There’s a story Kirk Watson likes to tell to illustrate how he felt about the Austin Development Services Department as he ran for mayor in 2022.
“When I was running, I emphasized that I wanted to do a performance review of Development Services, the site-planning process in particular,” Watson told the Chronicle. “And the joke – but it was only partly a joke – that I used to say was that not a single person came up to me during that race and said, ‘Watson, don’t touch that development review process. That stuff’s really working good.’ Nobody said that.”
In fact, as Watson was quite aware, few people had said anything complimentary about the Development Services Department (formerly known as Planning and Development Review) for many years, or maybe ever. As the entity responsible for issuing permits and inspecting construction in Austin, DSD is one of the most important departments in the city, but it has a reputation for having the slowest permit review process of the state’s large cities. Developers, affordable housing advocates, and even the city itself say the slow reviews raise the cost of housing…