With a statewide building code law on the books, home builders who favor uniform inspections regardless of where they work in Warren County pushed a split county board Monday to enact and fund the law’s intentions — which would usher in oversight of construction outside Vicksburg city limits for the first time.

“We’re for it, obviously,” said Thom McHann, of Vicksburg-based McHann Contractors. “We worked with (state Insurance Commissioner) Mike Chaney to make it happen.”

McHann appeared before the board’s scheduled informal meeting with Johnny Sanders, of Sanders-Hollingsworth Builders, and Chris Busby, a plumbing and heating contractor, to plead their case to county supervisors that some form of standards for newly-built residential structures are needed.

“You have a high number of engineers who come in to work for ERDC,” McHann said.  “They buy a house and they don’t think anything of it. You go to work on their house and they say, ‘Do you need to pull a permit before we start?’ You say, ‘No, we’re not under building codes. It’s the wild west when you cross that (municipal) line. You can get away with whatever you want to. There’s no governing body to check whether you’re doing things properly.”

In August, Senate Bill 2378, signed in April by Gov. Phil Bryant, went into effect and essentially enacted the state’s first building code. It requires counties and cities to adopt any of the last three editions of the International Building Code as a minimum standard and codes in the Mississippi Builders Codes Council, which addresses plumbing and electrical standards. Supporters cited a need to protect the state’s housing stock from damaging storms and hurricanes and put a dent in homeowners’ insurance premiums. The bill was authored by state Sen. Videt Carmichael, R-Meridian, who chairs the Senate Insurance Committee.

Multiple exemptions were written into the bill — including an opt-out clause for cities and counties if they vote to do so within 90 days of first enacting it. Structures such as manufactured homes, mobile homes, hunting/fishing camps and certain other commerce-related structures are exempt, as are structures built at the Neshoba County Fair and those used for personal-use timber from Pearl River County. It would not affect future eligibility for buying out property damaged in floods.

Warren County has an ordinance that governs how roads and drainage must be developed in residential subdivisions and employs a member of the combined emergency management/building permit office to enforce it. However, the county does not have general zoning regulations. It means, conceivably, that a gas station or used car lot can be built near an otherwise residential area at any time.

Construction outside the city requires only a building permit that costs $5 in most cases, whereas permits for building a home or business inside the city can cost between $15 and $1,660, depending on how the structure is valued by industry standards. Permits must also be purchased, on a sliding scale, for inspecting air conditioning and electrical work.

Supervisors said giving the new law full weight outside the city would mean creating and staffing a building inspections department, which District 2 Supervisor William Banks cast as an obstacle.

“You’d have to have an inspection department like the city,” Banks said. “Then you’d have to have them on the payroll and have benefits and everything you have to pay.”

In 2007, a comprehensive land-use plan for non-municipal Warren County was completed by Central Mississippi Planning and Development District after about 18 months of study. The county board to date has not adopted it. In it, the northeastern part of the county where the most development in the county has taken place in the past decade is advised to stay “medium-residential.” Most of the rest of nonmunicipal Warren County is recommended for agricultural use. The study cost the county $85,000 to have crafted.

The board left Monday’s discussion divided. District 1 Supervisor John Arnold, a real estate agent whose district covers that section of the county, favors it.

“I believe it’s important because it’ll improve our community to have zoning, for sure,” Arnold said.

District 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon, whose district grows southward in the next year’s county elections but stays entirely inside the city, said he favors zoning “in order for the county to grow.” District 5 Supervisor Richard George, a longtime skeptic of the need for zoning outside the city, took no position as contractors spoke.

No hearing or presentation has been held on CMPDD’s plan. Board President Bill Lauderdale said he’d vote against even a tacit endorsement of any building codes, though he didn’t have a problem “with looking at” the issue.

“Some people go outside the city just to get away from rules and regulations,” Lauderdale said. “They work on their homes on their own so they can do what they want to do without any interference.

“They can still do their own work,” Busby said in response. “That wouldn’t change. But, they would need to have it inspected.”

Sanders said enacting zoning countywide would make the development business a fairer proposition for contractors of all types who respect ethical standards.

“It would be more expensive for us to build (in the county), but ask yourself this,” Sanders said. “You inspect the roads, why not the houses?”

Lauderdale said he was skeptical of pledges from the bill’s supporters, Chaney in particular, to help counties pay for establishing an inspection apparatus.

“People are responsible for their house,” Lauderdale replied. “If they want to build a good house and have it inspected, they can hire somebody to do that.”

CMPDD had projected in 2007 the county’s nonmunicipal population would grow southeast along Mississippi 27 by 2030. The 2010 census showed population had slipped 1.7 percent in the previous decade, to 48,773, with the bulk of development outside Vicksburg remaining east of U.S. 61 North and north of Interstate 20.

On the agenda

Meeting Monday the Warren County Board of Supervisors:

• Raised no objections on a report from Road Manager Richard Winans concerning a request to supply county employees to assist building a firing range for local law enforcement.

Plans for land just east of the Mississippi Army National Guard building at Ceres industrial park to be developed for such a range haven’t made it off the drawing board since proposed to county officials in spring 2013. For years, local law enforcement had practiced at a privately-owned gun store in Clinton, since closed, and at Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, outside Port Gibson.

Winans told the board Undersheriff Jeff Riggs, a longtime Guardsman and spearhead on the effort, asked for road crews to install drainage pipe at the site. Crews would have to work four, 10-hour days on overtime wages to complete the work, Winans said.

• Heard a report on work to install a new motor on the Kings Point Ferry.

Winans assured supervisors the work would be done by the height of deer season in mid-November.

The vessel is parked near the Port of Vicksburg as it awaits a new engine, financed by a highway grant. Expenses to run the ferry in fiscal 2014-15 were pegged at $259,289, according to the county’s budget adopted last month. The projection is down by about $65,000, reflective of the department carrying two pilots instead of three this year.