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Development swamps inspectors

The county will consider increasing permit fees to tackle the backlog.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published April 29, 2005

TAMPA - Homes are popping up so fast in the Tampa area that not every government agency can keep up with the need to inspect them to make sure they meet standards.

Take Hillsborough County.

On May 18, commissioners will consider a request from the county's natural resources division to increase permit fees to pay for five more employees to review site plans.

Right now, about 15 employees review stormwater and tree regulations for about 100 plans at any one time, a daunting task for a job that requires physical inspections of a project's landscape, said Craig Mahlman, the county's manager of site and subdivision review.

"We have plans laying on the floor, stacked up on desks," Mahlman said. "We're falling behind. We're late all the time by an average of two weeks, and the developers get angry with us. We tell them to be patient, that we can't work any harder than we're working now."

Builders say a hike in fees is unnecessary.

For larger subdivisions, the proposed increase would cost developers an extra $6,500, up from about $2,000. That's an "exorbitant" increase, said Joseph A. Narkiewicz, executive vice president of the Tampa Bay Builders Association, which represents 1,400 builders, developers and subcontractors.

"For that amount, an applicant could hire someone who's only job would be to review the project," Narkiewicz said. "It's starting to cost more to review the project than it costs to design it."

A hike in the stormwater review fee last year didn't expedite the process, Narkiewicz said.

But numbers released Thursday by Metrostudy, a housing research firm based in Houston, back up the county's claim that it's swamped.

In Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Citrus and Hernando counties, 5,380 homes started construction in this year's first three months - a 16 percent jump from the same period last year. The number of homes under construction now is more than 10,000, an all-time high, said Tony Polito, director of Metrostudy's Tampa division.

And there are signs that review agencies are falling behind in their work, Polito said. At current building rates, Hillsborough County has an eight-month supply of lots ready for development, the ones that already have utilities and have been approved. Typically, it would take about 18 months to build out that supply of land ready for construction, he said.

"We've doubled the number of homes that are getting built in just four years," Polito said. "If you're government, it's hard to staff up for that. There's such a backlog of projects out there, that once the utilities get put in there, construction begins. It's explosive."

The county's building review division has 167 employees who review the electrical, plumbing, natural gas and construction of homes. They've managed to issue permits within a month's time, but they also need 800 hours of overtime every two weeks to do it, said David Ford, the county's building official and director of administrative services. That costs about $300,000 a year.

In the past six months, Hillsborough County issued 5,428 permits, the highest amount since it started tracking permits in the 1980s. It's also a 40 percent increase over the same period last year.

"We wish it would slow down," Ford said.

Staff writer Josh Zimmer contributed to this report. Michael Van Sickler can be reached at 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 29, 2005, 00:33:10]