Islip looks to speed up permit process

Islip Town officials say a pilot program aimed at streamlining the permit application process could shave weeks off the time it takes to move an application through the town's planning, engineering and building departments.

PermitNet creates an electronic database where permit applications can be monitored and processed by all departments, said planning commissioner Dave Genaway. The program was developed in-house and is based on an existing version of town software.

"The problem is you had to go through multiple different departments within the town as you moved your permit or plan along," Supervisor Tom Croci said. "In many cases within any government organization, one department may not know exactly what the other department just did, and you want to try to make sure you know what the other department has done and when they did it, so you can move that along in the process much quicker."

Moving an application for a big project, such as a new house or a large development, through the current system could take several months, Genaway said. The PermitNet pilot program is expected to reduce that time by 25 percent to 50 percent.

Genaway said PermitNet took three to four months to develop and is the brainchild of a handful of town staff.

"It kind of plays into one of the philosophies we've had here, which is the overall cost of developing this product in-house is far more economical than to pay for private vendors to do the same thing," Genaway said.

In last fall's successful election campaign, Croci and his Republican running mates for town board pledged to make it easier to do business with the town.

"One of the goals of this administration has been to streamline the building and development process so our residents and businesses suffer fewer delays," Croci said.

PermitNet has been tested internally and is still in the pilot stage, he said, but the town expects to announce a full launch in coming weeks.