In the Spotlight: City of McMinnville

Written by Heather Richards

​In February, 2019, after one year of planning, preparation and training, the City of McMinnville launched our new epermitting program with the State of Oregon’s Accela program. And we are so glad that we did. This program has allowed us to add more efficiencies to our building and development program, with the electronic permitting capabilities, and internal coordinating and tracking of permits. We brought on the building, planning, and public works modules, and added some outside partners to the program for enhanced delivery of services to our customers.  

We never could have accomplished this without the team at Oregon ePermitting. The staff went out of their way to accommodate us and help us through the transition. We are a small program and transitioning to a new software program is never easy, but the state team was very responsive to all of our questions and concerns, even adjusting their training to help our team feel more comfortable with the software. I was very impressed with the state team’s knowledge of the system, knowledge of the state building program, awareness of what it means to serve building program customers, and experience as a building permit technician. Our project manager worked with us and advised us along the way based upon our needs and goals with the program. 
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When it came time to go live, the state team was on-site with us helping our staff navigate the software program while serving our customers. We were trepidatious about the learning curve and adjustment to the new software, but it has actually been much easier than we thought to implement it and our customers love the new system.