Nixon adopts fee schedule for certified inspections

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The city of Nixon adopted an ordinance Monday, Jan. 13, setting a fee schedule for certified inspections performed by Bureau Veritas North America, as well as establishing an administrative fee of 10 percent additional cost.

During a lengthy discussion with Mike Olson, regional director of operations for the Waco/San Antonio Bureau Veritas, council members learned how the third-party inspection company does “plan review inspections for municipalities that can't quite afford a full time inspector.”

“I have an area manager and six inspectors that live in the San Antonio area that will actually cover Nixon. They do Stockdale, Karnes City, Kenedy. We have another group that is out of the coast that covers Cuero and all the way down to the coast,” Olson said. “We're here to do whatever y'all need done.

“The full contract covers building, commercial and residential, fire, health, planning and zoning if you need help with that,. There's some ADA. I'm not sure right now that Nixon is really in need of that, but some of these other cities, the feds have come down on their ADA disability stuff. We have engineering that can help out with engineering projects. We also have public works where we can go in and inspect water lines that are put in subdivisions that are coming in and stuff of that nature where we can help the city out.”

Code enforcement officer Rachel Barber told council members that with the recent adoption by the city of 2021 versions of the various International Code Council codes which govern building, residential, mechanical, plumbing, electric and existing building standards, the city must provide a certified inspector to make sure residential and commercial structures are up to a set of minimum standards.

“The reason behind getting them and having to find them is we did adopt the ICC codes, so we needed an ICC code inspector. Trying to find that between Austin and San Antonio was near to impossible, and the ones that did had such a long wait list of cities that wanted to be on it,” Barber said. “They were able to help. (Olson) was literally here as soon as possible when he could to explain everything to me.”

She said BVNA has a set fee schedule system that is easier to use and it would save citizens money in many cases for the city to simply adopt the BVNA fee schedule with the council determining how much of a percentage it wishes to charge for administrative overhead.

“The city does make some money off of it, since I'm having to do all the paperwork and submit everything and take checks for these permits,” Barber said.

Council member Justin La Fleur expressed concern that charging fees could hamper residents from getting emergency repairs when they need them, especially ones that call for plumbers or electricians where the work may have to be inspected.

“If we're going to start charging these fees, there's going to be service companies for service calls that don't want to come here,” La Fleur said. “You're going to have somebody that's in a bind, like, ‘I've got a leak in my slab I need to fix and I need somebody right away.’

“I don't want to have our citizens to go through an emergency situation where they're waiting on somebody. I want them to be able to get a plumber, to get an electrician, to get somebody in HVAC if it's deemed an emergency. How do we make this where we constitute what an emergency service call is where our people do not have to mess with the fees?

City Attorney Eddie Escobar said the easiest way would be to amend the zoning ordinance to clarify that the code enforcement officer has the discretion to determine what is an emergency, but said such action couldn’t be taken at that meeting because it wasn’t posted on the agenda.

“We don't have anything in writing giving her the autonomy to make that call,” La Fleur said. “She's doing it at her discretion now, but she might not be here in a week, or, you know, we might all not be here. I just want to make sure that if someone has a bad plumbing problem and they need a service call, that company's not going to go, ‘I ain't coming because y'all are going to make me pull a permit to run a service call when they need something now.’”
Barber said the process of getting a BVNA inspection set up is that when an inspection is needed — for  plumbing, for example — the plumber will come in and pull the plumbing permit and then pay an inspection fee at the same time.

“As soon as that's done, I submit it to (BVNA) and they create a ticket number, and then whenever the plumber says they are ready for inspection, they will come within 24 hours,” Barber said.

Olson added state law doesn’t require a permit to be pulled before performing emergency work and his company will always recommend that work needed to fix a serious issue should be done first by the tradesman and then they can worry about pulling a permit.

“That's what we're doing and that's the way I'm going to handle it for all my cities,” Olson said. “Like you said, there's emergencies, and the code book is just a guide. It's all in how we interpret it.”

Olson said for normal business, such as someone who is building a house, they should go through the normal way of doing business and submit their permanent plans before pulling a permit and then getting an inspection.

“On emergencies (Barber) is going to call me and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this. Can you come look at it?’” Olson added. “I’m going to get on the phone, look at it and she can release it, whether it is the gas company, the electric company, or perhaps you might have a tree come down and knock a power line down or a roof. Do you need to get a permit? Yeah, you need to get a permit but fix the flipping hole first. I mean, it’s a common sense issue and most of my guys are like that.”

Olson said there is also a difference between routine maintenance (an air conditioner compressor goes out) and a service call for an issue that requires a permit, like a busted pipe under a slab.

Olson said he is working with Barber to redesign the permit application to be a one-page that has everything necessary on it including “what you're doing, what it cost, where your address is and what your email is.”

“Within 10 minutes of us doing that inspection, that contractor is getting an email whether it passed or failed,” Olson said. “At 4 p.m., (Barber) will get every inspection we did that day so she knows what we did in town, but the contractor gets it within 10 minutes.”

Olson said the BVNA contract with the city “floats” because “you don't pay for it if you don't use it. There's no fee. There's no retainer.” BVNA only gets paid for services it performs and it builds up its business on volume by working multiple calls in multiple cities throughout the area.

Council members approved the BVNA fee schedule and also approved a revised 2005 fee schedule as well as a business ordinance that addresses requirements for specific types of businesses. It also amends existing city ordinances to make it more difficult for a sexually oriented business to move into town.

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