Gorge Commission previews new online permitting portal and planner hub, details digitization and rollout plans

At its April meeting the Columbia River Gorge Commission previewed a new public-facing permitting portal called Civic Access and the commission’s back-end eP&L (enterprise permitting and licensing) planner hub, demonstrating how residents will submit development-review applications and how planners will process them.

The demonstration showed a user creating a secure account, selecting a parcel by address or tax lot, uploading a site plan, and submitting a development-review application. "This is where residents would come to, begin an application for, development on their property," said Mike Crank, a commission GIS and systems specialist, as he walked commissioners through the public screens and the planner-facing hub.

Why it matters: the system centralizes permitting records, links application data to the commission’s GIS layers, and adds search and reporting tools staff said will make retrieval and historic queries far faster than the old Access database. Staff also said the rollout includes digitization of roughly 35 years of paper records and a new document-management system and agency website as part of the same IT project.

What staff demonstrated

Crank demonstrated the applicant experience (account creation, parcel lookup by tax lot or address, project description fields, attachments and a digital signature) and then switched to the eP&L hub that planners will use. The planner view pulls GIS-derived fields (management area, land-use designation, key viewing areas) into the record automatically; it shows a checklist-style workflow (pre-application meeting, completeness review, specialist subreviews) and an audit trail of every action on a case. Crank noted the platform shows a fees field that cannot be removed; the commission does not charge fees, so the field will display zero and staff will add explanatory text.

Kelly (staff), who has been configuring the system day-to-day, demonstrated saved and shared advanced searches, the ability to add custom fields (for example to capture development types and biosign (BSI) indicators) and to export results to Excel. "We can now include right in here that quick glance of all of this current work," Crank said of a planner dashboard that replaces an older spreadsheet-based tracking method.

Budget, procurement and timeline

Staff described the project as a two-phase effort overseen by state IT reviewers and supported by contracted vendors. Mike Crank said an initial feasibility and needs-analysis phase used an appropriation of $450,000 but returned roughly $52,500 unused. The larger implementation phase was budgeted at about $1.8 million; Crank said staff now expect to spend about $1.4 million and to return roughly $383,500 to the states. That Phase 2 figure covers the civic-access portal, the eP&L platform, digitization of past records, a document-management system and a new website.

Communications and public rollout

Crank said staff anticipate a soft public rollout timed with the new agency website in the coming months; he estimated a public launch could happen in June, subject to final approvals. "We could share that link with anybody, and they could begin an application," Crank said. Cheryl Shown, ESA project manager supporting the commission, added: "Yes, we do have a plan" for outreach and said the communications committee will weigh low-cost notification options (press releases, targeted partner outreach and emails) rather than a broad mailed blitz.

Questions and public comment

Commissioners pressed staff on cost details, staffing and accessibility. Crank said the only paid position funded directly from the IT appropriation is a limited-duration public-records and administrative analyst who has supported the project; other existing staff time was counted in-kind and Oregon and Washington oversight offices reviewed the budget. Commissioners asked how the portal will serve users who are not comfortable online; staff said planners will continue to accept paper applications, will assist walk-ins, and staff plan to produce short how-to videos.

Tara Lingley of the Oregon Department of Transportation, who spoke during public comment, raised a practical limitation she has seen with similar Tyler systems: permits for rights-of-way or other locations without tax-lot numbers can be hard to place accurately. "For permits that are on land that don't have a parcel number ... it is very difficult to input a location," Lingley said, and she described a common workaround of selecting an adjacent parcel.

Quality assurance and lessons learned

Blue Crane, the project's QA vendor, presented a lessons-learned summary prepared after stakeholder interviews. The QA report praised strong team involvement and engagement from commission planners and staff, and recommended that the commission maintain a change-management plan and consider small-scale solutions when possible to reduce unnecessary customization of off-the-shelf software.

Next steps

Staff said planners have been using the system internally for several weeks, that searches and custom fields remain a work in progress, and that staff will continue refining text and instructions for the public-facing pages. Crank and ESA staff also said they will continue to discuss potential integration or read-only access for partner county planners as a future enhancement. The commission did not take any formal vote on the software at the meeting; staff asked the communications committee to finalize the public-rollout approach and timing.