November 17th, 2025.

We have a lengthy agenda with about uh 16 items and then an executive session for a discussion of matters concerning the medical financial credit or employment history of a particular person, persons or corporation or matters leading to the appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal, or removal of a particular person, persons, or corporations.

At this time, I'll turn it over to our city manager.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Good evening.

We do have a busy agenda for you tonight.

We're gonna start off with uh looking at uh some answers to some questions that were brought up about the consolidated fee schedule.

So I'm gonna share the screen.

And uh I think we we did take this opportunity to do a more thorough review.

This is a 29-page uh document, and so uh Carol brought back some more um changes after a deeper dive into some of the particulars uh that she deals with in her department having to do with site plans.

But we wanted to start off with the building permit renewal fee comparison, and so we've got we brought back some more information about how that works for most municipalities.

So what we found was that so we have a um Carol, would you go?

Yeah, that would be great, thank you.

So in uh when we we looked at Yorktown, the town of Austening, the village of Osing, Beacon, and Cortland, uh to get some uh information about how they renew a building permit after 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months.

And uh Yorktown does have a 250 dollar or 50 percent of the original fee, whichever is less after 12 months.

After 24 months, they have 200, they have the same fee again, and after 36 months, they have a request for a total of the first and the second renewal fee, so a total of five hundred dollars or fifty percent of the original fee, whichever is less, and I guess that would be a hundred percent of the original fee, whichever is less, and or the uh and the full original amount.

So they actually do a hundred plus percent after 36 months penalty.

Um the town of Asening just has a flat 50 percent of original fee after 12 months with no additional information about whether or not they um make any changes afterwards, and the village does not state its fee, but I uh we did try to find out more information about that, and we will still look for that.

I do believe that there is some legislated fee that they might have in their uh either in a resolution or in uh practice or in their legislation.

Beacon does $35 after 12 months uh and there's no extensions after that, and uh one year with no extensions.

And what that means is that they're saying if you're if you go past the last date, you just have to apply again.

So what they're really telling you is they have a 100% fee.

However, it would be with any changes in the fee schedule, those would be they would be responsible for those as well.

Courtland does 200 after 12 months, 200 plus 50 percent of the original fee not to exceed 2,000 uh for uh after 24 months and every six months thereafter uh for residential and then for commercial uh they do the same thing and all permits with no activity in the first 12 months, they ask for 100% of the original permit fee.

And that really gets to the core of why building departments want to have this kind of uh a fee structure because it does protect the city from people who make no effort to move their project forward so that the city isn't left with um people who uh are are just not working on what they said that they were gonna work on.

So those are the um examples that we have the city is recommending that uh that we somehow legislate this um this need to to incentivize uh a a permit holder to complete their job.

And so uh we also wanna note that we have legislated discretion in in the building department to waive the fee for extraordinary circumstances, and that is something that we have not uh used often.

Um and we want to be careful about the way we use that, but we could also look at actually listing the reasons for that discretion and and what kinds of things that could be used for and using it more often.

We're still recommending that uh there be a line in the sand at some point, and so we recommend renewal fees be five percent over twelve months with a max of a hundred and fifty for residential and a thousand for commercial, twenty-five percent over twenty-four months with a max of two fifty for residential and five thousand for commercial and no further renewals, which would require a new application at one hundred percent of the fee after twenty-four months.

Uh so this is something that we know there's times to discuss this.

That's why we brought the fee schedule forward so early because we know that there's often something that we need to look at.

I know that I would like to see uh a potential three year extension uh on our books.

Um it's getting harder to get work done these days with delays in materials and contractors, um and I and I hate using money to penalize a project that is in process.

So I'd really like this to take a look at adding a third year option.

Um I think in my ideal situation, I'd like to see I I I think the f the five percent one fifty one thousand makes sense for the first year.

I think the second year, I think five thousand is too much.

I think for the for the commercial we should go to twenty five hundred, so it should be two fifty and twenty-five hundred.

And then following that sort of same line at 36, maybe we go to fifty percent five hundred five thousand.

Any other comments?

Uh the town, like they they they do it 250 or 50 percent.

How so let's say so on some of these commercial uh applications, you might have a fifty thousand dollar uh fee initially.

And so what that means is that they would have a 250 dollar late fee.

So that's the cap.

That's the cap.

That's how it works for Yorktown.

So it's more 50% of the original fee.

Whichever is less.

Whichever is less.

So they go to the 250.

That would be 250.

And then after in Yorktown after 36 months, they charge the $50,000 plus um the total of the first and second renewal fee on top of that.

It's it's too much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I do think that there I would still um ask the council to consider a fourth year, maybe or some outer limit just to make sure that if you have a property that is absolutely not making any real effort that there be some sort of uh way of holding them accountable to get the work done.

Yeah, I just think we have to just be careful with extending, extending, extending, because the whole point of having this conversation is to, you know, um deter, you know, people from just sitting on projects.

Encourage them to do it.

Or encourage them, you know, but um again, I there's just things that I see in the city that you know I'm not gonna say that, but you know, just I think if those deals were in other hands, they probably would have moved the quicker.

But um, and I can't speak to why the projects are taking so long, but some of these things are like years, and they're just like eyesaws in the downtown, and I have you know, we have no idea really what's going on.