Roanoke’s planning department faces obstacles that slow its processes and “erode trust inside the department and across the regional development community,” according to consultants’ findings presented to the city council Tuesday.
“Internally, fear has displaced trust following a period of leadership instability. Externally, stakeholders repeatedly described the department as a gatekeeper, as tone deaf, and as a culture of no,” the report states.
The report says that the employees of the department are “capable” and “committed” but that the system they work in makes success difficult.
The city sought the assessment after continued complaints from builders and developers, which prompted meetings with planning staff and the administration in the spring.
“We have allowed this situation to get to a crisis point, and that has cost us millions of dollars, I suspect, in lost revenue,” Vice Mayor Terry McGuire said during the meeting. He also expressed concern that relationships with builders and real estate agents have been damaged.
The report cites the repercussions of Roanoke’s process being more cumbersome than in neighboring localities.
“Investment tends to follow the path of least resistance,” it states, adding that the competitive dynamic gives the conditions described in the report “real urgency.”
The problems have financial impact — every $100 million in development results in $1.2 million in tax revenue, the report estimates. The report comes as city leaders spent the past two budget cycles emphasizing the need for more revenue streams.
The issues in the planning department include a prolonged leadership void, insufficient pay to keep trained employees, a staff vacancy rate that reached 36%, a permitting technology platform that creates work rather than reducing it and an enforcement-first posture in several key permitting and review functions, according to the findings.
At the time the analysis was conducted earlier this summer, roughly one-third of permits applied for had yet to be issued — with more than 400 in the pipeline.
The assessment was completed by Municipal Insights LLC and Blue Heron Leadership Group LLC, based in Fairfax County. The amount the city paid for the report was not disclosed during Tuesday’s meeting.
The report, dated July 15, was based on numerous interviews with employees in the planning department and other stakeholders in the community.
On Tuesday, Assistant City Manager Lavar Youmans told the council that the department is making improvements. Permit delays in recent months have been reduced from 5-6 weeks to 1-2 weeks. The number of permits waiting went from 337 to 215 from July 3 to Aug. 7, according to data provided by Youmans.
“We can now say that there’s steady progress made,” Youmans said during the meeting. “We’ve accelerated a lot of the process improvements in the last few months.”
In May, the department was short 20 positions, according to information obtained by Cardinal News under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, after experiencing various changes in leadership. Former director Jillian Papa left her role in March, after the previous director, Chris Chittum, left in December 2024. The department is now short 10 people, according to the report.
The report states that seven building projects were completed but could not open because they had not yet received certificates of occupancy. One staffer known as a residential plans examiner was covering the entire city, and one inspector was responsible for all commercial inspections. The report states that in one day, one inspector had 55 inspections scheduled to complete. The building official was clocking in at 6:30 a.m. in order to handle commercial plan reviews.
The assessment discusses concerns that the Ringana project off Interstate 581 — an $85 million investment with over 400 estimated jobs announced last month — could face obstacles, and it recommends the city designate a coordinator for projects of that scale.
“We are busting at the seams, and every day is an emergency room triage exercise,” an unnamed senior employee in the department stated in the report.
The report also states that the department’s staff doesn’t feel supported by city leadership — a focus group was “unanimous” in saying so. One staff member estimated another nine or 10 more employees might leave if changes aren’t made.
Youmans said the city is focusing attention on older permits that have been sitting in the system. Beverly Walkup, with the Berkley Group — a local government consulting group that the city often turns to — is helping with interim operations, and Youmans said the city is also advertising for the department’s director position.
The report offers almost two dozen recommendations: fill the department director role, make clearer staff’s individual roles, replace the technology the department is using — which staff said was “unreliable” and “described negatively” in every single review conducted — and look to adjust compensation to be more competitive.
The council took no action related to the report Tuesday.
“Ideally, it would be nice to start hearing that [builders] love coming to the city because we get permits approved as quickly as we can,” Mayor Joe Cobb said. “That’s certainly an optics goal.”
