City Council Meeting Date: January 19, 2021
To: Mayor and City Council
City Administrator
From: Mitzi Alex Baker, AICP Community Development Director
Title
Proposal to modify staff positions in Community Development, Building Inspections Division.
Body
Action Requested:
The Northfield City Council will receive a presentation on a proposal to modify staff positions in the Building Inspections Division of the Community Development Department.
Summary Report:
The Community Development Department, Building Inspections Division is a lean staff with one full time Building Official, one full time Building Inspector and the following two part time positions:
One Code Enforcement Inspector at 16 hours/week: the position primarily focuses on rental licensing inspections and code enforcement.
One Permit Technician at 20 hours/week: the position primarily supports customer service, permit processing, inspections scheduling, records management, and reviews and issues simple permits. This position is currently vacant.
This staff is responsible for building permits, inspections, enforcement and the rental licensing program. The City currently has over 690 rental properties and over 2,670 residential units in the rental-licensing program. Additionally, the Building Inspections Division has a steady plan review, permit and inspections workload related to building and construction permits. The attached summary report for 2020 shows a year-end total of 1,251 permits, with total building permit valuation of $64,829,717 and fee revenue of $530,045.
Providing consistent coverage, adequate backup and keeping pace with the work volume has been made more difficult with vacancies in each of the part time positions in the last year. Office responsibilities, including customer service, plan review and permit processing competes for time required of Inspectors to be at job sites inspecting projects. Having only two full time positions contributes to gaps.
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