NEW BUILDING OFFICIAL — Dave Herron, Steubenville’s new chief building official, looks over plans. In his first four days of work city officials say Herron cleared an 85-permit backlog. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — Steubenville’s newly hired building officer is already whittling away at the permit backlog waiting for him on his first day at work.

After just four days on the job, city officials say their new chief building official, Dave Herron, has already cleared out about 85 permits.

“The backlog is eliminated, as of today,” Second Ward Councilman Tracy McManamon said Monday. “He has worked really hard to get the backlog cleared up. We have just a few current issues that he is working his way through, but nothing major, just routine things.”

McManamon said in his first three days on the job Herron was able to work his way through a thick stack of commercial and residential permits that had piled up since the retirement of his predecessor, Anthony Bodo.

“Because he has multiple certifications, we will not need to fill two positions in the building department,” McManamon added. “This is really good news for Steubenville as we focus on some cost-containment issues.”

Herron says he’s not sure how many permits he processed, admitting he “lost count.”

“I’ve done the best I could to get stuff moving along, to not (make) people wait for what they should get easily,” he added, noting many of them were for “little turnouts — roofs, windows, things like that, and small residential projects.”

More complex applications are still being outsourced to a Cleveland-based plan reviewer who, McManamon said, also is doing a great job.

“The plan review that was recently completed for Chipotle was approved in seven days,” he said. “That is terrific news.”

That restaurant will be built in the parking lot of Lowe’s.

City Manager Jim Mavromatis said some of those bigger plans are voluminous.

“We have the plan reviewer because a lot of these plans are lengthy and need to be looked at thoroughly,” he said. “It’s time consuming — we can’t have our chief building official doing that — some of those run 200 pages or more.”

Herron said he’s “starting to see what’s going on here” after spending the last 20-plus years in north Florida and the Florida Keys, where he’s already licensed.

“I lived up here a long time ago, not in Steubenville itself, but my dad was a union fitter and I remembered him working up here once,” he said. “Then I saw the ad for an inspector here.”

Due to his extensive experience, the state granted Herron interim certifications. At some point in the next two years he’ll find out what they’d like him to retest.