Scot Wrighton, City Manager

Jon Kindseth, Deputy City Manager

David Greenwell, Building Inspection Manager

Staff has performed an analysis of our surrounding peer communities and determined we are significantly lower than any others.  More importantly than this is the fact that the City loses money on our permitting service as currently provided.  Our current fee structure is very complex and confusing for the average property owner, general contractors, and our staff tasked with administering this service.  The permit fees are currently found in five separate ordinances depending upon the type of work being done.  Under our current fee model, we lose money on the smallest projects and the larger, more complex projects.  

The biggest benefits of this new fee structure is the simplicity of knowing what the fees are for any project that a person would undertake.  The fees are based on the value of the work being done by the owner or contractor.  The City will start charging for full plan reviews, as opposed to the current structure where plan review and inspection costs are absorbed by the City with the issuance of a permit fee.  We believe the new fee structure is a more equitable model and thus we have seen this same trend among other professionally managed communities.  Even with this fee increase, it is not expected that permit fees will cover all expenses related to processing and administering the building department division.  Our fees will be more in line with unincorporated Macon County after this change, whereas now our fees are only about 50% of what theirs are. 

Most permits for residential or commercial repairs are not likely to be impacted by this change.  Most small projects are only going to be subjected to the minimum permit fee, thus not significantly impacted by this change.  The permits that will be impacted are the smallest fee permits like fences, where they were $10 they will now likely be $50.  The most significantly impacted projects are the large new construction projects, where fees were not covering the plan review or inspection costs historically.  Over the next year, the City will strive to conduct a more detailed analysis of the building division to determine if these new fees are adequate to cover costs, over if additional changes should be made to get permit related fees to cover the administration costs of providing this service.       

This proposed increase in building fees was tentatively authorized by the City Council during their review of the recommended FY 2020 budget. These five ordinance amendments implement this council directive.