Cookeville building permit fees could increase significantly beginning January 1 as city officials prepare to update numbers that have remained unchanged for nearly a decade.
Planning Director Jon Ward told the City Council in advance of Thursday’s meeting that the city plans to update the valuations used to calculate permit fees as part of a broader building code revision. The changes would reflect increases in construction costs over the past eight years.
“We’re going to be updating those valuations and we’ll have a platform to more simply do that,” Ward said. “Yes, it’s gonna go up. It’ll go up because we haven’t updated them since 2018. I mean you’re talking like 30 to 40 percent increases in the valuations.”
Ward said the city is nearing completion of new community development software that will assist in more streamlined updates. The International Code Council publishes updated construction valuations twice annually.
Officials estimated the permit fee for a 1,500-square-foot home would increase from approximately $781 to $1,000. A 2,000-square-foot home would see its permit fee rise from approximately $1,000 to $1,300.
Ward said the city currently calculates permits using a construction valuation of $122 per square foot for a standard single-family home. Updated International Code Council figures would increase that valuation to $175 per square foot.
Ward said the proposed ordinance would also replace Cookeville’s adopted 2018 building codes with the 2024 editions. Ward said state requirements mandate that municipalities remain within seven years of the latest published standards.
Building and Codes Director David Clouse said the update includes residential, plumbing, mechanical, fuel gas, energy conservation and fire codes. Ward said Cookeville intends to maintain several existing local amendments, including an exemption from fire sprinkler requirements for detached single-family homes.
“We’ve essentially included similar amendments that were included when we adopted the 2020 standards,” Ward said. “Some of the highlights of those are we are exempting single-family residential homes from being sprinkled.”
Ward said townhomes and duplexes would remain subject to sprinkler requirements. Officials also discussed the additional construction costs associated with residential sprinkler systems.
The city plans to retain its existing 2009 energy code provisions through local amendments.