Cut red tape: Miami-Dade Commission directs Mayor’s office to streamline county permitting

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Miami-Dade’s permitting process, which at best has received mixed reviews, is getting a makeover.

Miami-Dade Commissioners on Thursday voted unanimously for a resolution directing Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration to establish a centralized, online portal through which residents and businesses can seek and track permits.

Currently, permit seekers may have to interact with multiple departments to secure approval for a project — a matter doubly confounding if they live within one of Miami-Dade’s 34 municipalities.

To further ease matters, the County Commission also told Levine Cava’s office to move all permitting-related resources and services to a single facility “to the greatest extent feasible.”

Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera, the measure’s sponsor, said the county’s convoluted permitting process — which he dealt with while applying for approval of a septic-to-sewer project at his home — was among the reasons he decided to run for office last year.

He told Florida Politics in January that fixing the issue was among his priority issues in 2023.

“Seeing firsthand the struggles faced by residents and businesses, I knew we had to make some changes,” he said after the measure passed Thursday. Miami-Dade Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert III and Commissioners Marleine Bastien, Juan Carlos Bermudez and René García were co-sponsors.

“Our community deserves a simpler, more transparent and user-friendly process,” Cabrera said. “Today’s passage of this resolution is a significant milestone and demonstrates that we are moving in the right direction. Together, we are creating a permitting system that meets the needs of our community and contributes to the overall progress and prosperity of Miami-Dade County.”

The resolution describes the to-be-created online portal as being capable of collecting information from various sources intrinsic to plan approvals. Users should be able to “easily access permit information relating to multi-departmental reviews and approval statuses, as well as access staff to resolve plan review comments and make appointments for rework meetings” both virtually and in-person.

To facilitate these “enhanced services,” all county department reviews, multidisciplinary reviews and permit approvals are to be moved into one centralized building.

The measure also directs Levine Cava’s administration to provide a report to the Commission within 90 days detailing what it’s doing to effectuate its directives. The report should, at a minimum:

— Describe the county’s current online permitting platforms available to public for checking on the status of open permits and whether the “platform(s) integrate information from multiple agencies, county departments and disciplines.

— Describe what effort, if any, Levine Cava’s administration is taking to create one centralized, online web-based county portal for permitting approvals and plan-status tracking.

— Detail available customer-supporting appointment services across plan review and permit types.

— Confirm whether the administration plans to create a 2023-24 budget earmark to improve the county’s online permitting offerings.

— List what actions the administration is taking to move all permitting approval and reviews into one county facility location.

— Calculate the fiscal impact of establishing a one-stop physical location for permitting approvals and staffing of supportive customer appointment services across departments.

— Describe what a permit holder may currently experience in seeking information on their permit, including a list of the multiple county locations they may need to visit to address outstanding permit issues.

Prior to the measure’s approval, Commissioner Eileen Higgins — who is spearheading a $10 billion plan to redevelop a 17-acre are of downtown Miami into a dense, transit-oriented neighborhood with affordable housing for thousands — amended the measure to require that an update on how affordable housing development would speed up through the new system is also included in the report.

“As much as we are accelerating affordable housing permitting, it still isn’t as fast as any of us want,” she said. “I would appreciate it if it could highlight how the affordable and workforce housing permits are being accelerated into this new system as well.”