Why turn inspections over to state?

Thank you Mr. Vandergriff. It is nice to finally see the whole picture. I am having a house built now and the inspections are holding things up. But now that the city manager has left maybe you can go back part time and get the code office back on track. I feel that it ran very well when you were in charge. Something to think about.

The city building codes WERE a joke. I've already posted several instances for examples of poor and dangerous code practices that have been or are now being dealt with. The state knows better, not the city!

The tale of the code inspection division and city management, to include the commissioners and city staff, has been laid out and discussed at length before. The function of code inspection has been given over to the State for a year under the terms of the letter mentioned in a previous article. The intent of the Commission was to reconstitute the division, staff it with inspectors and get on with renewing the function within that time frame.

Given what Pat has described in his article, and the situation that exists with the Commission and City staff, can anyone or will anyone care to speculate on how much emphasis will be placed on the rebuild of the code inspection division? In doing the rebuild, it should probably include a look at every level from the top down to assure citizens and contractors/developers that the function is being done right and by the best capable people the City can find. The follies of the past need not be repeated and building without inspection or compliance with the law should not be tolerated.

Everybody has a piece of this action and everybody should participate in coming up with a solution. Getting the rebuild done quickly is in the best interest of everyone, but doing it right is even more important.

Good luck to the building community and the City on making this one work.

I quote from the article the following, "While some contractors may want to have a free hand there are problems that can result. At least one commercial building I am aware of underwent a several month remodel without any permits or inspections at all. There were, among others, clear violations of the codes regarding restroom accessibility requirements thus violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This is a civil rights act to protect the rights of the disabled community."

The question arises that, if a person with a disability or impairment attempts to use the bathroom in question and finds it lacking the required assistance devices, can they file a complaint and with whom would they file it? Following up on that, who would be responsible for the legal action to get the compliance repairs made and collect any fines levied because of work that was not permitted and amenities not provided (law ignored)?

Not having someone on site to assure compliance and having to retrofit jobs that were not compliant could get expensive and time consuming for a lot of people.

Actually it is Vandergriff who caused most of the problems going on at this present moment. According to Don Carroll last week it was Vandergriff who suggested this ridiculous ICC code adoption. The alternative or green codes from iccsafe.com are not widely accepted and represent the views of building inspectors and building officials rather than the industry. Probably the most troublesome aspect of iccsafe.com is its misleading statements about its acceptance. When they claim that they are adopted in x many states the footnote reads that at least a single jurisdiction within a state has adopted their code, not that the state has adopted the code.

The electrical code fiasco represents another misrepresentation of this slipshod department. The city had adopted the National Electrical Code NEC 2002 version and had added the International code 2003 to it. Now, being much newer than the venerated NEC, the only part of the international code yet written are administrative procedures. When the city was without an electrical inspector the state said not until Alamogordo adopted the NEC 2005, the industry standard. The city refused and a crisis ensued. Have a look at the international EC published by iccsafe.com to see just what was so important in the international administration of the NEC that replacing the actual NEC admin section that seems to work for just about every other jurisdiction in the US.

The majority of members of ICC are either contractors or industry representatives. If you look at the website you will see that for each code development committee there are at least 8 members who are industry reps. vs. 4-7 government members. On the residential code committees, the ones that affect you, there are 12 members on each of 2 committees, of those there are 8 representatives from the National Homebuilders Assoc.,4 architects, 4 contractors, and 8 inspectors.

ICC does not publish an electrical code nor profess to doing so. The do however publish administrative guidelines to facilitate enforcement.

Also, it's www.iccsafe.org .

Michael Morris wrote:

Actually it is Vandergriff who caused most of the problems going on at this present moment. According to Don Carroll last week it was Vandergriff who suggested this ridiculous ICC code adoption. The alternative or green codes from iccsafe.com are not widely accepted and represent the views of buildinginspectors and building officials rather than the industry. Probably the most troublesome aspect of iccsafe.com is its misleading statements about its acceptance. When they claim that they are adopted in x many states the footnote reads that at least a single jurisdiction within a state has adopted their code, not that the state has adopted the code.
The electrical code fiasco represents another misrepresentation of this slipshod department. The city had adopted the National Electrical Code NEC 2002 version and had added the International code 2003 to it. Now, being much newer than the venerated NEC, the only part of the international code yet written are administrative procedures. When the city was without an electrical inspector the state said not until Alamogordo adopted the NEC 2005, the industry standard. The city refused and a crisis ensued. Have a look at the international EC published by iccsafe.com to see just what was so important in the international administration of the NEC that replacing the actual NEC admin section that seems to work for just about every other jurisdiction in the US.

ICC codes are in use in over 1800 jurisdictions nationwide as well as several other countries and is the only true consensus standard. The only other "national" code is produced by NFPA, this code is enforced in very few jurisdictions. Calafornia tried it, and dumped it soon after. In answer to this "and represent the views of buildinginspectors and building officials rather than the industry", try this "NAHB initially decided that it needed to participate in the development of the new NFPA building code (NFPA 5000) to represent the interests of the home building industry. However, it soon became clear that NFPA did not recognize housing affordability as a major determinant in the development of its new building code and promoted instead the consideration of costly property protection requirements. Further, NFPA provided inadequate levels of voting representation to the housing industry on the technical committees drafting this document. For these reasons, NAHB withdrew in 2002 from participation in the development of NFPA 5000 and adopted policy urging its members and affiliated home builder associations to oppose its adoption.

ICC does not have a "green" code. There are sustainable features in many codes, but functionality and safety are the primary goals.

There is a pending National Green Building Standard, but it is a product of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the International Code Council (ICC) and the NAHB Research Center. It is pending ANSI approval.

Speaking of inspections, since they claimed to inspect EVERY bridge in the city and deemed only the one on 9th St to be a danger, I go to thinking if the one on my street was inspected. One quick call verified that it had been forgotten and HAD NOT been checked out. It is in far worse shape than the one on 9th St.

oops..I GOT to thinking....

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