Reducing Winnipeg's costly permit times top priority for mayoral candidate Motkaluk

A mayoral candidate wants to slash the time it takes for the City of Winnipeg to issue permits to businesses.

Unnecessary delays at the permit office are hurting local businesses and costing the city millions in lost revenue, Jenny Motkaluk during at a campaign stop on Thursday.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax revenue for the city itself is lost every day because of inefficiency in the permit office," she said.

"If I have to, I will burn that thing down and start from scratch, because it is the single biggest barrier to growth and success in this city."

Motkaluk made the announcement in front of the Perogy Planet store on Main Street, alongside owner Rob Naleway, who said it took around a month and a half for him to get a permit to build a wall inside one of his locations.

"It seemed like it took forever," Naleway said.

Greater transparency

"Then you have to wait for your construction guy. He's not going to be waiting the minute that that's done to come do it. And if everything could be just streamlined a little bit at the start, I feel like it could be a lot faster so people can start making money."

Motkaluk wants to make information on how long it takes between when the city receives a permit application to when it is issued more transparent.

The City of Winnipeg regularly reports on the amount of time it takes for the permit office to conduct an initial review of applications.

"Permit approvals are always contingent on the proper submission of documents and compliance with an inspector's orders or instructions," city spokesperson Kalen Qually said in an email.

"The City will always attempt to work with an applicant if information is incomplete, which saves far more time than rejecting a partial application."

Finding efficiency

Information on total processing times from the date the application is received to when it is issued can be found through the city's open data portal.

In 2021, the city received more than 11,000 permit applications. The median processing time for applications that year was 21 days.

Motkaluk would bring in experts from the private sector to review the permit process and find ways to make it more efficient, she said.

These experts would apply a set of management principles known as "lean," which aims to identify work that is not adding value for the citizen or customer, says Ron Koslowsky, vice president of the Manitoba division of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.

The process involves talking to front-line employees "who are often very frustrated by the fact that they cannot provide good service and working with them to come up with better ways of using these kinds of methodologies," Koslowskysaid.

A 2019 review of planning, zoning and permitting departments by the Manitoba government found that every day of unnecessary delay meant $400,000 in lost municipal tax revenue.

Reducing construction barriers

On Wednesday, Motkaluk announced she would bring in a policy preventing the city from putting up construction barriers when no active work is being done.

She would also change the way the city tenders contracts to favour bidders who will get the job done fastest.

"Right now we tender our contracts out and we are looking just for the low bid," she said, "and I don't believe that the city is measuring the cost of lengthy closures when they're doing those closures when they're doing those tenders."

She made her announcement at the Slices Pizza location on Stafford Street, which has been blocked off for construction since May.

The disruption to traffic has meant fewer people stopping in to pick up a pizza on their way home from work, according to owner Joel Kurkjian.

"My drive home is non-existent," she said. "As I had a customer the other day said, 'It's a good thing you've got damn good pizza or I wouldn't bother coming this way.'"

• Read more from CBC on the 2022 Winnipeg election

Motkaluk is one of 15 people running for mayor.

The other candidates who have registered mayoral campaigns are Idris Adelakun, Rana Bokhari, Chris Clacio, Vincent Gabriele, Scott Gillingham, Shaun Loney, Jenny Motkaluk, Glen Murray, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Jessica Peebles, Rick Shone, Govind Thawani, Desmond Thomas and Don Woodstock.

Election day is Oct. 26.