News & Blog

June 5, 2015: VICTORIA, BC:  CityView congratulates long-time customer Collier County, Florida, for its (NACo) Achievement Award for Building Review Standards.

Collier County's Growth Management Division earned its award from the National Association of Counties because of its innovative programs that modernize county government and increase services to county residents. The Building Permit Review Standards program was an aggressive initiative by Collier to truly cement Naples (the County seat) as a destination location for developers looking to help stabilize the floundering economy, and it worked.

The County implemented a host of customer service initiatives to attract development and substantiate their commitment to customer service excellence. One such initiative included guaranteed plan review turnaround stipulations, with a money-back guarantee if these weren’t met; a demonstration of the accountability the County assumes to its constituents. Now other Florida counties are looking to Collier as a leader in growth management.

The County has used the CityView Suite to review and issue permits, complete inspections and perform a host of community development-related tasks since 2010. Due to positive market changes and elevated demand, the County increased its issuance of building permits by 20.7% over the prior year for a total of 29,676 in 2014; likewise, inspections were up by 28.6% totalling 150,318. This trend shows no sign of slowing for 2015, as evidenced below:

CityView’s Mobile field Inspection solution has helped Collier County keep pace with the increased workload: “Currently Collier County inspectors are traveling about 80 miles a day doing about 26 to 30 inspections a day,” says Nick Casalanguida, Deputy County Manager. “Industry standards are less than 20 [inspections per day].”

Collier County, one of CityView’s larger customers at a population of 321,520, continually seeks new ways to improve processes and efficiencies and capitalizes on the flexibility of CityView to institute such changes. Here’s a look at some of the County’s other notable statistics from 2014:

• Processed 31,156 building permit applications in fiscal year 2014, up 23.4%.

• Processed 4,999 state and county contractor licenses. 

• Processed 1,066 vehicle for hire driver identifications and 182 certificates to operate.

• Completed more than 11,500 permit plan reviews.

• Completed more than 3,500 site development plan reviews, a 5% increase over 2013.

• Completed 1,200 subdivision plans and plat reviews, a 100% increase over 2013.

• Assisted more than 2,000 customers with flood insurance inquiries.

“We commend Collier County for having the vision to create an industry-leading permitting (Growth Management) department, aligning their service offerings to that vision, and succeeding in the desired result of attracting businesses and development to the community,” commented Sean Higgins, Executive Vice President of CityView. “We are proud to partner with the County in facilitating that success through CityView solutions that scale to such profound growth and flex to adapt to the County’s changing business practices.”

For additional information contact:
CityView
250.475.6600 or 800.665.5647

About CityView

Local Government Building, Licensing, Inspections, Public Works and other departments use CityView’s solutions to reduce customer call volume, shorten permit issuance times, increase citizen self-service, increase inspector productivity, and reduce paper and manual processes. Since 1982, CityView has dedicated itself to solving day to day business process and service challenges in local government. Visit us at www.municipalsoftware.com.

About Harris

Harris is a wholly owned subsidiary of Constellation and is a leading provider of Financial Management and Customer Information Systems (CIS) software solutions. Since 1976, Harris has focused on providing feature-rich and robust turnkey solutions to all levels of local government, public power and water entities as well as school districts throughout North America. Harris’ focus is on creating long-term relationships with our customers and ensuring that we meet the changing needs of our customers overtime. For further information on Harris Computer Systems, please visit our website at www.harriscomputer.com or call 888.847.7747.