Spent 90 minutes on hold with the county permitting office only to find out I needed a different form entirely

I was trying to pull a simple permit for a retaining wall repair in my backyard in Portland and it took talking to three different people across two phone calls to learn that the form I needed was buried on a page I never would have thought to check, so has anyone else dealt with a local permitting office that makes you dig through a maze just to get started?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonk985d ago

Did you actually look at the county website before calling? Most permit offices clearly list the forms you need based on the type of project, you just have to click through the right categories. For retaining walls under 4 feet in Portland they literally have a PDF checklist that tells you step by step what form to use and which office to go to.

betty_perry245d ago

4 feet? That's wild to me honestly, I had no idea the cutoff was that low. Here in Denver you need a permit for anything over 3 feet and they don't have a handy PDF checklist like you're talking about @simonk98. You have to dig through like 5 different pages to figure out what form even applies to your project. That sounds way easier than what we've got.

scott.olivia5d ago

Waited on hold with my city's water department for an hour and a half just to be told I had to mail in a paper form that wasn't even listed on their website. Stuff like that makes me wonder if they're trying to make it hard on purpose.