Happy Valley, Selling Dwellings!

Dwelling permits have been the mainstay  for the City of Happy Valley and in this relatively slow fiscal year (compared to years past).  They have issued 112 single family permits and delivered 127 Certificates of Occupancy in that same time period.

The ability to group required permits for a single home into one record is a true benefit to the customers and staff.  More so, enabling the inspections to be tracked on just one record is vital to the efficiency of production builders and the city staff that manage these permit records.

Naming Conventions:  Since Happy Valley’s master plan encourages managed growth and economic development, there are typically 4-5 new subdivisions under construction at any given time.  Naming conventions in the back office help the city manage and track these subdivisions.  Any record for a single family dwelling will have a similar project name and description of work that includes the Subdivision Name, Lot Number, and square footage of the home.  For example, the project description could be: Wooded Heights, Lot 15, NSFR 3500 sf.   By using this same naming convention on all DWL records, the city staff can use the search page to easily locate all records within a subdivision or a specific lot. They also add the lot number into the “Unit” field when creating or adding addresses to a record, which is just one more way to search by lot number when customers call in and don’t provide full address or record numbers (that never happens in your jurisdiction…. right?)

Inspections: Happy Valley has chosen to auto-pend 26 inspections on their DWL records.  To use less paper, inspectors send the inspection results via email.

Reports: Permit techs use an ad-hoc report to track assigned reviews and to ensure that all active reviews have been successfully assigned.  

Customers:  Contractors, owners, and even realtors love having the ability to look up records and permitting information on Citizen Access and Happy Valley doesn’t miss a chance to educate their users on navigating the ACA website.

Cristie Myron, Permit Technician: My favorite part of being on the OSM of ePermitting is the potential for collaboration between jurisdictions.  We are always striving for better customer service within our department and jurisdiction and love to learn how others are providing quality customer service to their residence and customers.  We always welcome new ideas and don’t mind sharing our operation standards, unless you’re going to tell us we’re doing it wrong! If you have questions or suggestions, please contact Cristie Myron at cristiem@happyvalleyor.gov.

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