The Dalles City Council unanimously adopted changes in police, building department and utility hookup fees at its May council meeting.
The proposals were first presented to the council on March 25, and public testimony was taken at that time.
The annual cost of burglary and robbery alarm permits issued by The Dalles Police Department were increased from $5 to $20. The fee increase is based on charges imposed by other law enforcement agencies, said City Attorney Gene Parker.
A fixed fee of $2,110 for new water connections and $1,903 for new sewer connections was also approved.
Councilor Russ Brown questioned the fairness of a single, set fee for new connections. “Right now, the fee is based on actual cost. Sometimes (adding new) service is easy, sometimes it takes more time. Charging for time and materials, you can’t get any more fair than that. Otherwise, easy jobs subsidize hard ones,” he said. For example, a simple connection for one home, where digging is easy, is far cheaper to accomplish than one in solid rock, for example.
Dave Anderson, director for the public works department, said the data showed average cost to be very close to the proposed fee. “I was surprised,” he said. “Yes, there are the outliers, but the average was really close to the proposed fee.”
Anderson noted most communities used a flat or fixed fee. The previous process required an estimate on each connection, prepaid by the applicant. “We are never right on with the estimate,” he said. “We owe them, or they owe us.” That created additional paperwork, and sometimes frustration for the applicant when an estimate was too low.
The flat fee will take less staff time, with no estimate required prior to beginning work, and lets applicants plan better. “They know exactly what it is going to cost right at the start,” he said.
He added that the new fees, calculated from local data, were very close to those of other cities.
The Community Planning Department also revised existing fees and established new ones. Their proposed fee schedule adjusted 35 permit fees, eight document fees and 14 administrative fees.
In addition to fee increases, the proposal changes how applications requiring site plan review, with visits by city staff, are paid for. Previously, if a developer chooses not to pursue a project after a site visit has been made the city was not recompensed for the staff time expended on the proposal. The new fee schedule requires a 50 percent down payment prior to the site visit.
Twelve permitting actions require a site visit, listed here with old and new fees: Comprehensive plan amendment, $450 to $590; comprehensive plan/zone change, $775 to $1,015; conditional use permit, $420 to $550; major partition, $380 to $500; minor partition, $250 to $330; mobile home park, $450 to $590; planned unit development, $480 to $630; site plan review, $335 to $440; subdivision, $480 to $630; street vacation, $380 to $500; variance, $380 to $500, and zone change, $450 to $570.
The proposal also calls for a new $1,000 fee for “exclusive use agreements” entered into with developers, for which there is no current charge. The agreements require both legal and planning staff time to prepare, and the new fee was based on an estimate of that time.
“Some of these increases are in the range of 30 percent, and there are not any reasons given,” said Councilor Rod Runyon, who with Councilor Russ Brown asked for clarification as to what fees were or were not being raised.
The new fee schedules, passed unanimously by the council, became effective May 13.
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