Tammy Carruthers, Principal and CEO of WSCE Consulting Inc presented the Building Services Review final report to the Council of Whitewater Region, making recommendations into the Township’s building services.
“We did do interviews and consultations with some of your developers.” She said. “Very few complaints on their side, the only area that was focused on was on timeliness of the proposals . Clearly growth was having an impact on your proposals.”
She said that the results were “generally favorable.”
Carruthers also said that the township was ‘very close to cost recovery.” saying the changes made to the township’s fees had had a positive impact.
She said WSCE found that the fees had increased over the last five years, and
She said the Township has “very good customer service.”, with “Very good staff.”, noting the assistance of the planning director had a ‘positive aspect’.
“Though you do have a vatum for your permits, it is underutilized.” she said. “It really isn’t an online kind of technology. When the inspectors go out, they’re using paper folders.”
She cited a lack of documentation on standard operating procedures as well as an issue for the inspector process.
“The whole sector is having difficulty recruiting CBOs and inspectors.” she said. “The people at the counter and the first response have not have had training in that specific area.”
She criticized the Township’s website as “not customer service effective.”
“The better documentation your customer service on the front end, it will reduce the work on the back end.” she said, citing the lack of online functionality as an ‘added workload.”
She also said there were some ‘challenges’ in reporting to Stats Canada that resulted in corrections and errors.
Carruthers recommended outsourced support for services like lot grading, and septic re-inspection programs.
She suggested several ‘Cloud-based permitting system’ to revamp the Township’s vatum system to better track permitting and approval of permits to online and mobile ability.
“It’s not something the staff have the time internally to implement.” she said, recommending “outside help” to make the changes.
She also suggested that the Township insource their inspectors for full-time hours, as they require over 1000 hours which might present problems for the contract-based position.
“We do think you should be tracking the customer comments and complaints.” she said, citing the website’s lack of available resources for online commentary from clients.
She also recommended better vatum system to track incomplete reports and applications, tied into an expansion of online resources and functionality.
“You might want to look at some fee harmonization.” she said. “We did look at your fees, and we did find that they were very different in application.”
She suggested that there would be a payback period for any investment in the expansion of services and online resources.
“I don’t think that we have the power in the sky to do this.” Mayor Moore asked, citing the Township’s lack of internet capacity.
Carruthers “I live in Lanark County, we have the same issues. Right now, your inspectors are out with file folders; its really cumbersome to enter. This way they would have synergies; in some townships, [inspectors] have small printers where they can print documents without having to go back to the office. I think it will make them more efficient.”
“Maybe with the money we’re getting this year, we’ll be able to go forward with that.” Mayor Moore said.
“Some of the charts said that we’ve received over 1000 permits, but it says elsewhere that we’ve closed 57.” Councillor Neil Nicholson asked “Do we really have 950 reports pending?”
“The open permits that are left right now are about 200, which is actually quite high.” Carruthers said. “That’s partly a resource issue but also a process issue.”
She said that she ‘did not believe the numbers were correct’, noting they were made by the auditors and might be incorrect, but cited that it should be corrected as it was the information provided to the provincial auditors.
“I think part of the problem is that the Township doesn’t have any deposit requirements, which means there’s not much incentive to close them off.”
Nicholson asked if Township projected growth had been taken into account.
“We were pretty conservative in assessing growth.” Carruthers said, citing uncertainty.
Councillor Charlene Jackson asked what kind of deposit WSCE would be recommending for the permits.
“The benefit is that if there are additional inspections requirement, many municipalities use that to draw down on the fees, rather than go out and have to collect extended fees.” Carruthers said. “Much harder to do after the fact.”
Councillor Jackson said she ‘liked that idea’.
“The relationship between the front desk staff and the relationship with Doug and Sam [the admins]. How do you define the relationship between the people at the front desk and the actual staff.” Councillor Nicholson asked.
“Clearly you’re not going to have a front desk staff who’s familiar with everything in the building code.” Carruthers said. “What helps is a front desk staff who is familiar with permitting process.”
“I think their will have to be some more training.” she said. “Doug and Sam have very little support as they’re split between many different jobs.”
Councillor Nicholson expressed approval of the addition of deposits, as well as a migration to an ‘iCloud’ model.
Councillor Nicholson also asked how their FTE account will address the ‘problem accounts’ that require extra work.
“That’s part of the reason we recommend time-tracking.” Carruthers said. “That’s something you may want to have more community outreach about.”
She cited community outreach and information as an area of improvement for the Township in order to inform the population of the necessity and process of building permits.
CAO Rob Trembley thanked Carruthers for her report, saying that the report “really speaks to the quality of the personnel available to us.”
“We have qualified, professional, and dedicated staff.” he said.
He also said that the WSCE firm was also selected for the Roads review, to be presented in the summer, and Planner Ivan Burton would report back to the Township with ‘some of the more actionable improvements’.
The motion was carried.
