Menlo Park residents looking to take out a development permit or appeal a planning department decision will see steep increases in fees for those services, in light of a City Council decision to approve staff recommendations for an updated fee schedule for planning services at its Nov. 25 meeting.
Under the new schedule, the city will recover an estimated 99 percent of its costs for planning services that have fees associated with them, according to Community Development Director Arlinda Heineck — up from the current level of 51 percent.
The new fee schedule for city services across the board is expected to yield about $1 million more in annual revenue for the city, according to Financial Director Carol Augustine — nearly $600,000 of which will come from the higher planning service fees alone.
Ms. Heineck attributed much of the increase to a new rubric the planning department has adopted to more accurately calculate fees, incorporating more of the “overhead.” As a result, she estimates that hourly billing rates for staff time on private development projects will increase by 16 to 20 percent. The value of deposits required for a number of planning services increased sharply in order to better reflect the actual cost of those services, Ms. Heineck said.
A number of flat fees have also jumped. Residents looking to appeal a decision by either planning staff or the Planning Commission will pay $110, up from the current $15.
The cost to have the city conduct property research will double, from $100 per hour to $200. The legal fee to write deed restrictions into a property’s title will jump to $950, from the current $200. The city will also charge $400 for every zoning compliance letter it sends, up from $150, and $6,000 to prepare a tentative subdivision map, up from $1,650.
The staff report mistakenly pegged the new cost recovery estimate for planning services at 63 percent, a fact that also resulted in a miscalculation of the overall revenue to the city. Ms. Augustine corrected the error at the Nov. 25 council meeting.
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