Council adopts revised permit fee schedule to respond to Florida House Bill 803

Sebrings council on Tuesday approved a revised building permit fee schedule the city says is intended to comply with changes enacted in Florida House Bill 803 and to stabilize the departments revenue stream.

Building Official Greg Griffin told the council the state law creates a $7,500 exemption for certain residential work and requires a 50% reduction in the citys base permit fee when property owners use a private provider for inspections and plan reviews. "They introduced and was adopted into law house bill 8 0 3, which significantly changes how building departments capture building fees," Griffin said.

Griffin said the city had not updated its rate schedule since 2014 and that staff used five years of trailing data, annualized the current year, removed the highest and lowest years, and ran median rates by trade to set the proposed schedule. He said the calculations are tied to International Code Council baselines with a regional modifier and three multiplier scenarios to aim for a sustainable level of revenues. "We came to the conclusion that we needed to revise the rate schedule," Griffin said.

Councilmember Josh, who participated in the analysis, said Sebring is in a unique position because the building department currently operates at a net-zero model and the city contracts with Griffin as a private provider. "If suddenly across the state everybody is using private providers all the time, then this is gonna be a huge problem. If nothing happens and everybody keeps just using our local building department and no private providers, then it'll be higher permit fees than we've experienced before," he said.

Griffin also noted an omission in the draft schedule that he said would be corrected before final adoption: a commercial plan review fee. He told the council the schedule would be effective immediately if the council voted to adopt it that night.

Councilmember Josh moved to approve the resolution adopting the new fee schedule, including the verbally added commercial plan review fee; the motion was seconded and recorded as approved in the meeting record. The transcript records the motion and a roll-call implementation but does not list a complete, unambiguous vote tally.

The council emphasized that the fee change aims to keep the building department self-sustaining while recognizing an uncertain future if private providers are widely used. Officials said the change is meant to be defensible under the states cost-recovery requirements and reflective of regional code-based baselines.

The council recorded the motion to adopt resolution 20 26-17 as presented, which, per the building official, incorporates the added commercial plan review fee and would become effective on adoption. The resolution and the revised fee schedule will be available through city staff for public inspection, and the council directed staff to include the omitted commercial plan review line in the final schedule.