News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The White County Commission approved an updated building permit fee schedule during its Tuesday meeting.
County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said the new fees will be based on square footage instead of construction costs. Robinson said the system was suggested by the county’s building inspector and comes from the International Code Council.
“I don’t foresee much of a difference to the average, average person, no,” Robinson said. “If you had some contractors that were lying about the cost of construction, it may affect them. But if they wasn’t, then it shouldn’t be, tell any difference.”
Robinson said the new schedule will take effect on March 1. The last update came in 2018. Robinson said the fees are determined by what the average cost of construction is for the size of whatever is being built.
Robinson said Sparta has adopted the same fee schedule and local officials are trying to work together so everything is implemented at the same time.
“It’s still based on cost of doing your home as it was before,” Robinson said. “But we had no way to verify what the cost of building was. Somebody may come in and build a thousand square foot and say it cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and somebody may come in with a two thousand square foot house and say it cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Robinson said the county is confident that the increase will also bring in more revenue.
In other business, the county commission approved a resolution in support of a request for the state legislature to share real estate transfer taxes with the county where the taxes are collected. Commissioners voted in support of a new five-year contract providing telephone services for the county’s inmates. The commission also approved a resolution to surplus two commercial gas convection oven ranges from the jail.
Commissioners also voted to adjust the county’s usage of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System preventing contributions from going up half a percent when an employee crosses the maximum threshold for social security in a year. Finance Director Chad Marcum said this situation typically happens for a single employee near the end of the year and it creates a reporting issue, but the change would be inconsequential.
