I think this is this is a result of being overworked or so they would have you believe. They did take in about 3 that day and my 326 square foot put them over the top. (I was permit #36 in mid February).
The most charitable thing I can say is we have probably made the Florida Building Code so complex that the building officials don't trust their people to review the permit. They want an engineer to sign everything. The engineer was baffled too. He told me what they want us to build so far exceeds what the real engineering numbers say for any possible load condition that he is just reading off a chart and writing it down.
