Dewey amends building permit requirements

Dewey Beach Town Council voted unanimously Dec. 19, to approve an ordinance that would ease the building permit process and requirements for residents who wish to do maintenance at their property. 

“This is our attempt at hearing what folks in the community have said about how we can make things move faster,” said Dave Lyons, chair of the charter & code review committee, which recommended the ordinance to council.

The goal, Lyons said, is to provide some relief to homeowners while also staying in compliance with Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program requirements. 

“There was a compromise here,” he said.

About two-thirds of the town is in a flood zone, and meeting FEMA’s requirements ensures those property owners retain NFIP flood insurance.

The ordinance will go into effect Wednesday, April 1, the first day of Fiscal Year 2027.

What’s changing

The ordinance amends code to define maintenance activities and to specify conditions for which building permits and fees are not required for such activities. 

It defines maintenance as the ongoing duty of property owners, operators and occupants to keep all property safe, sanitary and functional, consistent with town code and other applicable standards. This includes routine upkeep of property, non-structural repairs and cosmetic improvements or repairs that don’t involve major construction or code compliance issues.

Maintenance work that costs less than $1,000, including materials and labor costs, will not require a building permit or fee, and work may begin immediately without application or other notification. 

That which costs more than $1,000 but less than $10,000 will not require a building permit or fee, but notification of such work, including a description and a substantiation of the total cost, must be provided to the town building official. The work may proceed upon the official’s approval of the proposed activity.

Any maintenance that costs $10,000 or more in combined labor and materials costs will require a building permit and will be subject to all permit requirements.

The current threshold is much lower, requiring building permits for any normal maintenance using more than $1,000 in materials.

The new ordinance also specifies that any maintenance needed on an emergency basis may proceed immediately but requires notification to the town within five business days.

View the ordinance in full at tinyurl.com/572sj9np for a complete list of requirements and guidelines, including information about inspections and activities constituting maintenance. 

Residential vs. commercial

The ordinance governs maintenance performed at both residential and commercial properties.

Steven Spence, an attorney representing local property and hospitality group Highway One, said that while the ordinance is a step in the right direction, it’s not feasible for either the current building department staff or the businesses and contractors doing work in town.

“The burden that the town takes on by requiring us to come [in] and get something before we endeavor to do [any] work between $1,000 and $10,000 is going to be daunting,” Spence said. “I don’t think you have the staff to do that, particularly with respect to the number of things we’re doing on a daily basis all summer.”

There were subcontractors out working at Highway One properties just about every day this past summer, he said, fixing a range of minor issues from broken pipes to exploded toilets. This year, the group received 151 invoices from one contractor alone for maintenance work done. Of those, 50 were for work costing more than $1,000.

Spence expressed concern that the sheer volume and frequency of maintenance work required by the businesses in town will bog down the permitting process and overwhelm the building department staff under the new ordinance.

The ordinance, however, should do the opposite.

For property owners who have been complying with the $1,000 permit threshold requirement, the change will make the process much less arduous. Many folks, though, have not been following the existing requirement, either by conscious choice because they didn’t want to go through the effort, or, perhaps more often, because they didn’t know about it.

The town plans to hold a workshop to educate the public on the amended process and requirements, as well as the scope of county and town inspections.

Financial impact

Building permit fees bring in about $500,000, on average, to the town each year. Twenty percent of that revenue goes to the town’s infrastructure fund.

According to Commissioner Gary Persinger, increasing the permit threshold from $1,000 to $10,000 will likely result in a loss of only about $20,000 in annual revenue for the town.