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Budget committee advances DBI fee changes, redirects funds to code-enforcement reserve
Summary
The Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee advanced amendments to fire and building permit fees and agreed to scale back proposed fee reductions so about $3.7–4 million can be redirected to a new code-enforcement reserve for the Department of Building Inspection.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget & Finance Committee on June 24 advanced changes to fire and building-permit fee schedules and agreed to set aside funds for increased code enforcement.
Chair Supervisor Mark Farrell opened the committee by taking up Item 5, an ordinance amending the fire code to raise fees for specified fire-department services. Mark Corso of the Fire Department told the committee the adjustments for permits, inspections and plan review are a modest increase intended “to fully recover the cost of providing services for the department,” noting personnel costs and other operating expenses have risen.
Later in the meeting the committee took up Item 4, an ordinance to revise the Department of Building Inspection (DBI) fee schedules and a set of technical amendments. Supervisor Scott Weiner proposed scaling back planned fee cuts and creating a DBI code-enforcement reserve. Weiner’s amendment would redirect two sources — approximately $2 million of restricted DBI funds and about $1 million per fiscal year in reduced fee cuts — into a newly created reserve to finance additional enforcement staff, legal action and code-compliance work. Supervisor Maher seconded the amendment and the committee approved moving the amended ordinance forward to the full Board for its July 14 meeting “without objection.”
Committee members framed the change as shifting a temporary fee-relief posture toward more enforcement capacity at a time the city is experiencing rapid permit activity. The committee did not record a roll-call vote on the amendment; the transcript records the motions taken and treated “without objection.”
Next steps: The amended DBI ordinance and the proposed code-enforcement reserve will be considered by the full Board of Supervisors at the July 14 meeting. No definitive start date, hiring plan or department-specific timeline for use of the reserve were provided in committee; those implementation details were described as matters for DBI and budget staff to finalize.
