By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

When City Manager Valerie Lemmie first came to town in April, she asked building inspectors whether the city had a "one-stop shop" for permits.

They said, "Sure. You stop here once, you stop there once, and you stop there once."

Consultant Ben Graham explains how a building permit goes through the city's bureaucracy. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

Actually, Ms. Lemmie learned Tuesday, a permit stops 473 times on its way from the initial application to the printer.

That's according to a consultant hired by the city and Downtown Cincinnati Inc. to analyze the city's Department of Buildings and Inspections, blamed by some for being one of Cincinnati's biggest obstacles to development.

Ben Graham studies work. He watches as employees do their work, check their work, and move work from one place to another.

"And then there's the big one, when nothing happens," he said. "And nothing happening amounts to 95 percent of the time."

In a week at City Hall, he took down notes on every step a permit took from the time a developer walked in the door. He converted those steps into 12 different flow charts, representing different parts of the process. Just finishing and picking up a permit accounts for its own flow chart several feet long.

Tuesday, those flow charts - about 30 feet long in all - wrapped around the Clement L. Buenger Board Room on the fifth floor of Fifth Third Bank's downtown headquarters, where the city's Economic Development Task Force met.

Mr. Buenger was the former Fifth Third CEO who headed the Buenger Commission on business practices in the Cincinnati Public Schools. Chamber of Commerce Vice President Nick Vehr, for one, couldn't ignore the irony that it was a Byzantine organizational chart of the school administration that illustrated the problem and galvanized public support for the Buenger Commission's reforms 11 years ago.

Current Fifth Third CEO George A. Schaefer Jr. and Ms. Lemmie head the 18-member economic development commission, appointed by Mayor Charlie Luken in July. Its mandate from City Council: to figure out ways to cut City Hall's notorious red tape and jump start development efforts that are widely perceived to be lagging Newport's and Norwood's.

"Development is still getting done," said task force member James Ritter, a senior investment banker at Ross, Sinclaire & Associates. "But one could rightly conclude that anything this laborious, this labyrinthine, is pretty user-unfriendly."

First, a developer must submit an application to Buildings and Inspections. Anything more involved than a building addition will likely require stops at the zoning, public works, fire, water and sewer offices. Each one is a separate flow chart.

"Can you imagine if you're a developer and you have to shop your project to four or five different departments in four or five different locations?" Ms. Lemmie said.

The 473 steps don't apply to every project. A new backyard deck, for example, doesn't require a sewer hookup.

But some who have been through the permit process say the 473 steps can be just the beginning. A trip to the Board of Zoning Appeals could add weeks or months, just to start the process all over again. And some city-funded projects, especially downtown, require the approval of the Urban Design Review Board.

"What we have here is a least-effort picture," said Pete Strange, CEO of Messer Construction. "The Urban Design Review Board, I would suggest, is the most frustrating part of the process, because their role is the least defined."

Mr. Graham also analyzed two of 21 programs in the city's Department of Community Development. Those processes - Enterprise Zone and housing round funding - took a combined 282 steps.

William V. Langevin, the city's head building inspector, did not return a phone call. But Scott C. Stiles, an assistant to the city manager, said the department has not been resistant to the study.

"Ben got a real positive response walking through Buildings and Inspections. A lot of people wanted to know how they could do their jobs better," Mr. Stiles said. "They know everything that's wrong with it probably more than anyone else. And more than anyone else, they need to be part of the solution."

But Ms. Lemmie conceded the solution won't be easy. In a phrase that's become her mantra in seven months on the job, she said it would require a "culture change" at City Hall.

Many building inspectors still file hand-written reports, she said. Every inspector and plan reviewer is autonomous.

"There needs to be a person responsible for the entire process of issuing a permit, rather than just a piece of the process," she said. "The culture change we're talking about is really about taking ownership of the problem."

Another idea: a pre-application meeting on major projects, in which all the departments confer about what the major issues will be, removing any road blocks in advance.

For his part, Mr. Graham put no value judgments on the flow charts.

"The way I work with these is to put them in front of the people doing the work, to let them see where they fit in the big picture," he said. "People are so much more willing to change themselves than to have it mandated to them."

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com