Moses Lake staff present 2026 budget workshop; permit portal, homeless services, parks and lodging‑tax allocations draw questions

City finance and department staff gave an overview of proposed 2026 budgets and program changes, reviewing community development, homeless programs, parks and recreation, lodging‑tax funds and police budgets.

Community development

Vivianne Ramsey described the combined building and planning functions. Highlights included a projected downturn in development revenue, work on a one‑stop permitting counter, a planned cost‑recovery fee study, and continued implementation of the unified development code and comprehensive plan update process. She said planning staff have processed more than 80 land‑use permits so far in 2025 and that the building division had issued roughly 590 permits and 239 certificates of occupancy this year; two inspectors completed more than 3,500 inspections.

Council spent significant time on the city’s recent switch to a new permitting portal and back‑end workflow. Ramsey and other staff said the city will continue to use Cityworks on the back end and a vendor‑supplied front‑end portal (Centricity). Council members and customers reported time‑out and “spinning wheel” problems on the public portal. Staff said the city performed internal and external beta testing before launch, is tracking partial submissions and usage analytics, and will do a more exhaustive review of workflows with a study session and further staff training. Staff described an escalation path for customer problems (start with permit tech, escalate to GIS/technical staff) and committed to a follow‑up study session for council.

Code enforcement and building operations

Ramsey told the council code enforcement opened 812 cases in…