Brady was off work today, so we ducked into the city to get some groceries and to get Brady into chiro again. While he was in seeing Dr. Mike, I wrote on Facebook that I was getting antsy to get our deck permit, and that we’ve been waiting for three weeks. Within five minutes of writing that, Brady texted and said that the town office had just called and said they got our permit fast tracked, and it was available for pick up! I was SO thrilled.
To be fair, I still am, to a degree. I really really want a deck. Plus the permit covers our basement as well, so the work down there can continue.
However, the estimated cost of our permit was $100. And we paid over $300. I’m less than impressed.
Our permit estimated the cost of the deck and basement WAY too high. WAY too high. Like THOUSANDS of dollars more than it will actually cost. And apparently because of the amount they came up with, our permit cost WAY more than it would have otherwise.
Once we got home, Brady read through the permit and looked into appealing the cost. It says on it that we cannot appeal the cost of what we paid for the permit itself, and that if we want to appeal the actual permit in any way, its a $50 charge up front. We’re just a tad bit annoyed.
Brady called just to inquire with Municode, and they were insistent on their formula and how they got their figure. However, they encouraged Brady to keep all of our receipts and if we come in well under their expected cost, they’ll reevaluate and hopefully we’ll get a bit of money back from the town.
So. I’m miffed, but less miffed than I could be, I suppose. At least there is some hope we could get a tiny bit of money back. Also, I was worried about appealing and needed to put the whole shebang on hold, but thats not the case. So we’ll keep moving forward and getting excited! We’ll just be diligently hoarding our receipts all along the way 😉
Better call the pile digging guy! Hopefully he’s on board for setting us up next week!