City inspectors and codes and permits. And related crap.

I’ve been mentally cataloguing the goings-on in the neighborhood over the past few years in regard to neighbors making home improvements, permits, insurance, licenses, city inspectors and more; and I just have to ask: Is every inspector in every city a pain in the ass about every aspect of a home improvement, or is it just in certain cities? I’ll give you three examples just from where I am:

  1. Neighbor C. had a wraparound deck. He then considered putting in porch posts and had the metal brackets (?) in place for them, whereupon city inspectors arrived and told him to cease building because he didn’t have a permit for a porch. They said (I’m paraphrasing): “If you do this and that and the other, we’re going to fine you.”
    He replied, “Fine, my ass. I haven’t even done anything yet.”
    Inspectors: “You can’t talk to us like that!”
    C: “I just did.” He never did build the porch.

  2. Go forward to Neighbors V. and M., who wanted to have their two driveways poured with cement at the same time by the same outfit and also have a wall put up between said driveways. They thought they’d go through the proper channels and get city permits. Then the fun started.
    The city made a big noise about wanting them to get a million-dollar liability policy because the approach had to be done in city mix and the city folks were suddenly afraid that someone might trip and fall on the approach, even after many years of deteriorating asphalt but no trips or falls. Okay, fine. But the neighbors had to wait for the inspectors to show up four times for different phases of inspection. Someone in their office said it was a good thing the neighbors hadn’t waited until later to do it, because all the inspectors were going to be on vacation at the same time, ha, ha (as if this were funny).
    Then the guy down at city hall told V and M that since their wall was “visible from the street,” it would have to be painted to match the color of the houses, and that this was a law that went back to 1959. When she had reached her wit’s end, V spoke on M’s behalf and said (paraphrased), “The houses are two different colors. Are we supposed to paint one side beige and the other side blue? That would look stupid, and what if we paint the houses some day? Then the colors will be wrong.” The argument became heated, until finally City Guy said, “Fine! Paint it pink, purple, any color you want, I don’t CARE!” The wall remains in its original cement-gray.

  3. Go forward some more to neighbor S. They gave him the same shit about his wall that they’d given V and M. So S. decided to lay some colored brickwork on top the wall to make it decorative and get them out of his hair. They were still making a stink about something else and telling him they would make him take down his basketball hoop from his garage. S. remained calm and said something like this: “And if you don’t do something about the structural problem in the street that causes the water to pool up in the gutter no matter what I do, there are going to be mosquitoes in there and someone could get West Nile virus. Then we’ll be going to court.” And they backed off.

  4. The aforementioned neighbor M. recently had a deck poured and a porch built on weekends when the inspectors were not running around, and did it according to code but without permits. No problems. No hassles, no delays, and no word from the city.


Again, I have to ask: Is this sort of stuff “normal” in every city?

#4 neighbor M. is the one who’ll be in for the big hit. When they attempt to sell their property, the improvement will show as not being permitted, and could result in a backcharge of uncollected taxes, as well as demand for removal of those improvements if they aren’t meeting the latest building code. After all, who is to say when neighbor M. made the improvement, inasmuch as there is no permit?

Municipalities may be a PITA but I don’t go outside of their regs, as I want to cover my customer’s and my ass. Foolish or not, they get to make the rules, and playing along is easier in the long haul.

I went out to California last fall to help my son open an assisted living facility. It had been a nursing home, but was empty for several years. In dealing with the city Planning and Building, Public Works departments, I experienced the most stress I have ever had in my life. And also felt the most helpless I have ever felt. They were the most uncaring, inept, incompetent group of people I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with. And of course when people came into the business, as all this was happening, a number of them had their own stories to tell. And the contractors we dealt with all expressed their dismay with the constant delays and misinformation they were given. This was in Calaveras County. The worst thing is that another local assisted living facility was closing and the delay was so long that most of the oldies had to move far away from their families; only four were left, and these old women were crying themselves to sleep wondering what was going to happen to them. It was disgusting the way the city didn’t care in the least. I worked for two regulatory federal agencies during my career and knew people who just loved the power they had to make other people’s lives difficult, just because they could. Those types of jobs attact those types of people.

Whatever. Just don’t complain when your walls fall down during the next big wind/rain/snow storm. And don’t ask for any help from FEMA when a hurricane/earthquake/tornado/flood destroys your property because they have a policy of not providing aid to jurisdictions that do not enforce current building codes.

I know that some bureaucrats are obnoxious and inefficient. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The whole point of the exercise is to make sure that our buildings are safe for us to inhabit. Yes, there are some incompetent building inspectors just like there are some incompetent traffic cops. Does that mean we should get rid of stoplights and speed limits?

I’ve found that my homeowner’s insurance inspector was far more competent and helpful in matters of building code and safety than any municipal beaurocrat that I’ve ever dealt with. But then again, the insurance inspector actually has some incentive to be competent; safer buildings mean fewer insurance claims, generally.

Just opened a new facility in So Cal. Yeah that inspector was very concerned about following the building codes to make sure the building would not fall down
He wrote us up (and the contractor had to correct) the following:[ul]
[li]Rest room signs were placed 4’10" to the center not 5’0" off floor[/li][li]There was only one sign for each rest room, code requires two :confused: [/li][li]There was no handicapped decal on the front door (Of course the handicapped parking space is next to that door, and the fact that the pathway leads up to it is immaterial. Oh did I mention that it is the only way into the building?)[/li][/ul]

So if the big one hits, I guess my company will be golden with FEMA, since our shitter signs are the correct distance off the floor.

Look building inspectors can be a very necessary requirement. But what I went through had no relationship to building safety.

The first time we built a house, it was in Clay County, FL. The “Inspector” and the builder were sitting at a table having a coupla beers when they did our final “inspection” - I don’t know if there were any problems because of this - we sold the house 3 years later and never looked back.

We want to add a deck to the back of our house - I’m dreading it as I’ve heard horror stories about the inspectors here in St. Mary’s county. We shall see…

City inspectors are a pain in the ass.

My company bought a building that hadn’t been used in twenty years, and renovated it for our new office. The City Inspectors gave us crap at every turn. They even complained that the gold letters we bought to put our name on the outside of the building were eight inches high, because the law states “they can only be a maximum of six inches.”