Joplin staff report surge in utility right-of-way permits, outline enforcement steps

Dan Johnson, the city’s right-of-way manager, told the Joplin City Council the volume of utility activity in public rights-of-way has risen sharply in recent years and staff are adjusting operations to keep up. "There is way more," Johnson said, pointing to permit totals of 936 in 2025, 671 in 2024 and 558 in 2023.

Johnson described how utility and contractor permits are entered through a city engineering portal, then downloaded into spreadsheets staff use to verify final measurements and create invoices for utilities. He said the portal allows staff to identify work locations, track responsible utility companies and simplify billing. "This is really a quick and easy way for us to manage the information," Johnson said.

Council members pushed staff for clearer timelines and stronger enforcement. Johnson said current utility-cut permits can be issued for up to a year, that utility contractors maintain temporary patches while they continue work, and when a project is handed to the city the city’s utility-cut contractor has two weeks to complete permanent repairs. "From that point, there's two weeks," he said. "If it goes beyond the two weeks, then [the utility contractor] are responsible for doing any maintenance past that."

To reduce long-running, multi-block openings and slow temporary patches, staff proposed several operational and policy steps: improve the permit portal with IT, host an industry training so contractors and staff can complete IMSA temporary-traffic-control certification locally (contractors could pay a fee to attend), and hold a February utility summit to press utilities and contractors on compliance. Johnson also said the city will work with the city attorney’s office and city prosecutor to apply penalties to utilities or contractors that violate city ordinances.

Councilmembers described problematic local examples — long-standing temporary patches and poorly coordinated road closures — and urged ideas such as charging per opening instead of per permit package and establishing a discrete clock to force completion. Johnson said staff will seek to negotiate more efficient sequencing with utilities and to press for better contractor performance in the next summit.

The presentation also previewed procurement: a utility-cut repair contract was advertised with a pre-bid meeting on Jan. 5 and staff said the contract could come to council in early February depending on bid results. Johnson said staff will provide bid results and a recommendation to the council for final action.

The council thanked Johnson and his team and asked staff to return with recommended enforcement language and an update after the February summit.