Nearly 7,000 Hawaii County building permits will expire at the end of the month.
After the rollout last July of the county’s Electronic Processing and Information Center — a long-in-the-works online building permitting software — the county is now capable of enforcing expiration of permits under the county code.
Under the county code, permits expire 180 days after issuance if work does not commence by then, or if work is suspended for 180 consecutive days, or three years after being issued to contractors, or five years after being issued to owner-builders, DPW information and education specialist Sherise Kana‘e-Kane said.
But only now that EPIC is live can the county track permit expirations.
“Historically, DPW was unable to effectively enforce the expiration on the Legacy permits,” Kana‘e-Kane said in a statement. “When the EPIC system went live, many permits were marked expired per the system requirements and were disabled to allow the community to address their existing permits.”
But that grace period ends on June 1. On that day, all permits issued on or before March 27, 2012, will expire. Kana‘e-Kane said this includes 6,840 building permits and accompanying electrical and plumbing permits.
“Permit holders have had over 10 years to complete what was required to be built in three to five years,” Kana‘e-Kane said.
Another batch of 2,874 building permits — those issued after March 27, 2012, but on or before March 7, 2017 — expire Sept. 7, although further extensions for these permits will be considered.
Those permits, Kana‘e-Kane said, were issued under a 2006 version of the county code that is similar enough to the current code to be easily comparable.
Any work inspected and approved before a permit’s expiration date will be honored under the code when the permit was issued. Work that has not been inspected and approved will need a new permit application that references the expired permit.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.