San Anselmo has joined the Marin Builders Association’s “permit improvement program” to enhance the town’s process.

The effort aims to help homeowners and contractors amid complaints about slow response times and customer service issues.

The Town Council took up the matter in early February and considered suggestions such as eliminating resale inspections and adding more staff. San Anselmo handles around 2,000 construction permits a year, according to a staff report.

Community Development Director Heidi Scoble said she hopes the program, coupled with other changes in the department, will help reestablish lost trust and show residents that staff wants to partner with them.

“I’m really hoping that this assessment will act as that first initial step to show that the town really is truly committed to listening and seeing where we can make improvements to the process,” Scoble said. “I think people have lost that we really are here to improve the daily lives of our residents and support the public good, and that means that we should be accountable and transparent and responsive and equitable.”

Rick Wells, chief executive officer of the Marin Builders Association, said it launched the program in 2017 after learning from members in the construction industry about how the permitting process varied across the county’s jurisdictions. Many said they struggled with customer service.

The association has worked with San Rafael, Tiburon, Novato and the county.

Wells said having an independent, third-party consultant collect data — from surveys, interviews and focus groups — helps get candid feedback, in part because participants are anonymous.

In general, Wells said, jurisdictions struggle with customer service and response times. Ensuring customers get basic communication, like confirming the application has been received and their questions have been heard, goes a long way and diffuses frustration.

“Given our experience across just different jurisdictions in the county, customers are very interested in feeling heard and general response,” Wells said. “The building department has a lot of these projects that they’re working on simultaneously.”

“The important thing is to make sure that each one of those applicants feels like they’re being heard and attended to and taken care of, and that starts with basic response time,” Wells said.

San Anselmo homeowner Adrian Eyre, a resident for nearly 20 years, said a planning permit for a remodel — which involved knocking down some non- or low-weight bearing walls and bumping out the kitchen — took about year and a half, and a building permit took another five months. He said he was constantly asked for things he’d already submitted; did not hear back from anyone on certain matters; or was led in circles.

“It was just this really, really inefficient, highly non-communicative process that we went through,” Eyre said. “It was like pulling teeth to get any information.”

At the town’s help desk, Eyre said he felt staff did not want to answer his questions or interact with him “at all.”

“That’s what really set me off, the kind of lack of decorum,” Eyre said. “It felt like an insult to injury.”

Wells said a recommendation on how to improve could be to create a standardized response time for phone calls and emails. He also said that typically there’s room to improve online resources by simplifying language and hosting informational events for homeowners considering a project.

Scoble said she believes customer service and streamlining will likely be flagged as areas of improvement. She said that as the state comes up with new regulations, and checklists and forms get longer, it adds to homeowners’ frustrations.

Regarding customer support, Scoble said the department is working on “resetting its culture.” Staff completed customer service training a few months ago. They are working on understanding that when people come in upset, “it isn’t us, it’s the process,” and focusing on finding ways to help them, she said.

“Because we are a reactive process, people come to the counter angry, and we seem to be the receptacle of a lot of visceral comments, and it’s hard not to internalize that,” Scoble said.

The town has already made some changes, such as adding a new phone system that converts voice messages into emails. A new website should be ready within the next month.

“We’re just trying to make these little tweaks so that we’re making the contractors’ lives easier, the homeowners’ lives easier, which in turn will show the town as a community support system to help them through that process,” Scoble said.

Scoble said the first phase of the program was paid for with $45,000 in savings in the planning department budget. The phase will result in an analysis of how the town is perceived by residents and where there is room for improvement. The other four phases of the process are not budgeted for, she said.

“I think that’s a good first step forward,” Eyre said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that that will turn into some tangible improvement.”