Staffing shortages at Anchorage permitting department create backlog for homebuilders

A shortage of workers to process building permits has created headaches for Anchorage homebuilders — and growing concern that the situation will worsen as the busy season picks up in a few months.

Four of eight positions in the municipality’s permit management division have been unfilled in recent weeks, while a fifth employee, the permit manager, will soon be leaving her post as well, municipal officials said.

The Anchorage Home Builders Association has pressed the department to resolve the issue, including by paying people more, people involved with the group said. The need for more housing in Anchorage has contributed to high costs for homes and rents, mirroring a national problem, experts have said.

The city’s permitting front counter is not alone at the municipality in experiencing worker shortages this year. Shortfalls have also occurred in the police and health departments, and many other areas.

The Development Services department that includes the permitting division is taking steps to resolve the problem, including looking for ways to increase pay, officials there say. They have had difficulty recruiting and keeping employees as the private sector also looks to fill jobs in a tight labor market, they say.

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“Recruitment is active and ongoing,” said Greg Soule, acting director of Development Services.

Soule said an offer was made this week to a candidate for a permit clerk, which should reduce the current employee shortage to three. He said the permit clerk is a newly created position designed to improve the process.

Things are getting better, Soule said.

During the summer season peak, permit applications submitted by email had required two to three weeks for “intake,” Soule said, referring to a first step in the process before permit applications are reviewed.

That was reduced to about one week. Now, it’s been reduced to about three days, he said.

With winter now in full force, permitting requests have also slowed along with the building season, he said.

While the labor shortages at the permitting division are affecting the intake of permitting applications, they are not affecting the review and issuance of permits, which hasn’t had the same staffing issues, Soule said. Permit processing times have been consistent, he said.

Soule said the department is also doing what it can when it comes to more pay. “Development services is looking at ways to increase the pay of these permit techs to promote retention,” he said.

The pay range for the new employees can run from about $51,000 to about $65,000, with overtime possible when it gets busy in summer, he said.

In another effort to address the problem, the division also trimmed back the hours when it accepts hand-submitted permits, closing the front counter on Wednesday mornings.

Kayli Thompson, who co-owns Scope Permitting and Engineering, frequently handles the permit submission process for builders. She said there’s a lot of concern that the situation will lead to delayed projects if it’s not resolved by spring when permitting and construction pick up.

The shortages led her to post about the problem recently on X, formerly Twitter.

“If they can’t keep up with it now, it will get really bad when there’s all these projects,” she said in a recent interview.

Bill Taylor, co-owner of Colony Builders and co-chair of the government affairs for the homebuilders association, said a weeklong wait to intake an electronic permit application, before a review can begin, is a “horribly unacceptable statistic.”

The workaround for the delayed email processing is sending employees to hand in applications at the division’s permitting front counter at 4700 Elmore Road, Taylor said. Applications submitted by hand are prioritized over electronic submissions, he said.

But that process can be time-consuming and inconvenient, requiring an employee to wait in line for well over an hour, he said.

The permitting issues can throw off building plans or cause other complications, Taylor said.

The company would normally get a certificate of occupancy over email, allowing a family to move into a home. But to get one recently, an employee recently had to race down to the permitting office and wait, Taylor said. The company got the certificate with three minutes to spare, allowing a family to keep their relatively low interest rate, saving them many thousands of dollars, Taylor said.

“It was issued and we dodged the bullet, but we were sweating,” he said.

John Snelson, also with Development Services, said in a recent phone interview that the permitting counter is having trouble competing with private industry.

“We are facing the same challenges everyone is facing, as far as recruiting competent qualified applicants,” Snelson said. ”We’re having a difficult time with the private sector offering better benefits and pay than we can offer. We’re competing with the private sector and the private sector is winning. We‘re doing our best to recruit qualified individuals, but it is a challenge.”