City of Harvey, North Dakota - Building Permits

City of Harvey, North Dakota

city

120 West 8th Street, Harvey, ND 58341

Required

Required

Building permits are handled at Harvey City Hall, 120 West 8th Street, Harvey, ND 58341, on 701-324-2000 ([email protected]). The City's own Building Permit Application asks for the applicant/owner's name and address, the contractor's name and licence number, the estimated cost of the project, the zoning district, the exact lot location, a description of the lot (area, yard setbacks, lot coverage), and a description of the proposed structure, including a "Type of Construction" checklist (new, alter existing, enlargement or addition, metal, other) with foundation type, dimensions and roof pitch as data fields. The application requires plans in duplicate, drawn to scale, for any project meeting the $2,500 construction-cost figure described in repair_permit_threshold, plus a sketch of the water and sewer connection, and states that "all new water and sewer installations must be approved of by the City Council prior to construction." The form must be signed by the applicant, is acted on by the City (approved or denied, with an appeal to the Board of Adjustments), and expires one year from the date of issuance, with an extension available from the City Council "in case of extenuating circumstances." A plot plan (scale: one square = 10 feet) is required on the reverse of the application and the form states plainly that the application will not be accepted without it or a full set of plans. The application's own printed reference to a City penalty ordinance ($25 to $100 per offense) does not match the penalty currently codified in the Zoning Ordinance itself (up to $500 or 30 days, Section 6.2504) - the two documents disagree, and this record does not resolve which applies; ask the City Auditor before relying on either figure.

WHAT IS ESTABLISHED AND WHAT IS NOT. Harvey's own Municipal Code carries a Chapter Fifteen, headed "Building Code," Article 1, "General Building Code," with four numbered sections: 15.0101 Adoption of Code, 15.0102 Amendments, Deletions, Additions to Code, 15.0103 Clarification of Code, and 15.0104 Fees By Resolution of City Council. That chapter heading and section list confirm the City has a dedicated building-code chapter of the kind North Dakota law requires for a city that elects to administer one - N.D.C.C. Section 54-21.3-03(6) provides that "the governing body of a city, township, or county that elects to administer and enforce a building code shall adopt and enforce the state building code," and further that "the state building code may be amended by cities, townships, and counties to conform to local needs," with no stated limit on how far that local amendment power may go. WHAT COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED. The actual text of Section 15.0101, which would name the specific code Harvey adopted (the state building code, an earlier vintage code, or something else) and confirm whether the adoption is floating with the state code or frozen at a named edition, could not be located. The only surviving digitized copy of Chapter Fifteen is a single-page document, recovered through the Wayback Machine from the City's former WordPress site, that contains nothing but the table of contents quoted above - no operative section text at all, confirmed twice, once by direct text extraction and once by re-rendering the page and reading it again. The City's current website carries no ordinance text of any kind; its "Ordinances" page is a search-widget stub with zero linked documents. No other source, including a direct web search for Harvey's building-code adoption, turned up the missing text. Because the adopted edition cannot be confirmed, this record does not classify any field that depends on it - roof layer limits, deck sheathing, drip edge, ice and water shield, impact resistance and wind design are all held rather than guessed. Confirm the adopted code and any local amendment directly with Harvey City Hall before relying on this record for a technical requirement.

HARVEY REACHES ROOFING THROUGH A DEFINED TERM, NOT A NAMED PERMIT LINE, AND THAT DEFINITION IS WHAT DECIDES THE QUESTION. Harvey's Zoning Ordinance (Municipal Code Chapter Six) requires a permit before any building is "erected or structurally altered." Section 6.0301, Definitions, item 93, defines the trigger term: "STRUCTURAL ALTERATIONS; Any change which would prolong the life of the supporting members of a building or structure such as bearing walls, columns, beams or girders, or any complete rebuilding of the roof or the exterior walls." Section 6.2101(1) then provides: "No building or structure shall hereafter be erected or structurally altered until a building permit shall be issued by the city auditor stating that the building or structure, and the use of the land complies with the provisions of this ordinance, and all building and health laws and ordinances." A complete roof rebuild - a full tear-off and reroof - falls inside the definition on the face of it. NO DOLLAR OR AREA THRESHOLD APPLIES TO THE PERMIT ITSELF. Section 6.2101(1) sets no minimum job value or area, and Chapter Six publishes no list of work exempt from permit anywhere. The $2,500 figure that does appear in that same subsection is narrower than a permit threshold: "All applicants for building permits covering construction costing twenty-five hundred (2500) dollars or more, shall be accompanied by a complete set of plans, including a plan to duplicate, drawn to scale" - that is a plan-drawing requirement layered on top of an already-required permit, not a floor below which no permit is needed. WHAT IS NOT SETTLED. Nothing in Chapter Six distinguishes a full "rebuilding" from a partial repair or a shingle overlay, so whether a smaller roofing repair falls inside "structural alterations" is not resolved by the text and is not adjudicated here - ask the City Auditor before assuming a minor repair is exempt. THE FEE. Article 28, Section 6.2801, the whole of that article, reads in full: "Fees pertaining to building permits, use permits and certificates of compliance shall be set at a minimum of $10.00 and/or $1.00 for each $1000.00 of construction or alteration costs." ONE CURRENCY CAVEAT. Chapter Six carries no adoption or revision date anywhere in its own text (searched in full for "Ordinance No.," "effective," "adopted," "revised" and "amended" - the only hit is a reference to Ordinance No. 211 for the official zoning map, not the chapter as a whole), and the only surviving copy was recovered through the Wayback Machine from a version of the City's website that has since been replaced; the current site hosts no ordinance text at all. Confirm with the City that Chapter Six is still current before relying on the $2,500 and fee figures.

Harvey publishes no roofing-specific layer or recover rule of its own anywhere in the one chapter that was fully readable (the Zoning Ordinance, Chapter Six, all 28 articles), and the chapter that would carry a technical building-code answer, Chapter Fifteen, could not be read - the only surviving digitized copy is a one-page table of contents with no section body (see adopted_code). North Dakota's state framework supplies no default to fall back on either: N.D.C.C. Section 54-21.3-03(6) makes the state building code apply only where a city elects to administer one, and once elected, "the state building code may be amended by cities, townships, and counties to conform to local needs," with no stated stringency floor and no notice requirement for that local amendment. So even confirming that Harvey has elected to administer the state building code would not by itself establish which edition, or how the City may have amended it. Because Section 15.0101's operative text - the provision that would name the specific code Harvey adopted - cannot be read, this record does not classify a layer limit and does not borrow a number from any other jurisdiction's adopted edition. Ask the City building inspector for the current layer or recover rule before bidding an overlay in Harvey.

7.00% on materials in Harvey - North Dakota state sales and use tax of 5%, plus the City of Harvey's 2% local sales, use and gross receipts tax. THERE IS NO COUNTY COMPONENT. Wells County does not appear in the county table of the North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner's Local Taxes by Location Guideline (rates effective July 1, 2026), which lists only eight counties as imposing a local tax - Burleigh, Cass, Hettinger, Morton, Steele, Walsh, Ward and Williams - and the Harvey row in the city table is not shaded, which is the guideline's own mark for a city that also owes county tax (its footnote: "Shaded cities also have county tax obligations"). THE CITY RATE, READ FROM THE TABLE ITSELF RATHER THAN FROM AN AUTOMATED TEXT EXTRACTION, WHICH GARBLED THIS ROW. The Harvey row reads: Tax Type "Sales, Use, and Gross Receipts"; Rate Increase (Decrease) "1% 10-1-91, 1% 1-1-15"; Local Code 112; Current Rate 2%; Not Subject to Local Tax "New farm machinery"; Maximum Tax (Refund Cap) "$25/sale - 10-1-91, $50/sale - 1-1-15"; Permit Holder Compensation "3%, Max.-$83.33/month or $250.00/quarter." A PER-TRANSACTION REFUND CAP APPLIES. A patron who pays more than $50.00 in Harvey local tax on a single transaction of one or more items may file for a refund of the excess. At 2% that caps the Harvey local tax at a $2,500 purchase, so a full shingle order can run past it. WHO PAYS IT ON A ROOF. North Dakota treats a roofing contractor as the final consumer of materials installed into real property, so the contractor pays sales tax on its material purchases and does not separately charge the homeowner sales tax on an install-plus-materials reroof; selling materials without installing them is a taxable retail sale instead.