Permitting Authorities / City of Ralston - Building and Safety
Do you need a permit to replace a roof in Ralston, NE?
Adopted code
City of Ralston - Building and Safety
Yes — a permit is required to replace a roof in Ralston, NE, issued by City of Ralston - Building and Safety. Ralston files building permits through its own online Citizen Portal, reached from the City's Permits & Licenses page; the City states that "Paper applications are available by request to Dan Freshman or in person at City Hall." The contact is Dan Freshman, Building and Safety Director and Chief Building Official, on 402-331-6677 extension 1310, at 5500 S 77th Street, Ralston, NE 68127. Fees, from the City's 2024 Master Fee Schedule: a $25.00 issuance fee for a Building Permit/Accessory Use; a permit fee on total valuation starting at $41.00 for $1.00 to $2,000 and stepping up by bracket; and a technology fee of $25.00 on a total permit fee of $0 to $499.00, $50.00 from $500.00 to $2,499.00, and $75.00 at $2,500 and above. Plan review is $30.00 an hour with a one-hour minimum for additional review, $300.00 for engineer review, and $100.00 or 10% of fee for commercial and multi-family review. Refunds are "70% within 180 days if work has not commenced" on a permit with plan review and "90% within 180 days if work has not commenced" without, and plan review, engineer review and inspection fees are non-refundable. Ralston also publishes driveway and curb cut information and a deck-plan requirement sheet on the same page.
Jurisdiction
City of Ralston, Nebraska
Address
5500 S. 77th Street, Ralston, NE 68127
Contact
- url: https://www.cityofralston.com/1216/Permits-Licenses
- phone: 402-331-6677
- email: [email protected]
Roofing permit required
Required
Contractor registration required
Required
Registration details
- state_level: STATEWIDE, AND IT IS THE REQUIREMENT THAT BITES HERE. Neb. Rev. Stat. 48-2104(1), in the Contractor Registration Act: "Before performing any construction work in Nebraska, a contractor shall be registered with the department." The department is the Nebraska Department of Labor. A roofer is inside the definitions rather than at their edge: "Construction" means "work on real property and annexations, including new work, additions, alterations, reconstruction, installations, and repairs" (48-2103(2)), and "Contractor" means a person or firm "engaged in the business of the construction, alteration, repairing, dismantling, or demolition of buildings ... and every other type of structure" (48-2103(3)). Two exemptions, both in 48-2104(1): a person who performs work, or has work performed, on his or her own property; and "any person who earns less than five thousand dollars annually for construction services." That threshold is annual earnings for construction services, not the value of one job, so it will rarely reach a working roofer.
- city_level: NO CITY LICENCE FOR ROOFING. Ralston publishes its contractor-licensing requirements on its Permits & Licenses page under the heading "Contractor Licensing", and it licenses exactly two trades. For plumbing it requires a "Master Plumbing License from Omaha, La Vista, or Bellevue", a "Current Certificate of Insurance" and a "$30 licensing fee" - so Ralston recognises a neighbouring city's master licence rather than examining its own. For electrical it requires a "State of Nebraska Electrical Contractor License" and a "Current Certificate of Insurance". No roofing licence, general contractor licence or contractor registration appears there, and the City's 2024 Master Fee Schedule carries a "Plumbing Contractor's License" fee of $30.00 and no contractor licence fee of any other kind. One limit on that negative, stated plainly: the City's codified Municipal Code is on a vendor platform that refuses automated access and has not been read for this record, so a licensing provision sitting in the code and not repeated on the website would not have been seen. Confirm with the Building and Safety Director on 402-331-6677 extension 1310 before the first Ralston job.
Permit process note
Ralston files building permits through its own online Citizen Portal, reached from the City's Permits & Licenses page; the City states that "Paper applications are available by request to Dan Freshman or in person at City Hall." The contact is Dan Freshman, Building and Safety Director and Chief Building Official, on 402-331-6677 extension 1310, at 5500 S 77th Street, Ralston, NE 68127. Fees, from the City's 2024 Master Fee Schedule: a $25.00 issuance fee for a Building Permit/Accessory Use; a permit fee on total valuation starting at $41.00 for $1.00 to $2,000 and stepping up by bracket; and a technology fee of $25.00 on a total permit fee of $0 to $499.00, $50.00 from $500.00 to $2,499.00, and $75.00 at $2,500 and above. Plan review is $30.00 an hour with a one-hour minimum for additional review, $300.00 for engineer review, and $100.00 or 10% of fee for commercial and multi-family review. Refunds are "70% within 180 days if work has not commenced" on a permit with plan review and "90% within 180 days if work has not commenced" without, and plan review, engineer review and inspection fees are non-refundable. Ralston also publishes driveway and curb cut information and a deck-plan requirement sheet on the same page.
Inspection requirements
Ralston does not charge for the inspections a permit actually needs, and it does charge for the ones it should not have needed. Its 2024 Master Fee Schedule sets out, under "Inspection Fees": "Initial required inspection - No Charge"; "First additional inspection - No Charge"; "Second inspection, each additional thereafter - $50.00"; and "After hours inspections, if available - $100/hr (min 1 hour)". So a re-roof that passes, or passes on one re-check, costs nothing in inspection fees, and every re-inspection after that is $50.00. The City's permit portal is where inspection results are published to the permit holder. Which specific inspections a re-roof draws is set by the Chief Building Official and by the City's adopted codes, and this record does not state that sequence - the codified Municipal Code was not readable for this entry. Ask when the permit is issued.
Adopted code
Ralston publishes its own list of adopted codes on its Permits & Licenses page, under the heading "Current Adopted Building Codes": the 2018 International Building Code, the 2018 International Residential Code, the 2021 Ralston Plumbing Code, "The National Electrical Code, 2023 (NFPA 70, 2023)", the 2018 International Mechanical Code, the 2018 International Energy Conservation Code, the 2018 International Swimming Pool and Spa Code and the 2018 Property Maintenance Code. Note the plumbing entry: Ralston runs its own named plumbing code rather than an ICC edition. What this record does not establish is Ralston's local amendments to the residential code. The City's codified Municipal Code is published only on a third-party code library that refuses automated access, so the adopting ordinance and any local changes to the roofing chapter have not been read here. Ask the Chief Building Official for the building chapter of the Municipal Code before relying on any base 2018 IRC roofing provision in Ralston.
Repair permit threshold
Ralston names roof replacement as permitted work and publishes no exemption for small jobs on any page read for this record. The City's Permits & Licenses page states: "Building permits are required for most projects. Please use the links on this page to access our Citizen Portal to file for all building-related permits or to apply for a plumbing license." The City's Master Fee Schedule, Exhibit "A", marked "City of Ralston 2024" and "Updated 11-29-23", carries a "Building Permit Fees" block whose scope line reads: "Includes residential and commercial new construction, remodels, accessory use, decks, fences, roof replacements, siding replacements, and gutter replacements". Roof replacement is therefore inside the building permit, and so are the siding and gutter work that often travel with it - which is not true of every Nebraska city, so do not carry an assumption in from a neighbouring jurisdiction. Read the fee brackets as fee brackets and not as a permit threshold: the lowest one is "$1.00 to $2,000" at "$41.00", so a small job is a cheap permit rather than no permit, and on top of the permit fee there is a technology fee of $25.00, $50.00 or $75.00 by permit-fee band and a $25.00 issuance fee for a Building Permit/Accessory Use. Working without the permit is expensive: the penalty fee is "4x the regular permit fee", although "The Chief Building Official will issue one warning for a first offense for every address, contractor, or contracting company, if a permit appplication was received within 5 days working days of notificati" - the sentence is printed that way, truncated at the page edge and with the City's own spelling. One caution on what is NOT established: Ralston's codified Municipal Code sits on a vendor platform that refuses automated access, so any code-level list of work exempt from permit has not been read for this record. If a job looks marginal, ask the Building and Safety Director before skipping the permit rather than after.
Sales & use tax
7.0% combined (.07) = Nebraska state rate 5.5% + City of Ralston local-option rate 1.5%, effective July 1, 2026, per the Nebraska Department of Revenue's Local Sales and Use Tax Rates schedule. Ralston is an independent city inside the Omaha metro, so the rate turns on the municipal boundary and not on the county: Douglas County levies no county sales tax - Dakota County is the only Nebraska county on that schedule with a county rate, and its 0.5% applies only outside a municipality that imposes its own local tax - but the surrounding municipalities are on the same schedule at their own rates, and a job a few blocks away can be taxed differently. Confirm the address, not the metro. Nebraska's local sales tax is state-administered rather than self-collected by the city, and no separate construction or use tax deposit is taken at building-permit issuance in Ralston.
Local roofing hub
Related guides
The permitting authority for the City of Ralston, an independent city of roughly eight thousand people entirely surrounded by Omaha in Douglas County, Nebraska. Ralston is its own municipality with its own Chief Building Official and its own adopted codes, and a roofer working an Omaha metro job must check which side of the Ralston line the address falls on - the permit, the fee schedule and the code edition are the City of Ralston's, not Omaha's. Permits are filed through the City's own Citizen Portal, and the City's published fee schedule names roof replacements among the work a building permit covers.
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