Council workshop discusses aligning Temple building code with 2023 National Electrical Code

City building officials presented a proposed code amendment to align Chapter 10 of the Temple code with state law requiring electricians to be licensed to and to inspect work to the most current electrical code.

John McGowan, acting chief of building inspection, said the change would adopt the 2023 National Electrical Code (NEC) into local ordinance to match requirements already enforced by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). "The state mandated in 2023 that electricians are licensed to the most current code," McGowan said, and the local change is intended to put city ordinance in sync with that practice.

Why it matters: staff said builders and inspectors had already been enforcing the 2023 code in practice, but the city code lagged behind. Aligning the local code reduces confusion between contractors and inspectors, and staff said the update would better reflect newer electrical topics such as solar and electric-vehicle infrastructure that are covered in recent NEC editions.

Council discussion: members asked whether the city was enforcing the 2023 code already and whether the city remains behind on other model codes (for example, some international codes). Staff replied that electrical licensing has generally been aligned with the current NEC and that broader international-code updates are on the building department work plan but were separate from this targeted electrical-code cleanup.

Outcome: no formal ordinance vote occurred during the workshop. Staff described the amendment as a housekeeping change to be drafted and returned to council as an ordinance so local code matches state-mandated enforcement.

Ending: Council asked staff to proceed with drafting the ordinance to amend Chapter 10 and indicated they expect a clean-up amendment consistent with state law.