Warwick plans to lower building permit fees to encourage development, settle lawsuit

WARWICK MAYOR Scott Avedisian is seen at the InterLink garage at 700 Jefferson Blvd. He said the city plans to lower its building permit fees to spur additional development and to settle a lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island Builders Association, which had called the fees unfair.
 / PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
WARWICK MAYOR Scott Avedisian is seen at the InterLink garage at 700 Jefferson Blvd. He said the city plans to lower its building permit fees to spur additional development and to settle a lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island Builders Association, which had called the fees unfair. / PBN FILE PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

WARWICK – The city plans to lower its building permit fees to spur additional development and to settle a lawsuit filed by the Rhode Island Builders Association, which had called the fees unfair.
The Builders Association filed suit in 2010, stating the fees, particularly for projects with building costs exceeding $100,000, were not in proportion to the work required by the city’s development and enforcement staff.
Permit fees for these larger project amounts used multipliers that made the eventual costs of the permits unfair, according to John V. Marcantonio, executive director of the association. “They were basically using these fees as revenues as opposed to fees against the cost to the department,” he said.
The situation was not unique to Warwick. Lincoln and Cranston also were defendants in similar lawsuits, he said. And many other communities in Rhode Island had similar fee schedules, although they were not a part of the litigation, Marcantonio said.
Under the revised schedule for residential and commercial fees, announced Wednesday by Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, projects with building costs ranging from $100,001 to $250,000 will have fees of $775, plus $6.50 for every $1,000 up to the $250,000 limit. Fees for projects up to $500,000 would pay $1,625 plus $6 for every $1,000 up to the $500,000 limit. The largest projects, for $500,001 and over, will pay $3,250 plus $5.50 for each $1,000 over $500,001.
The proposed fees were established based on a series of meetings between the city and the association, according to Avedisian. They will be reviewed by the City Council at its next meeting, and if approved, enacted on adoption. As part of the settlement of the class-action lawsuit, the city will pay $50,000 to the plaintiffs.
“We wanted to work cooperatively with the Builders Association,” Avedisian said.
The fees didn’t deter development in Warwick, Avedisian said, but lowering the cost of large projects is a tool that the city can use to help spur economic growth.
Under the existing schedule, projects between $100,001 and $500,000 pay a base fee of $780 plus $8 for each $1,000 up to $500,000.
The largest projects, those exceeding $500,000, pay a permit base fee of $3,980, plus $9 for every $1,000 of project value over $500,000.

The lowered fees are not expected to affect the city’s finances, Avedisian said, in part because the city believes that contractors who avoided taking out permits, to not pay the fees, may begin getting the proper permits.
He agreed with the assessment of the Builders Association, that some of the original fees were not aligned with the work done to review the projects.
“In some respects they were,” he said. “In some cases the jumps [in cost] didn’t make sense.”

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