County to relinquish program

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The Scioto County Commissioners held their first meeting of 2016 on Thursday morning. Among the 18 items considered by the commissioners was a resolution relinquishing a county program to the state.

With passage of the resolution, Scioto County relinquishes its Building Department’s Certification Process to the Ohio Board of Building Standards.

The resolution stated, “Effective February 8, 2016, the Scioto County Board of Commissioners relinquish its certification to enforce the State of Ohio Building Codes.”

All pending building permit applications accepted by Scioto County up to January 8, 2016 will be processed by the county.

All documents, reports and project files pertaining to Scioto County Building Department’s Certification process will be turned over to the state.

According to information about the Ohio Board of Building Standards, “The Ohio Board of Building Standards formulates and adopts rules governing the erection, construction, repair, and alteration of buildings known as the Ohio Building Code, Ohio Mechanical Code, Ohio Plumbing Code, and the Residential Code of Ohio. The Board certifies county, township and municipal building departments to enforce these codes.”

Mike Crabtree, Chairman of the Scioto County Commissioners, said there has been a lot of complaints and issues with handling the program locally.

The commissioners thought the best thing to do was to let the state handle it.

“At one time the state handled all of that anyway. Many years ago they (state) encouraged us to take it over locally,” Crabtree said. “We’ve had a lot of complaints from our economic development department and there have been a lot of issues with the way inspections have been going.”

Crabtree said ever since the process was taken over locally there has been a number of issues and complaints, prompting the commissioners to give the program back.

“The amount of money the county gets for their part of it, doesn’t justify the time spent,” Crabtree said.

He said giving the program back to the state was the consensus of several people outside and within county government.

Crabtree said if there were no problems locally, they would have kept the program.

“This is not something that’s set in stone, but it is something that we have an option to do,” Crabtree said.

By Wayne Allen

[email protected]

Wayne Allen can be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 1933 or on Twitter @WayneallenPDT

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