By BEN LUNDIN

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – Fees associated with Louisiana’s new state mandated building codes will soon drop with South Central Planning’s upcoming removal of all but one of its third-party inspectors.

For nearly three months South Central Planning, an organization hired by the parish to ensure new construction complied with Louisiana’s State Act Number 12, had a slew of third party contractors from the Institute for Building Technology and Safety to train its employees. But most of the organization’s 10 inspectors are now certified and will take over the inspection process in June.

South Central Planning CEO Kevin Belanger expects their release to coincide with a series of cost reductions on some inspections.

&#8220The (South Central Planning) co-council is trying to reduce some of the fees concerning storage structures,” he said. &#8220So far we are still the cheapest in many of the areas, but our goal is to provide to the citizens the best efficiency that we can provide.”

South Central Planning had charged residents 45 cents per square foot to inspect storage facilities such as boat sheds and barns, but due to those structure’s limited number of inspection requirements the rates are expected to be reduced.

The proposed decrease, which will need to be approved by the St. John Parish Council before it is enacted, will lower inspection costs on any residential storage structure with more than 1000 square feet. The first 1000 square feet will retain the 45 cent per square foot charge, but any other square footage will cost 20 cents. Commercial storage structures will retain the 45 cent per square foot charge on the first 25,000 square feet, but all other square footage will cost 20 cents.

Other cost reductions that have yet to be identified should be forthcoming, according to South Central Planning’s Certified Building Official Michael Wich.

Along with lowered costs the organization sped up its response time to resident requests for inspections. The organization was responding to plan reviews to analyze new construction before groundbreaking in two weeks, but reduced that time frame to roughly three or four days.

Wich expects to see continued improvements for mandating the new law, which passed with little advance notice.

&#8220We’re going to continue to see the process evolve. We’re working on a lot of things to make the process automated and as that happens the time frames it takes to get everything done will get shorter. For the most part it gets better every week,” he said.

The inspections are necessary as part of State Act Number 12, which required uniform building codes for new construction as of Jan. 1, 2007 and forced parish representatives to increase permit fees to ease the financial burden associated with mandatory inspections.

South Central Planning is a planning commission working in conjunction with St. John, St. James, Assumption, Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes to ensure all new construction meets Louisiana state law.

St. Charles Parish elected to conduct inspections independently rather than join the planning commission.

The planning commission regularly holds meetings to educate the public about the new requirements. The next meeting is slated for June 14 at 2 p.m. in the council chambers of Percy Hebert building in LaPlace.

Former director of Planning and Zoning for St. John, Adrienne Labat, left her post this month to become one of South Central Planning’s 10 certified building inspections, citing concerns that her position wasn’t guaranteed when Parish President Nickie Monica’s final term expires this year.

Anyone desiring regular updates on South Central Planning’s code compliance program can sign up for e-mail updates at http://www.scpdc.org/scpdc/rbc_contact_signup.aspx.