City passes new building permits bylaw

Chestermere City Council approved the city’s first Building Permit Bylaw at the regular meeting of council March 6.
“The City of Chestermere having their own building permit you can get into the finer detail,” said Chestermere Safety Codes Officer Harold Wicke who wrote the new bylaw.
He wrote the bylaw to be both a learning tool for city staff on what is required now to get a permit and to simply both the permitting and enforcement process in Chestermere.
Prior to this bylaw, the issuance and enforcement of building permits within Chestermere fell under the provincial legislation.
The Alberta Building Code is written by the Edmonton based Safety Codes council these codes also cover the minimum requirements for building permits as well as penalties for non-compliance.
The council is also responsible to sanction organizations to enforce the building codes.
It was through this accreditation that Chestermere was approving and enforcing the provincial building codes.
By passing its own building permits bylaw, Wicke said that the city gains more flexibility and control over building permits in Chestermere, which provides a number of benefits to the city.
One benefit is the city’s ability to clarify building permits in the city.
“The building permits are defined in the building code but they’re very vague in general,” he said.
“You can get into the finer detail and spell out the procedures and policies that would relate to what the city would expect or what they require.” said Wicke.
The permits specified by the building code are generalized to apply to the entire province. In writing this bylaw, Wicke has created something with a focus on the needs of Chestermere.
He said that an example of the greater detail could be in the number and quality of drawings and designs that an applicant must provide to the city.
“In the Alberta building code it doesn’t get into that exact detail, all it basically says in general is a building permit is required,” he said.
Wicke said that detailed and to scale designs are required by the city so that they can be certain the proposed developments meet the building code.
“If we don’t have that then we have no way of judging…to see if they comply or not,” said Wicke.
Another advantage of passing this bylaw is that enforcement of the codes and any fines issued are now collected by the city instead of the province.
“If you don’t have a bylaw then you have to use the safety code act as well as the Alberta building code,” said Wicke.
When a penalty is issued through the provincial legislation it is the province that will collect the fines. The city would then have to apply to the province to get a portion of the money back.
With the new permit bylaw, the all the policies and penalties are written into the bylaw.
“So whatever fines are levied we’ll be able to collect it all,” he said.
Now that the city has a building permit bylaw it will be reviewed and updated at a minimum every five years when the provincial codes are updated.
“We may have to tweak the bylaw to suit the new codes,” he said.