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Contractor would act as building department

To speed up permitting and inspections, Brooksville wants a contractor to do the work of a public agency.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published January 25, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - The City Council is tired of routing all of Brooksville's building applications through the Hernando County Development Department, as it has for the past decade.

At its meeting Monday night, the council decided to seek bids for a contractor to run a "full-service building department" for the city, including permitting and inspections.

The department would help applicants avoid the glut of applications that get sent to the county and would ultimately be a way of fast-tracking the process in the city. The change might take effect as soon as late March or April and could be paid for through existing permit fees, City Manager Richard Anderson said.

Right now, the city contracts with the county, which gets 80 percent of the permit fees, or $76,800, according to a memo from Anderson.

"Due to the growth in the unincorporated area, and staffing problems due to shortage of qualified applicants, processing time has increased, and the level of assistance (complicated by new code requirements) has been reduced," Anderson wrote. "Builders and developers in the city have expressed concerns for the resulting costly delays; however, we do not establish priorities or scheduling."

Developers in particular have been hurt by the slowness of slogging through the county's permitting process.

"At Southern Hills (Plantation), these guys said it's taking too long," Anderson said. "The contractors we've talked to are willing to pay more to get it done faster."

Brooksville community development director Bill Geiger said the new setup would be essentially the same thing the city now does; only the agent it would be contracting with would be a private company, not the county.

Hiring a private contractor, he said, was a manageable first step toward instituting an in-house building department.

"If we would make our own (department), it would be deep in the red for years until we could build up a revenue base," Geiger said.

Council members agreed that they needed a building department more responsive to Brooksville builders.

"If we keep going down this road, we're going to have a problem," said council member Frankie Burnett. "I wish that whoever got rid of (Brooksville's old, in-house building department) hadn't, but we can't argue over spilled milk."

Mayor Joe Johnston III offered a "point of history" to explain why the former building department had been axed in 1996.

"The department got dropped because it was hemorrhaging money," Johnston said. "As activity is picking up, we definitely need to get it back."

At least one person had some reservations.

In the public comment portion of the meeting, Paul Boston told the council that he was worried the new contractor would cater to developers and not average citizens.

"It needs to serve everyone," Boston said.

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified January 25, 2006, 00:55:16]