Introduction
A few years ago, I (Grace) volunteered for the Portsmouth City Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during my senior year of high school. I was placed with the Inspection Department and given a deceptively simple task: organizing unsorted blueprints into a new shelving system. With four months to complete this, I believed I had plenty of time to sort the blueprints and document their locations. However, the task soon avalanched into a much more complex undertaking than I had anticipated.
There were at least 200 blueprints to catalog. Each one had to be carefully rolled and secured with an elastic band, and the outside had to be labeled with the address or other identifying information so they would be easier to find. I also had the responsibility of choosing how to organize them. They had previously been alphabetized by street name, but this system was inefficient because some letters had far more associated blueprints than others, which wasted time and storage space in the cube shelving.
I chose a less intuitive sorting method: physical size and shape. Some blueprints were almost a foot thick and could easily crush or hide the narrower plans between them. Sorting by length and thickness helped maximize the visibility of each blueprint and protect the older, fragile ones. It took me the entire four months to sort each blueprint and catalog them in an Excel sheet. During this process, I noticed several potential concerns. This system was extremely vulnerable to human error. If a blueprint was incorrectly cataloged, it would waste valuable time searching through up to 20 cubes to find it. The fragile blueprints were still at risk of damage. Finally, the process of requesting a blueprint and visiting the city hall to view it is inefficient and inconvenient. Increasing digital access to blueprints and their associated permit history seems to address these concerns. However, some cities have digitized faster than others.
Permit Overview
Building permits are public records, so they are intended to be accessible by anyone. Permit records are necessary when obtaining new permits or wanting to find information about a building. Permit access is important for prospective buyers, realtors, researchers, and contractors before starting a new project and documenting past work. If not available online, these records can usually be obtained by going in person to city halls and/or filling out a request form to view them through a third-party service.
Despite them being public records, accessing permits can be difficult if the proper internal structures are not up-to-date or accessible in municipalities. For example, some municipalities that have not digitized or are in the process of digitizing are only open during business hours. In Portsmouth, the Inspection Department is open until 6:00 PM on Mondays. The rest of the week, they close at 4:30 PM Tuesday through Thursday and at 1:00 PM on Fridays. They are closed on weekends. For individuals working regular nine-to-five or unpredictable part-time hours, it can be difficult to visit during these hours, which may significantly delay projects.
Examples
Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, are just two examples of many municipalities that have digitized historical permit records. In 2020, Ann Arbor made building plans and permits from 1930-2007 available in PDF form online. This was due to an effort to make permit access more convenient, rather than members of the public having to come in person and view them on microfilm.
In Minneapolis, permit records from the 1880s-1970s are available online for anyone to access. A website was recently created to be able to view these records and make information more readily available. The original permits were on microfilm, taking several months to digitize tens of thousands of records. The City of Minneapolis has also digitized some records of housing catalogs, as most residential houses were from stock plans instead of being drawn up individually. In addition to digitizing permits and housing catalogs, Minneapolis has property deeds available for request from the County Recorder’s Office. Many of these contain racial covenants, which Minneapolis has been creating educational material about.
In Portsmouth, blueprints are available for viewing in person. Lucyana Torres Chapman, a clerk for the Portsmouth Inspection Department, says that “Citizens and Contractors can either come to the Inspections desk and request to see a file/blueprint by using the property address or they can call the office and request that the file is pulled for them to view it.” To ensure efficiency, she recommends calling ahead to prevent waiting while the department finds the requested file. Additionally, Portsmouth has also publicized permit history online. Since the records are already available to the public and cannot be altered once submitted, the city’s IT and Legal Departments have deemed it safe to publish the records online.
Ann Arbor, Minneapolis, and Portsmouth all demonstrate a commitment to creating accessible and easy-to-navigate platforms to access historical records. In order to do so, they needed to invest significant time and labor into digitization and updating computer systems. Some municipalities have better systems than others, which can make getting permits harder and less efficient, slowing down the improvement of housing.
Next Steps
In order to ensure historical records can be accessed and are fully available to the public, it is important to invest resources and energy into creating digital databases. Digitizing records can take many forms, and may start with creating new systems, such as Grace did, in order to make the process as efficient as possible. As our physical infrastructure advances rapidly, we need to make sure we have the necessary digital structures to back it up. This will ensure contractors, prospective buyers, and researchers all have access to permit records and do not have to go out of their way in order to access them. This will allow for faster improvements of houses and buildings, which aids in the development of our national infrastructure.
Written by Grace Mower and Nora Priede von Herber, Public Policy Interns
The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii) is an independent, national research and educational organization. An innovative think tank, Aii explores the intersection of economics, law, and public policy in the areas of climate, damage prevention, energy, infrastructure, innovation, technology, and transportation.