Commissioners at the Doña Ana County Planning and Zoning Commission’s organizational meeting on Jan. 8 raised persistent customer-service concerns about the county’s permitting and planning phone and online systems and pressed staff for faster, clearer public access.

Commissioner Fisher said constituents have called planning and not received callbacks and argued that property owners should be able to get a password to check permit status themselves: “I think it's imperative that, an owner of a property be able to access to have a password issued to them so they can get on the site and look at what the status is of their permit request.”

Staff responded that the department’s phone system rings across multiple staff members and that, in some cases, voicemail messages have been lost because of IT issues. Staff noted an internal promotion (Eileen to permit technician supervisor) and the resulting clerical vacancy; once staffing is restored the department intends to improve live-answering consistency. Staff said email addresses for building services and planning could be added to voicemail messages and distributed to the public to improve responsiveness.

On owner access, staff said a guest account has been created to allow the public to look up permit status, but that the guest login is not fully enabled and some permission parameters remain under development. Staff committed to follow up with Commissioner Fisher this week, to place a guest-login and a short tutorial video on the county website, and to work on owner-specific permissions that would prevent public users from downloading or uploading restricted documents until appropriate safeguards and settings are in place.

The commission did not take formal action on permitting systems at this meeting; staff commitments were recorded as follow-up items. Commissioners urged faster progress so constituents can reliably check permit status without relying solely on contractor updates or delayed voicemail callbacks.