Fruitland board dismisses fee blueprint
By JESSICA KELLER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 10:41 AM PST
FRUITLAND — After a discussion that spanned months, the Fruitland City Council agreed to discard an idea to assess any fees for fire and life safety code reviews at its regular meeting Monday night.
At the council’s first February meeting, two council members, Ken Bishop and Ed Pierson, were undecided on the issue, given the state of the economy and the slowdown of commercial and industrial building plans coming before the city.
The two men wondered aloud whether now was the right time to assess a 20 percent fee out of building permit costs for fire and life safety reviews.
At Monday’s meeting, the council agreed to strike the language from the proposed ordinance, addressing commercial and industrial construction plan reviews and fire and life safety reviews, that would have allowed the city’s building official to charge a 20 percent fee of the building permit for any fire and life safety plan review.
After some more discussion, Bishop said he still felt now was not the right time to make developers pay more.
“In light of the economic time that we have, and our own expanded interest in economic development, I don’t believe it’s wise to put a 20 percent increase on building permits” for fire and life safety reviews, he said.
“The more I thought about it, the less inclined I was to be in favor of it,” Bishop added.
The council, however, did not scrap the ordinance, all together, determining the city would move ahead with the ordinance to establish both a plan review for commercial and industrial construction and fire and life safety. In place of the language installing the fee, the ordinance will be amended to say there won't be any fees for a fire and life safety review.
Bishop said, if a big commercial or industrial project came into Fruitland that required more time to complete by the city’s building inspector and was more detailed in scope, he might feel differently, but he didn't want to impose additional cost onto the developer of an $100,000 office building, for example, stating it was less complicated than a bigger project.
Fruitland Building Inspector Dwayne Holloway disagreed with that assessment, however.
“All commercials are complicated,” he said. “I don’t care what it is.”
Council member Vicky Cox suggested the council might reduce the proposed increase from 20 percent, but the council all agreed it could amend the ordinance at a later time, once interest picks up in development again and Holloway was doing a greater number of commercial and industrial development reviews, to include a review fee for fire and life safety.
In other business, the Fruitland Council made minor changes to a proposed economic development survey city officials would like Fruitland area residents to fill out to gauge their feelings on what is important for city growth.
The second function of the survey would be to use those results as a marketing tool for prospective developers later.
Fruitland City Manager Rick Watkins said he would see how best the survey could be formatted to make it easier for mail distribution and come back to the council with a cost.
At that time, the council will decide how to proceed with the mailings and set a deadline for the surveys.
