Do More With Less

Do not cut by percentage across every function. A flat 12% cut applied to a workload that is not flat produces the current outcome: everything slows, nothing stops, and the backlog compounds.

Rank by these criteria, in this order:

1. Legal deadlines and deemed-approval exposure. Anything with a statutory clock runs first, full stop.
2. Health, safety, and ministerial permits. Building-related and life-safety review is not discretionary.
3. Discretionary review tied to adopted council priorities - housing production, the corridor plan, economic development. Ask council to confirm the ranking in open session; do not infer it.
4. Plans and studies. Valuable and deferrable. Say so out loud rather than letting them quietly die.

Then explicitly sunset low-value work instead of starving it: eliminate design review of minor façade changes and administrative sign permits; convert pre-application conferences to a written checklist and a 30-minute slot; delegate routine approvals to one signature; publish a completeness checklist and reject incomplete submittals on day one rather than opening a review file.

Publish a service-level table with target times by permit type, and say what is not being done. Silence about the things you have abandoned is what turns a capacity problem into a trust problem.

And do the capacity math for council. Hours of demand against hours of supply, with the 12% cut and the frozen vacancies, in one page. 'Do more with less' is a slogan; a workload table is a decision aid. Absorbing the shortfall silently with 55-hour weeks is not leadership - it is borrowing against staff you cannot replace, and the 3-in-11 turnover is the interest payment arriving.

A single average days-to-approval figure is a measure that improves when service gets worse, which is the definition of a bad measure.

What it hides:

• Whose delay it is. Most elapsed time in a permit file is applicant response time. The number falls if you reject submittals on day one for a missing stamp - faster on the dashboard, no faster for the customer.
• Quality and rework. Fewer, shallower reviews compress the timeline and push errors into construction and inspection.
• Mix. A 47-file queue of complex site plans and simple fence permits averages into a number that describes neither.
• Distribution. A median of 61 days can conceal a 210-day tail, and the tail is what generates lawsuits and lost projects.

What belongs on the dashboard:

• Cycle time by segment (residential vs. commercial vs. administrative), and split into intake and completeness, first review, applicant response, and final action.
• Queue length by segment, so the public sees backlog rather than only velocity.
• Percent complete at first submittal and average review cycles per application - the two best proxies for whether your front end is working.
• Rework and call-back rate as the quality counterweight.
• Equity cut - turnaround by geography and project type, so the fastest service does not go to whoever calls most often.
• Complaint resolution time, since the mayor's phone calls are a service channel whether or not anyone admits it.

Publish the definitions and the caveats alongside the numbers. A dashboard nobody can misinterpret is worth more than one everybody can.

Respond through counsel, factually, and fast - but treat the letter as a diagnostic, not just a threat.

Immediate handling:

• Preserve the file. Pull the complete chronology for all three projects: submittal dates, completeness determinations, comment letters, applicant response dates, resubmittals, and every phone call logged. In delay disputes the record usually shows a shared cause, and if it does, you need to know that before counsel asserts otherwise.
• Check the statutory clock. Many state permit statutes run a deemed-approval or refund clock that starts on a completeness determination. If the department never made a written completeness finding, the clock may be running or may never have started - a technical failure that is far more dangerous than the backlog itself.
• Give counsel the facts and the department's proposed schedule; do not respond to the attorney directly and do not improvise legal positions.
• Communicate with the applicant in writing, with dates, even while counsel is involved. Silence during a dispute is what escalates it.

What the letter reveals:

• No written completeness determination at intake. That is a one-page fix with enormous leverage and should have existed years ago.
• No published service-level commitments, so the applicant has no standard to hold you to and you have no standard to defend against.
• No escalation path, so a frustrated developer's only available move is a lawyer.

Fix the front end - completeness checklist, written determinations, pre-application meetings, delegated approval for administrative items - because those changes shorten the legally risky part of the timeline at almost no cost. Then report the fix to council alongside the capacity analysis. A demand letter is a symptom of an unmanaged process, and managing the process is the part of this that is within your control.