BUILDERS URGE COMMON SENSE ON INSPECTIONS

Cape Girardeau area contractors, developers, engineers, architects and realtors Friday urged the City Council and administrative staff to use "common sense" when dealing with building inspections and permits.

About 45 area building-trades representatives attended a special Cape Girardeau City Council meeting Friday to voice concerns about the city's building inspection division.

Nearly half of those at the meeting testified before the council, and most agreed that the city's inspection staff needs to be less dogmatic when interpreting the city's building codes.

Several contractors and developers told the council that the inspectors' unbending and inconsistent enforcement of the 1990 Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) building codes is driving development from Cape Girardeau.

Another complaint levied against the city by the various contractors was that there are unnecessary delays in securing building permits. Also, once construction plans are approved and the permits are issued, on-site inspections often result in additional changes and further delays.

Herb Annis Sr., a local developer, said the cost of obtaining a building permit has increased dramatically in the past few years.

"The City Council has got so many rules that everyone has to comply with that you're spending $1,200 to $1,300 to get a permit in Cape," Annis said. "Why not go to Jackson and spend $50 to get a permit?

"What this council is doing, and basically the city management of Cape Girardeau, is shutting down construction."

But City Manager J. Ronald Fischer said that new construction in Jackson actually declined from 1989 to 1990 from $9.6 million to $6.7 million. At the same time, new construction in Cape Girardeau continues to climb, topping $25 million last year.

Some of the primary complaints Friday against the city's inspection policies included:

The cost for building permits is excessive.

The city's storm-water retention ordinance is too restrictive and needs to be reviewed.

The $750 sewer-tap fees should be eliminated.

Permit and inspection delays can eliminate a contractor's profit margin on a job.

A law that requires an architect's plan for any renovation or construction of a building larger than 20,000 cubic feet is unneeded and should be abolished.

When building inspectors change their interpretation of a particular code, contractors and building representatives often aren't notified.

Members of the City Council urged those at the meeting to suggest possible solutions to the concerns, but took no official action.

City Councilman David Limbaugh said that Friday's meeting presented only "one side of the story.

"I don't think the council ought to set in judgment of anything," Limbaugh said. "We haven't given the city staff the opportunity to respond, and we shouldn't pass judgment on the staff."

Also, some of the speakers at the meeting said they had no problems with the city's inspection department.

Anton Sebek, a Cape Girardeau architect; Leonard Jansen of Jaymac Equipment; James Arnzen, a builder; Norman Kirn, a plumber; and Ralph Flori, an electrician, all said they supported the BOCA codes as they are written and endorsed.

Sebek, Arnzen and Flori also are members of the city's Board of Appeals, which considers requests for variances from the city codes when there's a conflict between inspectors and contractors.

Flori said that the board has heard very few variance requests since it was formed last year. He also said that when the BOCA codes were being reviewed prior to their adoption, there was very little participation or interest by area contractors.

But, while most of the building-trades representatives at the meeting expressed support for the city's building inspectors, they said the inspectors lack experience and, at times, tact.

"Inspectors overstep their bounds in the way they deal with people," John Boardman, a Cape Girardeau architect said. "They're not very diplomatic."

Dee Welker, a plumbing and heating contractor, said that when construction plans need to be changed, the city inspectors should notify the contractor, not the customer.

He said the customers, when presented with what are very often minor problems, perceive that their engineer or architect is incompetent.

Developer Frank Bean said that the crux of all the complaints is that inspectors often don't use common sense when interpreting the BOCA codes.

"The changes they try to put on the contractor are never reviewed," Bean said. "There's no common sense used in that department and there's your problem. If there's a gray area, the contractor gets shafted. He has to go the hardest route there is to go."

Rich Bowen, a local engineer, said: "I don't know how you write a common-sense ordinance. A lot of them are individual problems and have to be addressed that way. But we experience extreme frustration in trying to get a set of plans approved in this town."

One of the items most discussed by contractors was the delay in getting building plans approved by the city for a permit.

Joe Gilmore, who operates an excavation firm from Oran, said it often takes four to eight weeks to get a building permit.

He said building permits for "major projects" normally take about 45 days in St. Louis; 30 days in Denver, Colo.; seven to 10 days in Chicago; two days in Tulsa, Okla.; a day in Evansville, Ind.; and an hour in Jonesboro, Ark.

In contrast, Gilmore said it took two months to obtain a building permit for the 480-square-foot Hamburger Express restaurant on William Street.

Bean said he recently was in Conway, Ark., where they "do in a month in building permits what we do in a year."

Ronald Scheper, a local plumber, said delays in getting on-site inspections can quickly run a profitable job into the red.

He said full excavation crews, with a payroll of about $90 an hour, sometimes have to wait for up to two hours for an inspector to arrive at a job site. He suggested the inspectors prioritize between large projects and minor inspections.

"I hate to think I'm losing money on a job because the city inspectors were down inspecting somebody's toilet," Scheper said.

Annis said he thinks the city's storm-water retention ordinance needs to be reviewed and amended. He said the law, which requires adequate storm water retention with new construction projects, forces developers to relinquish lots to build dry retention basins.

Annis said he's been forced at Ashland Hills subdivision to build two "frog ponds" for storm water retention that he said aren't needed, but were required by the city.

He said in a 20-inch rainfall, less than 50 gallons of water would actually drain into the basins.

But Councilman Al Spradling III said he was concerned that Annis was advocating "subjective" enforcement of the codes, which would expose the city to litigation and criticism for dealing unfairly with various contractors.

"You're a lawyer," Annis said. "You do everything by the law. But there's a time to apply common sense .... No law should be so rigid to not have flexibility."