Easing of building inspector workload approved

Stephen Curran

Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005 | 10:52 a.m.

The Clark County Commission on Tuesday moved forward with a controversial plan to ease the strain on overworked county building inspectors by shifting some of their work to private companies.

The commission approved the ordinance 5-0 but adopted an amendment that blunts much of the criticism the proposal faced from unions and county building inspectors.

Instead of developers hiring inspectors -- which critics claimed would give builders and developers too much direct oversight of their own projects -- the amendment gives the county authority to hire independent building inspectors. Under an earlier version, the developers would have directly hired and paid for the inspectors.

The ordinance is expected to come before the commission again next month, after inspectors and county officials meet to work out details of how the program will work.

Still to be officially settled is whether builders could end up directly paying the inspectors reviewing their property, although Building Official Ron Lynn said after the vote that he expected fees to be funneled through the county before going to the private inspection companies.

The discussions, while still incomplete, helped settle job security woes that had plagued earlier talks, he said.

"This program we're suggesting is in no way an indictment on their (inspectors') work," Lynn told the commission. "Nobody is going to lose their job."

A commission vote scheduled on Aug. 2 had drawn building inspectors and union representatives who said changing the rules would make inspectors beholden to the private developers who were paying their fees. The commission tabled the vote.

Jane McAlevey, executive director of Service Employees International Union Local 1107, called Tuesday's vote "a step in the right direction but a small step," saying she would have preferred the commission to vote down the ordinance entirely.

McAlevey said the union, which represents the county building inspectors, will continue to fight to ensure that private inspectors are used only as a backup for their public counterparts.

Meanwhile the amendment will give the SEIU grounds to argue for heightened requirements for the inspectors themselves, including at what level they should be trained and whether they will also be union employees. None of those discussions would have moved forward had the commission approved the ordinance without the amendment, she said.

"Had the developers had the right to hire them they would have gone for the bottom of the barrel," McAlevey said.

Addressing a crowd of union members and inspectors who gathered after the vote outside the County Government Center, McAlevey struck a decidedly upbeat note.

"We made protections for the homeowners real," McAlevey said. "For the first time it has room for public accountability."

The Southern Nevada Home Builders Association and Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce supported creating a separate category of "private residential inspectors," which Lynn said would help alleviate a "retention crisis" among county inspectors falling short of the between 200 and 400 individual inspections the Building Division must complete each day.

Private inspectors have for more than 20 years been hired to inspect commercial properties throughout the county. Similar laws governing residential properties are on the books nationwide, Lynn said.

Before the board's vote, Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald asked why county officials had let the Building Division's apprenticeship program for inspectors fall behind, forcing Southern Nevada to struggle just to keep pace with what has become a nationwide shortage of qualified inspectors.

"We need to continually work on the apprenticeship program," Boggs McDonald said. "It's not like we can wave a magic wand and not have a problem. This is a nationwide problem."

The shortage has prompted the county to launch a national recruitment blitz, with the county advertising in newspapers locally and in eight other metropolitan areas, Lynn said.

Zack Gharibian, a senior building inspector for the county who spoke against the ordinance, said after the vote that he was pleased with the outcome but had hoped for a monthlong delay for the board to make its final decision.

"Now we'll have input," he said after the vote. "We're going to be part of it instead of it being just the developers."

Commissioners Bruce Woodbury and Yvonne Atkinson Gates were absent for the vote.