Killeen launches new permitting system

Killeen Daily Herald
By Kevin Limiti | Herald
October 2, 2023

The city of Killeen announced in a news release Monday the launch of a new website for building permits and inspections.

This new system — called MyGovernmentOnline — will allow people to request inspections and apply for construction building permits via the internet.

“All existing applications that are received and/or permitted prior to October 1, 2023, will remain in the current Naviline system until completion,” the news release said.

City Manager Kent Cagle said last month that the city of Killeen would be moving toward an online permitting platform, but he initially said it was supposed to take at least a year.

He clarified Monday afternoon that the subdivision inspection portal would likely take a year, but the building inspection portal is much more simple.

“Once we get this process down, then we’ll start working on plans for the subdivision, which is a lot more complicated,” Cagle said. “But on the other hand, the real volume is on the building permits. The subdivision plans ... we probably won’t even get one a month.”

Cagle said in previous months that developers had inadvertently not paid building inspection fees, which is why the city of Killeen decided to move toward having all permits tracked online.

Cagle said one reason may be that some developers went to engineering with their plans, rather than to building inspection, and no one with the city checked to confirm that the fees had been paid.

He said that it wasn’t common, and likely unintentional, and that ultimately the blame is with the city.

The city claims it has no records regarding how much went uncollected by the city, or the amount that would have been owed by individual developers.

Initially, the old system was replaced by having developers provide receipts in order to show that inspection fees were paid. This was supposed to eventually be replaced by an online permitting system, such as the one announced Monday.

The city’s Audit Committee voted last month to conduct an internal audit on the unpaid building inspection fees.

City staff say taxpayers have to cover the cost of doing inspections because the inspection and other fees on new construction don’t cover the city’s cost of doing them. Some fees have not been collected in the past depending on which city office developers and homebuilders went to, officials have said.

All permits after Oct. 1 must use this new online permitting platform.

Users will need to create an account at http://www.mgoconnect.org/cp/portal.

Some of the features of MyGovernmentOnline include a paperless online application submittal, a projects list where permits that are in-progress can be viewed and feature where users can pay fees, request inspections and other actions.