TBBA Building Barometer 3
- from the desk of
Jennifer Doerfel,
Executive VP, TBBA
cornerstones
One of the cornerstone goals of this association is to ensure our members have a regulatory environment that is not duplicative, contradictory or punitive in nature. In order to express our position on policies and procedures that affect us, we must invest time into building better relationships with those in the regulatory community so that they welcome our opinion when making those decisions that affect our customers and bottom line. Mine has always been a collaborative approach, all the success I have enjoyed professionally has been because many people have pulled together to make something positive happen.
Over the last couple of years, our builder members have adopted this same philosophy of working in a collaborative way with those who regulate us in an effort to streamline the permitting process and suggest best practices that will create an easy environment to work in regardless of jurisdictional lines. When we put our mind to something, great things happen.
But I also want to recognize some people in the regulatory community who have worked with us because without them, none of the changes that have taken place would be possible. I'm going to focus on the staff for the next few months, the "unsung heroes" whose job it is to create public policy that works for everyone, but must strike a balance between what interest groups want like business and community activists, what their elected bosses want and what's best for the public at large. I have a lot of respect for these folks that I have the pleasure of working with and will share a little bit about them, like Lucia Garsys.
Ms. Garsys is the Deputy County Administrator and oversees Development Services, Public Works, Public Utilities, Facilities Mgt. Services, Fiscal & Support Services, Real Estate Services, Code Enforcement. This lady has a very demanding job to say the least. Her philosophy is that the counties should provide the customer with compliance assistance and that has led to a huge change in culture for the better. Ms. Garsys and her staff have listened to our concerns and whenever possible, have made changes to make it easier for us to get through the process. For example, the Building Services Department is funded by permitting fees and from 2007 to 2010 amassed a surplus of $15 million dollars, that's pretty incredible considering their annual budget is $10 million. That means they've been overcharging their customers and when we brought this to County Administrator Mike Merrill and Lucia Garsys attention, we saw action. They asked commissioners to adopt a fee schedule of 50% of the original fee, then later when the surplus wasn't going down by much, asked for a further reduction of an additional 10%. I'm happy to report that just last week the County Commission unanimously approved keeping the fee structure right where it is, 60% less than they were charging a few years ago, until December 2014.
This reduction in fees happened because a team of people got together, sat down to discuss an issue and agreed on a fair solution. That team includes Bonnie Wise, Julie Wisdom, John FerDon, Bonnie Wise, Julie Wisdom, Tom Fessler, Mitch Ramos, Alice Hernandez and Rick Carroll who worked on numbers, and various scenarios looking at budget requirements, positions, anticipated expenditures and revenues. Wayne Francis, John Ferdon and Ginny Zimmerman worked on the application, permitting and inspection issues. Adam Gormly from the County Attorney's side ensured we were legally sound those folks joined TBBA members Mike Southward, Grant Hachen, Anthony Crudup, Bob Suarez, David Campo and Jason Starling to make this happen. "I think it is a testament of how much horsepower it took, but also our commitment to making it work", said Lucia Garsys after the approval last week. Thanks to everyone who helped make this reduction a reality!