Pacifica studies 2025 California building-code updates; council asks staff to research reach-code exceptions

Pacifica city officials held a two-hour study session on proposed local amendments to the 2025 California Building Standards Code, focusing on wildfire requirements, electric-vehicle readiness and state limits on new local residential building standards.

The session centered on how recent state and federal developments — including new Cal Fire “local responsibility area” fire-hazard maps and Assembly Bill 130, a budget trailer bill that places a temporary moratorium on some local residential building amendments — affect the city’s existing “reach” codes and what staff should prepare for formal ordinance adoption later this year.

The study session matters because the 2025 state codes take effect Jan. 1, 2026, and local jurisdictions must decide which existing local amendments to readopt, which to let be superseded by the state code, and whether any exceptions in AB 130 allow locally tailored rules that would incentivize electrification while remaining legally defensible.

Community development director Samantha Updegrave opened the presentation with a summary of the agenda and the legal frame. “We’re here to talk about the 2025 California Building Standards Code update,” she told the council. “The study session is structured to provide information about the triennial Code updates and enable the city council to consider recent state law changes that prohibit changes to residential building codes between 10/01/2025 and June 2031 and to provide direction on future research related to reach codes in conjunction with annual goal setting and preparation of our local ordinance.”

Updegrave and certified building official Greg McFann reviewed Pacifica’s existing reach-code history. The city first adopted reach-code provisions in 2019 — including all-electric requirements with limited exceptions and “electric-ready” prewiring when gas remained — and tightened those in 2022 to narrow exceptions and add EV readiness,…