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A request to establish a building permit for decks in the Town of Lansing got a luke-warm reception by the Town Board Wednesday.  Engineering and Planning Coordinator Jeff Overstrom requested the new permit to address safety and liability issues that may arise from uneven authority to enforce New York state building code in the town.

"We're not looking to burden the public," Overstrom says.  "We're just looking out for their safety."

Decks on new houses or additions that require building permits, or on new swimming pools, are subject to inspection by the Town Code Enforcement Department.  But if you just want to build or extend a deck you don't need a permit.  Inspectors are not permitted to inspect a property without the homeowner's permission or a court order.  But Building Inspector Lyn Day says that when he was trained he was told that if a deck collapses and the owner can prove that inspectors have seen the deck the Town and inspectors might be liable.

"You go by and see the deck and it doesn't meet code," he says.  "This happened to me a couple of years ago.  Somebody put an above-ground pool in.  They got the electric inspected, the house, the pool alarm and everything, and I passed it.  I went by less than two weeks later and they were building a deck.  I have no idea whether they followed safety requirements, and I know for a fact that they had grandkids.  That worries me."

Some board members were concerned about putting such a burden on the Codes Enforcement Department that they would not be able to handle the load.  "Do we need to hire somebody part time to do all this extra work?" asked Town Supervisor Scott Pinney.  "I don't want to get into that either.  When you make new rules it puts more of a burden on your whole department."

Deputy Supervisor Connie Wilcox expressed concerns about over-regulating construction.  With a long-time push by the Town Board to make building 'friendlier' to businesses and individuals, board members have been advocating simplifying procedures, and using checklists and citizen mentors to help residents get through permitting and planning procedures.  "It's getting to the point that you can hardly put a rock in your rock garden without a permit," Wilcox said.

Councilman Bud Shattuck said that he is sympathetic to the concerns raised, but would prefer new permitting requests to include multiple issues, including driveway repaving.  "Permitting it doesn't restrict anything," he said.  "It just regulates it as a safety issue.  I wonder if when you are looking at doing this for decks, rather than coming back to us each time something comes up maybe there are two or three things to look at together."

Overstrom and Day say that there aren't enough decks built in a year to overburden their department, and their primary concern is safety.  Overstrom says there have been no reports of deck collapses in Lansing, noting that his concern is in prevention.  Day points to a deck collapse in Dryden last March that injured three people, and worries that it is just a matter of time before it happens in Lansing.  Even without required permits their department does what it can to help homeowners get their decks built safely.

"We try to educate them as much as possible," Day says.  "Not too many weeks ago we had a guy come in who wanted to put a deck around his pool.  We let him know there are a lot of safety issues.  He said he knew that and wanted a copy of it, so we gave him what information we had.  But that doesn't happen all the time."

One of the most common errors is undersizing the dimensions of a deck that a door leads onto.  Do-it-yourselfers often remove the railing to allow space for the door to open, and there may not be enough deck width for the width of the doorway.  Other safety issues include wrong guard rail height, incorrect spacing of railing spindles, stairs built incorrectly, decks incorrectly attached to a house, lumber that is cantilevered too far from a structural member, among others.  Day says he spent part of his day off polling surrounding towns and villages and found that Dryden, Newfield, Danby, Enfield, Town of Ithaca, City of Ithaca, Groton, Village of Groton, Freeville, Ulysses, and Caroline all require building permits for decks.

At Wednesday's Town Board meeting Pinney said that the board would look into the issue.

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