Permitting staff reports 1,566 permits in 2025 and outlines 18‑month enterprise software upgrade

Permitting staff told the Bonney Lake City Council on April 16, 2026, that the city ‘touched 1,566 permits’ during 2025 and described a planned enterprise permits and licensing (EP & L) upgrade expected to take about 18 months to implement.

The presenter (S4) said roughly 17% of those permits were commercial, multifamily, industrial or other nonresidential types, while residential activity dominated the workload. "The overwhelming bulk of our work is residential permitting," the presenter said, and noted 30 new single‑family homes received final approval last year along with 13 tenant improvements and 18 additions and remodels that obtained final sign‑off.

The presentation laid out recent accomplishments—completion of the East Pierce Fire and Rescue station, work at the Mountain View Marketplace (including tenant spaces for Panera, Aspen Dental and Xfinity), activity at Peak 410 (including GoodRoots Northwest warehouse/logistics), and the city’s first ADA‑accessible play equipment at Allen New York Park.

Staff also described operational challenges. The presenter said the permit team operated with a single permit staff member for six months, and that a major phone outage tied to vendor CheckMute hindered customer contacts because, in the presenter’s account, the vendor did not prioritize a fix. "We spent a lot of time working with CheckMute… Unfortunately, they didn't prioritize the fix," the presenter said.

To reduce manual work and improve transparency, staff consolidated system views so planning, building, engineering, fire and code enforcement can see the same project record; created public‑facing maps showing zoning, future land use and environmental constraints; and set up shared mailboxes for permit, planning, code enforcement and engineering staff to improve triage.

Records work is also underway: staff reported scanning nearly all remaining paper permit files (about 115,000 pages), an outsourced project that cost roughly $38,000 and produced accessible, text‑searchable PDFs and a TIFF archive. Moving scanned documents into project address files and completing physical file destruction is expected to take about 12–18 months and cover roughly 3,500 individual PDF files.

On technology, the presenter said the city is implementing the enterprise permits and licensing component of a Tyler system that will integrate finance, HR, utility billing and permitting. The presenter described current manual steps—applications submitted in a separate system (Seamless) trigger an email and staff must manually download and hand‑enter data into Eden—then said the new system should allow applicants to upload documents, calculate fees at submission and reduce re‑keying. "It should calculate their fees so that they're paying that before it even comes to us," the presenter said.

Staff warned the configuration work is substantial: every permit type must be built into the new system and data must be mapped, and with limited dedicated staff the work is being scheduled around day‑to‑day duties, producing an 18‑month estimate. A kickoff meeting for the vendor implementation was postponed due to a personal emergency; staff said the new kickoff date is pending.

The presenter also noted compliance and web deadlines the council should expect: updates to checklists and handouts to meet ADA requirements (deadline April 2027) and a website update schedule currently showing a March 31 target for development services pages (which staff said may change).

Next steps: staff will schedule the EP & L vendor kickoff, continue scans and document indexing, and roll out incremental improvements to checklists and public guidance to reduce application errors and processing time.