Pinstripe Sniper wrote:
Geez! So I see that my town requires a building permit to replace a
water heater in a non-rental residential property (owner occupied)

Does your government entity require this as well?

The local joke is that I live in the city that
requires a building permit to drive a nail.

Building permits required to install a ceiling
fan.

The good news is that anyone can do the work. I
drew up plans, got them approved and installed a
50 ampere subpanel in the garage. The city came
out and inspected and signed it off.

Sounds kind of commie to me. Geez, what if I replace my stove or get
a new gas clothes dryer? I guess this must be so because of
earthquake straps becoming a requirement in more locations?

Oh yeah, there's also a law here that vision prescriptions older than
2 years cannot be filled by local opticians.

That law was a compromise between the optometrists
and the people. The people wanted a law requiring
the optometrists to provide written prescriptions
on request. The optometrists didn't want to. The
compromise was the 2 year rule.