Bentonville Permits Available Online

The Bentonville building activity report can now be accessed on the Internet.

Permit information from Jan. 1, 2004, forward can be accessed although there’s a short time lag.

Beth Mireles, Bentonville’s building inspections secretary, said the Bentonville Building & Safety Department wanted to make the information more convienent for out-of-town customers.

Mireles said she sees an average of 10-20 permit reports picked up from the office per week.

Annette Brightwell, a development services technician, enters the report from the previous week’s billing after Friday’s payments have been posted. By Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, the permits should be online.

Users can go to www.bentonvillear.com and click on the “departments” hyperlink followed by the “building inspections” link. The building activity report will be under “other information.”

On June 1, the city will also begin a project to make the actual building permits available for viewing online. The software addition, called Click2Gov, is part of the $55,000 project.

“We are going to make it so that you can go and look at the status of the permit,” said Jonathan Rogers, the city’s systems manager.

Users will eventually be able to view large-scale developments online and pay city utilities. Utility users will have their own login and personal identification number. Rogers said the city takes in about $60,000 per month in credit card utility payments. He said the city has been great about keeping them tech savvy.

“I would hold our technology next to anyone’s in Northwest Arkansas,” Rogers said.

The software add-on should be up and running by Oct. 1.