20-Deliberate and act on administration of building permit and plan review services

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[BACKGROUND CONTINUED] There are two options for building plan review and inspections: the first option is to keep BV (or other third-party service) and the second option would be to hire in-house building inspectors and plan reviewers. Keeping a third-party service helps to reverse the perception of building plan review and inspections as being susceptible to the "good ol' boy" system. It also allows maximum staffing flexibility without the cost of employees or loss of productivity due to employee leave time but cost an estimated $64,500 more each year (excluding first year start-up costs of approximately $300,000). The second option is to bring the process back in-house. This plan would include hiring a Chief Building official, a second Building Inspector and a Plan Reviewer (see accompanying organization chart). The estimated cost of bringing the operation in-house includes salary and benefits as well as the associated department costs. Adding the additional staff will require moving some offices around and some remodeling costs. This option also includes the ability for (1) staff to use third-party plan review and inspections for large or complicated commercial plans (e.g. Paris High School, hospitals), (2) giving customers, if they prefer, the ability to utilize an approved list of third-party plan review firms (at the customer's expense), and (3) requiring the use of an approved third-party fire plan review firm (at the customer's expense) for commercial plans. Returning the process to in-house, as described, is expected to be less expensive and retain flexibility to meet the needs of large or complicated projects. Having inspections in-house leaves the process susceptible to the "good ol' boy" system. The first year start-up costs of approximately $300,000 will have to come out of fund balance or wait until they can be included in the FY 2010-2011 budget. Because of the start-up costs, it will take about five years before having building plan review and inspections in-house will "pay" for itself. The implementation period will take approximately 90-120 days to recruit staff, remodel, and purchase necessary equipment (and possibly longer to allow the run-out of large projects the City has already paid BV for such as Paris High School). During the transition period, it will be necessary to continue using BV or consider a moratorium on development. Regardless of which option is chosen, the City's fee schedules need to be changed so that the consumers of this elective service are the ones paying for it (i.e. currently all taxpayers are subsidizing the cost of a service provided to just a few). The last time any permit fee has been adjusted was almost 10-year ago. The accompanying Permit Fee Comparison chart includes the fees charged some peer cities, the City's current fee schedule, and the proposed new fee schedule. The proposed schedule has a small increase in the base permit fees so small projects (the majority of permits) are not impacted. The cost of a plan review typically depends upon the value of the project; however, Paris currently does not charge a plan review fee of any kind (which is 52 percent of the difference between what BV charged the City and what the City collected in fees). Most other cities use a minimum valuation depending on the type project in order to determine the cost of a plan review. Staff recommends using the lesser of the International Code Council's Building Valuation Data (updated in six-month intervals) for a minimum cost per square foot or the actual contract amount. This guarantees that those seeking permits do not under value their project in order to receive a lower permit fee. At the April 5 workshop, it was the consensus of Council to go with option 2, as described above, and increase the fee schedule to cover operating costs. Staff still needs direction on where Council wishes to pay for the upfront costs. City of Paris Revised 2/04/08