“The entire process was so unprofessional and such a joke, I’ll never do another project in this town again. If it wasn’t for our 200 people we would have pulled out and moved to a friendlier community.”

Unfortunately these stories are starting too become a series on this blog. I had a 4 hour conversation with a local business owner on a trip back and forth to Phoenix.  This business owner is in the highly sought after manufacturing business. He has been in Tucson since he bought the company in the late 70′s. His company employs 200 people and sales are over $20 million per year. This is exactly the type of business and industry our community desperately needs.

When I asked him how it was to interact with government, I got the typical answer I hear over and over. Apparently he bought some open land in an industrially zoned portion of Tucson. He went down to the city to build his new factory and office complex. There was no neighborhood opposition (shocking, I know) and his architect designed the project to current building and zoning codes.

After 6 months of stalls, delays and outright incompetency he took his architect down to Development Services and met with the director. In the meeting the tone was unfriendly and downright hostile. Apparently some genius from Dev. Service staff did a drive by of the property and found a building had already been built -without permits. The director commented that the manufacturing facility may be required to be taken down due to potential code violations and lack of permits. His plans were being held up and nickel and dimed for breaking the rules.  Here’s the best part of the story; the staffer that drove by his project went to the wrong address! The manufacturer still had a dirt lot on his property and hadn’t moved a rock.

With no apologies, no explanationthe development plans magically started to move through the process. Rather than address the issue head on 6 months earlier a decision from the top down was made to make this man’s life hell on earth.  He saw first hand the wrath of a bureaucrat scorned.

Unfortunately, these stories happen all to often. There are undoubtedly procedural issues with the Development Services department. There are steps that can be made easier. I personally have sat on 6 or 7 different panels to try to make the process more customer focused and streamlined. The piece that we continue to dance around is the role of an upset plan reviewer, the field inspector that’s having a bad day, the unofficial word that goes out department wide to make that developers life living hell because they stepped out of line. It’s retaliation at its finest.

If Tucson ever wants to become business friendly it must start with Development Services. This department is the gate keeper and usually the only place a business truly interacts with the city. Without a permit nothing gets done.

The attitude must shift from ‘what can we find wrong with you plans’ to ‘how quick can we get you up and running and generating sales tax revenues.’