By Mary Hladky
The city’s building recertification program will not need major changes to be consistent with state legislation approved by lawmakers in May.
Boca Raton enacted an ordinance requiring buildings to be inspected to determine if they are safe two months after a Surfside condominium collapsed in 2021, claiming 98 lives.
While the state was expected to enact legislation after the Surfside disaster, Mayor Scott Singer did not want to wait for that to happen. He said city residents needed protection as soon as possible, but he would be willing to revise the city’s ordinance later on so it did not conflict with state requirements.
City staff has analyzed the legislation and the City Council is expected to vote this month on staff-proposed modest revisions to the city’s ordinance.
While the city’s ordinance applied to “threshold buildings” more than three stories high, the state law specified condominium or cooperative buildings that are precisely three stories or taller.
Both the city and state required inspections of buildings that are 30 years old or older, and subsequent inspections every 10 years. But the state also mandated inspections of 25-year-old buildings if they are within 3 miles of a coastline.
The city imposed penalties for failure to submit a repair plan and to complete required repairs, but did not state a timeline. The state requires repairs to begin within a year after submission of an inspection report.
The city ordinance also will be amended to say that if a building owner fails to submit proof that needed repairs for substantial structural deterioration have begun within the required time frame, the city’s building official will decide if the building is unsafe for occupancy.
The city has identified 191 properties that meet the criteria for inspection, although some of those include multiple buildings. Single-family homes and duplexes are exempt from its recertification rules.
The city’s recertification program was launched one year ago when the first batch of notices went to 14 owners that their buildings must be inspected. Those inspection reports are due to the city by Feb. 1.
Additional notices have since been sent out every three months.
The ordinance divides the city into four zones, with buildings on the barrier island receiving the highest priority for review. The other zones run from the Intracoastal Waterway to Dixie Highway, Dixie Highway to west of Interstate 95, and farther west of I-95.
Each zone was further divided into four groups based on building age in order to stagger inspection report due dates.
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