PORT ANGELES — The fee schedule for the Clallam County Department of Community Development has been changed.
The Clallam County commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a resolution to adjust the fee schedule.
“As we discussed back on Dec. 8, we have before you changes to the fee schedule ordinance for the DCD affecting planning division fees and building division fees,” said Bruce Emery, the county’s director of Community Development. “Part of this update we are required under our ordinance to update annually to reflect CPIU (Consumer Price Index-U) changes and automatic changes to the International Building Code calculation tables.”
A few changes made were to address funding shortfalls, he said.
“One change was a tech fee to help assist the GIS department because of the extensive work that they have to do on an ongoing basis to maintain the GIS system,” Emery said. “When we make changes to it, for example, subdivisions, you know, when you create new parcels or affect existing parcels, someone has to go in and manually change the database and the map layer to reflect those changes and so on.”
Another change was to raise the administrative fee the department charges for helping people get through the process, he said.
“In follow-up to our discussion, though, it was recognized, obviously, that you don’t want to throw too much at it, you want to be careful about expecting too much out of the public and to see if we can be reasonable so that we don’t end up creating a disincentive or adding harm to things like affordable housing and economic development and so forth,” Emery said.
A memo from Emery to the commissioners, included in the agenda packet, details the administrative fee of $40 per permit.
“This fee was proposed, in part, on the fact that four of five comparable county jurisdictions reviewed included an administrative fee, and although the county has transitioned to an online permit submittal portal, significant staff time is required to assist many customers working through the permit submittal process,” the memo stated. “However, in reviewing the overall revenue from proposed changes and concerns expressed regarding multiple increases, the fee could be adjusted to $10 per permit.”
Another change Emery mentioned is to the building fee schedule.
“We do propose amending the building fee schedule to reduce the minimum deferred submittal fee, which was originally for an hour’s worth of work, reduce it down to a half hour, and that would actually create a reduction of about $4,800 in the projected annual revenue,” Emery said.
The full agenda item, including the entire fee schedule, can be viewed at tinyurl.com/PDN-Agenda-DCD-Fees.
“Just for the public, this is part of our new, somewhat new, strategy of taking a look at our fee schedules every year, rather than letting them sit for a number of years and then having large jumps, which are difficult for the development community to adjust to,” commissioner Mike French said. “So our strategy is to try to do very small incremental adjustments yearly, rather than give a big, huge bump to building permits every five or 10 years, which is kind of what I think was the practice in the past.”
Commissioners approved the resolution to amend the fee schedule 2-0 with commissioner Randy Johnson absent.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
