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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSOBC Request Form - Building Inspector II.DOCSIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 1 of 9 SUMMARY OF CHANGE Provide an explanation of the problem or need that the SOBC will address. Describe the resources being requested and how they would solve the problem or satisfy the need you’ve described. Identify the funding sources for this request and indicate if you have submitted this SOBC in prior years. If so, when? New Position: Building Inspector II (including a fleet vehicle) The Building and Safety Division is experiencing unprecedented levels of inspection demands that requires additional staff to accommodate. In addition, next fiscal year, a developer funded inspector that has been completing inspections for San Luis Ranch will no longer be funded by the developer. This new inspector position is necessary if the city intends to complete all inspections required by the California Building Standards Code and within a reasonable time period. SERVICE LEVEL IMPACT The Building Inspection team will not be able to provide consist timely inspections during the 2024-25 fiscal year and beyond with the current staffing level. BACKGROUND & SUPPORTING EVIDENCE Existing Situation: Factors Driving the Need for Change If there is significant background or important historical information related to this request, include it here. Additionally, consider the following: • How will the requested resources and capabilities fit into the existing services and programs of your department? • What support or opposition will there be for this request? • How is this proposal consistent with the department’s strategic plan and community wide objectives and Major City Goals? • Is there other information that might be relevant to this request or provide context to your request? Provide a sense of scale – what is the current budget (if any) and the % increase this request represents There are currently several thousand housing units in the pipeline in the City of San Luis Obispo. Each of these housing units (in addition to other construction work in the community) requires building inspectors to ensure compliance with regulations and safety standards. In order to accommodate the current demand of inspections, the Building Official negotiated a deal that resulted in a developer paying for the additional costs of a fulltime building inspector through an on-call consultant. The consultant has been the fulltime inspector for the San Luis Ranch Development since July 1, 2022. While this temporary solution has alleviated a significant burden on regular fulltime employees, there are several conditions in this agreement that create limitations for staff. For example, the contract between the city and the developer does not permit the Building Official to utilize this building inspector on projects other than those identified in the agreement. Additionally, the city is dependent on the developer paying for this service in advance and they have communicated that they will not be funding this position beyond June 30, 2024. It is likely that the city needs two additional fulltime building inspectors to accommodate the current and future demand. There are currently 3 fulltime building inspectors being supported by a supervising building inspector, for a total of 4 fulltime positions. Between January 1, 2019, and January 1, 2024 (5 years), the Building Inspection Team conducted over 46,000 inspections, with a peak year in 2021: SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 2 of 9 The average annual demand over the time reflected in the graph above is around 9,100 inspections a year. This demand spread out among 4 fulltime inspectors is 2,275 inspections, or about 10 inspections per working day. A building inspector must spend between 90 minutes and 2 hours a day in the office to conduct code research for projects, answer questions from phone calls and emails, schedule inspections for the day, and attend any necessary meetings or professional development to maintain their certifications. Therefore, this level of demand implies that an inspection will not exceed 30 minutes per stop and allows for no more than 6 minutes to commute between jobsites. Since the team of inspectors are combination inspectors and not specialized, many of these inspections require at least an hour of staff time on site since they are inspected all building components (electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and building/structure, and energy). A third building inspector was added to the Building and Safety Division in 2017. However, as reflected on page 156 of the 2019-21 financial plan, staff anticipated 4,600 inspections in each fiscal year for a team of 3 FTE’s. This plan reflects and supports the concept of 1,534 inspections to be assigned to each inspector in the division per year. These projections were not provided in subsequent financial plans. The Division was restructured during the 21-23 financial plan, which replaced a plans examiner with a permit technician, added a new permit technician, added a new Deputy Building Official, and reclassified the Building and Safety Supervisor and Permit Coordinator into Supervisors (This downgraded the Building and Safety Supervisor and promoted the coordinator). This restructuring allowed staff to accommodate roughly 750-1000 additional inspections a year if the Building Inspection Supervisor and Deputy Building Official participate in inspections. Even after this restructuring, the City is only staffed to successfully perform up to 5,600 inspections a year; however, .5 FTE was eliminated from the Building and Safety Division during the current Financial Plan. There are also concerns regarding other policies that have been enacted in an attempt to provide timely inspections. Up until this last financial plan, the Building and Safety Division had an assigned Key Performance Indicator that set a goal of providing inspections the day after they were requested. This created an SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 3 of 9 expectation that a building inspector would be available next day when requested. Unfortunately, with constrained staffing, this can lead to inadequate time to perform all inspections. This demand for next day inspections has become an expectation in our community and continues to present a significant challenge. The evidence for this has been apparent during recent complaints from the community. For example, the building official has received several complaints from residents in a specific development, which is now in the final stages of development, and verified code deficiencies in new homes. These include missing sprinkler heads, exterior access panels that allow significant water intrusion into the walls of the homes, and attic access doors that are blocked by electrical and water services. These deficiencies were replicated throughout the entire development. It is also relevant to highlight that the city is experiencing a significant increase in more technically complex projects for the area, which tend to require longer inspections because they consist of more complicated construction methods. These types of projects include multifamily buildings, mixed-use buildings, and special construction such as large mechanical parking lifts. These projects introduce complicated building elements such as fire walls, fire-protected structural steel members, and structural welding. In the last year staff has encountered several instances in which the licensed designers and contractors in this community have failed to understand the critical nature of these complicated building elements, and this has resulted in staff needing to spend additional time to ensure compliance. For example, a new mixed-use building in the City has a mechanical parking lift in which the materials for it were imported from India. The contractor was not able to produce the necessary documentation to show that the prefabrication methods complied with the minimum requirements in the code. An alternative method to verify compliance was necessary to ensure the integrity of the structural elements, which required special testing. Upon the Building Inspector’s investigation, they found that the majority of the welds were undersized, the welders did not follow the engineer’s methods and used a weaker form of welding, and structural elements were improperly spliced together which reduced the supporting members structural integrity below that which was necessary to resist seismic loads. This means that in the event of an earthquake, there would have been an increased likelihood of this 42-car structure collapsing. Working with the developer to address these issues took a substantial amount of staff time and effort. Another example is when a building inspector encountered a project in which wood stud framing was the primary form of construction; however, some steel I-beams were utilized in a few areas. These beams require fireproofing to ensure that any heat from a fire does not warp the beams which would result in structural failure. This concept was new to the contractor and the designer at the new people self-help housing project known as Tiburon. The contractor and designer initially rejected the determination made by the city’s building inspector and the supervising building inspector. They would not accept the interpretation without the Chief Building Official weighing in and preforming a site visit. With the current staffing levels and expectation to only remain on a project for 30 minutes at a time, these types of interactions and level of service mentioned in the examples above are not sustainable. In addition to seeing more technically complex inspections, the total number of permits issued each year continues to grow: SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 4 of 9 The steady increase can be attributed to several hundred permits for Energy Storage Systems, solar panel installations, and energy efficiency upgrades such as insulation and windows. Many of these permits only require two inspections to complete. However, in many cases homeowners and contractors are depending on grant funding to pay for these upgrades, which often come with strict schedules. Recently, PG&E started a Residential Storage Initiative program in which they intend to provide around 1,800 free Energy Storage Systems to residents of the City of SLO. City Administration received a communication from PG&E that stated if the Building Division was not able to provide timely services, then PG&E will be forced to “pivot” their efforts away from the City of San Luis Obispo to “focus on jurisdictions where the permitting process is not incumbering progress.” Additionally, the Office of Sustainability and Building and Safety Division intends to bring new amendments to the building code (Reach Code) for the City Council to consider on 5/21/2024. These new amendments will require building inspectors to attend additional training and spend more time on projects. During community outreach for this initiative, a local developer who supports the adoption of increased efficiency measures expressed concern for the inspection team’s ability to enforce these new regulations. It was his experience that, in past projects, Reach Code standards were being overlooked by inspectors due to the lack of time they had to spend on projects. Finally, the actual projects under construction or are about to start fall into the technically complex category. These projects include: • Peoples Self-Help Housing (Tiburon Place) • BMX Mixed-Use project at 2800 Broad • HASLO’s project on Bridget St. • The Creamery Lofts • San Luis Square Phase 1 SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 5 of 9 • San Luis Square phase 2 • The new Airport Hotel • New Mixed-Use project at 667 Monterey • And San Luis Ranch Commercial and Hotel In order to be effective, the city needs to get the average annual demand for inspections down to 1600-1800 inspections per inspector. If it is assumed that the peak year of 2021 was an outlier, it can also assumed that the average annual demand for inspections is closer to 8,000 requests per year. This goal can be accomplished with 4 fulltime inspectors and a supervising building inspector who carries a case load of up to 1000 inspections per year. Key Objectives What are the intended results or objectives of this SOBC? Describe the measurable results that will be achieved through the implementation of the request. State the results in terms of efficiency, quality of service, or outcome KPIs. Requests that do not include meaningful and measurable results run a higher risk of not being recommended for approval. Additionally, consider the following: • Are program/proposal objectives set forth in quantifiable terms? • How will services improve and what measures will you use to track and identify the improvement? • What improvements in cost effectiveness or future cost savings result from the proposal? How does the proposal improve customer service and how will this be measured? The objective is to replace the current developer funded consultant inspector with a new regular FTE and reduce the number of inspections each inspector conducts on an annual basis. The intent of this action is to continue to provide high quality inspection services in a timely manner. The Community Development Department will continue to track the number of inspections completed by each inspector and total number of inspections completed. In addition, the Department will continue to track the average amount of time between inspection request and when the inspection is scheduled. Adding an additional inspector to the team will allow staff to continue to provide next-day and/or same week inspection services to the public. Providing quick turnarounds on inspection services are crucial to providing a high level of customer service. The longer a developer/builder has to wait for a scheduled inspection, the longer projects can take, and the more expensive they become. Providing complete inspections (not inspections that are rushed) is also crucial to providing excellent customer service and results in fewer mistakes being made and less time and money required to remedy mistakes. Major City Goal or Other Important Objective Addressed The role of a building inspector is imperative to ensuring public safety in the built environment. Furthermore, building inspectors are instrumental in helping the City Council achieve climate action goals. Developers depend on timely inspection services to keep their projects on schedule. Failure to provide timely and thorough inspection services can hinder the City’s housing goals, as it can lengthen the time required to complete a housing project. Alternatives Considered Include an analysis of other feasible alternative solutions to the problem addressed by your request. Explain why your request represents the best solution to the problem. Describe why current resources are insufficient to address the issue or what tradeoffs would be required. Also, indicate what would happen if your request is denied. SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 6 of 9 While there are several alternatives, none of them are as effective as the addition of an inspector. The City has utilized on-call consultants in the past. This is not recommended as a permanent solution since the need for additional inspection services is anticipated to persist for the next decade as the General Plan build-out is not anticipated to be complete until 2035. Furthermore, the hourly rate for a commercial combination inspector is $135 per hour, totaling roughly $250,000 for the year. The Building and Safety Division is only allocated $140,000 per year for other contract services. Due to the high costs and lack of familiarity with the community, consultants should only be utilized in instances of staff vacancies and on a temporary basis, not as a solution for a long-term need. If the request is not approved, inspection services will cause significant delays to projects currently under construction. STAKEHOLDERS If implementation of the requested SOBC involves or impacts stakeholders outside of your department (staff from other departments or external partners), identify their role(s) and advanced coordination that has occurred to ensure participation. Implementation of the requested SOBC will allow the city to continue to provide the same level of inspection services as is currently being provided, which is crucial to moving projects forward in the City. This will greatly impact the development community, including housing developers, who have come to depend on next-day inspection services to move projects forward quickly. IMPLEMENTATION Program Manager: Michael Loew Project Team: Community Development – Building & Safety Development Community Timeline Provide the expected timeline for implementing the request, including major milestones along the way. When will the resources be in place and operational? How long will it take before measurable results will be achieved? As previously stated, if the request is time limited, identify when the resources would no longer be needed. Note that new staffing added for time limited projects should be requested as contract or supplemental. Date (MM/DD/YY) Task 07/01/2025 Hire Building Inspector 07/01/2025 Purchase a Fleet Vehicle ATTACHMENT SLOCITY EQUINOX EV Quote $48K.pdf (49K) SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 7 of 9 FINANCIAL AND POSITION ALLOCATION DETAIL ONE-TIME: $54,860.00 ONGOING: $110,848.00 TOTAL SOBC REQUEST: $165,708.00 BUILDING INSPECTOR II (44500) GRADE 418 CEA Fully Burdened FY25 Annual Mid Cost $109,948 Pay Type Amount Base Wage $84,617 Health Flex Allowance $15,508 Retirement $8,572 Medicare $1,227 PERS Survivor Fee $24 SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 8 of 9 FINANCIAL AND POSITION ALLOCATION DETAIL STAFFING DETAIL Fund Cost Ctr FTEs Classification Expense* Revenue** Net Cost (Expense-Revenue) One-Time/ Ongoing 101 4006 1 Building & Safety Inspector II $109,948 Cost Recoverable Position $109,948 Ongoing TOTAL $109,948 $148,430 $109,948 NON-STAFFING DETAIL Cost Ctr Account Current Budget Requested SOBC Expense Revenue Expense* Revenue** Net Cost (Expense- Revenue) One-Time/ Ongoing Description 4006 61005 $750.00 One Time Cell Phone 1101 I.T. $600.00 Ongoing Cell Phone Contract 4006 62509 $3,000.00 One Time Laptop 4006 61005 $300.00 Ongoing Bluebeam 4006 61005 $1,110.00 One-Time Laserfiche license 4006 Fleet $49,000.00 One Time Vehicle Purchase 4006 Fleet $1,000 One Time Vehicle Wrap TOTAL $55,760.00 * Expense should include all costs associated with the requested SOBC. For example, if the request is to add a position that will need specialized tools or require purchase of an additional vehicle, those costs should be included as part of the SOBC. SIGNIFICANT OPERATING BUDGET CHANGE DEPARTMENT NAME: Community Development COST CENTER- PROGRAM: 4006 Building & Safety TITLE (Short Name): Building and Safety Essential Positions Page 9 of 9 ** If the department has identified a funding source (grant funding, increased fee revenue, etc.) to offset the cost of the request, please describe and explain the identified funding source(s). How certain and stable is the proposed funding source for this request? What is it driven by or contingent on? If this request will be an on-going program or activity, what does the department expect future year funding streams to look like? Please describe below: