gloucester mass (town next to me) where i do alot of work has recently gone over to online permitting ONLY..
can't go into inspectors office and pull a permit anymore.
anybody else have to do this?
BTW..
i just pulled a permit for a new summer cottage. it is a teardown and rebuild. it has a high valuation because of its proximity to the ocean.
so total valuation according to the building permit is 495,000.00
one bathroom and one kitchen/laundry..
plumbing permit is 3% of valuation.
so, plumbing permit for that small job is 1495.00
outrageous for a 10 minute visit for rough inspection and 5 minute finish inspection..
that comes to about 6000.00 per hour not counting travel time..

That's nuts but it's what is going on everywhere. With online permitting, it provides another layer of disconnect between the bureaucrats and the irate homeowner.

We have online permitting too but can still walk in. So far.



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The town of Shrewsbury charges more if you pull a permit at the town hall than if you pull it online.
The city of Springfield charges 5 cents per BTU over 1 million on commercial gas permits.
Some plumbers tried to sue the city over those rates but the state ruled with the city.

You can still pull a permit (walk-in) in the towns I work in but they point over to a Computer terminal,always a few guy's in line and most dont know how to fill the form out.I just do them from the office or home...pay with a CC and your done,I love it.It's also very easy to see if the Plumbing/Electrical or any other trade working at a Property you put in a bid has pulled a permit.

Down here many cities are going online and a "UNIFIED permit system" and its a mess.

Because prior to that different cities have their own permit application form with their own unique fields. Now on the UNIFIED form some of those fields disappeared but are still needed in some cases because they were there for a reason. Now some permits are converted but the data is crippled.

In one city the online permit system is cheaper. Because it is really online ONLY and if you do a walk in manual permit application what it means is while you wait, the person behind the counter will enter your paper form into the online system, and they end up charging you for "data entry" and you might as well do it yourself then.

One property I had built in 1979 have over 20 permits some old some new and on the system it listed 14 of those permits dated "1899". Some glitch with the dates. I asked them and they said it's "the system".

The "system" is allowing people to not care and compartmentalize even when there is a breakdown.

At the end of 2016 I had a finished a driveway project that involved zoning, public works, and electrical approval. It's one of those UNIFIED permit. You submit one permit, and it automatically generated three "sub permits", one for zoning one for electrical and one for public works. When a particular part of the project is done you call in for inspection. You can't SELECT which inspector, the "system" selects it for you. Electrical MUST go first. Electrical comes out and passed it. Then you call again just punch in permit number and ZONING comes next, zoning will not come unless electrical has passed. So you cannot call and schedule three inspections in one day! I called zoning and tried to find out what time they will be there that day because the system shows that inspector has 5 inspections one of them is my address. What time will you be there? She said she didn't see my address because she works off a folder given to her from the "front desk" and she doesn't have my house on that day's list. Last inspection was public works, but instead "Structures" showed up. The system did this. The structures inspector said he has no idea why he is out there, because the work is outside of the property line, it is a driveway apron. I said yes, its true, but you are out here because the system messed up. He was upset at me for his being out there for no good reason, and he was looking for something to fail me on, simply because he had no way to pass me. Finally he failed me for not posting a notice of commencement on the front door (I had it taped to the window) because, by doing so, it will cause the system to reschedule the public works inspector. Can you believe this?

Finally, when I had all the inspections passed, which means all inspector signed off and "FINALED" the subpermits. Well I went to the city because the "OVERALL UNIFIED" permit was still shown as "OPEN". All the subpermits were closed and finaled, the overall permit was still opened. I asked why, the clerk said "THE SYSTEM"!!!!!!!

Now get this, this was a property I bought that had an open lien. I spent money to correct and legalize the property. Now that it's all done, I was there to tell them all is legal and I wanted to PAY THEM THE FINES TO HAVE THE LIEN RELEASED. They can't process the mitigation because the system still show the permit as OPEN. I said to them, that the fine is piling up at $200 a day. If your system takes a week to fix that's an added $1400 to me.

At the end it took ONE WHOLE MONTH to fix this. By that time I didn't want to pay because I want them to take off all the fines from the day the permit should have been finaled and they somewhat agrees but couldn't fix the system to do so. Now we still haven't resolved this.

if we as business owners tried to pull the "its the system" crap, we would be in the bread line in a week..

unfortunately its happening all over. The system just seems to turn normally helpful people into blind deferral to the system people. I don't know if it's human nature when there is a "process" in place to just do "your part only" even though you can see it's broken, or the individuals were told by their superiors to stay in their box.