The Select Board approved a revised permit fee structure for the Building Department. It includes a new fee — a $50 charge for reopening expired permits.
The fee is not required to extend valid permits. Town Electrical Inspector, Jim Colleary, told the board that he views the fee as an incentive to contractors to not let their permits lapse.
Select Board Member Sam Stivers publicly worried the reopening fee could cause problems if contractors are used to not having to pay a new fee when permits expired. The board was reassured that in addition to notifying people of the change when they pull a permit, the department will be reaching out to people whose permits may be expiring.
A memo from the Building Commissioner Casey Burlingame to the Select Board also clarifies the penalty for work done without a permit:
“Doing work without a permit is subject to a x3 permit fee plus license complaint filed with the State Licensure Board.” This fee is common practice in municipalities. It also deters contractors from doing work without the proper permits.
The memo also justified the new fee as of benefit to lapsed permit holders:
Reopening fees are a way for projects with lapsed permits to be restarted and completed. It is also more cost-efficient for the permit holder, rather than having to apply and pay for a new permit.
Colleary attended the board’s Tuesday meeting to support the new fee. He told the board that the state has punitive laws for the handling of lapsed electrical permits that incentivize contractors to follow the proper process. That isn’t the case for building and plumbing permits.
He followed that when the real estate market surged, towns saw a rise in homeowners coming to get long expired permits signed off on, and sometimes people who were involved were no longer around. The issue caused a lot of towns to add a reopening fee. As a former contractor, he said that if he had to pay the fee once, he’d be sure not to repeat letting a permit lapse in Southborough.
The inspector stressed that contractors letting permits lapse and not following through to get final inspections done is a safety concern. People can be surprised later to find that there are problems. Sometimes, codes change, and things that would have been grandfathered in now need to be brought up to current code.*
As for the other permit fees, the only change was a reduction in the base fee for Building Inspections “from $70.00 to $60.00 to align with all the minimum fees throughout the fee schedule”.
Although the website doesn’t yet indicate any changes, the new schedule was effective as of three days ago, January 1st. You can read the explanatory memo and the draft fee schedule (approved without changes) here.
Debate on how fee amounts should be determined
Stivers and Select Board member Kathy Cook were satisfied that Burlingame demonstrated that the fees were in line with those charged by other towns. Resident Tim Lit commented that he didn’t believe that’s how they should be considered.
Lit was opposed to thinking of them in terms of competition:
if you need a building permit for something in Southborough, you need a building permit for something in Southborough, and the fact you could get it cheaper in Marlborough doesn’t help you, and vice versa.
He also didn’t want the fees to be considered a revenue stream. Instead, he believed that the fees should be based on the cost for providing the service.
Cook argued that since the number of permits issued year to year changes, that would require changing the fees each year, which she wouldn’t support. Stivers said it would be challenging to track hours that department staff spend on work that is billable/non-billable.
Member Al Hamilton agreed with Lit. He acknowledged it wouldn’t be perfect, but believed they could look at a five year period to see if permit fees collected were close to the operating cost for the department.
Chair Andrew Dennington said these were all good thoughts. But he moved that for this year, they approve the fees recommended by the dept. The board voted unanimously to approve them for this calendar year.
*Updated (1/4/24 4:36 pm) I decided to add this Editor’s Note: I personally experienced the issue that Colleary described. In 2019, in the process of selling my home, I discovered that the Building Department didn’t have documentation that a permit for a years-ago renovation was signed off on. The contractor we used was no longer around.
We had to open a new permit and have the house inspected. By that time, building codes had changed and we were required to invest in bringing the building up to code. (It is probably something that should have been done anyway for safety reasons. But it was a surprise expense. And we were lucky it didn’t cause a delay that disrupted the sale.)
