City of Huron, South Dakota - Inspections Department

City of Huron, Beadle County, South Dakota

city

Huron, SD

Required

Required

A REROOF NEEDS A PERMIT IN HURON, and the City says so in terms. Its Inspections and Planning FAQ answers "How do I know if I need a building permit?" with: "Building permits are required for all new construction, structural changes, remodeling, fences, sheds, residing, reroofing (both commercial and residential), water heater replacement, HVAC installation, lawn sprinkler installation, etc." Huron Municipal Code section 18.08.010(e) backs it with an enforcement clause: "It is unlawful for any person, owner or contractor or builder to attempt to proceed with any work or improvement of any kind for which a permit is in this section required without first having obtained a permit for same." THE 2026 EXEMPTION ORDINANCE REACHES THE ROOF EDGE AND STOPS THERE. Ordinance No. 2285-18-71, effective 11 August 2026, adds a new item (9) to section 18.08.010(b): "Repair or substantially similar replacement of any of the following exterior parts of a detached single-family owner-occupied residential structure, unless such residential structure is a designated historical property authorized under SDCL ch. 1-19B and Chapter 25.03 of this Code: Door, if the dimensions remain the same; Downspout; Fascia; Fencing panel or post; Gutter; Siding, if nonstructural; Soffit; and Window, if the dimensions remain the same." Eight exterior components are named and the roof covering is not one of them, although fascia, soffit, gutter and downspout are - so gutter, fascia and soffit work is permit-free on a detached single-family owner-occupied home while the roof covering is not. That list mirrors SDCL 11-10-15, which since 2026-07-01 bars any South Dakota county, municipality or township from requiring a permit for those same eight components. Its recorded passage is "First Reading: July 6, 2026 / Second Reading: July 13, 2026 / Published: July 22, 2026 / Effective: August 11, 2026"; the copy the City publishes carries unsigned attestation lines for the Mayor and the Finance Director, so confirm its current form with the Inspections Department if a job turns on one of the eight components. TWO SOURCES THAT DISAGREE, AND THE ORDINANCE IS THE LATER ONE. The FAQ lists "residing" among the work needing a permit, while the ordinance exempts nonstructural siding replacement on a detached single-family owner-occupied home. Both sources agree about roofing. Separately, the City's online codification is stated to be current only "through Ordinance No. 2273-23-416, passed June 2, 2025," so it does not contain this ordinance at all. NO DOLLAR THRESHOLD APPLIES TO ROOFING, and one set of figures in the code looks like one and is not: section 18.08.010(f)'s $50, $100, $150 and $200 valuation bands are a late-assessment fee schedule for work begun without a permit, not a valuation at which a permit becomes necessary. Contact the Inspections Department on 605-353-8512; the City is at 239 Wisconsin Avenue SW, PO Box 1369, Huron SD 57350, main line 605-353-8502. A contractor must post its South Dakota contractor's excise tax licence number with the building permit under SDCL 10-46A-12.1.

CITY-SET. Huron Municipal Code section 18.12.010, "Adoption of ICC 2021 Version Codes," provides: "There is adopted by the city of Huron for the purpose of establishing rules and regulations for the construction, alteration, removal, demolition, equipment, use and occupancy, location and maintenance of buildings and structures, including permits and penalties, located within the corporate limits of the city, that certain building code known as the International Building Codes ... being particularly the 2021 Edition and any amendments thereto, and the following related codes and standards all published by the International Code Council: International Building Codes: Commercial Buildings and Multi-family Buildings; International Residential Codes: One and Two Family Dwellings; International Property Maintenance Codes and Nuisance Properties; International Existing Building Codes." The adopting instruments recorded against that section are Ord. 1969 (2004); Ord. No. 2092, 2-14-2011; Ord. No. 2174-18-72, 5-9-2016; Ord. No. 2215-18-77, 9-21-2020; and Ord. No. 2247-18-81, 1-30-2023, and an editor's note records that the section was previously titled "adoption of ICC 2003 Version Code." THE AMENDMENTS HURON MAKES ARE ADMINISTRATIVE AND FISCAL ONLY. Title 18 is three chapters and five sections in total, and all of it was read: chapter 18.04 (building inspector), chapter 18.08 (building permits) and chapter 18.12 (building code). The only changes section 18.12.010 makes to the adopted codes are a valuation-based permit fee basis, an exemption for government fees, a $30 appeal-application fee added to section 105, a Council rate-setting power and a misdemeanour penalty. There is no roofing provision anywhere in Title 18, so the model roofing chapter governs as published. READ THE CODIFICATION DATE BEFORE RELYING ON THE ONLINE CODE. The published codification states that it is "Codified through Ordinance No. 2273-23-416, passed June 2, 2025. (Supp. No. 24 Rev.)", so it does not contain Ordinance No. 2285-18-71, which amended section 18.08.010 and took effect on 11 August 2026. STATE FRAME. SDCL 11-10-12 named the 2021 IRC as the edition a South Dakota municipality adopts from 2022-07-01 until 2026-07-01, when SL 2026 ch 59 moved the statutory reference to the 2024 edition; the statute imposes no currency requirement on a local ordinance. The same section provides that a municipality "may not require the installation of a sprinkler system in a residential structure or impose any requirements that are more stringent than" the edition it names. South Dakota attaches no sanction to that limit and designates no body to review a local ordinance against it, so the City's published rules are stated here as the City publishes them. One wording note: section 18.12.010 says the codes are "recommended by the International Conference of Building Officials," a body that merged into the International Code Council in 2003, while the same sentence names the International Code Council as publisher.

Required — BASE-CODE GOVERNED, AND THE CITY DOES NOT AMEND IT. Huron adopts the 2021 International Residential Code, and its amendment list does not touch the drip-edge provision. IRC Section R905.2.8.5, Drip edge, reads in full: "A drip edge shall be provided at eaves and rake edges of shingle roofs. Adjacent segments of drip edge shall be overlapped not less than 2 inches (51 mm). Drip edges shall extend not less than 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) below the roof sheathing and extend up back onto the roof deck not less than 2 inches (51 mm). Drip edges shall be mechanically fastened to the roof deck at not more than 12 inches (305 mm) o.c. with fasteners as specified in Section R905.2.5. Underlayment shall be installed over the drip edge along eaves and under the drip edge along rake edges." THE ANSWER DOES NOT TURN ON WHICH EDITION GOVERNS: that section was read in the 2018, 2021 and 2024 editions and its text is word-for-word identical in all three. South Dakota supplies no competing rule - SDCL 11-10-6's statewide default expressly does not apply to any residential structure, so there is no state residential amendment to displace the adopted edition, and SDCL 11-10-12 lets a municipality adopt the named IRC edition but not impose requirements more stringent than it. The drip-edge requirement here is therefore the adopted code's own, not a local addition. About drip edge

Not required — No impact-resistant roof covering is required in Huron. This negative is earned over a complete read of the City's building title - all five sections of the three chapters of Title 18 - together with Ordinance No. 2285-18-71, the 2026 permit-exemption ordinance that the online codification does not yet contain. "UL 2218", "FM 4473", "Class 4" and "Class IV" each occur zero times in that material, and the base 2021 International Residential Code imposes no impact-resistance requirement of its own. Nothing from the fire family or the wind family of standards was read across into this answer - an impact rating, a fire classification and a wind classification test three different things, and only a genuine impact standard can support an impact requirement. A homeowner may still choose an impact-rated product for an insurance discount, which South Dakota hail insurers commonly offer, but the City does not require one.

Two layers maximum - one overlay is permitted and a second existing layer forces a tear-off to the deck. Huron writes no roofing rule of its own. Title 18 of the Municipal Code is small enough to have been read from end to end, and the section counts were confirmed from the codification's own child listings before reading: chapter 18.04 has exactly three sections, chapter 18.08 exactly one and chapter 18.12 exactly one. The only amendments section 18.12.010 makes to the adopted codes are administrative and fiscal, so the operative rule is base 2021 IRC R908.3.1.1 unmodified: "Roof recover not allowed. A roof recover shall not be permitted where any of the following conditions occur: 1. Where the existing roof or roof covering is water soaked or has deteriorated to the point that the existing roof or roof covering is not adequate as a base for additional roofing. 2. Where the existing roof covering is slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile. 3. Where the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering." So a single sound existing layer may be recovered; two existing layers, a deteriorated deck, or a slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement covering all require a tear-off.

2% CONTRACTORS' EXCISE TAX, NOT 2.5%, AND HURON'S OWN PUBLISHED CODE IS WHAT MAKES THAT WORTH SAYING TWICE. Start with the state position. SDCL 10-45-12.1 exempts "construction services (division C) except industry no. 1752 and locksmiths and locksmith shops" from the retail sales tax, so there is no sales tax on a roofing contract at all, and SDCL 10-46A-1 puts the work into a different tax instead: "There is imposed an excise tax upon the gross receipts of all prime contractors engaged in realty improvement contracts, at the rate of two percent." SDCL 10-46A-3 sets the base wide: the tax "applies to the total contract price including all labor and materials," and materials "include those purchased by the contractor and those purchased by the person who let the contract or his designee," so a homeowner who buys their own shingles does not shrink the excise base. Roofing is inside that tax by a three-step chain rather than by any Department of Revenue statement naming the trade: SDCL 10-46A-2 subjects contractors "enumerated in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual of 1987 ... construction (division c)", ARSD 64:07:01:01.01 provides that "The gross receipts resulting from the services performed by a contractor listed in Division C of the SIC manual are subject to the contractor's excise tax, whether or not the results of such services constitute a fixture," and SIC Division C contains industry 1761, "Roofing, Siding, and Sheet Metal Work." DO NOT ADD THE HALF PERCENT IN CHAPTER 5.64 OF HURON'S OWN CODE. The City's published municipal code still carries chapter 5.64, "MUNICIPAL GROSS RECEIPTS TAX ON PRIME CONTRACTORS ENGAGED IN REALTY IMPROVEMENT CONTRACTS," whose section 5.64.004 imposes "as a municipal gross receipts tax, a tax of one-half percent on the gross receipts of all prime contractors and other persons engaged in realty improvement contracts within the jurisdiction of the city of Huron, Beadle County, South Dakota who are subject to the South Dakota Realty Improvement Contract Gross Receipts Tax, SDCL 10-46A, and acts amendatory thereto." Read on its own it looks like 2.5% on a roofing job. It is not, because state law sunset that tax in 1980. SDCL 10-46A-11 permits a municipal contractors' excise at up to one-half percent and then closes it: "Municipalities that have a non-ad valorem tax in effect as provided for in chapter 10-52 may not continue the tax imposed by this section on or after April 1, 1980." Huron holds exactly such a tax - its own chapter 5.62 municipal retail sales and use tax, currently 2% under section 5.62.020 (Ord. 1959, effective 1 January 2004) - and chapter 5.64 was enacted in 1979, inside the window that clause was written to close. Three further signs point the same way: chapter 5.64's own materials exemption is grounded on SDCL 10-46A-6, which was repealed by SL 1980 ch 100; the Department of Revenue's current Contractor's Excise Tax Guide describes no municipal contractors' excise component at all; and the Department's municipal tax schedule for the period effective 1 July to 31 December 2026 shows no municipal excise line for any non-tribal municipality, listing Huron only at row 177-2 (2.00% municipal sales tax under SDCL ch. 10-52) and row 177-1 (1.00% municipal gross receipts tax under SDCL ch. 10-52A). BILL IT AT 2.041%, NOT 2%. The excise is charged on gross receipts and the tax collected from the customer is itself part of those receipts, so a flat 2% under-collects. The Department of Revenue's own remedy, in its Contractor's Excise Tax Guide of July 2026: "a bid factor of 2.041% may be used to calculate the excise tax when preparing a bid or bill ... Only use this factor to prepare a bid or bill. A straight 2% is used when calculating tax due on the excise tax return." MATERIALS ARE TAXED SEPARATELY AND IN ADDITION. ARSD 64:07:01:13 makes the contractor the consumer of its own materials and bars buying them for resale, so a Huron roofer pays 4.2% state tax plus the City's 2.00% municipal tax, a combined 6.2%, on the materials it buys, as a cost of goods rather than a line on the customer's bill. The municipal rate follows where the material is used rather than where it was bought, so buying outside the city limits and installing inside them leaves the 2% owed as use tax on the excise return. The 1% municipal gross receipts tax at row 177-1 does not reach construction either - SDCL 10-52A-2's enumeration is closed and covers lodging accommodations, alcoholic beverages, prepared food for immediate consumption and ticket sales or admissions only, and the Department's table has exactly those four columns and no construction column. Nor does the 1.5% tourism tax. Adding either to a roofing bill overcharges the customer. South Dakota has no county sales tax, so there is no county component to get wrong; the per-address hazard is the city limit. ONE DATE TO DIARY: the 4.2% state rate is a temporary reduction under HB 1137 of 2023 (SL 2023 ch 32) and reverts to 4.5% on 1 July 2027, which is already codified as a second, future-dated version of SDCL 10-45-2. Material cost in Huron goes from 6.2% to 6.5% that day; the 2% excise is not changing. South Dakota municipal rates may change only on 1 January or 1 July (SDCL 10-52-9).