HomeMy WebLinkAboutCouncil Fees MemoCITY OF MERIDIAN PLANNING AND ZONING DEPARTMENT
660 E. WATERTOWER ROAD
MERIDIAN, ID 83642
M E M O R A N D U M
TO: MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS
FROM: ANNA BORCHERS POWELL, AICP
PLANNING DIRECTOR
DATE: JANUARY 20, 2022
RE: SILVERSTONE PLANNED DEVELOPMENT FEES
You asked me take a look at our fee structure to determine if it needed to be amended. If
one just logically considers the fee structure, it would appear that the “$.02 per square
foot charge” associated with planned developments is not reasonable. A planned
development with a lot of building area is not necessarily more difficult to process. I
would propose, instead, that the fee would increase in relationship to the acreage of the
property (similar to fee structure for a rezone and/or annexation). I suggest the following
changes:
Conceptual PD: $480.00 + $1.00/residential unit + $15/acrecommercial and/or industrial
areas
Detailed PD: see standard conditional use fees
With regard to the base fees that we charge, I did some quick analyses of the number of
files we take in and the fees we collect.
The first analysis shows the fees we have collected to date for our applications in 2003. (I
removed final plats, time extensions, variances, and certificates of zoning compliance.)
The average fee collected is $1,959. Please note that the fees for a single project are
generally combined, i.e., the fees for a project that involves an annexation/ rezone,
preliminary plat, and planned development are collected as a single line-item in the
accounting records. This makes it difficult to do a detailed analysis, but I did take a stab
at it, as shown on the second analysis.
The second analysis shows the number of applications we have taken in this year. The
“weighted factor” is just a quick reflection of how difficult various types of files tend to be.
For example, a generic preliminary plat takes roughly twice the effort as a generic
variance permit. I then figured out what the average fee per application would need to be
to cover personnel, operating, and capital outlay costs. (The strategic plans calls for 25%
of our time to be devoted to long-range planning, so I subtracted this amount from the
total costs.) Our target fee per planned development application would be $2,638. I ran a
similar analysis with just the personnel costs. The target fee in that situation would be
$1,557.