Currently, the City’s Building Permit application does not include a mandatory field for disclosure of a property owner’s email address, and the email information for the property owner is optional.  As a result, when the building department provides comments on proposed plans to the general contractor pulling the permit, property owners are often not notified of the status of the permit because their contact information was not provided as part of the application.

The purpose of this referral is to discuss whether disclosure of a property owner’s email address should be required as part of a building permit application, so that property owners are automatically notified of the progress or status of their permit, at the same time as the general contractor pulling the permit.