Al Stearns

Review of Baltimore City Department of H...

As a contractor you deal with a lot of permitting ...

As a contractor you deal with a lot of permitting offices and while none are fun, none are bad on the level of Baltimore City's Building Permits and Inspections Systems. While it was never great to deal with, since the switch to eplans they have basically thrown out communicating or dealing with the public outside of going all the way down there, which is its own can of worms. They dont answer the phone, you will hear "Sysco unity Message" almost every time you call. If you do get someone at the front desk, they are going to transfer you before you even finish speaking, to most likely a wrong vm, and they dont return calls. I've never had a returned call from here...never. If you try to use Quicktrack to reach any department other than the front desk...."Sysco Unity....goodbye" the message service doesnt even work through that and its been like that so long i cant remember when it did. If you try to stop them from immediately transferring you they are going to be very rude. The people here either have no professional training or are trained to dodge the public. The Inspectors themselves are fine, and they usually call on there way, give a huge BS time window that will lock you down for hours, that is pretty normal though. Except it was pretty SMH hilarious when an inspector calls at 9:45 am to say he will be there between 10am and 12pm and shows up right at 10am....why would you not just say your on your way at that point, heads up they also show up after their window a lot. My main gripe is their permit system and dealing with its office/system. It is driving contractors out of the city and your going to be left with nothing but fly by night shady contractors doing things without permits. Baltimore City you are letting your public down greatly, likely to save a few bucks in hiring people to go with your broken automated system and kiosks. This is a service for people to repair their houses, fix up neighborhoods, upgrade to a better wuality of life...needed services, that you have turned into a poorly operated cash grab that damn near seems like a scam thats legally required. Please, if you are an authority for the City Permits and somehow see's this, please look into getting this system functioning on a professional level, it can be down, look at every County around you.