6.1. SR 08-01-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEMORANDUM ver TO: City Council FROM: Bob Ruprecht, Building Official Tim Simon, Finance Director Bob Thistle, Interim City Administrator DATE: August I, 201 I SUBJECT: Building Inspections This memo is in response to the City Council's question at the June 13, 2011 Council meeting. What would the Ramsey inspection contract look like for our City? The subsequent information shows how a $50 per hour contract inspector would work in the City of Elk River. Working together, we developed some graphs that account for the building inspectors' time, wages and workload. Using the years 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2011 through YTD we show various levels of staffing as well as the amount of construction activity for comparison purposes. Philosophy Statement The Elk River Building Safety Departments philosophy is based on our commitment to customer service, consistent and concise code enforcement, knowledgeable staff, and timely service. We always try to accommodate customer needs for inspections and are committed to professional working relationships with contractors as well as the citizens of the City. Analysis The City of Ramsey currently contracts for commercial and residential inspections and plan reviews at $50 hour. We applied this contract with our data from a high revenue year (2005) and the past several years (2005, 2009-2011 YTD). Assumptions (Exhibit 1) • Our historical average on the amount of time for a residential inspection is 45 minutes and 1 and half hours for a commercial inspection. This accounts for the drive time to and from the location in the City and the complexity of the inspection. • The same number of required inspections per the building code that we currently have completed. • The average time spent on plan review is 4 hours. • We also used the $50 per hour rate. N:\1'ublic Bodies\Ciry Council\Council RCA\Agenda Packet\08-01-2011 \Buildingsaferybudgetv2 (2).doc