Good afternoon and welcome to the work session for June 2nd.

We're going to begin with public comments.

Citizens are now invited to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of Isaiah City Council.

And items listed on the closed session agenda.

Creative criticism presenter, if appropriate, courtesy is always welcome.

Since it's all staff, probably not the case.

With me, I have Gina Ferguson, who's a financial analyst with the City of Isalia.

Tonight we'll be presenting the proposed rates and feeds for fiscal year 2526.

So if you have any questions that we cannot answer up here, they'll be coming to the podium to answer your questions.

Take comments and direction.

There's no action required tonight.

We will return on June 16th to provide answers to any questions that arise tonight and for the for the public hearing.

The purpose of the of our work annually to maintain the fees is to encourage the appropriate use of service to ensure fees are limited to the costs of service, and with the use of the CPI adjustments to help departments and capital projects cover costs.

There's a few reasons why we change our fees, such as requirements set by ordinance for business tax or impact fees.

Some of our fees are related to city contracts, so as those fees for the contract change, we need to update our RITs and fees document.

And by reviewing fees annually, we're able to ensure that we align the rates correctly to the cost of service.

This year you'll actually see some fees decreasing because of this process.

There are three committees and commissions that meet to review their respective fees, and the citizens advisory committee reviews all of the fees in the proposed document.

All these committees and commissions did meet prior to this meeting, and they have all recommended that council approve these fees as presented.

We use three different indexes to provide the inflationary rates.

The California consumer price index is what's used for a majority of the fees.

This year that calculates out to 3.06%.

Impact fees are required by ordinance to use the engineering news record construction cost index.

And this year that is 1.68%.

And then business tax again stated in their ordinance is required to use a three-year average of the United States consumer price index.

Tonight we'll be reviewing all five types of fees.

We're only going to discuss the ones that fit these categories.

Any that are increased simply equivalent to the approved indices are not presented tonight, but they are shown in the document that you were given, and they are highlighted to show that there's an increase.

So starting with the proposed new fees, under general government and finance, the first fee proposed is a fee for it a removal or a change to an item on the tax roll.

The tax roll process is used by several city departments, and it's a lengthy process.

This fee will cover costs that are charged by Tilarie County and city staff time.

The second is a pass-through fee for online payments made through the different payment portals that are offered in different city departments.

These fees are charged by the payment processors and are passed directly to the customer.

This is listed as an actual cost because the fees vary, but they're typically between two and a half and three percent.

And in a direct response to the feedback at those forums, they would like to introduce a fee for illegal breeding.

This fee would be applicable to anyone who has a litter that does not hold a breeder's permit or to permitted breeders that have more than the allotted number of litters.

In deciding what this fee should be, they did an area study and they decided that it would be best to go with the same fee that the county of Tilary and that the county of Fresno are using.

And convention center staff would like to propose a fee for elevating, we call it piano lifting, meaning elevating it up to a platform or a stage.

The inner workings of a piano, as we all know, are sensitive and complicated, and the size of the piano can often propose a risk to our staff.

So this fee would cover the cost of hiring a professional to do that movement.

This is covering our costs, right?

We're not making any money.

No, we're not making any money just to pass through.

Um wastewater would like to add a fee.

On occasion, our wastewater staff is needed to clean up situations in town, whether it's an overflowing grease trap at a restaurant or a spill into a catch basin.

Our crews and our equipment are what's best qualified to do those cleanups within our own systems.

Um this fee would be calculated on a per incident basis and would use the direct and indirect rates that are approved annually for the city and the published Caltrans rates for the equipment.

The next several fees are fees that are increasing above the allowed CPI.

As mentioned with the new fees, the tax rule process is used by several departments to help cover delinquencies or even agreed upon services like sewer connections.

It's a very detailed process, very timely, and this fee would allow us to recover the cost that we receive from the county for placing an item on the tax roll plus some additional city staff time.

Question on that.

So it's only if it's placed on the tax roll, we remove it, then they're not charge that fee, correct?

We're proposing that as a new fee.

But because that's a process too, and there's also a charge.

There's a charge from the county for both processes.

Okay.

So we'd like to recover that.

Okay.

The next fee for several years, engineering has rounded down this pavement maintenance fee for cash handling purposes.

A lot of our departments will do that.