City of Danbury, CT, Permitting Happens in a Single Online Portal

Video Transcript:

Sean Hearty, Director of Permit Coordination: “What’s unique to permitting in Danbury is the permit center. What the permit center does, it actually combines all of the permitting departments into a one-stop shopping.

You can see the banners. There’s approvals, payments, documents, inspections, and projects.”

Joseph Cavo, Mayor of Danbury, CT: “If you come through the OpenGov portal, then all the people involved in that process see the emails, get the notifications, and then they see the responses as well.”

Timothy Rosati, Zoning Enforcement Officer: “The interaction with any applicant who submits a permit application, you’re instantly communicating with one another on that platform.”

Hearty: “I carry around this little iPad, but in here, consider, there’s been 10 different inspectors in this building that all resulted in here, and I can see it in a glance.

So, the applications come through one location, for a one-stop shopping type operation, so that’s what OpenGov allowed us to take to the next level.

The history of Danbury… we’re one of those quaint New England cities that have been fortunate to have leaders with vision.”

Cavo: “The previous mayor, Mark Bowton, was a very technology driven guy. He was on every platform of social media you could get on. And because of that reach to the public, the public reached back to him.

Hearty: “We started a permit center in the city of Danbury back in 2001. We realized we had to be competitive, so the permit center was part of that.”

Cavo: “We moved forward with plans and ways for folks to be able to access city government to help serve our citizens the best way possible.”

Hearty: “A standard inspection we do through OpenGov would be one of my finals. And the final walkthrough would be the exterior, as far as landscaping goes, sidewalks, driveway, driveway grade.

What OpenGov gave us that other software didn’t was the ability to bring in legacy data, and then keep our system intact.

This is the thing – as soon as you’re done with the review, it will populate back. So, this will notify the electrical inspector as soon as I finish my review. And then immediately after he finishes his review, it notifies someone in the permit center staff to cash it out.

Every permitting department that touches a permit, reviews, approves, gets cashed out, posts bonds, does their inspections and COs in the same software.

Rosati: “When OpenGov was implemented for the city, it greatly increased our efficiency. Our operations and our procedures were more robust in how they could be implemented.”

Cavo: “It gives us an edge when we’re competing with our municipalities and towns in the area for businesses to come here. We’re very happy with the partnership between OpenGov and the city of Danbury.”