more inspectors.

The problem, simply, is supply and demand, City officials said. Santa Monica is in the midst of building boom with more than 1,600 active projects, 80 of which are private developments pegged at a million dollars or more, with 20 of those topping the $5 million mark, according to City officials.

“The primary issue is the supply of building inspection resources is than less than inspection demands,” said Andy Agle, assistant director of the City’s Department of Planning and Community Development.

"These larger projects...may have as much as 30 bathrooms to inspect," said City Manager Lamont Ewell, who took over the City’s top management post office in December.

With the current staffing shortage, inspectors work as long as possible, but often have to leave for appointments at other projects before the full inspection is completed, Ewell said. Subcontractors cannot finish their work, and the delays can add up to weeks.

"So it starts this backup of problems," Ewell said. "These delays,” he acknowledged, “can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for large developers."

The delays are especially costly to large housing developers, including those who build most of the much-needed affordable housing in the city, Ewell said.

Community Corporation, Santa Monica’s largest non-profit affordable housing provider, and JMS Inc., which has built most of the new housing Downtown – are two developers likely impacted by the delays.

At a meeting with developers, Ewell discussed the long-standing problem, and came up with a solution that would not require developers to pay for their own inspectors outright.

"Developers said they would be willing to pay more to have inspectors stay longer, but then there could be a conflict of interest," Ewell said.

It was ultimately agreed that paying City inspectors overtime was the best course of action, he said.

"The goal is to tie in the overtime to off Fridays," Ewell said, referring to the schedule that shuts down many City services -- except plan checking in the Planning Department -- every other Friday.

Projects should be receiving an inspection the day after a request from the builder, a common practice in several Southern California cities, such as Pomona, Agle said.

While the City meets this goal 60 percent of the time for smaller projects, larger developments can take up to five days to get an inspector on site, Agle said. In addition, it may take several days to complete an inspection of a larger development.

“Larger projects have specific needs for both more inspections and longer inspections during construction, but the City is unable to meet these needs while simultaneously providing next day inspection service for the majority of the other active projects,” Agle wrote in a memo to the City Council members last week.

In addition to initially allowing developers to hire out City inspectors after hours, the City is considering a longer-term solution that would pass the cost of hiring additional inspectors for large projects up front.

“Larger construction projects, which have the incremental need for additional inspection services, would bear any necessary increase in permit fees for this increased level of service,” Agle said.

A “fee and service study,” which will be conducted first, may find there is a need to hire additional staff, he said.

The recommended changes come two years after consultants suggested ways to stem the delays, personnel shortages and inefficiency that plague the City ‘s planning department, including its Building and Safety Division. (see story)

In response, the City has undertaken massive changes to improve accountability, making the interaction with the public more personal, automating some tasks and expediting plan checks, planning officials said.

Although the Building and Safety Division has added two inspectors, problems persist, Agle noted in his memo to the City Council.

The planning department is likely to see further changes with the hiring of a new director, Elaine Fogerty, a “turn-around specialist” credited with streamlining and making the permit process more clear and predictable for applicants during her six-year tenure heading the planning department in Alexandria, Virginia. (see story)

Fogarty’s track record improving and streamlining “development review processes” and providing “certainty and clarity for applicants and the public” were among the reasons she was tapped for the post, Ewell has said.