Tracking Dallas’ building permit backlog may get more straightforward following the launch of the City’s new online permit dashboard.
After more than six months of The Dallas Express covering the City’s building permit department’s failure to fix its backlog and cycle times, the department finally responded by rolling out a new dashboard that tracks single-family building permit activity in Dallas.
Dallas’ Development Services Department (DSD), which conducts the City’s permitting process, recently announced the launch of its new Residential Permit Activity Dashboard (RPAD) — an online portal intended to provide up-to-date metrics about the City’s residential permit activity dating back to January 2020.
DSD’s online permit dashboard was created in partnership with the City of Dallas Data Analytics and Business Intelligence Department. The RPAD is separated into 10 metric-based categories, which DSD says will be updated on a monthly basis.
The dashboard’s categories include: Permit Applications Submitted, Permits Issued, Median Issued Days, Permits In Queue, Permit Applications Submitted and Issued by Month, Median Issued Days by Month, Permits in Queue by Staff/Applicant, Permits in Queue by Stage, Permits by Number of Revisions, and Initial Review Start Met Goal.
Despite the launch of the online accountability tool, the department still has a long road ahead. In addition to ongoing issues with staffing and processes, DSD still has no publicly available tools providing transparency on commercial and multi-family construction throughout Dallas.
With the addition of a new one-stop shop for residential single-family permit information, local developers and construction experts may now get a clearer idea and understanding of where they stand in the permit process, how many permits are ahead of theirs in the queue, what stage their application is in, or how long the turnaround time may take given the aforementioned information.
Thus, holding officials like Espinoza and Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax accountable could be much easier moving forward.
This will help shed light on the dysfunction in DSD, but it will not provide any quick or decisive fixes to the wide range of permit issues at DSD, all of which stunt Dallas’ potential growth.
The Dallas Express reached out to Espinoza for comment about the launch of DSD’s new online dashboard but had not received a response at the time of publication.
DSD’s residential permit activity dashboard will be updated on the first day of each month with data from the prior month.
