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Report recommends steps to streamline development in Lucas County

Posted By: Toledo Blade on December 16, 2024.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Lucas County is exploring ways to streamline the complex approval processes that developers are required to utilize when siting projects in the unincorporated areas of the county.

A report commissioned by the county found that all developments, regardless of size, typically involve two political subdivisions and as many as six reviews by government agencies and officials. These can include the county Health Department, the Building Regulations Department, the sanitary engineer, the engineer, and various township fire departments.

Federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are also more closely regulating development.

“Unless an applicant is familiar with the entire process, it can seem overly complex and appear designed to make development unnecessarily difficult,” the report concluded.

Matt Heyrman, the county’s deputy administrator and director of economic development, acknowledged that the multiple layers of government oversight can make development a daunting process.

“It’s a complex road through our environment,” he said. “The standards need to be better aligned.”

The report was especially critical of the county engineer’s office, which was described as having a negative impact on the overall development process and being an adversary rather than a partner to developers. The report criticized the county engineer’s office for intolerable delays, poor customer service, a disinclination to talk with developers or come to a job site, a heavily bureaucratic culture, and a system that produces multiple rounds of comments and corrections on development projects.

County Engineer Mike Pniewski, however, characterizes the complaints listed in the report as exaggerated.

”Our job is to protect the public and the public interest,” he said. “Other interests have different objectives. We have to balance the need to protect the public against the development community’s interest in getting things done as quickly as possible. Like any regulator, we have rules and standards we have to follow — and we work hard to get developments to mesh with those rules.”

Sam Zyndorf, a veteran of the local real estate scene who serves as a consultant for the Lucas County auditor and various public and private organizations, doesn’t disagree with the report’s findings and recommendations.

“If Lucas County wants to step it up, they need a concierge to shepherd people through the development process,” he said. “People feel like they’re in a pinball machine getting bounced around. One agency tells them to do something, and then another says, ‘That’s not right, you’ve got to do it this way.’”

The report, which cost the county $9,750, was authored by veteran public administrator Marc Thompson and prepared by Management Advisory Group LLC. It echoes Mr. Zyndorf’s suggestion, but rather than calling the person tasked with assisting developers a “concierge,” it calls the person a “navigator.”

“The ‘navigator’ is envisioned as a knowledgeable ‘insider’ who is available as needed to provide guidance and information to applicants who are not familiar with the development process,” the report says.

Mr. Heyrman endorses the hiring of such a person and also advocates taking two additional steps to make the process of obtaining permits and authorizations easier.

One of these is the establishment of a program of education for developers and builders that would clearly lay out all the steps that have to be taken. The second is a single electronic portal that would collect information about proposed projects and make it available to all the applicable regulatory agencies, thus relieving developers of the burden of completing substantially similar forms.

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