SOLANA BEACH — Solana Beach residents will see increased costs for certain city services beginning in March after the City Council adopted a new user fee schedule on Wednesday.
New fees will take effect on March 17 and result from a user fee study completed over the past year. The study assessed salaries, staff time, direct costs and overhead costs related to city services such as permit processing, facility rentals, engineering, inspections and more.
Solana Beach’s last comprehensive update to user fees was in 2018. Willdan Financial Services, the city’s consultant for the fee study, said most of the city’s fees are below the cost of providing the actual service.
“The reason you want to update your fees and make sure you know what your cost of service is, is that most of these services are coming out of your General Fund, and since these are private benefit services provided for the private benefit to those requesting them, it can impact your ability to fund general services,” Tony Thraser, senior project manager at Willdan, told the City Council on Wednesday.
With the approved increases, the city will recover around $628,904, which will be subsidized by the residents using the service themselves rather than the city funds, according to a staff report.
For example, the cost for a resident to file an appeal of a city council decision will increase by around 20% from $1,805 to $2,182. Processing a development review permit for a single-family home will increase by 30%, from $5,630 to $7,309.
Costs for participation in the popular junior lifeguard program will increase slightly, from $359 to $375 for residents and $410 to $435 for non-residents.
Technology surcharges will be increased for applicants seeking plan checks, permits and entitlements to help subsidize the costs of digital record-keeping used by the city. The city currently charges 1% of all plan, permit and entitlement fees, and this will increase to 5%.
Councilmember Dave Zito shared concern about this increase, saying he would expect greater savings and efficiency across the city from using this technology. However, city staff said utilizing technology to review permits digitally saves applicants the cost of printing multiple sets of plans required for the review process.
The council discussed fees related to view assessments, which determine whether proposed projects infringe on someone’s view, at length. Currently, the fee for a view assessment is $600 for project applicants, and the same cost is charged to claimants who file a complaint about potential view blockage from a project.
City staff said view assessment fees had not been updated since 1997. To achieve greater cost recovery for the city, council members decided to increase the fee to $1,200 for applicants but keep it at $600 for claimants.
Councilmember Jewel Edson said she worried about increasing the view for claimants, as they often go up against developers with deeper pockets.
“Maybe they wouldn’t file, and they would just be unhappy for the rest of their lives as they lose their entire ocean view, or something like that,” Edson said. “Many of the claimants are people who have been here quite some time, they’re elderly, they’re on a fixed income, and I think that charging them anything beyond that is excessive for them.”
Solana Beach City Manager Alyssa Muto said the new fee schedules generally align with those of other cities, although some fees are calculated using different methodologies.
