91ÊÓƵ

Rebecca Esau took over as director of the Portland Bureau of Development Services in April, succeeding Paul Scarlett.

Esau had spent the previous 14 years as manager of the bureau’s Land Use Services Division, where city planners, architects and landscape architects are responsible for administering the city’s zoning code.

Initially named interim director by Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, Esau was appointed permanent director in October. Eudaly opted against a national search, saying the best candidate was already on the job.

Esau was raised in central California in a family of farmers, and later studied landscape architecture at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. She joined what was then the Bureau of Planning in 1996 as an entry-level planner.

Esau comes to leadership at a critical time for BDS, which has faced criticism for processing building permits too slowly. In recent years, the bureau has been plagued by low staff morale. Staffing levels have surged and receded at the bureau along with the economy, and the slowdown in new multifamily developments could cut the bureau’s revenue.

The 91ÊÓƵ spoke with Esau at BDS’ office in south downtown. The interview has been edited for clarity and condensed.

91ÊÓƵ: I wanted to ask about permit times. What permit times are you seeing for design review, and how long is it taking for projects to go through, and how can that be improved?

Rebecca Esau: It’s taking too long in many cases. It’s largely dependent on how well-prepared the applicant is, and the quality of the submittal we get. For a well-prepared applicant, it can go really quite fast.

So for permits for new houses, they range anywhere from 1.5 months to – we had another one that took 12 months, but it was the applicant who was inactive in dealing with it for seven of those months. It’s a very iterative sort of process, working with the applicant back and forth to get the information that’s needed to be able to approve the plans.

For commercial permits, the span from the quickest to the longest is much broader: seven to 12 months for most projects.

91ÊÓƵ: Commissioner Eudaly and Mayor Wheeler have discussed a project to get all of the permitting agencies working together. Is there any progress on that?

Esau: Since taking this position, I’ve started meeting with the development directors group; (that) is what I’m calling it. Prior to this, they had not met regularly. So those directors are from PBOT, BDS, Water, Parks and Fire. Those are the key ones that have staff who are involved in the permitting process.

So we’re at the beginning stages of starting those meetings and developing our work plan. We’ve heard from the Development Review Advisory Committee (DRAC) – they obviously want things faster. They want when we raise our fees, for example, or another bureau raises its fees, for City Council to look at those holistically so you can take a look at what’s the cumulative effect of fees and SDC charges on a development and it penciling out at all, rather than taking them in silos, which is what’s gone on in the past. So that’ll be one of the projects I’ll be working with the directors on is putting a combined package together for City Council when any of us want to increase fees so that it’s presented together and the cumulative impacts of those fees are explained to City Council so it’s not death by a thousand cuts for the developers.

91ÊÓƵ: I’m sure you hear this a lot, but with construction costs as high as they are now, time is money.

Esau: Absolutely, and we’re not at all at this point able to deliver the services as quickly as we’d like to. We have a lot of vacancies. And I’m working with those directors also on getting the sufficient staff they need to deal with the workload and deliver the services in a more timely way.

91ÊÓƵ: How are staffing levels at BDS now? Do you continue to be understaffed?

Esau: We have about 50 vacancies currently. It’s incredibly difficult in this economy to find candidates for these jobs we have that are so technical. We’re in competition with surrounding cities and one of the union contracts has just been negotiated. We have a tentative agreement now. Part of the problem has been we have not been able to offer competitive wages compared to some of the surrounding cities for things like building examiners and plans inspectors. So it’s difficult to attract, much less retain, qualified people to do the work – especially when everyone else is busy as we are. Maybe on a smaller scale in surrounding cities, but everybody’s busy.

91ÊÓƵ: It’s been my impression that when the economy is good and when people are building, BDS tends to need to staff up, and that when the economy’s slower, there can be layoffs. Is that a challenge to let employees go and then rehire when things heat up?

Esau: It’s incredibly inefficient to be in that cycle and to lay employees off – trained, skilled employees – during a downturn. I went through the last downturn, where we lost half of our bureau. Some people you can get back when it picks back up again; other people, they leave town, they move onto other jobs, other careers, and you never get them back.

To groom new people and get them trained is labor-intensive. It takes a long time. You hire a new employee here, whether it’s a city planner or plans examiner or an inspector, it takes nine months to a year to get up to speed. It’s a long learning curve.

So our bureau is tightly connected to the economy and what’s going on. That’s why it’s important that we have reserves set aside to help us survive those downturns and not lose staff.

91ÊÓƵ: So are you trying to set some revenue aside as reserves?

Esau: Yes, we do set revenue aside and we’re closely watching the economy. We’re just starting our budget planning process for this next fiscal year, and so we work with a team of economists that we bring in. We had our first meeting (in late November). We’re tapping their expertise as to what’s on the horizon and how long this busy building season is going to be. It’s looking like a year and a half, two years. Although we’ve also met with some of our larger industry customers. We’ve met with OHSU, TriMet, the Port of Portland – all of which have huge, multimillion-dollar projects coming in the next five years. So we need to be able to handle those and to be able to deliver the service to them.

In the last downturn, even though some of the private projects dropped off, there were a lot of institutions that continued on and kept going through the recession. So it’s a question of what will drop off first, and what will continue through the next recession and how deep will the recession be and how long it will last.

91ÊÓƵ: Inclusionary housing has been a huge topic among developers. It seems like since that passed there has been a big slowdown in large multifamily applications coming in. What impact are you seeing?

Esau: We’re having a few projects come in. We knew that there would be a drop-off right after Feb. 1 when it went into effect. And there has been a drop-off. A lot of people rushed the dates, got their projects in and got them vested under the old code so they didn’t have to comply with the new requirements.

So those projects are in the pipeline working their way through the system. But we have had some projects, a couple of them were in under the old code that decided to abandon their vesting and apply under the new code because they wanted the trade-off of not having to provide parking. Because the code allows if you’re within a certain distance from a transit corridor then you don’t have to provide parking under the new code. So they wanted to take advantage of that, and go ahead and provide that required affordable housing. That was worth it to them.

There’s been six or seven projects that have come in since the code changed. I continue to hear that we’re just not going to see, that we’ve gone over the cliff and we’re not going to see more apartment mixed-use development. As a result of that, the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, who wrote the code that we’re administering, are paying close attention to that. They’re giving it some time to see if it plays out, what everybody is predicting. But we continue to hear that the faucet has turned off.

91ÊÓƵ: You work under Commissioner Eudaly and Mayor Wheeler. What have they told you about what they would like to see out of BDS?

Esau: Where to begin? POPS, our technology project, is a huge priority. That’s probably no. 1. It needs to be delivered on time and on budget, and it needs to work. So I’m working with the project manager on that. The POPS (Portland Online Permitting System) project is not just an upgrade to our computer permitting system. It’s a transition from paper plans to digital.

There’s a lot of changes. It will be easier for our larger commercial-permit customers who already have electronic plans, compared to somebody who wants to do a 200-square-foot kitchen addition and has drawn it on a napkin.

So we have to set up a system that accommodates all ranges of customers and their resources and their ability to provide digital plans.

It is horribly inefficient to work with paper plans. I wish that we would have done it years ago. But we’re doing it now.

Other priorities: Obviously, the housing crisis that we’re in. That’s a huge concern, as well as affordable housing. We have been working with the Portland Housing Bureau to do expedited reviews and working closely with them to do early assistance to make sure those projects go through quickly and seamlessly. That’s been going well.

But, yeah, I have concerns about the inclusionary housing situation and what that does to the supply and what that does ultimately to affordability.

Equity is a big priority and serving all members of the community. So we’re going to be developing a new program to work with small businesses and provide a liaison to them. Say you want to open a coffee shop that was a record store before and maybe you don’t know what you’re doing as far as permitting. For the people who don’t and need some help, we’d like to have a single point of contact to help walk them through the process so it goes quickly and easily and provides the resources they need to get through the permitting process. It’s a complicated and intimidating process to a lot of people. We don’t want people to be so intimidated and reluctant to apply that they go do work without permit, and things are unsafe or just not built properly. We want things to be safe.

91ÊÓƵ: I’m sure in your 14 years you worked under a number of directors. What did you learn from your predecessors, and how do you approach your leadership style?

Esau: When the planners first came over to what was the Bureau of Buildings, Margaret Mahoney was the director. As far as I know, she was the first female director of the city’s building bureau. It’s very much a man’s world. She, for me, is a role model as to how to navigate in this environment. We’re dealing with contractors, developers, people in the trades – and there are some preconceived notions about women oftentimes, even in 2017. So it exists today and I encounter (it). My female employees encounter it. So that’s an issue in trying to break that down. We’ve done a lot of gender-equity training at the bureau as well as equity training to raise awareness and change the culture.