[helmchenlord]

> Used to be large cities (New York) would pay for it, and small towns would copy it

It will always be beyond me why literally every tiny town in the US seems to think they're a special snowflake with veeery different requirements than everybody else.

There should be base codes for literally everything coming down from the federal or at maximum state level that you may be allowed to stricten in very specific points for very specific, publicly discussed reasons. The need to "develop" such a code more than once should never exist.

Everything else is not just unfair to the taxpayers who paid for these developments, it's simply unfair to your citizens. Why should they have different rights just because they happen to live in a different federal state?