Council changes fees

A few fee changes were the top item of a light agenda facing the Spokane Valley City Council Tuesday. Finance director Ken Thompson said fees are usually reviewed once a year.

There are two new fees for rental equipment at CenterPlace, including one for providing chair covers. The fee would be $3 per chair per event. For example, people sometimes want colored chair covers to match a wedding color scheme, said parks and recreation director Mike Stone. The city would rent the covers and pass the cost on. “It just seems to be something people have been asking for,” Stone said.

The Community Development Department has asked to lower the fee for a binding site plan alteration from $1,474 to $278. Councilman Bill Gothmann questioned the large difference in amounts. “Our practice has been cost-recovery,” he said. “What happened? Why were we charging so much?”

Acting planning manager Scott Kuhta said staff discovered that such changes were usually minor and didn’t take up much staff time. “The $1,400 was a far higher fee than we felt we could justify charging,” he said.

Several new fees are also proposed for public records requests. Copies of more than six pages would be set at 15 cents per page and a new $19 per hour fee would be charged when putting scanned or electronic records on a CD. “We have so many public records requests now,” Thompson said.

The council will consider a resolution to approve the fee changes at a future meeting.

In other business, the council voted unanimously to pass a resolution to extinguish an easement the city inherited from Spokane County when it incorporated. The easement involves two parcels owed by the Department of Health and Human Services where the Healing Lodge of the Seven Nations is located. The land is south of Eighth and just west of Fancher.

“The County was concerned about land-locking some parcels to the south,” said acting city attorney Cary Driskell. “Since then two roads have been built.”

The council also voted unanimously to approve Mayor Tom Towey’s appointment of deputy mayor Gary Schimmels to participate in the Public Transportation Improvement Conference review committee. The committee will analyze whether changes to the Spokane Transit Authority board are needed.

The council’s next meeting on Nov. 16 will be the final meeting of the month. The meeting on Nov. 23 was canceled because of the Thanksgiving holiday and the Nov. 30 meeting was cancelled because several council members will be out of town attending a conference.