Dallas’ Development Services Department (DSD), overseen by embattled City Manager T.C. Broadnax released its December newsletter over the Christmas weekend, showing a slight dip in permit activity for the month of November.
DSD’s newsletters act as a selective snapshot of monthly permit activity, typically including month-to-month changes in the number of permits created as well as the number of days to issue.
The purpose of the newsletter is to inform Dallas’ homebuilding and development community about upcoming DSD events, partnerships, permitting progress updates, and more.
In November, DSD created 114 new single-family (NSF) permits, which was 54 fewer permits than the month prior and a decrease of 298 from September’s 2022 high, according to DSD permit data.
While DSD’s November permit chart shows 54 fewer permits created than in October, the department says its “permitting stats show a 15% increase” in NSF permits created.
It is unclear how DSD calculated its 15% and what month the department used for the comparison. The Dallas Express reached out to DSD and its chief building official, Andrew Espinoza, for clarification on Tuesday and was told in an interview that the 15% metric was a “misentry” and that it would “promptly be updated with the correct information.”
The department’s newsletter, meanwhile, does show that it managed to decrease the time it takes to issue an NSF permit in November. The number of days DSD took to issue an NSF permit in November was 43 days, a week sooner than the 50 days it took in October.
While the month-over-month decrease in issuance time might make it seem like DSD has started to make a dent in the long wait times, the department is actually about eight days slower than the average from June to September of 2022.
Earlier this month, The Dallas Express compiled a two-part breakdown of DSD’s monthly newsletter data since Espinoza took over as director of development services back in May.
What The Dallas Express found is that since Espinoza took over the position, DSD has expanded its community outreach programs, rolled out several new initiatives, transitioned to a new permit software, and slowly worked to chip away at the city’s problematic building permit backlog.
Besides an update to its monthly permitting charts, DSD continued its Lunch and Learn series, updated its monthly Performance Summary with metrics for November, and posted its November 2022 Heat Map, which illustrates new residential and commercial permit activity by each City Council district.
November’s Lunch and Learn series was held in the middle of the month and featured the city chief arborist, Phil Erwin, who shared information about residential and commercial landscaping in Dallas.
DSD is set to release its final set of permit data for December 2022 in its January 2023 newsletter, due out by the end of next month. DSD’s website has not been updated with the newsletters for November and December.
Readers can sign up for DSD’s monthly newsletter here.
