Hello, Franklin. It's Monday.
I'm Eric Stuckey, your City Administrator.
And it's time for the top three things you need to know this week.
And just like we did a couple of weeks ago, we're going to focus in on one of our
specific services here at the city of Franklin
and give you some important things that probably even more than three things
We talked to our customer service and revenue management a couple of weeks ago.
And this week, we're talking to our building
and neighborhood services department.
And I have with me today
our Director of Building and Neighborhood Services, Tom Marsh.
And it is an important department.
It's focused.
A lot of times we think about public safety
being police and fire while they're not the only ones.
Our building a neighborhood services plays a critical role in making sure
our homes, our public spaces, businesses you go in are safe.
And effective places to to interact. And so.
Tom, tell us a little bit about your department and especially what
you were standing in front of, which is our service commitments.
Good morning, Eric and everyone.
Thank you for joining us here.
As you said, the Building Neighborhood Services Department supports the
life, safety and quality of life for residents so that our
visitors and businesses in the city
and we do that through administering our adopted codes and ordinances.
And we know that we support the development of the built environment
and in developing the built environment.
We know that one of the things that's important
to residents and particularly the the large private developers
that are making investments in the community.
One of the things that's important is a defined timeline.
They want to know how long one thing
something is going to take to be approved and built.
One of the things we have done, we have adopted service commitments
for every application that comes in, nonresidential
and residential product projects and a variety of other requests.
We receive letters and information.
We provided a definitive turnaround for, for example,
most nonresidential applications.
The initial plan review is 20 business days
and the follow up revisions if necessary, is ten business days.
So those were our standard commitments.
And as you know, we also have many types of projects smaller, nonresident
and most residential projects are eligible for our One Stop service right here.
Right here.
Every Monday
and Wednesday of every week, we have building permit application, one
stop with the ours and then the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
We have land development applications.
Those are even earlier in the process development plans, site plans, final plans
that have gone through the full development process when they have
a few outstanding conditions to meet before they're ready to go.
To permitting,
they have the One-Stop eligibility to clean up those last permits
before they're ready to move on then the permitting.
So in come here and get lots of answers and get keep moving,
making progress on on whatever they're working on.
A lot of times it is, like you said, targeted for folks who may not have
all the expertize they come in and we help them answer questions.
So we talk about one stop as a process, but it's also we kind of refer
to this area as our one stop area.
So we're going to go into the department and show you this.
Here we go.
We're going to walk into building a neighborhood services.
This is one of the front doors of the city.
We welcome citizens here all the time.
Particularly on the One-Stop Days.
They'll meet our representative at the front desk,
talk about whatever their question or issue is.
And the thing about one stop what we guarantee our customers
is an answer that day.
And we have staff available and all the specialties
to do plan review, but also just to answer questions.
And that's where this starts to get all of that.
So let's go in here a little more.
We can show you physically some of the things you will be able
to learn in a one stop, but also what you can get online.
So we've got a big monitor here.
We'll show you some examples, show us a little bit
like a typical question somebody might have about their property.
What would that look like?
And we just pull up their address, for example, 109 Third Avenue South,
and the map zooms right in for us.
And we can turn on various layers.
We'll just stick with the zoning right now
and we can click when we click on that property.
We see the zoning descriptions downtown district,
and our staff will sit here with the applicants.
People ask questions about what does that mean in terms of side
yard setbacks, lot coverage how I can use my I can use a letter
my firm uses and we have our handy dandy zoning ordinance right here
so we can get through that with staff.
And also if they get into more in-depth building questions
we have our library of code resources here on the shelves behind me
so that our technical staff can sit with someone right here
and go through as many questions as they can in a short amount of time.
So in the codes that we have
are not just special Franklin codes, tell folks about that.
Absolutely.
The City of Franklin has adopted the international Code Council series of codes
building plumbing, mechanical and electrical are your standard.
We've also adopted a few other code other in the international series
Energy Conservation
Code, Green Building Code and things like that above the basics,
but mostly building property, building plumbing, mechanical, electrical.
And like you said, those are international codes not to do Franklin specific.
So we have
we use things that are nationally and internationally endorsed as best practices
of the best way to have safe buildings and safe structures.
Absolutely.
We sometimes you hear people say, Oh, Frank, they're Franklin codes.
We don't have Franklin codes. We have international. Yes, sir.
And there's a new series of codes every three years
and we're currently on the 2018 series of the codes.
And one thing that is a three year process through
design professionals, engineers, architects, insurance companies,
design companies developing new building
technologies to improve the safety and quality of buildings.
So that's a three year process that each version of the international code
that leads into what's created that we, the City of Franklin, have adopted
and do our best on every other project to enforce those codes.
All right.
So let's close it out and talk about the level of activity we've seen
and maybe a little bit what people can see themselves online.
That'd be good, too.
But so just last year, I saw how many people came through one stop
we had a permits about 1300 customers come in for one stop.
Okay, great.
And then we issued permits somewhere around what?
How many different total permits?
About 6000 permits.
That's all true of building permit, mechanical and electrical.
And that's been pretty consistent throughout the last three years,
even through COVID.
It's 6000 permits plus or minus a couple hundred.
So what's the scale of investment that that represents in the community?
Let's go to it on my research.
You can see here on the on our external web page,
FranklinTN.Gov of under services development and building services.
There's a section here called Development Reports and Maps.
What we have here are the quarterly and monthly summaries.
So I'll just go to the last quarter.
This was so October through
December of 2021 and that shows you the total number of permits,
all details, breakdowns, specific types of permits.
One of the things
people are often interested in is the number of new dwelling units.
So 745 total dwelling units in that quarter
and the breakdown of single family in multifamily.
And one of the things that I know that you're often
interested in the bottom line, the total investment in the community.
So in the fourth quarter alone for that calendar
year, $203 million of investment.
And as you recall the total for 2021 $556
million and that was calendar year 2021.
So that's real investment.
That's not just I might build that someday.
These are people pulling actual permits and then going and building
and making that kind of investment in our community.
So over $550 million in one year is pretty phenomenal.
And that's larger than we saw pre-COVID in 2019
and larger than we had in the, the first COVID year of 2020.
So the activity has continued.
It's a strong statement in how interested people are in our community and
investing in it. So
I think we've covered a lot of ground,
it's a lot of stuff, there's a lot more than three things,
but it's always helpful to see the great work
that's going on in our departments.
And thank you, Tom and thank you to your team for the great work you do.