After a joint meeting between the Flagstaff City Council and the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, Community Development proposed conducting a listening tour to hear from our customers.  With the support of the City Manager's office, staff created a proposal for the interviews, and a listening panel was created along with a series of questions.  The proposal was quite simple, tell us about your experience getting development approvals, building permits and final occupancy.    

City staff created a proposal and list of questions for participants, which are attached to this report.  The Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce promoted the Listening Tour among its members and City staff contacted a number of development professionals that do projects in the City of Flagstaff.  The Chamber recruited two members to join City staff on the listening panel.  Guillermo Cortes of SWI Engineering and Mark Woodson of Woodson Engineering volunteered for the panel.  

Sixteen development professionals participated in 9 interview sessions conducted between March and September, 2021.  It is notable that this was about halfway between when the pandemic began and today.  The listening panel members took notes which have been compiled and are attached as the Listening Tour notes.  Participants shared experiences and opinions on a range of issues.  Transitioning to remote work, partial re-opening and now back to full time hours certainly created challenges that were identified in the interviews.  Since the interviews were conducted, the Interdivision Staff (IDS) development review team has completed a team Charter and work has begun on implementing an action plan (attached to this report).  Additional initiatives are recommended for funding in the FY23 Budget.  A comment summation is provided in the attached presentation along with next steps to complete.