Although the meeting strayed off course at times, the Nevada County Board of Supervisors has voted to raise the cost of building permits and other fees. Yesterday’s afternoon session saw a lot of people who wanted to speak about code compliance instead—Board Chair Hank Weston tried to keep the speakers to the topic at hand.

Listen to Board of Supervisors 1

Dottie Ray Souter was able to speak later, even after Weston had closed the public comment period. Other speakers told tales of being fined for having a garage sale, or living on property and being told later that it wasn’t zoned for residential use. County Community Development Agency Director Steve DeCamp says contractors, property owners and others were pushing for the county not to enforce building codes at all, in order to save money…

Listen to Steve DeCamp

Nevada County has budgeted about 450-thousand dollars per year for code compliance. In the discussion, Supervisor Nate Beason reminded people that it has been awhile since a building fee increase, and that rates are much lower than in neighboring counties…

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As an example of one of the increases, DeCamp says a typical inspection in the building of a single family home would jump from 125 dollars to 136 dollars, with six to eight inspections usually needed during construction.