City Hall Closure Update - March 27, 2020

The City of Puyallup’s Permit Center shall remain closed to visitors throughout the Stay Home Stay Healthy order. During this closure, however, the City Permit Center is committed to serving the customers and citizens of Puyallup by providing inspections as outlined below, as well as plan reviews and basic permitting services, including responding to all customer and citizen permit inquiries. Permit Center staff will be available during regular business hours remotely. You can continue to reach the Permit Center by telephone at 253-864-4165 or by email at permitcenter@ci.puyallup.wa.us. For permit intake, application resubmittals or questions about issuances, please contact the Permit Center via phone or e-mail and a staff member will advise you on how we can best assist you with your permit.

In accordance with Governor Inslee’s guidance for Construction Projects on the Stay Home, Stay Healthy Proclamation, effective immediately, the City will be providing inspection services only for those projects meeting the guidance criteria circumstances. More specific information is as follows:

• Developers are responsible for determining if their project meets the Essential Business guidance criteria.
• If there is a question of whether a project meets this criteria, please use the State of Washington portal for inquiries from businesses about their essential/non-essential status. These inquiries are being reviewed as quickly as possible. For fastest response, businesses are urged to use this portal.
• Anyone requesting an inspection who believes the project is exempt per the Governor’s order must be prepared to specifically cite the language in the order and/or follow-up memorandum that justifies the exemption. The request will be documented within the inspection record for purposes of justifying the City’s decision to grant the inspection request.
• SINGLE FAMILY: Inspections of single-family and multi-family residential construction that clearly do not meet the Essential Business guidance criteria will not be performed. Job sites may take temporary means of providing weather protection and securing job sites per the Governor’s Construction Guidance Memo - Part C. (See the link to the memo on the right hand side of this page under Related Documents).
• Inspectors are granted the authority to use sound judgement in determining if the inspection can be done safely. In-person inspections will be restricted to new or unoccupied construction only, subject to social distancing protocols. Inspections that are requested for occupied structures may be postponed or conducted by an agreed upon arrangement at the inspector’s discretion.
• Work that was performed without necessary inspections and cannot be determined to meet applicable City codes and standards will not be accepted.
• If further questions do arise regarding inspection on a specific project, contact your City project inspector, or Building Official Ray Cockerham (RayC@ci.puyallup.wa.us 253-841-5585) or Assistant City Engineer Ken Cook(KCook@ci.puyallup.wa.us. 253 864-4177.)