News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
White County considering its options to increase the price of building permits within the county.
County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said the county is leaving a lot of money on the table because it uses a schedule fee from 2002. Steering Committee B Chair Roger Mason said the county needs to find a way to offset the costs associated with its continued growth.
“The more building that occurs and the more the population increases, the bigger strain it puts on infrastructure in the county,” Mason said. “So you’ve got water, roads, different things.”
Robinson said he will look at pricing structures that have come out since 2002 to find one that will support the county without raising prices too much. Steering Committee B Member Jordan Cocke said he supports a price increase but it would have to come with an improvement in the county’s building permit services.
“I think we’re lacking that end of it, honestly,” Cocke said. “I work in five or six counties now, pull permits in five or six, seven counties, and I think our service needs to step up just a hair.”
Robinson said Cumberland County recently modeled its building permit system after White County’s but used a building chart from 2018 for pricing. Robinson said he met with White County Building Inspector Brett Nash to discuss what it would look like for White County to use the same chart.
“This is a rough guess, we didn’t put pen to paper, but rough guess he said it would probably right at double the revenue that we’re bringing in,” Robinson said. “That being said, that doubles the price of the permits.”
Mason said the county considered instituting impact fees for new buildings in the past but was unable to do so. Robinson said the county still does not meet the legal requirements that would allow it to charge impact fees.
“There’s two criteria: you have to have… I think it’s forty percent growth in the last ten-year census or twenty percent in like the last three, four years,” Robinson said. “And we would have to pay to get a new census done for the county to prove that we’ve met that threshold. I don’t think we’ve grown that much so I think it’d be wasted.”
Robinson said the county’s current pricing matches the building permit costs within Sparta.
