Permitting Division leadership briefed the committee on Sept. 8 about implementation of Senate Bill 5290, the state law that sets firm county review timelines for land-use permits and related applications. Jim Chan and Mark Rowe said the county received roughly 1,445 applications subject to SB 5290 between January and August 2025 and reported 98% compliance with the lawtime limits.

Mark Rowe described the timeline categories: applications without public notice receive 65 county days for review; applications requiring public notice receive 100 days; and applications requiring both notice and a hearing receive 170 days. Rowe said no 170-day hearing cases had yet been received year to date.

The Permitting Division also presented actions to address the pre-2025 "legacy" pipeline of applications. Division staff said the legacy inventory dropped from about 1,500 to approximately 900 pending files and that the group issued roughly 500 legacy permits by August. They highlighted residential legacy work: of about 450 residential legacy applications at the start of the year, staff issued 335 and the count remaining fell to 115, a nearly 75% reduction.

Chan and Rowe attributed the progress to training, process changes (16 improvements adopted), a new timing-tracking software (chest-clock management), recruitment of additional positions approved in the 2025 budget, and closer coordination with industry and partner jurisdictions. Rowe said cancelled applications generally were duplicate filings, applicant-withdrawn, or files deemed not complete after repeated attempts.

Leon Richardson, Director of Local Services, said the division has made significant progress but still needs a modern permitting system and continued staffing to reach a regional "gold standard." Chan noted the department requested new system funding in the upcoming budget and said that permitting currently runs on a 10-plus-year-old system augmented by multiple subsystems.

On staffing, Rowe said the council approved 16 positions for 2025 and the division had filled more than half of those. Committee members thanked staff and signaled support for the divisionbudget requests for systems and staffing in the 2026budget review.