As we’ve reported, the Perry Community School District will be doing a roughly $1 million parking lot project at the elementary school this summer and with that typically comes building permit fees.

That is unless the City Council waives those costs, like the Perry’s did at their meeting Monday. Building Official Steve Tibbles says the fees totaled an estimated $7,125 for the project.  City Administrator Butch Niebuhr said it came down to the two entities working together.

“We don’t do a lot of building.  We haven’t built a lot of new buildings for the City or the school, the last one was the Perry Performing Arts Center.  So it doesn’t happen very often, they’re not building new buildings every year.  Historically in Perry, the Council has forgiven building permits for the school because it’s the taxpayers that support us, the taxpayers that support the school, so it’s taxpayer dollars going to pay for these permits.”

However, the District will be required to take care of any out of pocket costs for the City.

“Any fees we have to pay to our contracted engineers, we’re going to ask the school to help us with that.  It’s no different than what they’re having to do with the engineers that they hired to oversee the project of the new parking lot.”

In total, Tibbles said those engineering costs were estimated at around $200, or less than three percent of the total building permit fees.