A great share of the September 22 Rushford City Council meeting was used for a presentation by Tom Wiener and Tanner Young of Construction Management Services (CMS) on proposed changes to the city’s building permit process.
CMS is shifting away from hourly and mileage based fees to a lump sum percentage fee for building inspections. Building permits will have a scalable building permit cost attached to them.
Currently, Rushford’s valued fee schedule is nearly 30 years old; as a result, the city is losing money on each permit. The suggested fee increase would result in a simplified fee schedule. The fees would increase to about twice as much as the current schedule. This would be identical or very similar to most of the region. Billing for permits would occur ahead of time rather than after inspections.
An example presented was that the current fee of $58 for a $4,000 deck would increase to approximately $192 under the new schedule.
Plumbers and reroofers would be able to fill out the permits online; diagrams could also be submitted online. When Mayor Terri Benson asked if the process would complicate things for the city staff and people who were not familiar with online computer usage, Wiener responded that the staff would be able to accept paper copies filled out at city hall. The copies could be picked up in a few days by CMS. Diagrams and paper copies could be scanned and uploaded, however, by the staff. When houses are being built, the blueprints and pertinent info is often available from the contractor as a PDF sent directly to CMS.
Contractors such as reroofers will be required to submit a minimum of 10 photos before and 10 photos after a job. The photos become part of the records.
Jim O’Donnell asked if the zoning regulations were dealt with as well. CMS does enforce Rushford’s zoning regulations; City Clerk Kathy Zacher could also approve zoning compliance on the website. Staff would have full access to the same information as CMS. Young added that all communication is tracked by email.
Wiener assured the council that CMS tries to be consistent in inspections regardless of which inspector does the job. He also noted that quality construction companies actually want inspections to prevent shoddy work by others.
CMS suggested charging a plan application fee of $150 to start with any remainder refunded after the permit is closed out.
Since the city reviews fee schedules at the beginning of the calendar year, Benson suggested waiting until then to make a decision. The council felt it was important to not become too cost prohibitive. City Clerk Zacher shared that the zoning fee has only been raised once since building permits were put in place and is a flat fee at this time. The council decided to consider a rate change with no other additional fees such as technology fees at this time.
The council discussed the possibility of adding a frequently asked questions section to the city’s website about whether permits are needed in assorted cases. Often residents aren’t aware they need permits to do certain work.
CMS will send a proposed contract with a cover letter about what is included in the contract to the council for their review.
Other council business included approving a resolution to call a public hearing about a proposal to issue student housing revenue notes for a Winona State University housing project. The maximum aggregate estimated principal amount to be issued by the city of Rushford would be $8,000,000.
The council also approved a resolution to set the comment date for the proposed tax levy for 2026. The public meeting will be December 22 at 6:30 p.m. at city hall. The total proposed levy is $1,195,232. The levy cannot go higher than the proposed levy, but can be cut later. City Clerk Zacher informed the council that PWD had purchased quite a few supplies ahead and now only needed to backfill supplies used.
The General Fund had been purposefully spent down recently; at this point some wages will be reallocated to the utilities fund and the levy fund to help increase the general fund a bit more. The city will need to gradually build up the general fund over time. Zacher noted that the city received a bit extra LGA which was put in the general fund.
City Administrator Tony Chladek informed the council that after the next EDA meeting, they will be ready to share what will be presented at the upcoming community meetings about the former Farmers Win Co-op property.
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