Council reviews annual fee schedule: permit consolidation, attorney-fee recovery, body‑camera redaction fees and a planned airport fast charger fee

Amy Roscoe presented the proposed annual fee resolution and explained code updates and line-item changes across departments.

Roscoe said the city will be changing permit nomenclature (type 1, 2, 3) as part of a code cleanup this year and that fee schedules must temporarily retain legacy permit entries until the code can be fully revised. She said the city added an appeal deposit and administrative-interpretation fee and clarified that attorney fees incurred for project-specific legal work can be charged back to applicants. "We had consultant services to be able to charge, but we did not have attorney fees... So we're be able now to turn that back to the applicant," Roscoe said.

Roscoe said public-works fees were corrected to restore water and sewer availability charges that had been inadvertently removed, and staff- and equipment-hourly rates were updated based on average wages. She said police redaction fees for body-worn cameras were raised per minute to reflect wage increases and that the recreation department adjusted ballfield rental fees and added a raised-bed community garden fee.

Roscoe also previewed a future policy on a quick‑charge vehicle station at the airport; a fee for that service may be added when the city implements the fast charger.

Councilmember Tim Abrahamson asked whether the administrative conditional-use permit for homeless encampments covers safe-parking or similar facilities; Roscoe said the permit references chapter 20.44 and includes site-plan, parking and sanitation requirements and that the process exists though the city has not used it before.

Roscoe said staff generally limit fee changes to an annual process to avoid repeated council review, with a few exceptions this year tied to policy changes and new services.