The City Council adopted Ordinance 2025-12 on July 8 to update Fruita's adopted building and related technical codes, a routine but consequential action that affects construction standards across the city. Assistant City Manager Dan Karas and Building Official Mike Mossberg presented the ordinance and described the changes, which move the city from the 2018 editions to 2024 editions for the international building, mechanical and residential codes and adopt the 2021 edition of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) with local amendments.

Karas said the ordinance does not increase permit fees and is intended to maintain safety, consistency and archival quality of building records. "We use these codes to validate that structures were built under that standard that gets memorialized and lives with the property for many years to come," Karas said. He described the changes as partly driven by state mandates for specific code sections (for example, plumbing and energy) and partly by a multi-jurisdictional effort to keep Fruita aligned with Mesa County to reduce confusion for builders.

Mossberg and staff told council they had coordinated with the Mesa County building advisory group and had amended the IECC adoption to mitigate cost impacts: adopting the 2021 energy code with local modifications rather than adopting the most recent 2024 energy provisions wholesale. "There might be some minimal increased costs with applying that in the field," Mossberg said, "and it's a refinement intended to improve energy performance without becoming cost prohibitive."

Councilors asked whether the code updates will increase building costs and whether records or plan-review changes would affect ongoing projects. Staff said permit refunds and fee schedules are unchanged, and that the city uses archival plan review and electronic records to document the code edition under which plans were approved. Karas emphasized the city's intent to provide stable, predictable requirements for builders and to keep standards consistent with neighboring jurisdictions to avoid regulatory divergence.

Ending: Council adopted the ordinance on a 6'0 vote; staff said they would circulate the presentation and full ordinance text to stakeholders and to contractors affected by the changes.