While Mayor Mike Johnston has spent $45 million so far putting roofs over the heads of Denver’s street dwellers at a dizzying pace – rank-and-file residents have been waiting for City Hall just to let them fix their own leaky roofs. Those and other household repairs, upgrades and renovations requiring city building permits have been stymied by backlogged approvals.

And though the city’s Department of Community Planning and Development contends it has picked up the pace of building permit approval in recent months, data collected through last April showed the department falling further behind in its ability to issue permits on time. It has frustrated homeowners and idled contractors.

That’s the upshot of an audit of the planning department released this week by eagle-eyed Denver Auditor Tim O’Brien.

His office’s findings point to, “review errors, unclear instructions, and a lack of manager oversight” by the city agency as key factors that are “increasing costs and slowing down the process for homeowners to get permits for renovation and building projects in Denver.”

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“This is dangerous for the community and frustrating for homeowners,” O’Brien said in a press statement accompany the audit findings. “If more people start going it alone without approved construction plans, we could have a big issue.”

It appears the planning department never really bounced back from a surge in building permit applications during the pandemic. If anything, things got worse heading into last year. For 2022, O’Brien’s team of auditors found the planning department did not complete permit reviews on time in 76% of the cases. As of April 2023, that figure had risen to 81%.

As part of the audit, O’Brien’s office surveyed homeowners and construction contractors. Long permit review times were a top complaint, with 30 out of 55 respondents saying it made the process more difficult.

“One survey respondent said delays added more than $24,000 to the cost of a project because of extended payments on rent and mortgage, so they completed the work without a permit,” O’Brien’s office recounted in its press statement. “…a City Council member told us their constituents are completing projects on their homes without permits.”

Another complaint that turned up in the survey: 10 out of 55 respondents said city staff made errors in reviewing their project plans. If an application has to be resubmitted as a result, it could incur extra costs for the property owner.

“The time it takes to get a permit approved could depend on which reviewer gets assigned to your application,” O’Brien said.

Those findings and others suggest poor communication as well as inadequate training by the planning office. A lot of the audit’s key recommendations address those failings – calling for the development of a formal training plan at the department; for written guidance for the oversight and monitoring of permit review, and for developing policies and procedures for monitoring contractors brought in to help the department with its workload.

It seems the core competency of planning staff and contractors is in question. That’s not reassuring when you consider basic building safety could be at stake. And that’s alongside the headache and expense caused by the delayed permits.

Kudos to O’Brien and his crew for bringing it all to light. Now, it’s up to the Johnston administration to ensure the findings are implemented.

It would be a chance for the freshman mayor to devote a little more attention to Denver’s homeowners – who are picking up the tab for the many homeless with whom he has been preoccupied since taking office.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board