Hawaii County should be able to work through a massive backlog of building permit applications by the second quarter of next year, county officials said Tuesday.
In July, the county’s $2.4 million new application processing software — the Electronic Processing Information Center, or EPIC — went live. Within months, it became clear that permit applications were getting stuck in the system, with thousands of applications delayed.
In late October, Mayor Mitch Roth issued a statement that the Department of Public Works would “expedite” certain applications in order to whittle down the backlog.
However, at a Tuesday meeting of the Hawaii County Council Public Works and Mass Transit Committee, some testifiers raised concerns that such a process would allow some applicants to jump the queue.
Public Works Director Ikaika Rodenhurst assured council members at the meeting that the applications will still be addressed in the order in which they were received.
However, those applications which meet the criteria for the expedited process — residential building permits submitted before Oct. 1 that contain the proper certification of a licensed professional, and whose construction will be carried out by a licensed contractor — will be handled more quickly.
Rodenhurst said the expedited applications will be handled normally, but will not be subjected to a thorough check against county building codes beyond a “life and safety review.”
Of the hundreds of backlogged applications, Rodenhurst said about 100 should fit the criteria to be expedited, which he said would allow Public Works’ staff to quickly move on to other permits.
Rodenhurst predicted that the county should process all applications submitted before the switch to EPIC by the end of the year, and could completely clear the backlog by February, if certain improvements to the process are made.
If those improvements — which entail, among other things, hiring more staff — are not made, he said the backlog could be cleared within the second quarter of 2022.
Although he acknowledged certain technical problems with the launch of EPIC, from data migration issues to inconsistent notifications, Rodenhurst said the primary cause of the delays has been a gradual reduction in Public Works staff. In 2019, he said, Public Works had eight reviewers managing applications. This year, there are only four.
“There never was a good time to go live with this,” Rodenhurst said, saying that the technical problems inherent to transferring data to a new system could not have been completely ironed out ahead of time.
Despite the staff shortage, Rodenhurst said reviewers are becoming more familiar with the system. Within the last three months, he said, 279 permits have been issued, 208 of which were within the last week.
But council members remained concerned Tuesday, particularly about those applicants who do not qualify for the expedited process: owner-builders, who are often residents intending to make changes to their own property, do not qualify, nor are they able to transfer a completed permit to a licensed contractor. Permits issued through the expedited process that are then transferred to owner-builders will be suspended pending review.
“There is a concern that, by the time the owner-builders get their turn, given the current supply chain issues, they won’t be able to get their materials,” said Puna Councilman Matt Kaneali‘i-Kleinfelder.
Hilo Councilman Aaron Chung did not mince his words.
“I now view this system as a very expensive, glorified tracking system,” Chung said. “Maybe that’s not all it is. Maybe it might enhance the process in some ways. But … it doesn’t speed things up on its own.”
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.