The inspector supplied the applicant’s permit-scope wording, and the City’s own permit export later classified that work as Residential Housing-Minor, with plans not required.
When a building official tells a property owner to get a permit, the owner is supposed to describe the work in their own words on the application. SCC §8.100.190 Here, a city inspector emailed the applicant the exact wording to put in the “scope of work” box — including the line “Remove all Illegal construction in/at garage” — R.25-3549 and that same wording then became the official scope on the permit the city issued, so the city’s own permit record now carries the inspector’s phrasing about the work. M010 The detail that makes this matter only surfaced once the records were pulled: the city’s own permit list files the like-for-like/minor-repair portion under a routine category — “Residential Housing-Minor” — and marks it “Plans not required.” R.25-3549 That sits in tension with how the case began, when the city’s served order had called the building “substandard and/or dangerous.” M122–M124 HSC §17980 To be fair to the city’s side: its “plans not required” tier is tied to the “like for like” minor-repair part of the job, and its own file shows Planning getting pulled in the moment the owner wanted to expand the work — a different siding around the fireplace, added square footage at the garage. M010 M011–M012 So this is not a clean either/or. But the narrower point still holds: the city treated the like-for-like minor-repair portion as routine and plans-exempt at the very time its served order was still using broad “substandard and/or dangerous” language — M125 SCC §8.100.190 a contradiction the record only makes visible because the owner’s side forced the records out through public-records requests. R.26-1965
Bottom line: the inspector supplied the applicant’s permit wording, that wording became the city’s public permit record, and the city’s own permit-system export then files the like-for-like/minor-repair portion under a routine, plans-exempt record type (“Residential Housing-Minor”) — a narrower administrative register than the broad “substandard and/or dangerous” framing the case started with.Inspector Paul Lovato emailed the applicant and told her what to put in the permit application’s scope-of-work box: “Remove all Illegal construction in/at garage includes electrical and plumbing,” followed by minor dry-rot, siding, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, and other non-structural repair language. R.25-3549 R.26-1549 That wording then appears, essentially word for word, as the scope on the issued permit ledger. M010 The City’s permit-list export classifies the permit record as Residential Housing-Minor and carries the scope with “(Plans not required).” R.25-3549
The point is narrow. This card does not claim that every part of the garage issue was automatically permit-exempt. M010 separately lists B45, SCC §8.96.110(L), for “Added square footage at detached garage to be permitted.” M010 But for the like-for-like and minor-repair portion, the City’s own record type is routine and plans-exempt. That matters because the served order used a generic “Permits Required” placeholder and named no permit category, M125 while the later permit-system record classified the processed scope in ordinary residential-minor terms. M010
In plain language: the City first served an order that made the property sound broadly substandard or dangerous, M122–M124 HSC §17980 HSC §17985 but when the work was finally processed through the permit system, the inspector’s own supplied wording became the permit scope R.25-3549 and the City filed the like-for-like repair portion under a routine, plans-not-required permit category. M010
M010 records RES-2524445 as issued on 11/25/2025 with the same operative scope, ending “(Plans not required).” M010
The Block Permit List (Block_Permit_List_Apr2_2026.csv) lists RES-2524445 and successor RES-2603471 as Residential Housing-Minor, with “(Plans not required).” R.25-3549
M010 separately lists correction B45, SCC §8.96.110(L), “Added square footage at detached garage to be permitted.” M010 That entry is in the permit ledger’s VIOLATIONS table, not on the served Correction List. M125 Card 3
The served Correction List used B59, SCC §8.100.190, “Permits Required,” and did not identify Residential Housing-Minor, plans not required, or the like-for-like/minor-repair distinction. M125 Card 3
RES-2603471 carried the same record type and scope, and its siding inspection was approved on 04/02/2026. M011–M012 When the owner sought to change siding around the fireplace, Valuation Staff recorded that Planning would become involved, confirming that the plans-not-required tier was tied to the like-for-like/minor-repair portion. M011–M012
The City’s strongest response is likely that inspectors routinely help applicants phrase permit scopes and that “Residential Housing-Minor” is merely an administrative processing category, not an admission that the property was never substandard. This narrows the dispute but does not eliminate it. The inspector supplied the scope wording, R.25-3549 the same wording became the public permit scope, M010 and the City’s permit export classified the like-for-like/minor-repair portion as Residential Housing-Minor, plans not required. R.25-3549
The card does not treat the added-square-footage issue as exempt; it separates that B45 ledger entry from the routine repair tier. M010 The unresolved tension is that the served order named no permit category and used broad substandard/dangerous boilerplate, M122–M124 while the permit record the City later issued classified the actual processed repair scope in ordinary, plans-exempt terms, even as earlier notices suggested plans “may be needed.” R.25-3549 SCC §8.100.190 HSC §17980