Andrew Espinoza
Some Dallas permit fees will double or triple starting May 1, and industry leaders say those rate hikes will be passed on to home buyers. Dallas Development Services officials say the increased fees were necessary to prevent the department from hemorrhaging money. The Dallas Development Services Department collects about $28 million in revenue each year,…
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For the first time in almost a decade, Dallas Development Services raised its building permit fees to close the gap between operating costs and revenues. The matter has been postponed twice by the Dallas City Council as staff was directed to gather more feedback from stakeholders. The higher building permit fees have been criticized by…
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Dallas continues to chip away at infrastructure needs, allocating $154 million this fiscal year to streets, sidewalks, alleys, and bridges. The Dallas Infrastructure Management Plan, now in its sixth year, evaluates maintenance needs for infrastructure projects outside of the bond program. During a Feb. 21 briefing, staff from the Dallas Public Works Department reviewed the…
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Altamonte Springs, California, recently became the first U.S. city to implement artificial intelligence for site plan reviews, and the initiative has caught the attention of Dallas leaders looking for ways to improve the permitting process in the Development Services Department. It took Development Services Director Andrew Espinoza over a year to clear a permit backlog…
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Dallas Development Services appears to have overcome a bad reputation of delivering building permits in a slow, inefficient manner that costs builders money and backlogs the city’s housing availability — just in time for state legislation mandating that they need to move even faster. Members of the council’s Government Performance and Financial Management Committee and…
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