Professionals in the building and development industry met with Island County Commissioners Jill Johnson, Janet St. Clair and Melanie Bacon Wednesday afternoon to voice their frustrations about the permitting process and share ideas on how to tackle issues.

The speakers complained about their struggles with the lack of consistency in permitting policies and procedures, the unpredictability of policy changes, the prolonged back and forth between the county and the applicants and the lack of experienced staff.

Johnson said that while some professionals have met with commissioners and other staff members, this was the first time commissioners and industry members have gathered together to discuss.

Eric Richmond — who runs the design firm Flat Rock on Whidbey — said builders understand that building and energy codes are updated every fixed number of years. It becomes a problem, he said, when the county changes policies unpredictably, depending on who is doing the interpretation. This can burden applicants with more assessments, time and expenses.

The speakers lamented the lack of a consistent review timeframe. Without knowing when to expect their application to be approved or rejected, it can be difficult to schedule any on-site work, further delaying construction while there is a desperate need for housing.

“I have never known the permit process to be more difficult than it is right now,” Richmond said. “Policies are changing on a whim and we can’t keep up.”

During the meeting, Johnson explained that county staff has 120 days to complete the review, but that only includes the days the permit is under the county’s control — meaning that the time when an application is sent back to the builders for changes is not counted.

The speakers asked for their application to go through a one-time comprehensive review of their application with a list of all the things they need to do in order to meet requirements and secure the permit, believing this would expedite the process and ensure more predictability.

In an interview, Johnson said it’s an idea worth exploring, but she doesn’t know how feasible that would be. She explained that feedback from a department can affect feedback from another department. One issue can affect the entire site plan, triggering additional assessments.

The county’s high turnover rates were also discussed at the meeting, with speakers suggesting to increase the pay of employees and even offering to pay higher permit fees to increase staff wages. This way, they said, the county would cease to be a mere training ground for young professionals to move on to higher paying jobs in neighboring counties. With an ever-changing crew, they said, the county lacks experienced staff.

In the interview, Johnson agreed that poor staff retention is an issue but increasing the wages of only a part of the county’s staff would be unfair to other employees and also difficult due to budget restraints.

Another idea was to hire an outside consulting firm, which Johnson found “intriguing.”

Both the county and the building and development communities have been waiting for the Department of Ecology to approve the county’s Shoreline Master Program for years. One of the speakers said the county should be able to make decisions locally rather than allowing the state to do that, which Johnson agreed with in an interview.

She explained that, over time, state agencies have been given more authority over local decision-making, for which she said she feels just as frustrated as the speakers.

“We’re ready to adopt it,” she said. “We haven’t heard back from the bureaucrats in Olympia. They haven’t given us permission to adopt our own code.”

Johnson said she feels optimistic about finding solutions and that she expects more meetings to happen in 2024.