BDC report: July was a construction corker

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CHARLOTTE – Total building permit value in Mecklenburg County made unexpectedly high annual and monthly jumps in July to the highest level seen in the past 60 months.

At nearly $537.8 million, permit value leapt 26.5 percent over July 2013, according to monthly figures unveiled Tuesday at the regular meeting of the Building Development Committee, the advisory board to the county building permit, plan review and building inspection agency.

That, in turn, meant that the revenues collected by the Mecklenburg County Code Enforcement agency were up year-over-year by 46 percent, to nearly $2.1 million. Jim Bartl, director of Code Enforcement,told the BDC he did not yet know why they increased so much.

“We’re studying it really closely,” he said, explaining that his agency had not yet put its finger on the possible causes for the “big month.”

Until July, monthly permit revenues hadn’t crossed the $2 million mark in the past 60 months, the figures show; but it did get within $100,000 five times –twice this year, twice last year and once in 2012.

The April 2012 figure was an anomaly prompted by construction activity ramping up as the city primped for the Democratic National Convention that September, Bartl said before the meeting.

Rolling 12-month county building permit value figures published semiweekly by The Mecklenburg Times have shown current 12-month value totals hovering in the $2.8-2.9 billion range, up 15-22 percent from the previous 12 months. (For the latest Meck Times figures, see Page 7.)

Code Enforcement is one of the only such agencies in the state that is consolidated. That means it performs its functions for the city of Charlotte, unincorporated Mecklenburg County and the county’s six other municipalities instead of each political entity have its own plan review, building permit, and building inspection operations.

If July’s figures hold steady over the course of the next 11 months, according to a chart Bartl showed the board, Code Enforcement’s revenues could total more than $25 million by June 2015, up 10.8 percent over budget projections.

Tom Brasse, managing director at Faison Enterprises and a new BDC member representing the Home Builders Association of Charlotte, quipped: “I wish our graphs looked like that.”

In other news from the Tuesday’s Building Development Commission meeting, Bartl told the board that members of a select committee composed of board members and other representatives of the development and construction industry had added three action items for the committee to pursue, along with the 16 the BDC approved in July.

The latest additions to the list include a long-term goal of creating a program that would in some way reward contractors that had high building inspection pass rates.

The select committee was formed and the 19 action steps were devised as part of the BDC’s part in County Manager Dena Diorio’s ongoing seven-prong review of Code Enforcement, prompted by letters of complaint from the Charlotte-based Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition and other groups.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Bartl – in response to a question from Charlotte real estate agent Melanie Coyne, the board’s public representative – told the board that his department has not yet reached any conclusions about the possible impact of two provisions of Senate Bill 734, which was approved Aug. 15 by the N.C. Legislature and is now on Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk.

Among the many provisions in the omnibus regulatory reform bill is a call for a study of local building inspector authority, and clarification of what constitutes official misconduct by local building code authorities.