The proposed fees are set to go before City Council in November for approval.
What happened
At an Oct. 13 meeting, Plano City Council members received an update from city officials on proposed additional fees on building inspections, zoning changes and other planning and building services.
The fees would be part of the city’s ongoing cost recovery efforts, which began in March. Departments developed proposed cost recovery targets and fee replacements in September, ahead of council’s planned review of potential fee adjustments in November.
City Manager Mark Israelson said the cost recovery efforts have been part of Plano’s fiscal roadmap project that city officials have been working on for the last few years.
“The cost recovery model is a framework for the city to recoup costs for programs and services that do charge fees,” Deputy City Manager Shelli Siemer added.
Plano’s Planning, Engineering and Building Inspections departments are reviewing their current fees to determine what adjustments should be made. The goal is to achieve 80% cost recovery for these three departments by fiscal year 2027-28, Siemer said.
The level of cost recovery is dependent on the balance of tax and fee support, according to city documents.
Siemer said the fee adjustments will also consider market comparisons with benchmark cities such as Arlington and Denton, which are similar to Plano in size and growth, as well as neighboring cities to Plano.
What it means
Currently, the building inspections department is the closest to the city’s cost recovery goal at 84.4%. The engineering and planning departments are currently seeing just over 20% cost recovery, according to city documents.
Additionally, the department currently does not charge for submitting or resubmitting engineering plans for review.
“This is a big shift for us,” Day said. “It’s still substantially less than our benchmark cities, so we’re not coming close to meeting that 80% [cost recovery] ultimate objective, but again, we’re still trying to stay within a reasonable realm of not too far ahead of our benchmark cities.”
Day said several fees do include public notice fees, which were not factored into the examples.
Council member Rick Horne said he is worried about the potential impact of the increased fees on small developers.
“The large developers ... know the cost of doing business,” Horne said. “When we have the small businesses that are trying to develop small parcels of land, I want to make sure we’re fair to them ... I’m concerned that there may be some unevenness here ... or an unnecessary burden on a small business.”
Isarelson said that the cost to the city for the hours and materials city staff spend does not change regardless of whether it is a small or large developer.
“Those costs to the city are the same,” Israelson said. “While I understand that their economics may be slightly different, the cost borne to actually produce that may not be different from the city perspective ... We do understand a little bit of the rate shock as well, but we think that consistency is extremely important as we move from project to project.”
Looking ahead
Proposed fee adjustments are set to go before City Council members at their Nov. 10 meeting. If approved, the new fees would take effect in January.
