A plan to combine Twin Cities planning and code functions would be easy to implement, but it likely wouldn’t save contractors any money, officials say.
The two cities rely on different rule books to review building quality. An updated version of the International Building Code is due this year, however, and that gives the cities a new opportunity to work out of the same book.
“Using the same code book is not really a big deal,” said Gil Arsenault, Lewiston’s director of planning and code enforcement. “It would have to go to the two councils, and they’d have to adopt it. But I don’t think it would mean huge changes in either city.”
Getting both cities to work out of the same code book is a key point in a study released last week that calls for combined services in the Twin Cities. The report, commissioned by the Lewiston and Auburn city councils, calls for combining code enforcement functions over the next two years, starting by adopting identical building, electrical and property maintenance codes.
Auburn uses a revised 1999 draft of the Building Officials and Code Administrators rules. That was the last year BOCA issued an update. It was replaced by the International Building Code the next year.
Both Lewiston and the state of Maine building codes rely on the 2003 draft of IBC rules. Those codes are updated every three years, and a new draft is due this fall. Many of Lewiston’s IBC rules were based on BOCA rules from the 1990s.
The differences would be subtle for contractors and engineers, according to Jeff Larimer of Harriman Associates.
“In many respects, they are the same code,” he said. “I don’t think there’d be many problems for developers if Auburn adopted the IBC.”
Larimer doubted the change would result in savings for developers.
“But it would be easier,” he said. “If you work in both cities, it would be nice to be able to work out of one set of codes.”
It would still take the cities a couple of years to arrive at matching building codes, however. For example, Lewiston deleted the plumbing section and energy efficiency sections when it adopted the 2003 IBC rules because state laws already cover those areas.
“We usually take a year to go through the new rules and look for differences, deleting the parts we don’t want,” Arsenault said. “It would just be a matter of working with Auburn, to make sure we’re deleting the same things.”
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