Newberry Set to Hike Inspection Fees

NEWBERRY – New construction in Newberry will be more expensive says the City’s Building Official, Scott Thomason, who maintains that building inspection fees are not keeping up with costs associated with inspections. In a presentation he made to the City Commission on March 14, Thomason said the City’s current permit fees were set in 2003 and haven’t been raised since. Although fees have been stationary for nine years, expenses have risen year after year.

“Building Departments in Florida operate on the premise that development should pay for itself and fees collected for permitting should be sufficient to fund the operations of the department. Since [2003] the cost of providing plan review, permitting and inspections has grown steadily,” said Thomason.

In addition, Thomason said the state banned the collection of contractor registration fees several years ago resulting in an average budget loss of over $20,000 annually. Although fees established 18 years ago were sufficient at that time, they are no longer sustainable.

Thomason said the City of Newberry conducted an internal review of fees charged to see if they were in balance with associated costs. What they discovered is that some of the fees charged for certain types of permits were adequate based on the costs associated those permits, while others were not.

Based on several factors such as the Building Official’s time to review or inspect a site, vehicle and gas costs, etc. Thomason determined that the cost per inspection is $85.76. In a Cost vs. Fees Charged Comparison of five typical inspection types: single-family residence, re-roof, HVAC, mobile home and pool, only single-family residence and mobile home inspections paid for themselves. Based on cost to the City, re-roof inspections cost the City $101, while HVAC and pool inspections cost the City $35 and $252 respectively, to perform.

The City also conducted a comparison of Newberry permit fees relative to other local jurisdictions. He used fees charged by Alachua County, the Cities of Alachua, Gainesville, High Springs and Williston and Gilchrist County for comparison. “Relative to our peers, Newberry permit fees in general are on the low end of the spectrum of permit fees being charged,” Thomason said.

Another issue identified by Thomason is that building permit fees were set by ordinance to be calculated based on the Southern Building Code Congress International tables, which no longer exist. “The industry standard is to base permit fees on the International Code Congress (ICC), which the Florida Building Code is based on. Therefore, the City needs to update its code to base permit fees on the ICC standard,” he said. The effect of this change is a modest increase in permit fees on residential permits (on average, around $200 per unit), and a significant decrease in fees charged for large commercial development.

Thomason also recommended developers put down a deposit for plans review. He said sometimes they spend time on plans reviews and never hear anything more about a project. However, staff members have spent time on their project, which doesn’t get reimbursed to the City.

The last issue reviewed had to do with Building Department reserves. “The Building Department is supposed to pay for itself and stand alone,” said Thomason. “It is not supposed to take funds from the General Fund to operate.”

Reserves are used to supplement revenues for operational expenses during down market cycles, to avoid having to draw funds from the City’s General Fund or lay-off staff while permit volume is temporarily low. The state recommends a one-year reserve, based on the average cost to operate the department over the previous four years.

Thomason explained that currently, Building Department reserves (after programmed expenses) are approximately $10,000—or 0.03 years’ worth of the current operating budget. He estimated that if the proposed changes to the Building Permit fees are adopted by the Commission, the proposed departmental reserve goal will be met within “five - seven years, at the current rate of community development”.

In other City business, Ordinance 2022-19/LDR 22-02 to allow electronic message signage at City Hall was approved in a 4-1 vote on second and final reading with Commissioner Tim Marden casting the dissenting vote.

Amendments to the Personnel Policies were discussed and Commissioners voted to approve Resolution 2022-09 to update the policies as reviewed by Assistant City Manager Dallas Lee. Designation of the Juneteenth holiday was tabled for further discussion regarding whether the date would be a paid or unpaid holiday.

Major changes include updates to the drug testing policy, compensatory time, clarification of leave policies, declared City closure policy and disciplinary actions.

Mayor Jordan Marlowe invited interested citizens to attend an informal Meet and Greet with election candidates on Monday, March 21, from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. at The Blend, 305 S.W. 250^th Street, Newberry.

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