Today, with a housing boom in full swing, building permit applicants begin lining up before dawn to get a spot near the front, and they're lucky if they can get out the door before lunch time.

On Robben's latest trip to the department, he showed up at 5:45 a.m., only to find out there were five people ahead of him waiting for the office doors to open at 7:45 a.m.

The long lines and lengthy processing time for building permit applications are a headache for homeowners who are often doing only modest renovations.

Harriet Itai says she arrived at 10 a.m. on her first visit to the department and ended up spending 4ý hours in line waiting to submit an application to replace the galvanized pipes at her home. "It was shocking the first time I came down. I had no clue," she says.

On her second visit, Itai arrived at 6:15 a.m. in hopes of cutting her waiting time.

Breandan Gleason says it took him four visits to the department to get approval to add a deck on his Pearl City home. On a recent trip to the permit office, he arrived at 7:20 a.m. and was 31st in line.

"All I want to do is build a deck so I can have parties," he says.

For bigger contractors and developers, however, the red tape involved in obtaining clearance for projects can carry a significantly higher price tag. The developer of the Ko Olina Resort & Marina, for example, said recently that unexpected permitting hurdles pushed back the expected start of construction for the resort by at least eight months, and added $1 million to the cost of the project.

Resty Baptista, an architect with Innovations Architectural Design Inc. in Kaimuki, says an average trip to the Department of Planning and Permitting takes about four to five hours of his day.

The long waiting time is an inconvenience, he says, "but it's just part of the cost of doing business."

The crux of the problem, city officials say, is a surge in building permit applications at a time when the department is in the midst of a staffing shortage.

The value of building permits issued by the city swelled to $1.4 billion last year from $900 million in 2001 — a 56 percent increase.

Meantime, the number of job vacancies at the department has been rising "pretty much in a straight line" from 39 in 1999 to 66 this year, says Eric Crispin, the department's director. Full staffing for the department is about 300 employees.

The increased burden on the department staff has been noticeable, according to regular customers, like Robben, who estimates he's been to the permit office at least a dozen times over the past 1ý years. "They're overwhelmed with way too much work," he says.

A lack of money is the primary issue, says Crispin, who notes the City Council cut $310,000 from the department's budget last year.

For 2004, the council has approved an $800,000 increase over 2003, "which should go a long way to filing some of the vacant positions," he says.

Still, it will take time to fill many of the openings created by the retirement of senior staff over the past few years, Crispin adds. The hiring process also is being made more difficult because local universities are producing fewer engineering graduates than they used to, he says.

For its part, the department has been working to ease the paperwork burden on building permit applicants by making more services available on its Web site (www.honoluludpp.org). Applicants can go online to download forms, check on the status of their permit applications, and have questions answered.

Visits to the sites have been steadily increasing, and it now receives nearly 3.3 million hits per month, Crispin says.

There is one group that doesn't mind waiting in line at the permit office. The hassle of applying for a building permit has spawned a cottage industry of "permit routers," who will wait in line and shepherd your plans through the application process for a fee.

Ana Wisch got the idea a few years ago when she was waiting in line to submit plans for her husband's construction company.

"Permit routers provide an asset," Wisch says, noting she's been in line as early as 5 a.m. to submit building plans.

Despite showing up early, however, Wisch says she's never been first in line.

"I've been No. 2, but never first."

Wisch says business is good these days with the increased volume of building permits being submitted.