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I have spent a good part of the day on the phone
with contractor friends, the probate judge (a friend, also an engineer), the
ex-county manager, trying to reach the interim county manager, etc. The
amazing thing is that no one knows anything! We even called lawyers but
they didn't return our calls.
I did find out that the bldg inspector derives his
power from Georgia state codes, so I looked them up and found these little
paragraphs which seem applicable:
(5) Upon submission of the certification required by
this
subsection, the local governing authority shall be
required to
accept the inspection without the necessity of
further inspection
or approval, except that the local
governing authority may perform
an inspection at any time
and may issue a stop-work order if the
work is found to be in violation of code requirements.
In Georgia he can inspect at any time but it would
certainly appear from this paragraph that the violations would have to be known,
not just vaguely suspected, before the stop-work order.
8-2-26 (f) A local inspector, including a fire service
employee enforcing a
state or local fire safety standard, who
specifies a code violation
noted during an inspection shall, upon the
written request of the
permit holder, cite in writing the particular
code book, section,
and edition of the code which is the basis of the
violation.
As I suspected, written citations of
actual violations of actual code, not just "you used that new-fangled engineered
lumber." We have requested such a list of citations at least 10
times. Not in writing, though. I shoulda thought of that. But
it's a bit late now, since my engineer is coming up tomorrow and will probably
be more reasonable, whereas this bldg inspector would probably be a real pain if
forced to go out there, look around, look up laws, etc. So I guess
we'll proceed to this:
8-2-26
(g) (4) The registered professional engineer shall be
empowered to
perform any inspection required by the
governing authority of any
county or municipality,
including, but not limited to, inspections
for footings,
foundations, concrete slabs, framing, electrical,
plumbing, heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), or
any
and all other inspections necessary or required for
the issuance
of a certificate of occupancy by the
governing authority of any
county or municipality,
provided that the inspection is within the
scope of such
engineer's branch of engineering expertise.
(5) The registered professional engineer shall submit a
copy of
his or her inspection report to the county or
municipality.
(6) Upon submission
by the registered professional engineer of a
copy of his
or her inspection report to the local governing
authority,
said local governing authority shall be required
to
accept the inspection of the registered professional
engineer
without the necessity of further
inspection or approval by the
inspectors
or other personnel employed by the local governing
authority unless said governing authority has notified
the
registered professional engineer, within two business
days after
the submission of the inspection
report, that it finds the report
incomplete or the
inspection inadequate and has provided the
registered
professional engineer with a written description of the
deficiencies and specific code requirements that have not
been
adequately addressed.
So as long as they do not respond within 2 days in
writing with actual code violations, his word will stand and they cannot
overturn it.
Nice to know. They probably don't know
this. It will be at least two days before I tell them.
:-)
Jeannie
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