A12
ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT
Date: October 8, 1996
Dept. File No.: ADDRESS
TO: Vancouver City Council
FROM: Director of Permits & Licenses
SUBJECT: Building By-law Amendment and Staffing Increase
RECOMMENDATION
THAT Council approve conversion of four existing temporary
positions to regular full-time positions to coordinate and
support the increasingly complex addressing function. The
1997 salary and related costs of $190,400 and one time costs
of $ 47,700 to be funded by collecting the $383.00 Address
Change fee, as included in the Building By-law (B/L 6134),
from all applicants requesting any address change. Expanded
fee collection is to begin on November 1, 1996. The foregoing
positions are subject to job evaluation by Human Resource
Services.
GENERAL MANAGER'S COMMENTS
The General Manager of Community Services RECOMMENDS approval
of the foregoing. This is an adjustment that directly links
the cost of the service with the level of service. Due to the
high demand in addressing services, staff have had to be
redirected from other services. The adjustment will allow
staff with other customer commitments to return to the
previous level of service. During the Development and Building
Permit Process Review it is anticipated that the Addressing
function will be reviewed and may be restructured in ways that
are consistent with the goals of the Redesign Project.
COUNCIL POLICY
On February 3, 1994, Council approved that, during the term of the
1994-96 Budget Management Program, any recommendations for increased
staff or for new or enhanced programs be fully offset by corresponding
expenditure reductions or by increases in non-tax revenues within the
City's operating budget, subject to Council discretion.
SUMMARY
Permits & Licenses is the comprehensive source of information for
property addressing in the City. Addressing is fundamental to activities
within City departments, other government levels, public utilities and
the private sector. The most efficient method of disseminating address
changes over various computer networks is the Central Addressing System
in the City's Geographical Information System (GIS). Four permanent
positions are needed to maintain quality and timely information.
PURPOSE
This report is submitted to:
i) request approval for the coversion of temporary positions to
two regular full-time Addressing Coordinators and two regular
full-time support positions for the acquisition and
maintenance of accurate and timely addressing information; and
ii) confirm the expanded collection of Address change fees to
recover the cost of maintaining the service.
BACKGROUND
In 1903, when the Vancouver Building By-law was formally implemented,
there was an understanding that each building on a lot needed an
address. As areas of the City developed, each lot was assigned an
address after the Building Permit application was received.
As part of the Vancouver Building By-law, Property Owners have been
provided with two opportunities to apply to the City Building Inspector
to change their property's address. First, the owner can pay for an
'Application for Address Change' for an existing building. The By-law
gives the City Building Inspector discretionary power to allow the
change and directs that an accurate record be maintained.
The Owner has another opportunity to apply to change a building's
address as part of any Development/Building Permit process. Again, the
By-law gives the City Building Inspector discretionary power to allow
the change.
Until the mid-1980s the requests for address changes were infrequent (10
to 15 per year) and uncomplicated. The service could be provided as part
of the general activities of the Department's By-law Enforcement
Coordinator.
Since the mid-1980s there has been a dramatic and sustained increase in
the number of requested address changes. Gradually the Department has
had to re-assign staff to meet the rising customer demand. This meant
that some other activities had to have their service scope reduced, the
service delivery time frame extended or the service had to be curtailed.
During the last few years, new, additional and more complex
address-related customer service demands have appeared. There are many
more consolidations of lots and more subdivisions of lots. Infill
housing has become more common and presents a variety of complications
in the addressing function. The size and scope of projects have
increased the volume and complexity of addressing and record management.
New databases are much more detailed and comprehensive and need
experienced, trained staff to maintain the information. These activities
have also contributed to the workload of the re-assigned staff.
The trend in real estate marketing practises includes the sale of units
at the Development Application stage. This gives the owner a chance to
presell the building before financing is finalized. In order to make the
building more marketable, a new address may be needed. This new workload
also includes a large risk of error component which compounds the time
needed to serve this market. This pre-market need for addresses has also
become part of alterations and renovations to existing buildings to the
point where address change requests have become part of this permit
process.
DISCUSSION
City Council empowers Permits & Licenses with the responsibility of
maintaining a record of street numbers that have been assigned or
re-assigned under Section 306(x) of the City Charter. The fee ($383.00)
for re-assigning an address is included in the Vancouver Building
By-law. The address index is the basis of many of the City's systems and
processes.
The increasing volume of address-related activities and information
prompted a review of the current processes and work assignments in
Permits & Licenses Department. The review confirmed that, to this point,
staff have incorporated the added workload into their existing
activities at the expense of their other job priorities. These
priorities include by-law enforcement coordination between the
department and the City's By-law Prosecutor and file research which is a
fee-for-service provided to property purchasers that need quick
information turn-around. Over the course of the last two years, the
Department has had to transfer 4 clerk positions using reallocated
temporary funding to maintain this service. As a consequence, vacation
relief in other functions was significantly reduced, decreasing service
in those areas.
The review also confirmed that the Department could no longer meet the
accelerated demands for addressing from the public while adequately
performing its other duties.
The proposed Addressing Coordinators and the support positions will work
together to maintain and update the database for the corporate Central
Addressing System (CAS), which is a component of the corporate
Geographical Information System (GIS). The current method of updating
CAS uses information brought in from the Department's Permit Processing
System (PRISM).
These positions will focus on customer initiated addressing issues and
balance those issues with the City's addressing requirements. There is
a need for experienced researchers with detailed knowledge of the
guidelines for the creation and maintenance of information in the PRISM
address indexing system and the relationship with the City's GIS.
The By-law Enforcement Coordinator was responsible for assigning,
reassigning and coordinating the numbering of all buildings in the city.
These tasks were reasonably infrequent and usually took place after
construction. For the last few years, the volumes have increased from 10
to 15 per year to an average of 1025 per year. The construction related
address changes have also substantially increased over that period.
In order to allow this person time to accumulate and present evidence to
the City's By-law Prosecutor, to represent the Director of Permits &
Licenses at the Board of Variance and to train various inspection
disciplines in preparing proper evidence and documentation for the
Courts, a clerk was assigned from the Correspondence Branch to
coordinate address changes. Volumes and complexities continued to
increase and a second position was re-assigned to assist in the
addressing function.
In the past, addressing accuracy depended on erasers and addressing
errors rarely became legal issues. The need to communicate with many
more interested parties encouraged the use of photocopiers, faxes and
computers. With the increased use of even more technology to move and
manage this type of information, the need for 'first-time' accuracy on a
timely basis has necessitated the re-assignment of 2 more experienced
clerks into the addressing function in a database maintenance and
consistency monitoring role.
The proposed regular full-time Addressing Coordinators will formally
assume responsibility for assigning and re-assigning of all addresses in
the City together with related procedures, and maintain the database for
the city address record system. From the initial application stage,
these Coordinators will be the resource for all City Departments,
developers, contractors, property owners, etc., to determine appropriate
numbering.
Besides the Provincial Registrar of Voters, there is a variety of
organizations (Canada Post, BC Assessment Authority, BC Hydro, BC Tel,
Rogers Cablevision, etc.) that rely on the accuracy and "currency" of
our central addressing information. This customer group's specific needs
are to be identified and a 'fee-for-service' negotiated and reported to
Council in 1997.
The Department also recommends establishment of two regular full-time
support positions to work with the Coordinators in identifying,
researching and correcting addressing errors that exist in various
internal and external file records.
The addressing function and PRISM (Permit Review and Inspection System
Manager), which is the computerized backbone of all property related,
departmental and corporate address related information, will provide the
data to be utilized by CAS. Using GIS as the communications device, CAS
is the system that takes the PRISM address index data to coordinate all
civic addresses and to, potentially, connect all address related
information. Therefore, these positions will spend a significant amount
of their time maintaining the accuracy and updating the database with
current information.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
The projected costs are to be recovered, in part, by continuing to use
the funds received from Applicants who have requested an address change
by submitting a request to the City Building Inspector. The balance of
funding will be generated by having construction-related address changes
follow the same requirement of completing the Change of Address
application form. These fees are reviewed annually and a report to
Council from the Directors of Finance and Permits & Licenses includes
any fee adjustments relating to workload or service level issues.
By beginning the collection of this addressing fee on November 1, 1996,
the Department intends to offset some of the cost of temporary staff
that are maintaining the service during the balance of 1996.
Based on the Department's analysis of current usage of the service, the
following table shows the best estimate of the impact of the change:
Salaries $159,000.00
Fringe Benefits 27,000.00
Training 2,400.00
Office Supplies 2,000.00
Annual Operating Total 190,400.00
One Time Costs 47,700.00
$238,100.00
Service Cost Recovery $246,200.00
CONCLUSION
The creation of regular full-time positions for Addressing Coordination
and support for the Addressing function and its database maintenance
role will provide system-specific departmental expertise, improved
service to the customers, a resource for internal staff and consistent
addressing operation policies and procedures. All users of the
Addressing service will gain value from a well maintained, accessible
database that can provide for one time requests or for customized report
formats.
As part of all future analyses of the Trade Permit Fees prior to a
report to Council from the Directors of Finance and Permits & Licenses,
there may be service fee adjustments driven by customer demand.
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