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Slope site building targeted State: County must set new standards By Dani Dodge A review by the state building codes division is prompting Jackson County�s building department to revamp its computer system and create some new standards for building on steep slopes. "They said, �You need to improve the record keeping,�" said Dave Kanner, deputy county administrator. "And they recommended that we establish a steep slope ordinance. "I don�t just expect to do these things. We will do them." Back in September and October, the county administrator got a series of anonymous calls claiming that the building department did inadequate inspections on four projects. So the county asked the state building codes division to come to Jackson County and review the complaints. Three investigators arrived in late November and spent two days in the county. Allen Aschim, the program administration specialist for the building codes division, said the investigators didn�t find inadequate work but did discover a need for improvement on several fronts. "It wasn�t a situation of bad inspections or failure to perform, but the track record (of inspections) wasn�t there," Aschim said. "And the ability to change the record was accessible to everyone. "I don�t think we identified a true inadequacy, but they needed to address some changes." After getting the state�s report, the county stopped work on one of the projects � a house being built on a steep slope in Rogue River. The county will be working to determine whether further slope stabilization testing should be done before the project moves forward. The state recommended a number of minor "corrective actions" for a garage being built by the Applegate Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville, such as checking to make sure that reinforcements are adequate in a retaining wall. On the other two projects � a workshop in Central Point and a pool and pool house in Ashland � the state said no further action was necessary. All the anonymous complaints dealt with properties on steep slopes. The state recommended the county consider doing special studies on steep slopes prior to building plans being approved. Aschim said it�s an issue being dealt with all over the state as home construction is expanding more and more into the hills. A poor record-keeping system stymied the investigators attempting to check cases. In one project, the state had to get plans for a project from an ex-employee of the county because the county didn�t have them on file. Kanner said, though, overall, he feels good about the state review. "Any program of this nature handling 3,000 projects a year will invariably have some problems and the fact we only had four out of 3,000 speaks very well for the department," Kanner said. "I would be hard pressed to think of any other organization that is able to achieve that kind of success rate with that volume of projects." Kanner said, though, that the county is very aware of the need to make improvements and will start on them immediately. Kanner said the county will contract with a soils engineer to make sure that projects on steep hillsides get a thorough review. The county will get a new computer system that will record who makes changes to records and when those changes are made. And building department employees will increase the number of records they keep in the new system, including inspection reports, he said. Also, the county will establish a steep slope ordinance that will identify when a complete stabilization study would be required prior to plan approval. And the county will conduct random checks on projects approved by the building department to make sure that the problems associated with the anonymous calls were isolated incidents, Kanner said. "We�ll go back and pull files at random and take a look to make sure everything is OK," he said. "And we�ll continue to do that in the future. We�ll randomly select files and make sure they check out." Reach reporter Dani Dodge at 776-4471, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.