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Audit finds $1.4 million in permit fee misconfigurations; single large shortfall tied to Garland ISD
Summary
An internal audit of the Building Inspection permit process found configuration errors that led to roughly $1.4 million in under-assessed fees (including about $978,244 tied to a single government entity identified in the meeting as Garland ISD); staff corrected open-permit rates and will work with the district to resolve closed permits.
The Audit Committee was told that building inspection issued roughly 18,000 permits between October 2023 and July 2025 and assessed about $6.4 million in permit and processing fees — but internal audit identified fee-configuration issues that produced both overbilled and underbilled permits across commercial, multifamily and single-family categories.
Auditor Seth said "we reviewed these fees" and reported that for commercial permits 522 permits were overbilled for a total of $99,348 and 1,521 permits were underbilled for $966,531; expanding the scope to government and church permits identified about $1,400,000 in under-assessed fees. Seth told the committee that a "single government entity was underbilled by $978,244 for closed permits and under assessed by $270,109 for open permits." When asked if the single entity could be named, a staff member said "it's Garland ISD."
Staff explained the cause was a permitting-system classification issue: when fees were increased in 2018 the church and government fee categories in the system were not updated to the new rates. Building inspection has updated open permits in the system so future collections will reflect ordinance rates; for closed permits staff said they will work with Garland ISD to reconcile the amounts and develop a payment plan where appropriate. Recommendations include periodic fee-schedule reviews, stronger governance around updates to the master fee table, testing during the planned migration to a new permitting system (Salesforce), and verification steps after fee changes.
The committee discussed timelines for the Salesforce rollout and interim controls; staff said code compliance and revenue-recovery streams are prioritized first with building inspection following and that some fee fixes were implemented immediately on discovery.
