Permit fees for reroofing projects in the city should soon cost less.

During both Monday’s Housing Committee and overall City Council work session, lowering the permit fees for reroofing was discussed, due to the fact that City Development Director Crystal Surdyk said after reevaluating some of the city’s permit fees, these specific costs seemed high.

Surdyk discussed with the housing committee that permit fees were reevaluated after former building and zoning code officer Larry Scalise retired, and current officer Kenny Garcia took over the role. She said Garcia is looking at things with fresh eyes, taking time to learn everything about city codes and procedures.

“Through that, we’ve done a little bit already of an evaluation, and Kasie (Foulk, deputy development director) has helped with this, looking at our permit fee structures,” Surdyk said. “And so, we’ve had a couple of permit applications come through for commercial roofs, and they seemed kind of high.”

Surdyk said a deep dive was done to look at how the city is quantifying and permitting these projects, and with the help of the mayor’s office the Department of Development looked at other committees across the state of various sized communities, including some comparable to Jamestown. Following this look, the DOD and mayor’s office is proposing adjusting just reroofing permits, which are regular repairs or tear off and roof replacement projects. With the permit fee being based on square footage, Surdyk said the base amount will be $120, and currently it is $0.25 per square foot. The city is looking to reduce that amount to $0.08 per square foot.

“So, it’s still $120 base fee, and then $0.08 per square foot,” Surdyk said. “And then we’re also suggesting that we put in a cap of $2500. We don’t see a need for it to be more than that. It covers Kenny’s time, it covers the time it takes them to process an application. It covers the time it takes for them to go out and do a couple of inspections.”

If it is a new construction or brand new build, Surdyk said that is something completely different, but for reroofing projects, they did not see a need for it to be more than that.

Mayor Kim Ecklund also spoke on the fee reduction during the work session, saying that the change will be up for a vote at next week’s voting session under new business, as it was not able to be put in sooner as she was out last week traveling.

“I’m sure some of you saw the video on social media, I’m sure some of you got a call,” Ecklund said. “I advised some people we would take a look at it, and I do want to thank Joe (Calimeri), Crystal (Surdyk) and Kenny (Garcia). We met before I left and we did a lot of research to see where our old $0.25 came from, as we had no idea where it came from since that was pre Crystal.”

Similarly to what Surdyk said in the housing committee, Ecklund said they looked into what is done in other cities, both across the state and locally, and the recommendation for the reduction to $0.08 came that morning, which is why it was not on the agenda for Monday’s city council. She added this is for commercial reroofing projects only.

Ecklund noted a few large commercial properties in the city such as Big Lots and Tops that cover a lot of property, that were also taken into consideration when coming up with the numbers.

“There’s other cities that do upwards of $0.10,” Ecklund said. “There’s some that do $0.05, and some that do none, which blows my mind, because there’s a cost to the staff to do some of that work. This is nowhere near what it is for a new building, that stayed the same, this is just redoing, reinstallation of a commercial roof.”

Ecklund said they felt this was a good compromise, having looked at numbers from $0.25 to $0.05, and coming up with $0.08. The permit fee reduction will be voted on at next week’s voting session, and Ecklund said Garcia has also communicated with others who have current permit applications and paid the $0.25 this year, as they will be compensated.