25 May 2026 Council meeting Housing

Councillor Geselbracht Motion re: The City's Building Permitting

Motion

That Council make improving the efficiency of the City's building permitting system and reducing permit processing times a Council Priority; and That Staff: 1. Return within 60 days with an implementation plan for each accepted 2026 Building Permit Process Review recommendation and the Power BI dashboard to track applications, including specific milestones, deadlines, actions and options for additional resources that could accelerate execution, and an interim approach for tracking internal referral timelines. 2. Provide quarterly written status updates to the Governance and Priorities Committee on the progress of implementing recommendations, tracking software, and interim measures to improve timelines on interdepartmental referrals for both in-process and new applications outlining key bottlenecks and corrective actions. 3. Provide a staff report on Re- Establishing and implementing service standards and target timelines for each permit category (Part 9 residential, Part 3 commercial, Fast Track, Tenant Improvement, and CP Program), including defined timelines for internal ref errals, and report performance against those standards to the Governance and Priorities Committee on a quarterly basis.

Minutes, page 18

Sources

Agenda itemCity agenda, whole meeting

Put forward by Ben Geselbracht Source

Ben Geselbracht Yes

In 2021, Council Committed to create a faster and clear permit process and endorse a series of recommendations to achieve that. Um, the April update showed us where, you know, some real progress has been made through initiatives like the Fast Track Program, certified professional And the implementations of some new process technology. Um, this motion's intended to support and build on that work. The reasonable report received was pretty candid. However, five years after our permit review, it's still unclear whether permit in round times have meaningfully improved. Partly because we still do not the causes of delays also continues to be referrals between departments. Um, compounded by staffing shortages and development engineering, which we address with the new. Higher. There's several important recommendations that, uh, have been needed to work on. Um, that includes internal service agreement between departments and audit of the certified professional program decoupling design stage acceptance from the Building Permit process and exploring more risk - based differentiation and application reviews. And then implementing modern submission tracking and review software. Um, so there is still a significant work ahead. And staff may require additional resources to complete it on this motion makes clear that improving permit efficiency is council priority. And it asked staff to return with an implementation plan for the outstanding recommendations and identify what additional capacity or resources are needed. So Council can properly support the work rather than, uh, ask, staff to do more with less. The motion also requests intermeasures to improve tracking of internal referrals while the new software systems being implemented. In addition, it calls for quarterly updates to the Governance and Priorities Committee on implementation progress of the permit review, recommendations. So progress on the commitments can be monitored. Finally, the motion asked staff to provide a report on reestablishing service standards and target timelines for each permit category for the portions of the City process. The City controls. Um, this is important because it gives the Building Community greater certainty for financial planning and helps identify across all parties where delays are occurring.

Gesselbrock. Uh, thank you. Um, the motion is really clear. Um, that this is asking staff to establish their own timelines on implementation and to come back to Council with what additional resources they would need to execute on, uh, the timelines that they're going to come back to us with on the different technology fronts or within the internal service agreement. But we all unanimously raised our hands to endorse the recommendations from the last review. Some recommendations that were still outstanding from 2021. This motion is just asking, can you please provide us with a implementation plan and tell us what resources if you don't have them that you'd need to actually implement this stuff over the timelines requested. I think that is more than reasonable. And if folks don't think 60 days to provide that is insufficient or a staff believe they don't have the capacity to provide an outline of a plan and request for resources within 60 days. And, you know, I'm happy for Council members to make amendments on that. But the rest of the motion is not timeline dependent or whatever. It's asking what's the plan to implement this and what are the resources needed. We can decide if we don't want to put any additional resources to speeding up the technological implementation of things, uh, the internal service agreements. But, uh, we're, you know, it doesn't make sense to just endorse recommendations and then, and then have no, no framework around it. And this is why an accountability framework is needed to say that, yeah, we're, we're taking this seriously. And, um, we're here to support staff. And I think staff needs to hear from Council that this is an important issue for this. And we would like to support you in the implementation of this in a reasonable timeline. Please let us know what that is. So, uh, you know, I do hope that Council supports this motion. I think the lot of expectation that we do take this front seriously. And I think this is a very variable, very reasonable, um, outline of, of, of how to go do that. That's respectful of all parties and really cognizant of what are the resource needs and limitations that we have to just make it clear for everybody. Thank you.

Time. Thank you. Yeah. I think the actual resourcing and staff needed to actually process the development permits has been identified. I do think that there is a gap in strategic, uh, project management on this that is put the burden is put on directors or that are already have a lot of responsibilities. And I do think that maybe there is a gap in sort of moving forward strategic project that just implementing sort of like the internal service agreements, identifying sort of the implementation of the computer software. And I think that we need to recognise that these are things that we, you know, we identified in 2021 to implement. And they haven't been implemented yet. And that if there is this gap, um. Focus on it, uh, and put a framework in place that we can just address it. And I think that's why this accountability framework is, is needed so that we can demonstrate that we are moving forward something that we've committed to. I don't think that, you know, if 60 days feels unreasonable to people, um, then let's extend that, that length of time. But I think two months, um, the amount of discussion that has gone into and like staff are already clearly working on these items is more than enough to come back to Council with timelines and what needs to be done in terms of executing on internal service agreements when the working group is going to discuss the de - risking, how the decoupling is going to happen.

Sheryl Armstrong No

I don't know if our CEO is there, but I had a conversation about this on the timeline and I believe the staff capacity. So a consultant will have to be hired. So I'm just wondering what the cost for you in terms of cost. That's my concern, especially with the timeline of 60 days. Like we're, we keep saying we want to get these permits done, but we keep pulling our staff that do the permits, do all these reports. We've got a lot of votes down in one. So I think we as a council maybe need to start looking at could be a GPC topic. What are the priorities for us on all our outstanding motions and start prioritizing them?

Preno. My concern, like I'm okay with, it's the 60 days. Like I don't think our staff has, like we're going to be pulling staff away. There's supposed to be working on permits to do this report. That's my concern. Number one, or we hire a consultant. When we talk about additional members, that's something to be talked about at the Finance and Audit when we do our financial plan. And that's not up to this Council to do in my opinion. That's up to the next Council. Second point is this is going to take us even with the 60 days. To probably August 1st. And we don't work in August. So I would like to see a different date. Like, I mean, personally, I think it should wait for the next Council, but that's neither here nor there. My concern just remains that we keep piling this work on staff and everything's a priority. We haven't sat down and looked at our priorities. We're telling them everything's a priority. So it's not fair to the staff. From my perspective, like we got to have these conversations. We can't keep giving them work when they don't have the staff to do it. Or we give them a budget that, you know, like, I don't know, as consultant going to be a hundred thousand, 200, 000. I don't know. And that's a concern for me. Like when we're starting to talk in dollars on something like this, we could be talking six figures. And that's considerable. Thank you.

Ian Thorpe No

Very much your worship through you. If I may, I agree with the comments of Councillor Armstrong. And that was my concern when I read this motion, which is quite specific and quite, quite comprehensive. Starts out return within 60 days with an implementation plan for each accepted permit process review recommendation. There was a number of recommendations, which the, uh, development industry accepted and seemed happy with. And I know that our staff are going to try and bring about improvements. And I think monitoring those improvements is important. I just feel that the timeline here is unreasonable. And I don't think it's fair to our staff. Uh, as we've just heard, they're already short - staffed in this department. So I don't want to see more time spent on our report. Telling us basically what we already know and something that we're already going to be working on. So I'm sorry, again, I appreciate the intent, but I don't think I can support this.

I'm Councillor Thurt. Councillor Thorpe. Thanks, your worship not to prolong us. I'm sorry. I just find this way too specific. Um, the recommendations that we had brought to us, which were well received and heard by staff indicated that we were under resourced in this department. We all want to see things improve. We're not disagreeing with that at all. But so what are we going to do? Higher consultant to come in and tell us that we need to hire more staff, which we've been trying to do for years now. So I just, I just don't see the point of having our staff given the burden of writing quarterly reports and staff, spending time on other reports that are requested here. And then on top of all that, putting a fairly tight time frame on it. And I'm sorry, but I think 60 days is pretty tight. So I just, I think staff have heard the message. I think we are doing what we can to improve in this area. And I'm sorry I just don't think this is necessary. And I don't think spending money on further consultants will be helpful at all.

Hilary Eastmure Yes

Council Eastmeer. Thank you. Um, yeah, I think, I think this is really, really important. And if it takes more resources, it is what it is. Like this is something that we've had so much talk about as a council. There's, um, huge demand for us to, uh, get better in this department. And this is how we're going to do that by, um, by taking a hard look at it and setting some actual like, uh, goals and like deadlines and expected timeframes. So I think this is really critical for us to uphold our end of what our council is saying as far as we're really interested in improving building permit times. And this is what it's going to take. So if it takes more resources, like that's, that's the cost of us doing what we said we were going to do and make this process better for everyone. So I'm, I'm happy to support this. And I'm grateful for Councillor Gesserbrack for working on this motion.

Paul Manly Yes

Mr Manley. Thank you. Yeah. I'm inclined to agree with Councillor Eastmear. We need to get the development permit process rolling along. And if that means that we need to hire consultants to improve our systems, uh, then so be it. Like that's, let's get this, um, cracking. We've, we've seen reports. We've talked about this over and over again that we need to, uh, speed up the development permit process times. And, um, so let's hire some consultants and, um, and get a process that, that works for the development community, uh, we're talking about it costing us money for consultants. And we heard very clearly from the development community that it's a very expensive process to delay development processes while they wait for the city. So let's make improvements. I trust our staff to, um, to get things done. We do need to hire people.

Erin Hemmens No

Councillor Hemmons. Thank you, worship. And thank you to Councillor Guessabark. I appreciate that. Um, further context, I again have to go back to the point this isn't a struggle of whether we think additional resources is worthwhile. I for me, it's, if I felt, if the CAO felt that just adding resources was going to get us out of the mess that we all know we're in. Nobody denies that. Then I think we would have had that recommendation come forward. So the specificity of this that I struggle with, but I completely hear Council Gassebrock, we, we all approve these recommendations. So I guess my, my question for the CIO is yes, we did approve these recommendations in the absence of this resolution. How would you go about operationalizing?

Janice Perrino No

Council Prena. Thank you worship. I just want to bring up something that Councillor Hammond said. And it was consoleness are expensive and they're short term. If we need more staff, we need more staff. And I would prefer to see us spend the money on more staff. Permanent. To get the work done because we know the work is the. We keep putting this off. We've been here for years and we're still facing the same issues. If we need more staff, we need more staff. I just, um, I agree with consultants, but in this particular case, I would much prefer to have something more long - term to get the work caught up and keep it going in the right direction. Just my point of view.

Leonard Krog No

Cecil B de mill version of the 10 commandments, the movie where the Israelites are instructed by the overseers. They're slave monsters. Pardon me. Our instructed by their overseers, the slave masters, to make more bricks with less straw. Look, we have heard over and over again, both in this chamber and in discussion, that we have positions that we have not been able to feel for years relating to development and building permits. We know that. As I have repeated the sage advice of Peter Ramsey many times as well to this Council. You lay with the tracks. You don't play with the trains. Mr. Lindsay, our CAO, Mr. Holm, everybody in Senior Management understands that we'd all like to get developments approved faster if they're approved or going to be approved. We'd like to get building permits out the door faster. We've had a major study and recommendations. It takes time. We know we have unfilled positions with great respect. This motion in its entirety and my respectful opinion is great politics, but its poor governance. It speaks to trying to manage what our staff are doing. It is not our job to manage the staff. Our job is to sport staff in what we ask them to do, which is to speed up the process as best they can within the circumstances that, uh, are allow them to do so, which is resources. If they can't fill positions, they can't fill positions. You can't feel positions with respect for answer Guesserbrock. I see you've asked to speak fourth time. Not going to happen. So I am not going to support this motion. I expect. The leadership team in this City to do their job, setting the guidelines in terms of times asking for reports. These are all with respect, apart from the 60 day implementation plan. These are all things that are within the purview of the management of our city. I'll leave it at that. Those in favor of the emotion.

Questions and answers

Councillor Erin Hemmens
No

asked

you Councillor Hemmons. Thank you, worship. Um. I'd like to ask staff additional resources to get this work done that was from the CAO. I don't think anyone at this table is against adding resources to the building or to the planning department to get our building permits out faster. I would be shocked if anyone was against that. Um, the additional resources you can bring it to us and ask. But if that is the solution that I think we would have heard that, um, so my question for you, Mr. Lindsay is the additional resources to get this work done, meaning respond to the motion or additional resources to get the permits sped up. Because if it's the latter, then, then I'm in favor. But if it's the former, if it's really, we're going to add resources to get this report. I don't want that. I want permits

City staff answered

out faster. Sorry to take you through your worship. It's certainly, I think it's, it's likely a combination of both. We may be looking for some help in the short term to make sure we hit the time frame. I think more importantly, um, some of the long - term recommendations around software changes and getting, making sure we make those improvements quickly. That's more what I'm talking about. We are going to be looking at external resources if we want, um, move forward this in the short term. Just give them the capacity we have in our existing IT teams and the projects are already committed to. So I think it's a combination, but it's probably more, um, on

A councillor

asked

again. Thank you. You worship any question through you to our CAO. Um, Councillor Armstrong said pretty much everything that I was feeling as well. My concern is, um, given everything that, um, that she had said, is this doable. Is this doable at this time? Because it's a, it's a good motion. We certainly need it. I certainly agree with it, but I want to make sure that we can accomplish what we're setting out to do. We don't want to put emotion on the floor that doesn't have a hope of getting through. And consultants are expensive. Should we be looking at a consultant staffing? I'm just, I'm just looking for is this a reality. It's through your

City staff answered

worship to Councillor Preno. If the motion passes, then we will come back to Council within that timeframe with the report and have a little bit more detail. But, um, you're both correct in that, uh, staff right now, um, staff capacity is limited just given, uh, the numbers of staff we have, but also just the number and variety of projects that they're being tasked with right now. So additional resources, um, consultants will be required both in IT on the IT side and in the, uh, plotting side