Report to Mayor and City Council
Tuesday, June 06, 2023
Special Orders of the Day
SUBJECT:
Title
PUBLIC HEARING TO CONSIDER RESOLUTION NO. 23-091, A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CARSON TO APPROVE AND ADOPT THE AMENDED 2023 UNIFORM COMPREHENSIVE SCHEDULE OF FEES
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I. SUMMARY
Cities charge fees for various services, such as issuing permits, conducting plan reviews, and providing recreational activities like Zumba classes. These fees help receiver the costs of providing these services and ensure that the costs are borne by those who benefit from them rather than being spread across the entire tax base. Cities adopt fee schedules to establish fees for services and to ensure that the fee charged are fair, reasonable, and consistent. Fee schedules are updated periodically to reflect changes in the cost of providing services, changes in demand for services, and changes in state and federal regulations. Simply stated, setting user fees is equivalent to developing prices for established services. Unlike private organizations or businesses, making a profit in providing services to the public is not a legally allowable practice for local government. The City may set fees at a level to recover the full cost of providing the service. However, there are circumstances where the City Council can set policies in establishing fees for certain services at a level that does not recover the full costs, resulting in a General Fund subsidy.
On February 4, 2020, the City Council approved a professional services agreement with Revenue & Cost Specialists, LLC, ("RCS"), an independent financial consulting firm that specializes in government cost allocation, cost recovery, user fee study and overhead cost analysis. RCS spent numerous hours working with City staff to identify services offered by each department and calculating the full cost of identified services including labor, benefits, material, supplies, overhead expenditures, and determining subvention...
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