OCEAN CITY – The city is looking to become more user-friendly for local contractors and business owners by offering online permitting and licensing starting this week.
Ocean City is continuing to expand the online services offered to its citizens by allowing contractors and business owners the opportunity to apply for building permits, such as plumbing, electrical and mechanical and business or rental licenses online and without a trip to City Hall. The online service went live on Monday and is available by visiting the town’s website.
“Online permitting is what a lot of communities are going towards. It is a good way to provide a service, from building permits to business licenses,” Ocean City Planning and Community Development Director Matt Margotta said. “These are things where people have to come downtown, fill out a form, wait in line, and turn it in only to have someone quickly look at it or just accept it right there, take a fee and send them on their way, and they will receive a response in the mail. … this online process takes all of that out.”
By simply going online, contractors and citizens will now be able to complete the most common steps in the building permit process including applications, payments and scheduling inspections. In addition, the online program will improve access to permit information.
“We are very excited to offer an online option to our property owners and contractors,” Margotta said. “This will vastly improve the permit process, speed up the scheduling of inspections and will allow users to check the active permit review status. Not only will this service be a large benefit to our customers, but it should reduce inquiry calls from the public and allow the resources of our building department personnel to be maximized.”
Along with the building permits, the new online services option allows for businesses to complete routine tasks associated with business licenses. Citizens can search for licenses, renew licenses and pay for licenses, as well as perform “what if” scenarios to determine the impact of changes on a license.
“Having an online service for business and rental licenses is an exciting option to offer our community,” said Michael Sherman, Licensing Inspector for the Town of Ocean City. “This will allow businesses and property owners to renew a license and pay any associated fees directly online. We hope that it will make their life a little bit easier and will be a more effective way to maintain the town’s business and rental licenses.”
According to Margotta, development of online permit and licensing has been a work in progress for a number of years as it has taken time to load background information into the system.
“All of our files in one system or another had to be prepped and entered into the data base for online permitting reviews, so we have the background data that is associated with a particular address, and that is an incredible of work,” he said. “We are starting off slow with some of the easier permits to see how this functions…and eventually we will open it up to other types of permits. Therefore, the functionality would increase from here.”
Councilman Joe Mitrecic, who owns a local building company, has been a proponent for developing an online permit process since his second term serving on council starting in 2006.
“I am happy to see it come to fruition … it is going to be much more user friendly for contractors to apply for small permits, and online licensing is another convenience for people who have to use our services,” Mitrecic said.
While there is some limited functionality with the service, the town is confident the new tools will be an extraordinary benefit to the citizens of Ocean City. For questions or inquiries, citizens should visit www.oceancitymd.gov or email [email protected] for building permits or [email protected] for business or rental licenses.