Those backlogs come in spite of efforts by a team of city employees from City Administrator Faith Leach’s office, who have zeroed in on problems with the city’s new permitting platform, Accela, which debuted in February.

During a hearing of the Baltimore City Council’s Housing and Economic Development Committee Tuesday, council members and city residents alike lamented the slow progress.

“There’s stacks and stacks of people trying to get a building permit and do what’s right for our communities and rebuild our vacant properties,” said Councilwoman Odette Ramos. “It’s devastating to see a government that we work hard to be a part of ... fail so catastrophically.”

City-issued permits ensure safety and quality control across the entire life cycle of a housing project, from demolition and rehabilitation to occupancy and use. Permits are needed to build on empty land and renovate homes. Contractors from electricians to plumbers must get permits to perform their work.

A delayed permit can wreak havoc on a development project, an issue that has plagued city developments big and small for years. So notorious were the pitfalls, that fixers like Lou Catelli made entire businesses shepherding developers and business owners through the process.

City officials said Accela, the platform for the city’s revamped system, was supposed to simplify and even accelerate that process. Instead, the number of permits issued has plummeted.

Members of the Baltimore City Council sounded off about delays during budget hearings in June. Then, Ramos called the situation an “abomination.” City Council President Zeke Cohen said he had little confidence in Baltimore’s housing agency to fix the problem.

On Tuesday, Cohen lamented the more than $2 million the city has paid to Accela while the system continues to fail residents, businesses and developers.

“Even after spending millions of dollars we have a system that takes months to issue the simplest permit,” he said.

City officials refused to call the rollout a “failure,” but acknowledged that significant problems remain to be fixed. Deputy Mayor Justin Williams said vacant positions dedicated to permit reviews have been filled and additional staff from other city offices have been detailed to assist.

Confusing questions on permit intake forms were eliminated where possible, and staff have been trained on how to sort permit applications for basic requests so they can be handled more quickly. Of the 5,928 permits currently in process, about 200 have yet to be touched by an employee, Williams said, noting there’s been a reduction in that figure.

For the first time since the new system went live, more permits are going out than there are applications coming in, he said.

“I know it’s late and a long time coming, but it shows we are going in the right direction,” he said.

Still, homeowners and developers who spoke to the council reported issues securing even basic permits. Hilma Munson, a Locust Point resident, said her Councilman Zac Blanchard had to contact the housing commissioner before she saw action.

“We should not have to have political connections or reach out to an elected official for help to get a simple permit for a leaky roof,” she said.

Williams said the Accela system lacks an efficient way to quickly move along permits that are simple requests.

Other challenges remain. Documents haven’t been integrated the way they’re supposed to, triggering more phone calls to the office than staff can handle. Permit reviewers have had to consult older legacy computer systems for information that was supposed to be integrated into Accela, slowing down review times.

Cohen questioned why the Accela platform, which has been used successfully by other jurisdictions in Maryland, has been a challenge in Baltimore.

“Why isn’t it working here?” he asked. “Is there something wrong with the technology the company produced for Baltimore? Or is there something wrong with the processes we employ?”

Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said she consulted other jurisdictions in advance. Some of Baltimore’s challenges were unique, while others were not. Integration took as long as a year in other places, she said.

“There was a perfect storm of different pieces,” she said. “The need to move forward and also the need to adjust some items as we go. I don’t think there’s a failure of Accela.”

“If we can’t use failure, I don’t know what other word there is for it,” Cohen countered.

Leyla Lehman, the city’s interim chief digital officer, said the city’s previous system was developed in-house and was essentially held together with duct tape and bubble gum. The city has no access to the source code, and it risked collapse if it needed to be updated.

“When I look back on it, more testing, more time for testing, that would have been optimal,” she said. “But we were one potential vulnerability from the system coming down.”

“I don’t understand the decision to move forward,” Ramos said, acknowledging she was among the officials who pushed to roll it out. “We just weren’t ready to launch the system.”

Clearing permits more quickly is critical to the success of Mayor Brandon Scott’s ambitious plan to rehabilitate more than 3,000 blocks of empty and abandoned properties. A special tax increment financing zone was created last year allowing the city to borrow money against future tax revenues to assist in the rehabilitation of properties in some of Baltimore’s most beleaguered neighborhoods.

About 8,000 properties are targeted in the first wave of the 15-year plan, most in East and West Baltimore.

Baltimore Banner data reporter Greg Morton contributed to this article.