It’s taken more than a year but the City of Kamloops will soon have its permitting department fully-staffed.

Director of development services Marvin Kwiatkowski says the city has now hired a new building official, who will start on June 29.

That’s after council approved adding a new position to its annual budget in the spring of 2019.

“We’ve been sort of waiting for things to stabilize in regards to COVID, and we do have a verbally-accepted offer from a fellow for the permanent Building Official III, coming from northern Alberta. Very excited to come back to Kamloops, I believe he grew up here as well, so that’s a bonus.”

Kwiatkowski says this will allow permits to get processed faster. He says residential permits are going through in one-to-two weeks on average, and commercial permits are taking four-to-six weeks.

“I would say client concern is always turn-around time. So we did some changes earlier this year as far as increasing hours, so having our employees work eight-hour days. So that has helped as well, but having a full contingent of staff is another help as well in that regard.”

Kwiatkowski says with expanding hours of building officials from seven to eight earlier this year – it meant the city was able to offer a larger salary for potential building officials, which he said led to more qualified applicants.

City staff processed a record $288 million worth of building permits last year, which was a third-straight record year for building permit values.