Get email alerts on the Building Fees topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City staff propose using ICC published building-cost values to standardize permit fees
Summary
Staff recommended replacing applicant-entered construction values with ICC region-based published values when calculating building permit fees, with an appeals process for unusual cases; staff said the change would align Oak Ridge with neighboring jurisdictions and reduce underreporting.
City staff explained that building permit fees in Oak Ridge are calculated from the estimated value of construction and that historically applicants filled in that value. Staff presented examples showing large discrepancies between applicant-stated values and published or market indicators and proposed using ICC regional cost tables to produce more consistent fee calculations while adding an appeals mechanism for applicants who can document a different value.
Using a recent example the presentation compared a Zillow listing and an ICC-calculated value to an applicant-provided figure: "If you use the ICC calculation for the value, it would have been 317,000. The permit application said it was 110,000," the presenter said, and staff recommended applying published values with an appeals path. Council raised no objections and staff indicated they would return with a draft ordinance or fee schedule for council review. (Provenance: topicintro SEG 1800; topfinish SEG 1949.)
AI generated
The text on this page is AI generated. Summaries, highlights, analysis, and video transcripts are all produced from the original source material.
AI can make mistakes, so if you spot one, and we will fix it for everyone.
Note: the source content is unaltered by us. Any content source we link to, be it a video, an audio recording, or a document, is presented exactly as its publisher released it. That publisher is usually a government body, sometimes an individual official or another organisation.
