For about four years, city staff has omitted building permit information for local homebuilder Patco Constru-ction from weekly data submitted to the Temple Daily Telegram.
City manager David Blackburn said Wednesday “unofficial” 2007 figures for Patco (which were previously omitted) were 27 building permits in 2007 with $1.76 million value. Patco owner Pat Patterson said about half of the units he built in 2007 were single-family and the rest were duplex units.
Blackburn said for 2007 this constitutes 2 percent of the total value of the Temple building permits and 5 percent of total permits granted.
Temple Economic Develop-ment Corp. President Lee Peterson said they use building permits as an indicator of continued growth. Troy Glasson, Temple Area Builders Association director of government affairs, said they use building permit data to gauge the health of the building industry.
“The total number of permits issued during a period indicates the level of activity that is going on in the housing industry,” Glasson said.
Low figures could be a result of high inventory numbers, limited custom building activity, or inclement weather, Glasson said. High numbers suggest that builders are optimistic about selling homes, or the custom market is busy.
Glasson said, “The dollar-value of permits is an indicator of socioeconomic status of the home buyer, or the market is being targeted by speculative builders.”
Blackburn said the building permit error was unintentional, and there was no intent to withhold public information. “We were simply trying to accommodate a builder’s request to minimize criminal activity associated with the publication of the addresses,” he said.
Patterson, Patco’s owner, said he suspected thieves were using published addresses of new building sites to pinpoint locations they would soon target. Patterson said that he followed the suggestion of then-city manager Mark Watson and asked city staff who compile weekly building permit totals to omit building site addresses from information released to the Telegram.
“He (Watson) suggested I ask the girls in permits not to put information (addresses) in the paper,” said Patterson. “I thought they were only removing addresses.”
The TABA awarded Patco Construction the 2006 President’s Award for Excellence. Patterson is on the association’s government affairs committee and a trustee for their political action committee. He has been building homes in Temple for 25 years.
