EPHRATA — Grant County Development Services received 131 applications for building permits in December, the highest total of the year, and the year’s total was 953 applications. And permits are still waiting for processing.

Damien Hooper, GCDS director, reviewed year-end statistics and information during a Tuesday meeting with Grant County commissioners.

“We don’t see this (demand) tapering off any time soon,” Hooper said.

The applications generated more revenue than projected in December, he said, but revenue was less than budget projections for 2020. Hooper attributed that in part to the shutdown, or near-shutdown, of private construction activity for about six to eight weeks, beginning in mid-March.

Projects already in the works were allowed to resume in late April and other construction resumed in May in counties that had reached the second phase of the state’s then-reopening plan, which has since been discarded and replaced with a new plan.

Applications also decreased during those two months. Hooper said people planning commercial and residential projects delayed filing applications due to the uncertain circumstances.

Development services employees started processing 78 applications during the month of December. In addition, 160 applications were pending for one month, 116 for two months, and 46 for more than two months.

“We’re pushed out quite a ways on our permits,” Hooper said.

Typically, it takes about three weeks to process a permit for a residential structure, Hooper said, and about seven to eight weeks for a commercial project.

He attributed the delay in issuing permits to coronavirus exposure among the staff that kept them away from work in November and December.