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06/21/2017 10:00 AMFor the town’s Building Department, the transition from paper to digital records is already underway. For the public and town contractors, the wait for access to the new Municity
online system will be a little longer.
When the transition is complete, it’s unlikely contractors will miss having to stop in to the Land Use Department office to file paperwork for building permits, schedule inspections, or check on a permit’s status, and building department staff won’t miss having to answer repeated phone calls from contractors checking on the status of building permits and inspections. With 24/7 online access to the new Municity
permitting system, contractors will soon be able to check on permit and inspections status from their own computer tablets and smart phones wherever they are.
With this system, “there will be live results in real time from the field that applicants will receive by email,” explained Town Building Official David Maiden.
Building Department staff this month have been completing training on how to use the Municity
system. To expand staff knowledge of the system by exploring its capabilities, each paper application received this month is being converted by staff into an online application.
“We started training staff two weeks ago. So far everyone who sees it loves it and we know the public is going to love it, too,” said Maiden.
The public will need to wait a little longer for the new online permitting system, however.
“The public won’t see any change in the application process until mid July. We will be taking paper applications [for now] and staff will be entering them into the Municity
system,” said Maiden. “We want to use this month to work all the bugs out before the public uses it, and we want to become subject-matter experts so that we can assist the public when we launch the public portal.”
Maiden said that the Building Department would be the first town department to use Municity
for permit applications and inspections. Other town departments that plan to convert to its online permitting capability soon after the building department goes live include the Health Department and Inland Wetlands.
As part of the project, the town has migrated data from the existing database into the Municity system, so some historical permit data will be available.
Old Saybrook Town Building Official Don Lucas said that the Town of Old Saybrook will open its Municity permitting system to the public on the same timetable as Westbrook, sometime in mid-July. As with Westbrook, historical permit data for town properties has been carried into the Municity
system, where it is available.
Once the public portals are open and the public has access to and can use the Municity
system, permit filing and tracking will be easier and quicker for contractors.
For example, each contractor only has to register and create a Municity account once and that account is valid for any town using a Municity
system. Three shoreline towns—Branford, Westbrook, and Old Saybrook—will all be using the system by mid-July.