CALGARY — Mike Borkristl gave the city plans for three virtually identical fourplex homes in northwest Calgary this summer, and then waited.

A city planner’s review of one project took three days. Another took 21/2 months.

Building a house in a southwest neighbourhood has cost Borkristl’s client more than $100,000 in applications, appeal fights and backfilling the construction hole until next spring — all because, ultimately, a window should have been frosted to fit into the right permit category.

A co-worker brought in a client’s letter of authorization, and was told the memo needed its own letter of authorization.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi threw Calgary developers a curveball last week when he warned that the city would cut development “red tape” but not “if you’re bringing us crap.”

Borkristl, president of Tricor Design Group, might use that same pungent term to describe the process grit that thwarts his small home-planning firm’s daily work.

“The system is so broken and disjointed and inconsistent,” said Borkristl, who reasoned clients would be willing to pay higher permit fees if the problems eased.

“They would easily pay more for approvals if they could get building in a month.”

The mayor has focused his “cut red tape” initiative on the planning sector — where the complaints are loudest and most common — and the administration has brought in a new chief planner and head of approvals to spearhead an overhaul.

“He said we’ll fix it,” Borkristl recalled the mayor saying at a 2010 home builders’ gathering. “Well, fix it. In a year and a half since, it’s gotten worse.”

While Nenshi’s “crap” remark was mainly aimed at suburban retail or housing projects that don’t meet pedestrian-friendly guidelines, Borkristl’s firm focuses on the sort of projects city hall encourages to limit outward sprawl: inner-city duplexes and other multi-family or smaller homes on former bungalow lots that subtly add density in old communities.

Joel Silverman, a developer who builds similar homes in Calgary and Vancouver — where infill projects are the only kind that exist — said the Cowtown rules are much clunkier and harder to interpret.

“Calgary’s much more geared to large subdivision-type projects. Inner-city stuff is problematic,” he said.

“The actions and policy aren’t consistent with rhetoric.”

Nenshi — who contends feedback on his “crap” comment has been mostly positive — admits there’s still a culture that can make building a fast food drive-thru near an LRT station easier than building transit-friendly condos or office buildings there.

“We’re good at talking about mixed-use and different kinds of development, but our processes are aligned to approving the same thing we’ve always approved,” So it’s not just the developer’s fault on this, and that was never my intent to say that,” he added, referring to his comment.

Borkristl said the crap remark as widely viewed as an insult.

“You can’t believe how riled the community is on that one. The way he said it lumped everyone in together,” he said.