State law authorizes the City to adopt and implement fees, rates, and charges for municipal services up to the estimated reasonable cost of providing such services.  The City Council has previously approved fees and charges for various City services.  In 1994, the City Council adopted a Master Fee Schedule, which combined the City’s fees for various services into one document.

User fees and charges are payments for voluntarily purchased, publicly provided services that benefit specific individuals, rather than the general public.  Sound financial management principles encourage the full recovery of the costs for providing these services, as it protects the general public’s best interest.  Since the fees and charges are to be established based on actual costs, it is necessary to review the fees on a regular basis to ensure full cost recovery.

In a recent review, staff identified several fees that require update to properly reflect the current costs for both labor and materials to ensure fairness. While adjusting these fees, the City also strives to benchmark with surrounding Orange County cities and ensure our fees are not only reasonable, but also comparable.

Staff is proposing to adjust the following fees:

Public Works Class “B” Permits

The Class "B" Permit fees are established to recover the City’s costs for inspections, plan checks, and staff time for certain development projects.  Historically the City has contracted consultants to provide necessary services for permitting and inspections. Current fees are established based on previous consultant agreements and fee rates. Contractual fees have increased and staff is proposing to amend the existing fee schedule to reflect the current fee rates under the new consultant agreements for professional inspection and plan check services to achieve full cost recovery.

Under the current contract, the rates for the Class “B” permit related services are:

Police Services

The current fee for producing copies of reports/records was established many years ago. Cost of labor, materials and postage has gone up significantly over the years, the current fee of $0.10 per page is no longer sufficient to cover the cost of staff producing them.  Additionally, it creates more administrative burden to charge per page, as each invoice has to be calculated based on the number of pages produced.  Staff from the Police Department had carefully reviewed and calculated the cost of producing these records and report over the past couple of years, and proposed to change the fee to a standard $20.00 per report, based on average labor and material involved in producing such report.  The proposed fee is minimal comparing to other law enforcement agencies charge, but improves the City’s ability to recover our cost and reduces the related administrative burden.

The current fee schedule does not have a false alarm fee established for unpermitted or expired alarm permits. The Police Department is proposing to add such fees at the same rate as the existing permitted alarms, without providing the first two courtesy false alarm response charges.  False alarms are costly for our Police personnel, and when responding to these false alarms, available resources are taken away from responding to real emergency situations.  By assessing a minimum fee, it encourages business and home owners to be more responsible with the maintenance of their alarms, and reduces the waste of our valuable law enforcement resources.

The Police Department is proposing to remove the section of “Cost Reimbursement for Jail Inmate Booking” under the Police Services Section of the current fee schedule.  California Assembly Bill 1869 Criminal Fees took effect on July 1, 2021, which eliminated a total of 23 fees, including the “arrest and booking city jail” fees.  Collection of these fees were discontinued with the passage of AB 1869.  As such, the entire section of “Cost Reimbursement for Jail Inmate Booking” is to be removed from the current fee schedule. 

Community Services

The Community Services Department has completed a comprehensive fee study in the Spring of 2023.  As a result, staff restructured the entire Community Services fee schedule.  Classifications are standardized across all facilities, and rates are adjusted based on actual costs and survey results of other Orange County cities.  A comparison of current and proposed fees are is demonstrated on Schedule A attached, and a revised fee schedule for Community Services fees is shown on Schedule B.

A public hearing is required for amending user fees, and a notice was published on July 12, 2023 and again on July 19, 2023, in accordance with Government Code Section 6062(a).  The proposed user fee changes and documentation were made available for public review at the City Clerk’s office.  Once approved, the new fees will become effective 60 days after the adoption of the attached resolution.

It is estimated that the proposed fees will better achieve cost recovery in relations to providing the perspective services and facility uses.

It is recommended that the City Council:

•  Conduct a public hearing; and
•  Adopt the attached Resolution amending certain user fees.