The Seattle City Council recently adopted the 2026 budget, including legislation that implements SDCI fee changes in 2026.
We’ve implemented an inflationary increase of 6.5 percent year-over-year to most fees. These fee increases will result in an SDCI base hourly rate of $292 an hour.
Construction Permit and Master Use Permit fees will be increasing by 18 percent year-over-year. These increases are necessary to sustain permitting services and maintain review timelines amid a post-pandemic shift from high-value development projects to a greater volume of small- and mid-sized projects.
Additionally, some technical changes will be made to Master Use Permit fees for clarification of fees related to tree review when no construction is proposed and to recoup the cost of reviewing tree removal and protection during construction permitting; the elimination of special accommodations; clarification of letters for land use analysis and research; and simplification of pre-application conference fees.
SDCI will be reducing fees for permits under the Unreinforced Masonry program to encourage building owners to retrofit their buildings through this voluntary program.
SDCI recently completed a study on current OTC Electrical Fees and processes and as a result of the study, is updating the Electrical Permit fee table to provide clarity to customers, reduce redundancies and duplicate permit fee requests, eliminate staff time used on correcting errors, and to recover actual costs. These changes are intended to simplify the application process and are not expected to increase revenue.
Finally, we’ll be adjusting Rental Registration and Inspections Fees to keep up with the cost of administering this program.
New Director’s Rules, the BVD table and other fee-related information will be available on our website by the end of January.