A customer works with staff in the Lincoln County planning and development department’s office in Newport, which drew criticism for its Plexiglass security windows, narrow hallways and lack of privacy. (Quinton Smith/Lincoln Chronicle)By QUINTON SMITH/Lincoln Chronicle
More than 140 contractors and businesses who use Lincoln County’s planning and development department expressed overwhelming dissatisfaction with its operations in a survey organized by a Waldport contractor frustrated with what many say is deteriorating service and little being done about it.
Chris Carlson of Waldport-based C.P. Carlson Builders initiated the 70-question survey in April with the idea that contractors, developers, property owners, surveyors and engineers would respond with their experiences. Some 145 did.
“ … the results consistently point to a common theme: respondents believe the department suffers from problems in leadership, accountability, commission and process efficiency rather than isolated issues involving individual employees,” a summary said.
The survey’s results are unflinching — and may be already leading to some small changes.
Custom homebuilder Chris Carlson of Waldport surveyed people and businesses who use the Lincoln County planning department to collect their views on permitting and other processes. (Quinton Smith/Lincoln Chronicle)In a letter to various county officials on the results, Carlson said that in his nearly 40 years of working with the planning department much of the time it “maintained a reputation for being open, helpful, communicative, timely, fair, and focused on helping citizens navigate increasingly complex regulations.”
“Over the last several years, however, conversations and experiences among contractors, realtors, surveyors, engineers, landowners and citizens — people whose livelihoods and investments often depend upon timely and accurate guidance from the Planning Department — have become increasingly dominated by frustration,” Carlson wrote. “Those concerns became so widespread and consistent that I felt compelled to move beyond anecdotes and rumors and instead ask difficult questions in a structured and objective manner.”
Lincoln County’s planning and development department is notably different than many of the county’s other functions. Other departments focus on public safety, health, records, taxation or providing a direct service like transportation. The planning and building department has more of an immediate impact on businesses because it is required to review and OK all types of construction permits, tell people how or what they can do with their property, and then enforce rules that are often handed down by the state.
Newport and Lincoln City have their own planning and building departments and anecdotally draw fewer complaints than the county’s department, which deals with planning, zoning and development in five small cities and unincorporated areas.
Carlson and others interviewed by the Lincoln Chronicle said while all county functions were impacted by the 2020 Covid pandemic, the building department never seemed to recover and its struggles have only worsened the past 18 months.
“One hundred percent of the people who walk through that door are not there for fun. They have a business that depends on them,” Carlson said in an interview with the Chronicle. “But now the situation is the worse than it’s ever been.”
Lincoln County rarely if ever asks people who deal with its various departments for their reviews. It’s also unusual for someone whose business could be affected by going public with issues to step out and initiate a review. But in announcing the survey in April, Carlson told the Chronicle that by going public — and letting planning department leaders know he’s doing it – he felt somewhat protected.
“My point on the whole thing was to ask questions and I will continue to ask questions to help identify problems and see if they can be addressed,” he told the Chronicle.
Some 145 respondents to a customer service survey of Lincoln County’s planning and development department gave it very low marks for efficiency and ease of doing business. (Quinton Smith/Lincoln Chronicle)Survey results
The survey asked respondents to rate various planning department functions from 1-5, with 1 being “terrible” 2 being “poor” and 4-5 being “good” and “excellent.” While the survey covered five areas, the most questions dealt with interactions with the department and its staff, which were uniformly negative, including:
- 62 percent gave the department poor to terrible rankings on professionalism; 13 percent said it was good to excellent;
- 66 percent said customer service was poor to terrible; 13 percent said it was good to excellent;
- 85 percent rated the overall efficiency of the department’s processes as poor to terrible; 5 percent said it was good to excellent;
- 83 percent said the ease of doing business with the department was poor to terrible; 6 percent said it was good to excellent; and
- 78 percent said department staff’s “willingness to help solve problems” was poor to terrible; 11 percent said it was good to excellent.
Many complained about the planning and development office which has a massive plexiglass partition separating visitors from staff and has the feeling of a high-security bank. Until last week visitors had to be buzzed into the office to get through two locked doors. Many others complained about the department’s phone system which requires most customers to leave messages and wait for a callback days later.
“I get the feeling when I call or visit that I am a problem to be dealt with instead of a customer that needs help solving a problem,” one survey respondent wrote.
Another wrote “Yes, more code and policy have come into play, but the culture and the way Lincoln County professionals and the public are treated in the department is awful and out of line.”
There were also questions on department leadership, land use and code enforcement, permits and inspections.
- The department’s leadership received poor to terrible rankings from 75 to 83 percent of respondents;
- Permitting issues received poor to terrible rankings from 62 to 86 percent of respondents;
- If there was a bright spot in the survey, is that respondents gave “acceptable” to “good/excellent” on the department’s building inspections, including good marks on professionalism, knowledge, consistency and reasonableness although many struggled with the reliability of scheduled inspection times.
The Chronicle contacted others who deal regularly with the department on multiple major projects but were not involved with Carlson’s survey and echoed the survey’s results – and were granted anonymity to avoid potential retaliation.
“It’s very unfriendly,” said one. “The office is the big thing. The inspectors are great.”
“The office is very off-putting,” said another. “They stayed with Covid hours and protocols. You can’t drop by and talk to anyone.”
What now?
Issues in the department have been festering for years.
Former county administrator Tim Johnson began to address some of them in late 2024, but resigned in February 2025 and 17 months later the position is still vacant. The lack of an interim administrator, turmoil among remaining top staff and with county commissioners have left the planning and development department without higher-level oversight.
In addition to sending the survey’s results to department leaders, Carlson also sent it to county commissioners Casey Miller and Walter Chuck, commissioner-elect Curtis Landers and candidates in the November general election.
Carlson said he met with building official John Rodriguez and office supervisor Vanessa Howard in June to go through the survey. Department director Onno Husing responded to Carlson with an email outlining some issues and upcoming changes, but has yet to meet with Carlson.
Husing told the Chronicle in April that while customer satisfaction surveys can be painful, he would welcome the feedback and called it “a great idea.” But since getting the survey in late June he has declined to talk or meet with a Chronicle reporter to discuss it.
Miller said he met with Husing last week for more than three hours.
“They’re over the shock of it and now they’re trying to address what they can,” Miller told the Chronicle. “But it’s a catalyst to force our hand to work on our customer service.”
Chuck just received copies of the survey results last week and is trying to arrange a meeting with Carlson.
Landers, who was elected outright in the May primary election and will replace Chuck in January, said he’s in an awkward position but believes the root of the problem is the lack of higher-level administrative oversight.
“The key is how are they going to respond to this,” Landers said. “But it’s something that can be fixed.”
- Quinton Smith is the editor of Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]
When people have their own ideas on something they want to do, they don’t like being told “no”, or you have to do things differently to meet building codes and rules. I remodeled my home and found that working with contractors and the Planning department through plans, permits, inspections , etc was very professional and timely. They all were a great group to work with, very helpful.
Thank you very much for doing this survey. More than ever, this is a time for people to work together and help each other.
1. Why is it that HR Director David Collier is identified as the interim administrator in some situations, but this one indicates that part of the issue is the lack of an interim administrator?
2. I find it interesting that both Casey Miller and Curtis Landers were able to answer questions about the results of the survey; however, Walter Chuck’s only apparent response is that he is trying to arrange a meeting with the survey’s organizer.
When Walter Chuck was campaigning to hold his appointed seat, I recall at least two instances where he said that he didn’t want to be involved in the day-to-day business of the county. I remember replaying that part of both videos because I found his disinterest shocking.
We are fortunate that Curtis Landers will be replacing Walter Chuck.
How many employees does Director Husing manage? Does the workload exceed reasonable expectations?
Building on the coast has different environmental and geologic demands for permitting and inspections from the Valley.
Pressure will increase in the permitting Department, I suspect, as builders continue to seek variances from existing state and local land use and building standards and regulations.
Just saying as the Commissioners review budget requests and fee schedules.
C.P. Carlson Builders has been serving the central Oregon coast for over 40 years. Years ago, I worked for the Carlson family and to the best of my knowledge, Chris has a good reputation in the building industry, and I believe him when he says there are problems. This is not a frivolous claim. For a busy contractor to become so frustrated as to take the time and energy to find out if others are experiencing difficulties with the Lincoln County planning and development department and then to get a whopping 145 respondents to his survey, speaks volumes. The department is broken. We’d better fix it or we’ll lose our good builders as we’ve been losing our good service providers in, for example, the medical profession.
How can we build more housing if there is a big slow clog in the pipeline of necessary building certifications needed to build? Builders and their clients are already losing time and money because of the national administration’s policies affecting the cost of supplies, and then they have to be sand-bagged on a local level, too? Unacceptable.
Thank you, Chris, for bringing this problem to the public’s eyes.
All I know is that when someone in my neighborhood wanted to build a home on a lot not big enough for a septic system, Onno Husing prevented it. Good.
Having actually had a builder that has built on the coast for almost 40 years apply for a building permit for us, I can tell you that it was a total circus. We were told 6 weeks. When 6 weeks came and went you have to navigate how to even get inside the building that is behind a locked door during business hours only to be told they are still working on it. It took over 3 months total and that was to build a standard home with no variances required or requested on a regular lot. There were no utility issues to slow it down just excuses as they had everything they needed on the application for the permit.
I agree with Curtis Landers that it is a management issue. The Board of Commissioners has been hijacked by bureaucrats and we all are living with the result of that to include long delays, arrogance and higher prices that result due to the delay.