A Message from
the Director
Dear Stakeholders,
During the past year, the Department of Consumer and
Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) has produced some great results. In
2015, we successfully launched our new Customer Service Unit,
responsible for fielding over five thousand monthly calls from residents
across the District. Additionally, we developed a Residential
Review Team in order to effectively manage the plans reviews of the
city’s one and two family dwellings. But we’re not done yet!
The new year is here, and it is full of promise and opportunity
for the District and our agency. DCRA’s leadership is continually
looking for innovative and creative ways to improve our agency
processes and services. We know that we owe it to you to keep you
informed about and engaged in our work— and the direct impact it has on
the District’s visitors, residents, and businesses.
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to A
Regulatory Affair, our new agency newsletter designed to keep you
updated on the city’s development, business activity, enforcement
issues, and agency initiatives that may have a lasting effect on your
ward and the lives of your constituents.
I recognize transparency and communication are the keys to
successful working relationships. As Director, I pledge to keep
you informed about agency progress and future plans. A
Regulatory Affair is our way of sharing what we’ve done and the
best that’s yet to come. I hope it serves as a useful source for
DCRA news and information.
Sincerely,
Melinda M. Bolling
Director, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs
In The Know
Keeping
your ear to the DCRA streets
Strengthening Illegal Construction Enforcement
Practically every day, DCRA receives reports of alleged
illegal construction from residents and business all over the city. You
voiced your concerns and our agency leadership heard you- and
delivered! Yesterday, February 18th, DCRA announced that
effective immediately, inspectors will be on weekend duty- helping to
put an end to illegal construction activity in the District in a much
faster and effective way. From 8:00 am – 5:00 pm every Saturday and
Sunday, residents can report construction activity believed to be
unregulated or illegal at 202-442-STOP(7867) while benefiting from
quicker turnaround time on inspectors arriving at the scene.
For more details, please access DCRA's press release regarding our new
weekend inspections.
New Third Party Program Manual
Hot off the press... Check out the 2016 edition here.
New Solar Permit
Near the close of 2015, DCRA went out with a bang and
announced the launch of a new permit category to support the growing
number of green developments in the District. Introducing the
first Solar Permit from DCRA – designed specifically for solar projects,
the permit specifically reviews system size, system type and mounting
style. The Solar Permit was designed with ease and efficient
processing in mind – and its greatest feature is that it can be applied
for exclusively. This means customers may be able to cut through
needless disciplinary reviews and potentially eliminate the lengthy
application process typically associated with building permits. We will
continue to support innovation and development by creating regulations
and implementing processes that make it easier to build green in DC.
The Solar Permit is just one example of DCRA’s commitment to the
District’s sustainability.
To learn more about the guidelines for projects that
should apply under DCRA’s new solar permit, please visit here and here or contact DCRA’s Green
Building Division at (202) 442-9554.
JBG Takes U Street!
Whether you are a native Washingtonian or new to the
District, U Street is known as the pulse of the city by most. From
lounges, to restaurants, to trendy apartments, the corridor has become
one of the most sought after places to live and spend a night out on
the town. But if this District gem wasn’t attractive enough to
residents as it was, a shiny new development has graced this Shaw
neighborhood with its presence. In June of 2015, JBG broke ground on
the Shay and the Atlantic Plumbing buildings - two new development
projects at the corridor’s Shaw North End, consisting of mixed-use
retail and residential space.
DCRA was proud to play an instrumental role in this
project, ensuring that residents would soon be able to reap the new
community benefits and perks that a development of this scale and
magnitude offers. DCRA participated in weekly conference calls with
JBG, discussing over 30 business/retail tenants including, a movie
theater, multiple restaurants, an art gallery and much more. (During these
calls, the agency identified key milestone goals to ensure the timely
processing of the development’s permit and licensing needs.) For
efficiency purposes, agency management assigned staff to track the
status of permit and licensing activities for each tenant through the
point of issuance.
To date, as a result of DCRA’s project management efforts,
more than 90% of the planned tenants in JBG’s U Street Corridor
development are open for business—ultimately transforming the texture
and quality of life for District residents.
Modern Schools for a Modern DC
In 2007, the District of Columbia adopted a $3.2 billion
plan to modernize schools throughout the District’s Public School
System. Since then, the modernization of dozens of schools has
been completed. In 2015, DCRA took our agency involvement a step
further by coordinating a proactive effort between our Permit
Operations Division (POD) and the Department of General Services (DGS).
This collaboration enabled DCRA to effectively manage and track the issuance
of permits critical to these District school renovations, ensuring a
fluid process with timely issuance of appropriate permits, so that the
doors of these beautiful new public campuses could be experienced by
our youth without delay.
Below is a list of the most recent public school
modernizations:
- Cardozo High School (Ward 1)
- Dunbar High School (Ward 5)
- McKinley Technical High School (Ward 5)
- Peabody Elementary School (Ward 6)
- Anacostia High School (Ward 8)
- Hendley Elementary School (Ward 8)
- Leckie Elementary School (Ward 8)
- Moten Elementary School (Ward 8)
- Simon Elementary School (Ward 8)
DCRA Snags Industry Honor!
DCRA takes great pride in establishing and enforcing the
District’s building code. Our codes were not only designed to serve the
booming development activity of the city, but, additionally, to protect
the life and safety of residents across all eight wards. In 2015, DCRA
received one of the greatest building industry honors by receiving a
top-tier rating of 3 from the Insurance Service Organization’s (ISO)
Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule (BCEGS).
ISO’s BCEGS program assesses the quality of a community’s
building code and how well it is enforced. Recognized for our modern
construction code, staff certifications, and our strategic use of
enforcement to encourage compliance, the District is now among the top
20 percent of building departments in the more than 20,000
jurisdictions surveyed. While this distinction is an
incredible accolade for the agency and city, it’s perhaps even more of
a win for our residents. Our ISO rating means that our families,
children, and friends are living in some of the nation’s safest, most
resilient buildings ever!
DCRA Strikes Gold at 2015 Standard Bearer Awards
Compliance with building energy codes is critical to the
District's Sustainable DC Initiative, particularly in attempting to
achieve net-zero energy standards. For the past five years, DCRA
has taken great strides towards encouraging and enforcing the
District’s sustainability through green construction and development.
In 2015, The International Code Council (ICC) and the Institute for
Market Transformation (IMT) announced at the ICC Annual Conference that
the DCRA was the recipient of the 2015 Standard Bearers Award.
The Standard Bearers Award is a national program designed to celebrate
innovation and leadership in the enforcement of energy code compliance
at the state and local level.
The award recognized DCRA as a jurisdictional leader in
energy code compliance for the work of the agency’s Green Building
Division. To help promote compliance with the energy codes, which
were adopted in 2014, the Green Building Division hosted bi-weekly
energy training workshops, provided energy verification sheets as a
part of the city’s building permit approval process, and authored the
Green Building Program Manual – an educational resource available
citywide.
Our new 2014 energy codes employ affordable mechanisms to
ensure that structures function in ways that not only reduce the
monthly energy/water bills for owners, but also provide a safe and
healthy environment for residents. The District’s leadership,
coupled with DCRA’s management of green compliance has catapulted our
city to the top, making the District one of the greenest and most
sustainable jurisdictions in the nation.
Amnesty NOW!
It’s no secret, even great businesses can fall on hard
times. To help mitigate some of the financial strain impacting the
District’s small-businesses community, DCRA announced a temporary
Business License Amnesty Program that allows businesses to come into
compliance with licensing requirements by obtaining business licenses,
corporate registrations, and weights and measures device registrations
without being fined $2000 for operating without proper
licenses/registrations.
The amnesty program began on January 1, 2016, but will
continue through February 29, 2016. All business within the
District of Columbia, operating with an expired license or without a
license qualify to participate in the program, as do any and all
customers with missing or expired corporation filings/weights and
measures device registrations. Late fees will not be imposed upon
individuals or entities that take advantage of the program.
By encouraging compliance through forgiveness, DCRA is
protecting consumers from unlicensed, unregulated, and dangerous
business activity.
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