total fully burdened cost for each staff member. >> >> the methodology for the bench marking analysis is really three at the points and the first step at the beginning of the engagement and we discuss with the staff, which jurisdictions they would like to the bench marked against. and we selected five jurisdictions and each jurisdiction mgt has conducted it and very similar fee study for the building departments recently. and so, we have it on these five cities and they are come parable cities and we have the good contacts in each. and next, the quantitative survey, this is a traditional fee study, and we selected several fees, within each division.

and we compared those to the used survey cities. and number three, qualitative survey, and in the discussion with the staff, after our first round of interviews with each division, we came up with a list of questions that we have had to be useful to ask our survey cities, and we have tabulated those results and we have a sampling to share with you today. and the next slide presents a sampling of our quantitative results. the first graph, for example, identifies for a 50,000 evaluation alteration project. and what the building permits charged is for the city of san francisco, and verses oakland, sacramento and santa clara and santa monica and what we found

so far, for the building inspection division is that the fees are not out of line with the jurisdictions that we surveyed. and we could draw a few conclusions from that but i think that one is that, it would appear that the building inspection staff are highly efficient and that may be a reason why the costs or the fees are a bit lower, on average than the survey participate cities. >> could i ask a question. >> sure. >> in this evaluation, do you just look at the fees. >> do you look at how long it takes for a five million dollar project to go through our system? do you evaluate that efficiency? i mean that you are assuming it because it costs less, but are

these, are these other cities, also enterprise departments where the fees can't go to the other issues or all used within the department? >> a few are, and when you look at the next slide, we will, i think that we will see which are and i don't have that as a sample. but, yes, a few are and a few are not. a few are general funded and a few are enterprise funded. >> i think that it would be important to see on the higher fees of all of those fees are used in the department or if they are allocated to other and zboe to the general fund and they can charge whatever they want in other words,. >> yeah, and i believe, oakland and san diego are both enterprises and sacramento and santa clara and santa monica are general fund. >> it would be helpful if i knew the time frame that it took to get the permits processed in these cities along with the cost. >> you mean from cradle to grave. >> yes. >> okay.

and as i said we have contacts at these cities and so we can ask for that information, and the one thing that we do have, we do have the response time information in terms of what percentage of inspections were performed within 48 hours. that was one of our questions on aur qualitative survey and we have do responses back from that and we will see it on the next slide, actually. >> that is good, but i also think that the over all time frame for project processing. >> that makes sense. >> would be important for us, and in comparisons. >> i will make a note. >> then if we have and we could do it quicker, by charging more, is that worth it to the development community? that is a question that we have to look at. >> and we will ask if they have

a backlog, that might be a good question. >> backlog and time of processing. >> from the start to finish. >> and that the good segway into the next slide, there we go, which is a sample of a qualitative survey, and you can see that we have listed 8 questions i believe the, and the completed survey is, in the range of 15 to 20 questions. >> yeah. >> what we found is that all jurisdictions do check small building plans over the counter, but, we found in the next survey question number two, we found that san francisco checks a higher percentage of projects over the counter than other

jurisdictions. >> so that kind of leads me to one of the questions that makes us an outlier compared to the other cities, is that the reason that we are doing so much over the counter work based on, you know, our efficiency or whatever, but also, based on the comparison to the planning department. in our city. >> for example, how, efficient we are, and how fast we move has to compare and had it has to be in some ways compared to planning or connected. because, perhaps one of the reasons so many of the development communities come through us, over the counter, is because if they were in the planning it would take a lot longer, and so, it would help us to know why is it that like in, i don't know, nowhere else

does anybody do close to what we do over the counter like 50 percent, why is that? because they could get it done the same way through planning? or is it because they can't do it over the counter? >> you know, they don't have a choose. >> they have to go to the counter. >> i think in these cases, the fees that we are studying, are not i think that they have to come to the dbi, and i think that it is, and it is the first step in the process it to go through the planning and assuming that they have gone through planning and now their at dbi and i would agree with you that your plan check staff processes meant a greater volume over the counter than what we have seen elsewhere. and that does speak to possibly efficiencies and that is one thing that we are laobing at with the plan review staff is, is that part of the revenues

surplus, equation, that staff are processing over the counter very efficiency, and very quickly, and that we know that the building community appreciates this, and that the time is money, and but we are looking into to see if that is part of the, of the fee surplus, situation. >> yeah, and i, we really appreciate, you know, getting kutos for the efficiency in the department, but i feel that the development in the community, or the builders out there, they get conditioned. based on their interactions with the entire city and not just with the building department and so i think that the point that i am raising is that a lot of developers and expediter and contractors or anybody who deals with the voting department, they may tie themself in a pretzel if they think that they can get it over

the counter verses going to the submital. >> i see what you are saying.de

department. s that is part of my point. >> yes, understood. >> i have something. i just think that commissioner mar suggestion would be to compare the types of permits that can be obtained over the counter verses the different. >> and the type. >> yeah. >> the type. >> the definitions for over the counter. >> yes. >> and so, for example, if some jurisdictions may say, replacing a window, is an over the counter permit that does not require, submission to the planning department and stuff like that, you know, and in some jurisdiction if you want to expand the room in the backyard you need to go through the planning department. and we just wanted to make sure that we are analyzing the an pell and apples and not apples and oranges. >> and since i am really talking, i want to bring up one thing. and what is the amount of permit activities in all of these agencies? and all of these cities? >> and i am just curious, since

you have done studies with them and is our volume the highest? i am just curious and how does it compare to the other city. >> that might, also, play in the part of how we determine what the fees should be. >> and i don't think that your volume is, and i am working with san diego, concurrent with san francisco, and i believe that their volume is a bit higher. >> oh, really? okay. >> i am almost sure of that. but i don't have that information at hand, i think the other, and i think that your volume is higher than the other jurisdictions with the exception of san diego. >> commissioner melgar? >> yeah, i just wanted to point out that this is the fee study, you know, to properly pay the fees that we collect to how much the service costs so there is, you know, some overlap, with the issue of you know efficiency, but i did not want to, just to be careful not to micromanage the process,

because i do think that we could go to work and we don't know and we do need to get this done in six months and i think that maybe later we should talk about you know, whether or not we want to have mib a separate study about a issue about the over the counter permit verses the full review and the planning and whether or not people avoid it. yeah. >> and that is a good point. this study does not or is not designed to identify efficiencies or in efficiencies but it is rather identify it, and designed to identify what the cost is. and so that is a good point. >> and i know that it is, i look at this and i am like, we are charging less than half of what oakland charges. for permits. and i want to know, it can't just be efficiencies.

maybe it is. but, it seems like it might be doing something different. so i want to make sure that we are comparing apples to apple and not apples to oranges and i don't know if they include more plan, i don't know what their criteria is and so the criteria that you are using is important for us to know. and i do not suggest changing it. >> my point was only that, i think that this will bring up a bunch of questions and not necessity a different study and may not be this study. >> and these result and we recently completed this study for oakland, and these results are straight from their. >> yeah. >> table 1 a from the building, so this is their building permit, fee table. >> so, you are right. and okay land charges a bit more, than san francisco. for what it is worth. >> moving on to item number 2, i think that i covered this a bit, what percentage of the plans are checked?

over the counter? and san francisco, and we, mentioned processes a very high number over the counter. and number three, do you charge a different fee for plans that are checked over the counter? several do not. and then it is a bit mixed and sacramento charges, actually charges an additional amount, for the benefit of accepting the plan over the counter, and san diego charges a discount. and then lastly, santa monica charges a flat fee for the plans that are checked over the counter. >> and as you can see san francisco there is no difference, in the fee charged. so that will, and that is a policy decision. and in san francisco, number four, you do not utilize inspecters and you have specialized inspecters, and for

structural and mechanical and plumbing and electrical and most of the other jurisdictions and all of the others, use combination inspecters to some extent to sacramento and san diego, it is just limited to the residential projects. and number five, what percentage of the inspections are performed in 48 hours and you can see that for each jurisdiction it is a fairly high percentage are checked within 48 hours. >> similar, what percentage of plans are checked within 30 days and the range goes between 75 percent, and 99 percent, and again, this is the information from these are responses that we were provided and not with these numbers and we just, we accept them as valid and put them in the survey. >> do you charge an issue ans fee and if you do and if you don't, and then, this issuance

fee is to cover the clerical time up front and so that may be a partial reason why san francisco permit fees are a little bit lower and it does not of course, answer the full difference there, but, your fees do, and your fees do not, your building permit does not include an issue ans fee, where others, that clerical time is incorporated into that permit fee. >> it says yes. >> yes, you do charge an issue ans fee, separate from the building permit. and in other cities, it is combine. >> i see what you are saying. >> so this is... >> in truth. >> is that included in the numbers that we, and is the issuance fee amount included in the overage in those totals? >> i am sorry. it is just the previous, when we talked about having well i guess that it is based, or our concern is based on the amount

of money that we have left over. >> and here is earlier in the slide that showed, common comparison of the building inspection fee and our issuance fee will not be included because we calculate it different, if it was included it will show it. >> and it will be calculated separately. >> i see. >> and lastly, we asked each jurisdiction whether any fees are intentionally subsidized, and in san francisco, you do not. and oakland, subsidizes reroof fees, and sacramento subsidizes remaintenance fees and to be honest i am not 100 percent what that includes and santa monica subsidizes single trade permit fees. but, as i said, this is a sampling of the survey, and there is about, i think between somewhere between 15 and 20

questions. and we are working on completing that and finalizing that. >> and again, in the city's rfp asked for the surveys to be performed just as the information to help you folks make the ultimate fee policy decisions. >> in the next slide, we have identified the budget milestones, and i will not go through all of these but you can see the bench mark pg analysis, and we are 90 percent complete with that. and we have completed all of the various steps down through number 6, preparation of the user fecal you lacings. and the upcoming milestones include reviewing and reviedsing the calculations doing our various checks. and number eight, will be issuing a draft report to the staff. and in july, and in august, we

will be completing that staff report and issuing our final report, and then in september, we are anticipating a presentation to the dbi commission. ultimately, this will all result in a revision to the building code if these are revised. findings, one thing that we found, and primary findings that i should qualify this and this is from our draft results, the primary findings of our draft results identify that all divisions except for the housing and code enforcement charge a few fees that are in excess of cost. and so each division has a few fees that are generating a profit and that is what our drafts are telling us. number two, and this is not surprising at all.

and we find this at most jurisdictions that we analyze, the primary fee categories that produce excess revenues are the high evaluation projects and that you really, really large projects typically because of the economies of scale, generate a profit. and that may be part of that may be happening here, and our draft, analysis is that conforming that for these high evaluation categoris that there is a profit being generated. number three, we thought that this is significant to add as a finding, as i said we are still in that reconsilation of the actual revenues and the actual revenues to the projected revenues, and as an example for the plan check analysis, the results project an over all subsidy and the over all results showed that there is room to actually increase these, but we know from the

actual results that revenue are coming in higher than cost. and so, we are in the process right now of trying to resolve that discrepancy and drill down and figure out our time, and perhaps our time estimates and it may be a little too high. we are looking into that. and so, that is where we are in our reconsilation process. primary findings for the bench marking analysis, these are all things that i think that we saw from our earlier slide, for bid, our inspection fees, are generally lower than those charged by the survey group and you mentioned in comparison to oakland, we were not expecting

that. and as i said, it or a possible of explanation could be of how this might be... and it might be happening is that if the staff is just highly efficient, and again we dent know that we are not studying that but we do notice that your fees for building inspection are generally lower than the comparison group. employee review fees on the other hand are m the mid to high range compared to the survey group and we note that the dbi standard lerate fees are the second highest among the survey group and the highest in santa monica. and lastly, dbi work without a permit penalty, that is somebody starts the construction and then does not pull a permit and gets caught, you charge 9 times the original fee. and that is that fee is much

higher, than those charted by the survey group, the next highest was three times and your is 9 times and so it is a very high penalty. >> the next slide is a or gives you a picture of our results, or our draft results, for the plumbing and the mechanical division. so it liflts category 1 through 23 and these are straight from your plumbing and mechanical fee schedule and for each category we identified first of all the current fee and so for the first category, single residential units and the fee charged is $160. and if you look at the far right column we see that based on the time estimates, multiply

by the hourly rate the cost is $129 resulting in a profit being generated and so the fee is $31 higher than the cost. and you can see for the remainder of the fees, generally that is not the case, typically, the current fee is coming in a little bit lower than the cost. but again, these are draft results. lastly, we have recommendations for the next steps. we have listed a few proposed policies. and the first is to adjust either up or down the fees annually by a price index and this is a best practice that many cities employ to keep the pace with inflation, our for the reverse, if the consumer price index goes down, the fees

will be lowered. but another policy, gets to do with project valuation, and for, some projects, when a project is presented, to dbi, evaluation is declared, and that evaluation is often times an estimate of market value. and what the schedules are based on, is construction value. which is different. and so, a recommendation and the best practice, is for those projects higher than a million dollars, and these are and just gets into the area where our draft results are showing that a profit is being generated. and the projects above one million dollars, we are proposing that those valuations be checked against your marshal and swift cost index, which takes on the square footage

bases and applies to the project and comes up with an independent evaluation and that may take care of the very large projects. >> and the next steps, before us are on august 15th, we are submitting a final report, and the next step is presentation to the commission, and then ultimately, if changes are made to the fee schedule, revision of the building code. and with all of that i will open it up to questions. >> thank you. >> any questions from the commissioners? >> thank you, for the presentation, and we look forward to the final report. >> thank you you are very welcome. thank you. >> and is there public comment on this item? >> seeing none, item 10, commissioner's questions and matters. inquiries to staff? at this time, commissioners may make inquir eyes to staff regarding various documents policies practices and

procedures. which are of interest to the commission. >> are there any? >> so i just have a question about the update of the planning, building, inspection joint? >> the joint meeting? >> yeah. just... >> the meeting. good question. so, we have had one prepatory meeting, between both the president and the vice president of both commissions are schedule to take place next week on june 23rd. and i want to thank the commissioners for submitting their agenda items so we are giving staff time to prepare for those agenda items and i think that we will, and we are going to be discussing the next prep meeting about which of the agenda items we are going to tackle.

and but, it seems like, it is from what i heard, the meeting with the commissioner and the president and it is work able and the next step is to have that prepatory meeting with the staff from both departments there to give them time to prep the agenda items and then we will schedule the commission meeting after that. and so i... >> you are going to schedule the meeting at this meeting? >> i think that what we are going to probably do, is to finalize the, or which one of the eight items we submitted and we want to tackle and then i will see that we are probably going to be with the three and it is assuming that everybody, and offers the suggested dates because i know how hard it is to schedule the meetings. >> and so especially for the colleagues here and also m planning, and we will probably be you know, accepteding out some suggested dates. and also, we want to get the

feedback from the staff both of the departments where they are going to give them adequate time to prep that agenda item. >> but that is what we will be discussing at the next public meeting. >> okay. >> item 10 b. >> could i? >> go ahead. >> regarding this, the fees, and, what we are charging and this study, i would like to get from the city attorney's office the restrictions described to us about what fees are supposed to be used for. and how i mean, is it just the service, is there a... we deal with lots of other departments, and there is an enter face between the departments, that i feel like, we do not do successfully. and i just, i would like to be able to know where we can or where we can go with this to

make our delivery more effective. it is efficient, and quick, because we are doing so much over the counter, but i think that there is still, i hear the complaints and i don't hear that from people that it is quick, especially if it is a complicated project. so i would like to get sort of a sheet about where we could go with that. i mean, what are the limits? so, at the next agenda meeting, you don't have to do it now. >> okay. >> and the attorney, just to clarify so i understand what you are asking for our advice on. and so specifically. >> the fee. >> what is a fee and how can it be used. i think dbi staff would be better to talk about the efficiency question and all of that. but we certainly could provide the legal advice on the proper use of fees and how they should be set. >> great, thank you.