Board of Appeals
The Board of Appeals consists of five members with professional expertise in construction and/or code-related areas. The mayor appoints all members to five-year terms. A sixth board member serves as an alternate to fill in when another board member is unable to attend a meeting. The city does not compensate the board members for their service.
Locations, dates, and times for any upcoming meetings, as well as their planned subject(s), are published on our agenda page. The schedule for the 2009 International Code Hearings has been published on the agenda page. The rules for those hearings are posted on the Code Review Hearings information page.
The board works with the city's Inspections Department on construction-related and design-related code issues'. The boards work focuses on three main areas:
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Advising the Fargo City Commission on changes to the codes or adoption of new codes. The hearings for the changes to the 2009 International Codes will begin on September 10, 2009. Please see the agenda page for details.
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Requests for interpretations of code from members of the public who feel that the Inspections Department has made an error in applying a code requirement.
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Hearing requests for findings of equivalency from parties who want to show that their proposal meets the intent of city codes even though it does not meet the codes' exact wording.
If you would like to file an appeal on a code issue please use our form, available as a Microsoft Word document or an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file. It should be mailed with the $150 filing fee to the Inspections Department or brought in to our office. You will be placed on the agenda for the next meeting as long as there are at least 10 days before the meeting; we need this amount of time to notify you, Board members, and staff of agenda items.
The board's regularly scheduled meeting time is the first Thursday of every month at 9:30 a.m. Meetings are broadcast live on TV Fargo, channel 99 and rebroadcast each Thursday at 9:30 a.m. and Sunday at 6:00 p.m.
The Board of Appeals handles matters related to these codes:
- International Building Code (IBC)
- International Residential Code (IRC)
- International Mechanical Code (IMC)
- International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC)
- International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC)
- International Fire Code (IFC)
The board also addresses the content of standards related to accessibility, materials used in construction, and sprinklers.