BUILDING PERMITS TO BE GIVEN ONLINE.

Byline: JUDY O'ROURKE

Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- Residents can't power-saw joists or jackhammer driveways in the wee hours, but soon they can apply for building permits at 3 a.m. -- online.

People enjoy the round-the-clock ease of buying a CD or a cruise on the Web, and more and more cities are helping residents summon municipal services the same way.

"Requests from the community and a desire internally to provide virtual City Hall-type services for the community -- that's the expectation of consumers," said Kevin Tonoian, the city's technology-services manager. "Our goal is to create more e-commerce opportunities on our Web site, to provide a 24-7 accessibility to City Hall."

The online permit system is due this summer.

At first, the menu of permits available on the city's Web site will be limited to those typically processed at the building-safety counter -- as for replacing a water heater. Tonoian said that's no trifle because it could dramatically cut waiting lines.

The number of applicants varies seasonally. Activity increases in warmer months, when about 30 permits are sought daily. Currently about 20 permits are issued each day -- roughly 400 a month -- for everything from recessing kitchen lights to erecting big commercial buildings.

Bobby Chevalier, a liaison with cities and regulatory agencies for a Newhall-based engineering company, sees benefits and risks in online service.

"(It's) a very easy and convenient thing," he said, adding the city must ensure applicants comply with standard codes and regulations. His caveat: "When you're dealing online, we all know what the risks are with sensitive information with hackers and identity theft."

His employer, Calex Engineering Co., is a midsize firm specializing in excavation and shoring work.

Four months ago the city deployed the first phase of the online system, a permit tracking service. It draws roughly 500 hits a month. Visitors to the site can see when permits were sought, a description of the scope of the work and inspection results -- by providing the permit number or the address.

The transparency could cue the curious in on the process, too. A professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law counters reasoning that the data are public record available to anyone -- so what's the difference? -- noting it misses a vital point.

Laws defining the data as public record were passed when the material was available but not easily accessible, said law professor Jerry Kang.

"What the Internet has shown us, by making things easier to find, we radically alter our behavior if it becomes trivially easy to find information about others," Kang said. "We were granted a practical privacy and anonymity because we were never that interesting to other people. Now that costs of search have come down, it is almost costless for curious neighbors, marketers, stalkers and old friends to find out more about you."

Marketers selling second mortgages, construction services or fancy cabinets could see who's in the process of building and target them, he said.

Or neighbors concerned about nuisances could scrutinize the record, comparing whether permits align with development spied over the fence. Disgruntled neighbors could file lawsuits for perceived violations or unauthorized construction, he said.

"People forget, as more and more information becomes publicly available and easily searchable, quite telling data profiles can be made about us with little cost," Kang said. "This has implications that society rarely considers because of its incremental nature."

The city of Boca Raton, Fla., assigns building applicants a personal identification code, like the one provided by banks, to view permits online.

"It basically precludes someone else, other than the contractor, gaining access to that information online," said Jorge Camejo, director of Boca Raton's Development Services Department. "There's really no one else, besides the contractor and homeowners, who needs convenient access to that information online."

Florida's sunshine laws make all public records available for public review, but not at the click of a mouse.

On Santa Clarita's horizon is an automated voice-recognition system, similar to one used in Anaheim, allowing people to request inspections and learn inspection results.

Perhaps two years hence, building inspectors will be outfitted with handheld devices to input inspection results on site, readable by contractors in real time.

The city would be able to provide much better communication between the city building department, contractors and homeowners. It would help them keep their projects moving faster.

Palmdale is testing a similar system.

Local residents can now e-mail building and safety inspectors 24-7, but don't expect next-day inspections for requests made after dark; 2:30 p.m. is the cutoff for next-day visits.

The city is expanding its array of Web conveniences. Residents can report potholes or graffiti, request sidewalk repairs, look for city jobs, learn about new business incentives, register for recreation programs or report problems with cable service or traffic-signal timing or outages -- with a mouse click.

Santa Barbara, which has offered online permit tracking for about seven years, blacks out property owners' names and has had no complaints about the service, said Danny Kato, a senior planner for the coastal city.

Nor have complaints barraged San Francisco, which has offered open tracking for about five years. The city issues more than 60,000 permits a year and performs more than 135,000 inspections. Licensed contractors can receive a password to obtain electrical and plumbing permits online.

"San Francisco's housing stock is much older than other California cities'(housing), with buildings dating from the 19th century," said William Strawn, a spokesman for the city's Department of Building Inspection. "Many of these buildings are not yet up to today's code requirements, which are the most stringent in the nation since we live in one of the world's most at-risk seismic zones."

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