INDIAN ROCKS BEACH — Indian Rocks Beach is moving its permitting, licensing and short-term rental registrations online, with city officials targeting a Labor Day weekend launch for a cloud-based portal they say will pull code enforcement out of its filing cabinets.
City Manager Ryan Henderson told commissioners at their July 14 meeting that the shift was one of the first needs he identified after his hiring in October.
“Our code enforcement department is overrun with paper and filing cabinets,” Henderson said. After an assessment of the city’s technological gaps and capabilities, “we quickly realized we needed to move to a cloud-based system and automate a lot of our code operations, especially when it comes to permitting and licensing.”
Working with the city’s IT consultant, staff settled on Citizenserve, a cloud-based software company Henderson said serves several other local governments.
“We met with them several times, and we’re soon to be up and running,” he said before asking Finance Director Robin Gomez to walk commissioners through the system.
The software, Gomez said, “would allow property owners in Indian Rocks Beach to file for a few of the building permits that we issue where you do not have to go to the county” — a list that includes short-term rental registrations, business tax receipts and other vacation rental items.
“We anticipate the largest usage for this will be for vacation rental registration,” Gomez said. The city is approaching 800 registered rentals, he said, and those records will already be loaded when the system goes live.
Henderson said the city will route all short-term rental business through the portal, including new applications, renewals and complaints.
“We found that applications are rarely complete,” he said, a gap that has cost staff hours of back-and-forth email. “So, we’re going to ask that everybody go through this portal.”
The system will also generate renewal notices, a feature Henderson called central to the switch.
“We’ll be able to send reminders 60 days in advance, and that’s something we’ve had property managers and business owners ask of us,” he said. “So, being able just to do that is going to be incredibly beneficial, from a staffing standpoint and a compliance standpoint. Because the goal is to get everybody compliant with our ordinance.”
Asked by Mayor Lan Vaughan when the system would be running, Gomez said the city was aiming for Labor Day weekend. Beyond the benefits for staff, he said, “this will be a public portal where the public can search for permits or licenses.”
Vaughan also asked whether the city would hold workshops for residents and business owners. Henderson said it would.
“We want to be responsive to the community, because we want them to go through this system,” he said. “The goal is to get everyone using this system.”
Mayor praises commission-community collaboration
Since the new commission was seated in March, officials have promised to open lines of communication with residents — or neighbors, as they are now called in IRB — and to be more transparent about city business after a turbulent stretch in the waterfront community.
“As far as I’m concerned, you are the citizens. We’re going to listen to you,” Vaughan said at his March 25 swearing-in. “We will enforce the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority.”
In his monthly report July 14, Vaughan pointed to the monthly Coffee with the Neighbors sessions and to magnets detailing the city’s short-term rental rules.
“We are accomplishing a lot as a City Commission,” he said. “We are opening the lines of communication. You call us, we take care of it.”
Vaughan, a former city commissioner who defeated incumbent Denise Houseberg in March, described a resident’s online complaint about Sunday construction work.
“An email got sent to a commissioner, and we immediately took care of it,” he said. “After that we turned our hotline on, and the very next weekend we closed four construction sites. And we’re continuing to do that. We’re upping the game. We’re listening to the citizens. We’re communicating. And it’s a two-way street.”
Vaughan also praised the new Hurricane Task Force, including its June 27 Hurricane Preparedness Expo at City Hall.
“The Hurricane Expo was totally amazing,” said the mayor, who also promoted the city’s monthly newsletter. “There is amazing leadership up here, guys. They are doing an awesome job and keeping me on my toes.”