City Council Meeting Date: February 6, 2024
To: Mayor and City Council
City Administrator
From: Lynette Peterson, City Clerk
Title
Adopt Changes to Fees and Charges.
Body
Action Requested:
The Northfield City Council approves the attached resolution adopting changes to fees and charges.
Summary Report:
Annual review of fees and charges is desirable to ensure that the appropriate fees are being charged for City services. In formulating updated fee amounts, each department reviews services that are provided and what the costs for those services are. Costs include staff member time as well as overhead expenses. A resolution adopting changes to fees and charges is included as attachment 1. The updated 2024 fee schedule is included as attachment 2. A redlined list of proposed changes is included as attachment 3. This attachment shows a side-by-side view of current fees and proposed fees. It is recommended that the proposed fees be effective upon adoption. The proposed changes will be incorporated into the comprehensive fee schedule once adopted.
The Finance Policy Subcommittee reviewed the updated fee amounts at their January 31, 2024 meeting. Councilors Reister and Holmes were in attendance. Councilor Sokup was not in attendance due to a communication error on staff related to Councilor Sokup’s new appointment to the committee in place of Councilor Ness. The following were items discussed by the subcommittee:
• Passports: The committee discussed the fact that the Northfield Library has been recognized by the state to start processing passports ($35) and also take passport photos ($15). This is a new service that fills a huge gap in passport processing locations in the region and should be a positive revenue stream for the library (the processing fee is set by the state, but the photo fee is set by each location and this pricing is comparable to other locations.
• Water Violation: This section was added after last summer’s drought and water restrictions were imposed. How this will be enforced (reports from the public, staff driving around and noting infractions, etc.) will depend on the year and how severe the water restrictions are, but it’s important to have this defined now so that when/if it needs to be enforced it can be.
• Increases in the Community Development fees (especially the increase in escrow on Planning/Development fees):-These increases bring Northfield in line with other comparable communities. As it’s escrow, it’s money people will get back if it’s not spent, but we wanted to make sure we had an answer to the larger increase if people were questioning it.
Council Reister and Councilor Holmes passed a motion to “recommend the 2024 City of Northfield Fee Schedule to City Council for the February 6 meeting pending input from Councilor Sokup.” Councilor Sokup was provided additional input from the discussion by Councilor Holmes and offered that if he wanted to have the committee meet and review again we could do that or move it on to the City Council. Councilor Sokup reviewed and responded on February 2nd with support of the fees and to proceed with the recommendation to the full City Council.
Additional Background
A brief explanation of proposed fee changes is noted below provided as background to the committee:
Library
• Added fees for processing of new passports and providing passport photos. The Library will start to process passports starting, tentatively, in February.
• Removed fee for proctoring exams. The library no long offers that service.
City Clerk
• Added fees related to data requests which had not previously been noted on the fee schedule. Since all of the previous data request fees were contingent on a physical output (i.e. copies) and many data requests are now returned to requesters via email or flash drive, a fee for staff time related to these requests has been added.
• Added a separate Community Events section to better align with the fees noted on the community event application.
• Revised the fees for temporary liquor licenses. In reviewing our temporary liquor license fees, we noticed we are charging quite a bit more than our comparable cities so we are lowering the fees to be more in line with other cities.
Engineering/Public Works
• Added a section for Public Works - Water and added a fee for water restriction violations fines.
Streets and Parks
• Added fees for cone and barricade rentals. These are noted in the community event application but had not previously been noted on the fee schedule.
Community Development
• Added $50 for rental license fees (type 1, type 2, type 3, and temporary).
• Removed fees for rental housing inspections and failure to renew rental license prior to expiration.
• Increased fees for late rental license renewal application and renting without a rental license.
• Made slight formatting changes to the Building Inspections and Ordinance Offenses sections.
• Separated Sign Permit and Temporary Sign Permit and increased fees.
• Updating Zoning Certificate descriptions and increased fees.
• Increased fees for select planning fees to better align them with comparable cities.
• Increased fees for select building fees to better align them with comparable cities.
Alternative Options:
The City Council may alternatively:
A. Remove from the consent agenda for separate discussion.
a. Discuss other items; or
b. Propose an amendment; or
c. Pass a motion to refer to the Council Finance Policy Subcommittee for review of additional items to come back to the City Council and recommendation back to the City Council.
Financial Impacts:
There is not a significant impact to any of the budgets by the proposed fee changes.
Tentative Timelines:
If approved, staff recommends that the fees become effective immediately.