CITY OF CALIFORNIA — At his first meeting since being elected, Mayor Kerry Klikoff called for discussion on relaxing the city’s building codes as a means to encourage development in the city.
However, it was not clear in the resulting discussion whether the development bottleneck was in the code itself or in how it was applied in the development process.
“I don’t understand why it’s more difficult for developers to build than[Khan]county,” Kulikov says. “That way, more people might want to build in the county than in the city.”
He suggested following the state’s minimum requirements instead of including additional city-specific requirements that might hinder development.
Alderman Jim Clayton said the city’s regulations are already state minimum standards and the only change concerns fencing. said.
These state codes are updated every three years, with the latest version expected to be adopted by the city council in January, said Fire Chief Jeremy Kosick.
“It looked like there was an obstruction, but we didn’t know where it was coming from,” said Kulikov, adding that there appeared to be additional requirements in the building code.
Councilor Karen Macedonio said the council clarified it was following state law.
Local developer DJ Twohig says it’s not the requirements of the code that the developer faces, but the plan-check process, which requires additional documentation not required by the building code. .
Alderman Ron Smith echoed the complaint, stating that the consensus among developers he spoke of was “efficiency is an issue and we are being asked to do more than our building codes require.” There is.
The council agreed to direct interim city manager Jim Hart to review the plan check process to determine if additional requirements were added to the project during the process.