January’s regular meeting of the Bryan city council included recognizing the planning and development office for the eighth consecutive year by the Texas chapter of the American Planners Association.
That was followed by a recap of last year’s activity from director Martin Zimmerman.
Statistics from 2023 include:
- 607 permits for new detached single-family home construction, bringing the five year total in the city of Bryan to 3,722 permits.
- 23,700 building inspections, which averaged around 95 per day.
- An average of seven residential and one commercial permits were issued each work day.
- Employees in the development services permit center answered around 37,200 phone calls for inspection requests, permit questions, or general development process questions. Zimmerman said each employee averaged 25-31 calls each day.
- 18 condemned structures were removed, bringing to about 580 the number of structures that were removed since Bryan’s substandard structure abatement program began in 2010.
- There were 280 redevelopment applications, (change of owner, use, or tenant), 248 new development review cases, and there were 87 pre-development meetings.
Zimmerman considered the biggest accomplishment of 2023 was the launch of a new online building permitting portal. Zimmerman said the CitizenServe portal marked the biggest improvement to the department’s business processes in 25 years. Phase two of that project is underway, which Zimmerman says will make the city of Bryan’s development review and engineering plan review applications available online.
Click below to hear comments from the January 9, 2024 Bryan city council meeting. Mayor Bobby Gutierrez introduces planning and development director Martin Zimmerman.