City of Tea, South Dakota - Planning, Zoning and Building Services

City of Tea, Lincoln County, South Dakota. Tea sits directly south of Sioux Falls and its city limits are the boundary that matters for both permitting and municipal tax, since the surrounding unincorporated Lincoln County land carries neither the City's permit requirement nor its municipal sales tax.

city

600 E. 1st St., PO Box 128, Tea, SD 57064

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Apply through Planning, Zoning and Building Services at City Hall, 600 E. 1st St., PO Box 128, Tea SD 57064; the Community Development Director is on 605-498-5192 and City Hall on 605-498-5194. There is no online permit portal: the City states "To pay for a building permit online, email [email protected] for payment link." A REROOF IS PRICED AS SMALL WORK, at a flat $25.00 under item 11 of the 2026 Schedule of Fees, rather than on the valuation-based Table No. 1-A that governs larger jobs and starts at "$1.00 to $1,100.00 - $20.00." Plan review, where it applies, is "25% percent of the building permit fee." Electrical and plumbing permits are not the City's to issue: "Electrical and Plumbing Permits are obtained through the state Electrical and Plumbing Commission." ONE CONSEQUENCE OF PULLING A PERMIT IN TEA THAT ROOFERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT, AND WHICH DOES NOT BITE THEM. Ordinance No. 299 amends the smoke alarm and carbon monoxide alarm retrofit triggers so that "Where alterations, repairs, or additions requiring a permit occur with a valuation of more than $1,000, the individual dwelling unit shall be equipped with smoke alarms located as required for new dwellings," and the same for carbon monoxide alarms at Section R315.2.2. A reroof over $1,000 would fall inside that trigger, but each section's first exception takes it back out: "Work involving the exterior surfaces of dwellings, such as the replacement of roofing or siding, the addition or replacement of windows or doors, or the addition of a porch or deck." So a reroof does not drag a whole-house alarm retrofit with it. Note the shape of that provision, because it reads like a permit exemption and is not one: it exempts roofing from the alarm rule, and it in fact confirms that a reroof needs a permit, since the rule it excepts is scoped to work "requiring a permit" in the first place. Inspections are scheduled by direct contact with the City's named inspectors; no published inspection sequence for a reroof exists, so ask which inspections a job will draw when the permit is issued.

2021 International Residential Code, adopted by Ordinance No. 299 and effective 3-2-2023. Section 14.04(a) of that ordinance provides: "The International Residential Code, 2021 edition, including Appendix AE, Appendix AG, Appendix AH, and Appendix AQ as published by the International Code Council Inc. as amended, is hereby adopted as the residential building code by the city..." Subsection (b) fixes the application date: "The adoption of the International Residential Building Code, 2021 edition, will become effective March 2, 2023. The minimum building standards in the 2021 edition of the International Residential Building Code and amendments thereto shall be applied to any building permit issued after March 1, 2023." THE ENACTMENT IS VERIFIABLE ON THE FACE OF THE INSTRUMENT, which is not always true of a published ordinance: it carries "First Reading: January 9, 2023 / Second Reading: January 23, 2023 / Publication: February 3 and 10, 2023 / Effective Date: March 2, 2023," is signed by the Mayor, attested by the Municipal Finance Officer, and sealed. Plumbing and electrical are handed to the State by Sections 5 and 6 of the same ordinance - "the 2018 Uniform Plumbing Code ... (As mandated by the South Dakota State Plumbing Commission)" and "the 2020 National Electrical Code as adopted by the State of South Dakota." The City separately publishes companion documents adopting the 2021 International Building, Existing Building, Mechanical and Property Maintenance Codes. NOTE THE CONFLICTS CLAUSE, WHICH RUNS THE OPPOSITE WAY FROM THE USUAL ORDER. Section 14.04(d) provides: "In the event of any conflict between the provisions of the code adopted by this subchapter and applicable provisions of this Code of Ordinances, state law or city ordinance, rule or regulation, the provisions of this Code of Ordinances, state law or city ordinance, rule or regulation shall prevail and be controlling." So where a Tea ordinance and the model code disagree, the ordinance wins. SOUTH DAKOTA'S FRAMEWORK IS AN OPT-IN WITH A CEILING. There is no statewide residential building code: SDCL 11-10-6 sets a statewide 2024 International Building Code default and says it does "not apply to any residential structure." SDCL 11-10-12 makes residential adoption a municipal option, provides that a governing body "may enact requirements ... by adopting the 2024 edition of the International Residential Code," and bars it from imposing "any requirements that are more stringent than the requirements in the 2024 edition." Tea's 2023 adoption of the 2021 edition matched the statute as it then stood: SDCL 11-10-12 was created by SB 90 of 2022 naming the 2021 edition, and SL 2026 ch 59 raised the named edition to the 2024 code effective 2026-07-01. Because Ordinance 299 names the 2021 edition by name rather than adopting whatever edition the statute names, it did not move when the statute did. Nothing in SDCL chapter 11-10 requires a municipality to refresh its edition and the chapter states no sanction for any departure.

Required — BASE-CODE GOVERNED, AND THE CITY DOES NOT AMEND IT. Tea 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

Required — Required, and stated twice by the City. Ordinance No. 299's Table R301.2, Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria, carries the entry "ICE BARRIER UNDERLAYMENT REQUIRED - Yes." The City's Asphalt Shingles Information handout gives the operative detail: "An ice barrier that consists of a least two layers of underlayment cemented together, or of a self-adhering polymer modified bitumen sheet, shall be used in lieu of normal underlayment, and extend from the eave's edge to a point at least 24 inches inside the exterior wall line of the building. The exception to this would be detached unheated structures." The transcription "a least" is the City's own and is reproduced rather than tidied. Note the exception on the face of that sentence: detached unheated structures. It is narrower than a blanket detached-garage exemption, since a heated detached garage is not within it, so confirm that specific case with the building official rather than assuming. About ice & water barrier

Not required — No mid-roof, dry-in or underlayment inspection is established for a Tea reroof. A permit is plainly required and the City says so in the document it hands homeowners: the "Homeowner's Building Permit Handbook" lists "Re-shingle & Re-side" among the work requiring a building permit, and prices it at "a flat 5 building permit fee for a fence, deck, new siding, shingles, driveway repair, doors, windows, or signs." What that handbook never does is name an inspection stage for that work. Measured across it: four occurrences of "inspect" and ZERO of the anchored word "roof". Its inspection references are the two named inspectors -- Building Inspector Tim Odland and Mechanical Inspector Steve Robertson, both scheduled directly by call or text -- and a commencement rule, "Work must be commenced, and an inspection requested within 180 days of permit issuance." The City's Planning and Zoning FAQ likewise carries ZERO occurrences of both "roof" and "inspect", answering instead on chickens, parking, fences and sheds. So no City instrument creates a roofing stage, and the governing scheme is the adopted code's. Tea adopted the 2021 International Residential Code by Ordinance No. 299, effective March 2, 2023, and 2021 IRC Section R109 was read directly: foundation, plumbing/mechanical/gas/electrical rough, floodplain, frame and masonry, other, fire-resistance-rated construction, final. No roof-covering stage appears, and across the whole section the word "roof" occurs exactly once, in R109.1.4, which takes the framing inspection "after the roof, masonry, framing, firestopping, draftstopping and bracing are in place." 🟢 South Dakota's framework cuts the same way: SDCL 11-10-12 makes residential adoption a municipal option and bars a governing body from imposing "any requirements that are more stringent than the requirements in" the named IRC edition. That is a CEILING, so a locally invented roofing inspection stage would sit in tension with it -- though this record does NOT adjudicate whether a procedural inspection step counts as a "requirement" for that purpose, which is an open interpretive question. ⚠️ ONE GAP, STATED RATHER THAN GLOSSED: the City's own file of Ordinance 299 and its IRC amendment set, at the .docx URL this record cites elsewhere, returned HTTP 500 on two separate attempts on 2026-09-01, so the amendment list could NOT be re-read this pass and this record does not assert that Tea leaves R109 unamended. The finding rests on the homeowner handbook, the FAQ and the base 2021 IRC. If that file becomes reachable again, check it for an R109 amendment before treating this as settled.

Not required — Not required. Tea imposes no impact resistance rating, no Class 4 requirement and no hail rating on roof coverings. Ordinance No. 299 was read in full and then measured across its 76,949 characters: UL 2218 occurs zero times, "Class 4" zero times, "Class IV" zero times, FM 4473 zero times. The same four counts are zero across the City's Asphalt Shingles Information handout, which is otherwise detailed on underlayment, fastening, flashing, valleys and sidewall work. The base 2021 International Residential Code imposes no impact requirement either. Keep the three roof performance questions separate: Tea does publish a 112 mph design wind speed and does require an ice barrier, and neither of those is an impact requirement. A hail-rated shingle may still be worth specifying on its own merits or for an insurance discount, but the City does not require one.

NO VALUATION THRESHOLD AND NO SIZE THRESHOLD. Tea requires a building permit for a reroof regardless of what it costs, and charges the same flat fee whatever the value. Three of the City's own sources agree. The Homeowner's Building Permit Handbook, under "When do I need to get a building permit?", answers: "A building permit is needed for any construction work completed on a building regulated by the building code. This includes: ... Re-shingle and Re-side ..." The 2026 Schedule of Fees prices it as a class of its own at item 11: "Small Work Building Permits (including reroof, reside, same size windows/doors): $25.00," and the Handbook repeats it - "There is a flat $25 building permit fee for a fence, deck, new siding, shingles, driveway repair, doors, windows, or signs." And Ordinance No. 299's amended Section R105.2, "Work exempt from permit," was read in full: its twelve building items are playhouses under 96 square feet, one-story detached accessory structures under 200 square feet, low retaining walls, small water tanks, sidewalks and driveways, finish work, shallow prefabricated pools, playground equipment, small window awnings and drain-tile work. THERE IS NO ROOFING ITEM ON THAT LIST AND NO DOLLAR FIGURE ANYWHERE IN IT. That distinguishes Tea from Spearfish, whose equivalent list does carry a roofing item. ONE DISCRETIONARY ESCAPE EXISTS AND IT IS NOT A THRESHOLD: the amended Section R105.1 ends "The building official may exempt permits for minor work." That is a judgement reserved to the building official rather than a published cut-off a roofer can rely on in advance, so a genuinely small patch repair is worth a call to Planning and Zoning on 605-498-5192 rather than an assumption either way.

Design wind speed 112 mph. The full Table R301.2, Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria, as enacted in Ordinance No. 299: ground snow load 40 psf; wind design speed 112 mph; topographic effects no; special wind region no; wind-borne debris zone no; seismic design category A; weathering severe; frost line depth 42 inches (1067 mm); termite slight to moderate; ice barrier underlayment required yes; air freezing index 3,000; mean annual temperature 46 degrees F. ONE CELL OF THAT TABLE NAMES ANOTHER CITY, and it is recorded here so that nobody later reads it as an error in this reference or "corrects" the wind figure on the strength of it. The flood hazards cell reads: "Sioux Falls entered the regular phase of the National Flood Insurance Program on September 17,1979." Tea is a separate municipality in Lincoln County south of Sioux Falls; the ordinance was evidently adapted from a Sioux Falls instrument and that cell was not localised. It bears on none of the roofing fields, but it is the most likely explanation for the otherwise unusual 112 mph figure, which is a Sioux Falls-area value. THE 112 MPH IS NONETHELESS TEA'S OWN ENACTED LAW and is stated as such. A WARNING THAT MATTERS WHEN COMPARING SOUTH DAKOTA CITIES: a wind speed means nothing without the basis it is stated in. The 2021 International Residential Code states wind speed as an ultimate design wind speed, which is the basis of the 112 mph here, while older editions state a nominal or basic wind speed for the same physical loading. The two differ by roughly the square root of 0.6. Nearby records in this reference print 115 mph and 90 mph for exactly that reason. Do not average them, do not treat a lower neighbouring figure as a disagreement, and do not apply a figure stated in one basis to a design method that expects the other.

Two layers maximum - one overlay is permitted, and a second existing layer forces a tear-off to the deck. This is the best-sourced layer limit in the South Dakota group because the City restates the rule itself rather than leaving it to the adopted code. The "Asphalt Shingles Information" handout, under the heading "Recovering Versus Replacement," states: "New roof coverings shall not be installed without first removing existing roof coverings 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 wood shake, slate, clay, cement, or asbestos cement tile. 3. Where the existing roof has two or more applications of any type of roof covering." The adopting ordinance corroborates it by leaving the provision alone: R908 occurs zero times across the whole of Ordinance No. 299, so Section R908.3.1.1 of the adopted 2021 International Residential Code is unamended. ONE DISCREPANCY IS WORTH KNOWING AND IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE LAYER COUNT. The handout's condition 2 includes wood shake. The 2021 edition Tea has adopted lists only "slate, clay, cement or asbestos-cement tile" in that condition; wood shake was dropped from it after the 2015 edition. So the handout was drafted from an older edition of the code and has not been refreshed since the City moved to the 2021 edition in 2023, and a roofer told by the handout that a wood shake roof must be torn off is being told something the currently adopted code does not itself require. Condition 3, the layer count, is identical in every edition from 2015 through 2024, so the two-layer answer is the same whichever text is applied. Where the two disagree, note the ordinance's own conflicts clause at Section 14.04(d), under which the City's ordinances prevail over the adopted model code - and ask the building official, because the handout is guidance rather than an enactment.

Asphalt shingles must go onto a sheathed deck, and the City publishes the fastening rule that goes with it. From the Asphalt Shingles Information handout, under "Sheathing": "Asphalt shingles shall be fastened to sheathed decks." Under "Fasteners": "Fasteners for asphalt shingles shall be galvanized steel, stainless steel, aluminum, or copper roofing nails, minimum 12 gage [0.105 inch] shank with a minimum 3/8-inch diameter head, of a length to penetrate through the roofing materials and a minimum of 3/4 inch into the roof sheathing. Where the roof sheathing is less than 3/4 inch thick, the fasteners shall penetrate through the sheathing." The handout adds a stricter rule for a different covering: "Mineral-surfaced roll roofing shall be fastened to solidly sheathed roofs." READ THE TWO SHEATHING WORDS AS THE CITY WROTE THEM, because they are not the same requirement. Asphalt shingles are required to go onto a sheathed deck; mineral-surfaced roll roofing is required to go onto a solidly sheathed one. The fastener rule then carries the practical consequence for thin or spaced decking: a nail must reach 3/4 inch into the sheathing, and where the sheathing is thinner than that it must pass all the way through. The handout is the City's own restatement of the adopted code rather than an enactment, and one of its other conditions is drafted from a pre-2021 edition (see the roof layer limit entry), so confirm a borderline decking question with the building official.

SOUTH DAKOTA DOES NOT PUT A SALES TAX ON THE ROOFING CONTRACT, and the figure a customer sees on the invoice is 2.041%, not a municipal rate. SDCL 10-45-12.1 exempts construction services from the retail sales tax. In their place SDCL 10-46A-1 imposes "an excise tax upon the gross receipts of all prime contractors engaged in realty improvement contracts, at the rate of two percent," and SDCL 10-46A-3 applies that two percent to "the total contract price including all labor and materials. 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 base. SDCL 10-46A-12 lets a contractor list the tax as a separate line item and makes that line "collectible from all entities," public and private. THE BILLED FIGURE IS 2.041% AND NOT 2%, because the tax is charged on gross receipts and the tax collected is itself part of those receipts. The Department of Revenue publishes a bid factor of 2.041% for use "when preparing a bid or bill," while "a straight 2% is used when calculating tax due on the excise tax return." The arithmetic is 0.02 divided by 0.98, which is 2.0408%. Both numbers are correct and they are not interchangeable. Tea's flat $25 permit fee sits inside the excise base if it is rebilled to the customer, since the Department's guide directs a contractor to "include amounts received for all licenses or permits required for a project." THE EXCISE IS IN ADDITION TO, NEVER INSTEAD OF, TAX ON MATERIALS. ARSD 64:07:01:13 makes the contractor the consumer of its own materials: contractors "are the consumers of materials and supplies purchased by them for use in their contract work ... the contractor may not purchase for resale supplies and materials and must pay sales or use tax on the purchases." So the roofer pays the 4.2% state rate plus Tea's 2.00% municipal sales or use tax on what it buys, 6.2% in total, as a cost of goods rather than as a line on the customer's bill. DO NOT READ THAT 6.2% AS A TAX ON THE REROOF; it is what the roofer pays on materials, and the customer's invoice carries a 2.041% excise line instead. THE MUNICIPAL FIGURE, read cell exact from the Department of Revenue's own municipal tax schedule for the edition effective July 1 to December 31, 2026: Tea 2.00% municipal sales and use tax, city code 344-2. The city also levies a 1.00% municipal gross receipts tax, code 344-1, AND THAT TAX DOES NOT REACH ROOFING: SDCL 10-52A-2 enumerates a closed list of lodging, alcoholic beverages, eating establishments and admissions, and the Department's own rate table carries exactly those four columns and no construction column. A roofer who adds that one percent overcharges the customer. SOUTH DAKOTA LEVIES NO COUNTY SALES TAX, so there is no Lincoln County component to add. THE HAZARD HERE IS THE CITY LIMIT AND IT IS A REAL ONE IN THIS PART OF THE STATE: Tea sits inside the Sioux Falls metro with unincorporated Lincoln County land around it, and the material rate follows where the material is used rather than where it was bought, so a job on an address just outside the city carries no Tea municipal tax while a job inside it does, whichever yard supplied the shingles. THE STATE RATE IS SCHEDULED TO RISE AND THAT IS ALREADY LAW RATHER THAN A PROPOSAL: SDCL 10-45-2 is codified in two versions, the current one imposing "a tax of four and two-tenths percent" and a second headed "Effective July 1, 2027" imposing "a tax of four and one-half percent," both sourced to SL 2023 ch 32, which is HB 1137. Material costs rise by three tenths of a point on that date. ON PROVENANCE, no Department of Revenue publication names roofing. The determination runs through law rather than guidance - SDCL 10-46A-2 reaches contractors "enumerated in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual of 1987 ... construction (division c)," and 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."