Mountain Village building permits

Tips & gotchas

• Mountain Village is a home-rule town with its OWN Planning and Development Services Department, Building Division (455 Mountain Village Blvd., Suite A) — San Miguel County's own Building Department has authority only over unincorporated county land and does not issue permits within Mountain Village town limits, and neighboring Telluride's own separate Building Division likewise has no authority here despite the two towns sharing a gondola connection and, for fire code purposes, the same Telluride Fire Protection District.
• The Town's live Building Division page confirms the CURRENT code cycle as 2024 IBC/IRC/IMC/IFGC/IEBC/IFC, 2023 NEC, and 2021 IECC (updated via Ordinance 2025-05) — but the only publicly accessible full section-by-section amendment-text PDF is still on the OLDER 2018 code cycle (2020 NEC); the current 2024-cycle amendment text likely resides on the mountainvillage.municipal.codes host. Administrative/procedural provisions (permit expiration, fees, inspections, contractor licensing structure) are corroborated as current by the live page; code-specific numeric design criteria (snow load, wind speed, seismic category) below are from the 2018-cycle text and are flagged as possibly superseded rather than presented as current.
• Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria (Municipal Code 17.7.10, Section 1601.2, last-confirmed 2018-cycle text): 130 lbs minimum ground snow load plus elevation per the SEAC Guide, 90 mph 3-second gust wind speed/Exposure C, Climate Zone 6B, Seismic Design Category C, 48-inch frost line depth, Severe weathering, slight-to-moderate termites, -15°F winter design temp, 40°F mean annual temp — confirm against the Town directly before relying on these for a live 2024-cycle submission.
• Contractor licensing splits by trade: General/Roofing/Mechanical contractors need Town-issued building licenses backed by current ICC certification (GC-A/B/C exams, Master Mechanical exam, Roofing exam); Electrical and Plumbing contractors instead need ONLY Colorado state licensure plus Town registration (no Town registration fee for those two trades). Random job-site license checks are conducted by Town inspectors; non-compliant workers can be sent off-site and reported to DORA.
• Owner-builders occupying the home as a primary residence for 2+ years are exempt from the contractor-license requirement (Municipal Code 17.7.9.D) but must sign a Town-approved, county-recorded Homeowner Contractor Affidavit and be on-site at least twice weekly, present for every inspection.
• The Town publishes NO numeric plan-review turnaround (days or weeks) for any standard building-permit category anywhere on its site — not on the Building Division page, the Building Regulations PDF, the 2025 Community Development Fee Schedule, or the Inspection Information document. Colorado is home-rule with no statewide clock, and every permitType in this record is honestly null/unverified with a documented chase trail rather than an invented figure (including not borrowing Telluride's own null figure from the same county).
• A single Table 1-A valuation-based fee schedule applies to Building, Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing permits alike, with permits under $1,500 total valuation FEE-WAIVED entirely — a materially more generous small-project threshold than Telluride's flat $51.50 minimum in the same county.
• Total project cost has FIVE stacking components beyond the base permit fee: Plan Review Fee (65% of permit fee), Mountain Village Use Tax (4.5% of 40% of valuation), San Miguel County Use Tax (1% of 40% of valuation), and a Road Impact Fee ($1/sq ft new construction or $1/$400 valuation for remodels, waived for deed-restricted housing) — all five sum to the total permit fee due at issuance per the fee schedule's own formula.
• The Renewable Energy Mitigation Program (REMP)/Exterior Energy Use Offset Program is a genuinely distinct approval gate for any project with snowmelt systems, site-built pools, or spas — offset or payment-in-lieu is calculated via the Town's own spreadsheet and must be resolved before permit issuance, separate from standard IECC compliance.
• The Smart Building Incentive Program (Ordinance 2015-02) can discount the Building Permit Fee by up to 100% collectively across four stackable incentives (renewable energy offset, snowmelt-free roof design, no-exterior-energy-use covenant, low HERS rating) — worth investigating for any high-end custom build in this market before assuming standard fees apply.
• Roof Material changes require a SEPARATE Planning Department Design Review Process approval (Class 1, Staff Level) in addition to the Building Division permit — don't assume a re-roof is purely a Building Division transaction.
• Private sewage disposal (septic) systems are flatly PROHIBITED within Town limits; building sewers must connect to the municipal system at a minimum 6-foot burial depth.
• Fence, ADU, and standalone Demolition permits are NOT modeled as separate permitTypes for Mountain Village: the fee schedule lists only a generic Demolition Permit Fee (taxes only, no distinct valuation table/timeline/documents), and the ADU/fence provisions are zoning-level Planning/CDC criteria rather than Building Division permit-type data with their own fees and process. All still require a standard Building Division permit (via Residential Building or Addition/Remodel) plus any applicable Planning Department Design Review.
• The Town's own domain (townofmountainvillage.com) and its PDF DocumentCenter are freely accessible, but the mountainvillage.municipal.codes host — which carries the live/current Municipal Code text — blocks automated retrieval (as does the equivalent telluride.municipal.codes host for neighboring Telluride); the Code must be read interactively in a browser.