The company with the exclusive right to do building code inspections in the M.D. of Lesser Slave River defended its new fees before M.D. Council on June 28. Alberta Permit Pro owner Rick Kerscher made a somewhat rambling presentation that boiled down to was this: the new 50 cents per kilometer fee for inspections is necessary to cover the rising cost of doing business, and no, it’s not negotiable.
“We feel it’s quite reasonable,” Kerscher told council. “We’ve got to bring ourselves up to where we’re profitable.”
Council didn’t buy it, and later in the day voted to terminate the M.D.’s business relationship with the firm. It means builders will be free to shop around for inspection firms, some of which do not (yet) charge mileage.
As reported in last week’s Leader, some local contractors are not happy with the sudden, precipitous jump in inspection fees charged by Permit Pro. Norman Olsen told The Leader his fee for an electrical inspection jumped from $59 to $328.
Kerscher told council that his inspection fees have been static since Permit Pro became the M.D.’s contracted inspection service in 2000. The cost of doing business has shot up since then, and the company had to do something to recover those costs.
That prompted M.D. Manager Allan Winarski to ask if perhaps Permit Pro could not have raised its inspection fees instead of adding the mileage fee.
“We could negotiate that,” Kerscher said.
Responding to a question about ‘bundling’ several inspections so that they could all be done on one trip to Slave Lake, Kerscher said that won’t work. There aren’t enough building projects in the M.D. to warrant it, and if the inspector waits to visit a building site, it’s often too late. He cited examples of buildings being closed in, making it impossible to properly inspect the wiring or plumbing.
On the other hand, Kerscher pointed out that the $250 travel fee (from Edmonton to Slave Lake) only amounts to $50 per each of five inspections that need to be done. But only if the contractor ‘pulls’ all four (sometimes even five) at the same time. If they are dealt with separately, it can come to $250 five times. Kerscher said he can’t imagine why anyone would do it that way.
But councillor Lorne Larson – who is also a building contractor – told The Leader in a subsequent interview that general contractors seldom, if ever, apply for all the inspections at once.
“I spoke with an electrical contractor about that this morning,” Larson said. “It never happens, at least not around here.”
Taking out permits is up to the individual sub-contractors – plumbing, electrical, gas and so on. So in practice, it’s never $250 split four ways.
Larson thinks council made the right decision and not just because of the travel fee issue.
“I’ve had complaints from homeowners and contractors,” he says. “One guy has been waiting eight or nine months for his permit.”
Another sore point with the M.D. was the method by which the new fees were imposed. This was raised at the meeting by M.D. Financial Director Judy Hogberg, who pointed out that the travel fee is not in the contract and should have been agreed to by the M.D.
“I feel like it’s holding a gun to (our) head,” she said.
Kerscher acknowledged that there were communication problems and said he’s taken steps to fix them. On the other hand, he noted that the M.D. had received 30 days notice, and in fact got a month more than other municipalities. The fees were imposed May 1 everywhere else, he said – June 1 in the M.D. of Lesser Slave River.
In a written brief for council, Winarski recommended that the M.D. terminate its contractual relationship with Permit Pro. This would turn the M.D. into what he called an ‘unaccredited’ municipality, with the same status as Slave Lake. It will take a while to accomplish, but the result will be that contractors can choose their inspectors.
It also means that inspection information won’t automatically come to the M.D. office. But that advantage, in the opinion of council, was outweighed by the disadvantages of being tied to a single provider.
“We didn’t like the lack of choice,” says Reeve Denny Garratt, adding that the un-negotiated fee hike was an aggravating factor that helped council make the decision.
“We’ll try this out and see how it goes," says Garratt. "We can always go back to being accredited."

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