Entitlement Tracker

A building permit is checked against rules. An entitlement is decided by people in a room, on a calendar, after a negotiation, and the record of what was promised to get it is usually nobody's job. Two years later the conditions arrive as obligations and half of them are a surprise.

Workflow

Step 1. Record the process as the jurisdiction defines it

Ask, in one message:

1. Which approvals are sought, and which body decides each?
2. What is the published process for each: submission, completeness review, staff report, notice, hearing, decision, appeal period?
3. What is the hearing calendar, and what is the cut-off for an item to reach a given meeting? Missing a cut-off costs a full cycle.
4. Who represents the project: attorney, planner, architect, owner?
5. Is there known opposition, an interested neighbourhood group, or a prior application on this site?
6. What does each approval gate?

The cut-off dates in question 3 are the thing this log is most useful for. They are published, they are inflexible, and they are missed.

Step 2. Log submissions and staff interaction

#	Event	Date	With whom	What was said	Written?	Reference

Include pre-application meetings, completeness letters, staff comments, and every call. Mark verbal separately from written, always. Staff positions given verbally change, and a project that relied on one needs to know it was verbal.

Log the staff report when it comes, and log its recommendation.

Step 3. Log every hearing, and every commitment made in one

For each hearing:

• Date, body, agenda item, who attended for the project.
• What the project presented, and what changed from the submission.
• What was said by the body, by staff, and by the public.
• Every commitment the project made in the room. This is the entry that matters. Design changes offered under questioning, operational promises, community benefits, phasing commitments: each becomes a condition or an expectation, and none of them is in any drawing.
• The outcome: approved, approved with conditions, continued, denied.

A continuance gets logged with why and what has to happen before the next date.

Step 4. Log every condition, with what discharges it

#	Condition	Quoted	Discharged by	Owner	When due	Status

Conditions come in kinds that behave differently and the log separates them:

• Before permit. Gates the building permit. permit-tracker needs these.
• Before occupancy. Discovered late, expensively.
• Ongoing. Operational obligations that run for the life of the building and bind an owner who may not be this one.
• Recorded. Attached to the land, surviving sale.

Every condition has exactly one owner. Two owners means none.

Step 5. Track the expiry and what restarts it

Entitlements lapse. Record the expiry, what constitutes commencement, whether an extension is available and what it requires, and what happens to the approval if it lapses. Where phased, record each phase's expiry separately.

Step 6. Read back

On request and at every milestone:

• Next cut-off date and what has to be submitted for it.
• Conditions by kind, with before permit first.
• Conditions with no owner.
• Every commitment made in a hearing that has not become a condition or a drawing. These are the ones that get forgotten and then remembered by somebody else.
• Verbal staff positions the project is relying on.
• Expiry dates approaching.

Report elapsed time only. Never predict an outcome or a date.

Step 7. Write the log

One dated file per application, appended to rather than rewritten. Ask where it lives on the first run and use the same path after.

Rules

• Never supply a process, a timeline, or a hearing calendar.
• Never predict an outcome. Discretionary approvals are not forecastable and a prior approval is not precedent.
• Mark every verbal position as verbal.
• Log every commitment made in a hearing, in the room's words.
• Every condition has one owner, or is flagged as having none.
• Separate conditions by kind, and lead with before permit.
• Append; never rewrite an earlier entry.

Anti-patterns

• Logging only written correspondence.
• Treating a staff recommendation as the decision.
• Losing the design change offered under questioning at a hearing.
• Recording conditions as one list with no kinds.
• Missing a hearing cut-off because the log tracked the hearing date.
• Predicting approval from a similar project.
• Assuming an ongoing condition ends at occupancy.
• Rewriting a condition entry when it is renegotiated. Log the change.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. The log is written at the path you choose on the first run and appended to after.