Development services prepares for building move; staff continue permit data recovery and software demos

At the Feb. 10 meeting Valley County planning and building staff updated commissioners on office moves, permit counts and ongoing work to migrate historical permit records to a new system.

Staff said they have issued 10 permits so far this winter but cannot directly compare year-to-date numbers with prior years because the historical dataset in the CAI/Tyler systems is incomplete or not yet fully migrated. Annette (building department staff) and IT staff are working on locating and importing legacy permit data; staff said Jeremy (IT) has done partial imports so addresses and select records can be located but the migration is not complete.

The county said it recently hired an architect to create construction drawings for a new facility (the timeline for moving staff and bidding construction will follow those drawings). Merit/Amerit Title (private tenant) is preparing to leave a county building at the end of the month, which affects scheduling for renovation and move-in. Staff said they are scanning documents and minutes to reduce the volume of paper to move and that some staff are preparing to relocate.

Staff also said they are scheduling demonstrations of development-services software (vendor demos) while work volumes are low; the goal is to select software and implement it before the busy permit season. The county will continue to provide spreadsheets of permit records and to set up demos with multiple vendors before making a selection. Commissioners requested staff follow up and report on migration progress and demo schedules.

No formal action was taken on software procurement at the meeting; staff presented status and next steps.