Palm Beach officials are scrambling to reinvent the town’s system of setting building permit fees in preparation for a new state law that will bar municipalities from using estimated construction value to determine the fees.
“House Bill 803 in my opinion is the most damaging set of state regulations to impact our building division that we have encountered in at least the last decade,” Wayne Bergman, director of the Town’s Planning, Zoning and Building Department, said at a May 12 Town Council meeting.
If the town does not adopt a new fee system, the change could represent a notable loss in revenue for the town, Bergman said, although he did not provide specific details.
According to documents provided during the Town Council’s July 10 budget hearing, building permits generated just over $1 million in revenue during the 2025 fiscal year.
The new permit law, which goes into effect July 1, is among a group of recently passed Florida regulations Bergman said will strip municipalities of key parts of their governing power to regulate development and redevelopment.
Another of those laws, House Bill 399, will allow resorts with at least 500 guest rooms to get automatic Town Hall approval for construction projects that occupy less than 20% of the property’s total area. The Breakers is the only resort in Palm Beach with enough rooms to qualify under that law.
The building-permit fee law was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis May 6. It significantly changes the approval process for building permits for commercial and residential developments, Bergman told officials.
Most consequential to Palm Beach, it bars towns, cities and other local governments from using a project’s construction value in its formula to calculate its building-permit fees.
Under a revised formula, the town would use the square footage of a project as the starting point for its permit-fee calculations, Bergman told the council.
Palm Beach also plans to add new compliance fees based on the amount of time staff and consultants would need to review different features of a project. Bergman said those fees also would include a submittal compliance fee, a design-review compliance fee and a fire-protection compliance fee, among others.
While the proposed system would likely not generate as much revenue for the town as the current system, it would come close, the building director said.
The new law also will require the building department to have a staff member dedicated to following the progress of permit requests, as the law will place strict limits on how long the town can such requests, Bergman said. The time given to review projects depends on the price and size of a project and can range from five to 60 days.
If the review is not completed within the allotted timeframe, the permit is automatically issued, according to the bill.
Additionally, the new law requires the town to significantly reduce the permitting fee for construction projects that hire private consultants for site-plan reviews and for building inspections, once construction is underway or complete.
Commercial developers will receive a 25% discount on their building permit fees should one of those aspects be handled by a private consultant, and a 50% price reduction on permit fees if both processes are handled by the consultant.
Bergman noted that figuring building-fee price reduction for residential projects is more complex . But it would range between an 8% fee reduction to a nearly 40% reduction.
Palm Beach has a contentious history with private inspectors, also known as “private providers,” because Town Hall staff have previously noted that those inspectors tend to miss design changes not approved by the town’s Architectural Commission or Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Additionally, the bill may throw a wrench at the town’s design-review process, because single-family homeowners will no longer need a permit for construction work that would cost $7,500 or less.
Bergman said an ordinance incorporating these changes to the town’s current regulations will be on the council’s docket at the council’s June 9 meeting, when officials could give it their initial approval. They would have to give it a second pass before it would become law.
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach hustles to revamp permit system as big state changes loom
Reporting by Diego Diaz Lasa, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
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