City officials discuss updating city fire code, preliminary 2026 Budget
The Mount Pleasant City Commission discusses its proposed 2026 budget during the regular meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (CM Life | Blace Carpenter)
The Mount Pleasant City Commission and other city officials spent a of portion of their meeting on Tuesday night discussing how adopting the 2021 International Fire Code (IFC) would impact the city.
Currently, the city is operating under the 2012 International Fire Code, which is outdated compared to the other codes and regulations the city has implemented according to Mount Pleasant Fire Chief Doug Lobsinger.
“(If we) stay under (2012 IFC), we can get along, but we’re going to have some difficulties with that,” said Lobsinger. “There are areas that we do not have fire code for things that exist today, such as agricultural grow processing ... any type of battery storage.”
Lobsinger wrote a letter to the commissioners earlier this month explaining the three main retroactive changes that the 2021 IFC has:
- Unsprinklered high-rise buildings must either install an automatic sprinkler system or meet specific egress and fire alarm requirements.
- Retrofitting a fire alarm system in existing hotels and motels has been reformatted, and a new requirement has been added for retrofitting sprinklered single-story hotels and motels.
- Updating carbon monoxide detection in existing buildings.
Bob Wheeler, chairman of the Mount Pleasant Housing Committee, said that he is not against the updated safety precautions, but that the cost of a full sprinkler retrofit would be challenging.
“We have no objection to the ordinance; we object to the retroactive (changes),” Wheeler said.
Lobsinger said the commissioners have three options: implement the entire fire code, implement the fire code with an exemption of the high-rise sprinkler retrofit or stay under the 2012 IFC.
Mayor Boomer Wingard and Commissioner Grace Rollins were not in attendance for the meeting, so the commissioners decided to hold off on any further discussions.
The preliminary 2026 Budget
The city is looking to adopt its 2026 budget by December and held a work session during its meeting on Tuesday.
Some of the main points commissioners and other city officials discussed were:
- Adopting a 50% recovery cost for non-residents for programs from the Parks and Recreation
- Implementing fees for the city’s fields and courts
- Gradually increasing Mount Pleasant’s Summer Partners Empowering All Kids (PEAK) Program over the next few years
- Utilizing the unassigned budget to contribute to the Municipal Employees' Retirement System (MERS), childcare stabilization and accounting and software upgrades
The board will hold a public hearing for the budget on Nov. 10 to receive feedback on the budget.
