Council to address update to residential building code

WORLAND — After tabling an ordinance to update the Worland residential building code in June, the council is set to take action on first reading at tonight’s regular meeting.

At the June 7 meeting, the council tabled first reading after a brief discussion. At the time, Building Official Nick Kruger said the code is updated every three years. The city adopts the International Residential Code (IRC) and eliminates those parts that are not relevant to the city of Worland. He said the Board of Contractors has reviewed and approved the ordinance and the sections the city is opting out of from the 2015 IRC.

Council member Lisa Fernandez said at the June meeting that she would like to see exactly what is being opted out so that the city does not have the same problem it had several years ago when language requiring residential fire suppression sprinkler systems was left in the code.

Kruger said the council received a hard copy outlining changes at a recent work session. Mandy Horath said since it was about two months previous when they went over the changes, it would be good to review those changes before taking action.

Kruger said in an interview Monday there are no major changes in the IRC. “There are some simplification in sections of the code. There are a couple of areas that conflicted that they changed so that they would not conflict anymore. But, this is nothing like the last the code cycle they went through for the current one. This one is a pretty mellow change.”

According to Ordinance No. 841, Chapter 7, Article III, Section 13 of the Worland City Code is repealed and replaced with provisions from the International Residential Code, 2015 Edition.

According to the ordinance the city of Worland is excluding entirely the section on automatic fire sprinkler systems, the subsection on fire protection of floors, the subsection on locking access port caps and the chapter on energy efficiency.

Kruger said the standards in the IRC are “baseline of construction standards. It’s the very base minimum that you can do in order to protect the inhabitants of the building, protect the building in case there’s a storm, from excessive damage, and just basic fire and life safety if there is an emergency … is really the goal of the entire code.”

He said for the parts the city exempt out, people are welcome to use provisions in their construction. “There are certain sections which go a little bit for our area and they can be very costly to do some of the stuff. Council’s and the contractor board’s preference was to allow for people to allow to do that as they saw fit for their personal needs.”

Also on tap at tonight’s council meeting is third and final reading to the ordinance updating the franchise agreement with Wyoming Gas, and under citizen petitions Tim Barrus for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints youth dance and Tim Hislop about the Battle of the Bands.