Kathi J. Pletzke, MIS Director

This year, the FLGISA initiated a "Presidents" Award program to be presented by the FLGISA President, with advice and consent of the Board of Directors. The purpose of this award is to recognize both leadership (technical and/pr organization) and innovation in a community within the FLGISA membership. This award will be given every 2 years.

The Town’s MIS Department happened to be working on important improvements in our PZB department, and hence prepared and submitted a presentation for this award, along with a letter of nomination by Randy Fowler, Town of Longboat Key Code Enforcement/Building Official for the category of "Best Application Serving the Public" award. This award is presented to individuals and teams that design, develop (code) and deploy applications that deliver services more efficiently and effectively to the public. For this award, the public may be defined as citizens, contractors, or vendors.

By direction of the Town Commission, our Planning, Building and Zoning Department (PZB) was given the directive to improve customer service to their clients. Specifically by developing a web-based permitting system. This directive gave our MIS Department an opportunity to assist the PZB department enhance their services to contractors and property owners using technology.

MIS and PZB staff met and evaluated several web-based permitting applications being utilized by various city/county agencies. Rather than choose a solution that we thought worked best for our clients, we decided to seek the input from the contractors. We held a meeting with the building contractors (we packed the Commission Chambers), and to our surprise, the building contractors resoundingly indicated that it would be more beneficial to see the results of their building inspections posted to the web. Posting the results of their inspections to the web translated into money in the contractor’s pockets from their clients (the home owners & citizens); by saving them travel time to and from job sites and the PZB department. In addition, it would allow the contractors to schedule and manage their jobs and subcontractors better, because certain tasks must be completed and pass inspection before they can schedule the next phase of a job. This was a turning point in our project. We decided to give our clients what they requested and set out to deliver our "Electronic Contractor Notification System".

We believe our internally developed "Electronic Contractor Notification System" is what sets our application apart from the others. Utilizing an inexpensive piece of software called "Act-Fax" and making programming changes to our application to interface with the Act Fax product we created a system that has changed the way we do business.

In a nutshell, contractors are notified of an inspection outcome; whether it passed/failed or was cancelled, via fax, e-mail or cell phone text message. Contractors may also access this information via the website that was set up for this purpose and view all inspections and permits issued by entering in the permit number, street address, owner name or contractor name. This application has been embraced and widely utilized by the area contractors, and it translates into time and money savings by eliminating trips or phone calls to the Town offices, and improves the operational efficiency of our PZB department and it’s employees. There are over 600 active contractors that are taking advantage of this free service.

We do not know of any other Building Department that provides this level of service at no charge to the contractor.

Another huge benefit to our Contractors using this system is that they are also notified through the same process if they need to update or renew their licenses, general liability or worker’s comp insurance. The system generates warning notifications and sends them electronically (fax/email or cell phone text messaging) if a contractor is within 30 days of expiring on any license or insurance. This allows the contractor to be proactive in their business and have the documentation in order in advance. Prior to this system, work stoppage orders were routinely issued by our PZB Department to contractors with expired certificates/insurances. This prevented a contractor from scheduling an inspection for an active job and also prevented a contractor from applying for another permit. Many times, this news came as a surprise to the contractor and of course, added to their frustration.

Additional enhancements that have been made under this Town Commission customer service improvement directive are:

1) Contractors may call in by telephone and pay for any and all services of the PZB department including building permits and re-inspection fees using VISA or Master Card.

2) An Electronic Bulletin Board has been designed for the contractor’s on the Town’s website, where we post important notices to contractors.

All award submittals were due prior to March , 2006. A review coordinator ensured that all the submittals followed the policy, format and procedures as defined by the FLGISA Board of Directors. The review coordinator selected at random and contacted three to five member jurisdictions that did not submit a proposal to assist in the ranking process. Members of this "blind panel" were known only to the review coordinator and was not known to the FLGISA membership, Board or to each other. Based upon various categories, as established by the FLGISA Board of Directors, the "blind panel;" provided a numeric rating if each submittal to the League.

The review coordinator calculated the totals and submittals with the highest number of points and then provided the applications that received the top three points in each jurisdictional category to the FLGISA Board of Directors for selection. They were submitted in random order and the Board did not know the number of points assigned by the blind panel.

The Town of Longboat Key WINS!

At the annual FLGISA Conference held July 7 – 11, 2006, on the evening of the President’s dinner, the announcement was made that the President’s Award for the Best Application Serving the Public of Cities with populations of < 30,000 for 2006 would be awarded to the Town of Longboat Key!!

Kathi Pletzke, MIS Director was in attendance to accept the award.

The FLGISA President will present the award to the Town Commission on September 21, 2006. In addition to being honored with the award, the FLGISA Organization will publish our award-winning entry in a national technology magazine and feature it on the FLGISA website.

Click on the link below for information on details of the system
"Electronic Contractor Notification System"
 

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