The Loxahatchee Groves Town Council on Tuesday, Dec. 7 passed a resolution that compiled and amended the fee schedules for the town.
Assistant Town Manager Francine Ramaglia said the resolution is the result of a collaboration between Town Attorney Elizabeth Lenihan and Safebuilt, which was recently hired by the town to provide code enforcement and inspection services.
“A big part of their services is bringing fees back to the town,” Ramaglia said. “What we tried to do… was to keep things as close as possible to what people were already paying.”
She said the resolution provides a new section to the code of ordinances and picks up items from Palm Beach County, which previously provided inspection services for the town. The town has had fee schedules in place since it incorporated in 2006.
“The last time the fee schedule has been looked at was in 2018,” Ramaglia said. “The fees were all over the place. Some were in resolutions… [and] they were on applications that we had been using for a number of years, but they weren’t all in one spot. What we tried to do with this particular resolution was include all the services that we’re bringing in house from the county through the Safebuilt contract.”
The resolution also attempts to bring together in one place all the different kinds of fees the town is currently charging.
“There are still a few other fees that we have to bring in and incorporate here, but those are some things that we’re still working on, like, for instance nuisance abatement,” Ramaglia said. “Nuisance abatement has its own separate series of ordinances.”
She suggested that it is a good idea to be able to authorize the town manager to make adjustments as the town starts administering the fees. Some of the previous fees were a bit unusual.
“There were a number of fees that were $1,017,” she said. “We changed those to $1,000. There were fees that were $5,085. We changed those to $5,100. We didn’t know where those odd dollars came from, so we rounded those all off for implementation of the new system.”
Ramaglia added that the method of paying the town’s planning consultant Jim Fleischmann has been changed. Zoning confirmations had been a flat fee of $103 but take several hours to complete.
“For equity purposes, when we knew he was not charging us for the couple of hours that he was spending, we’ve made adjustments from whatever the fee was to $250, which is two hours of Mr. Fleischmann’s time.”
Lenihan said two hours is the minimum amount of time required to perform those types of activities on behalf of the town.
Ramaglia added that the resolution adds a $125 site visit fee for land clearing.
“Right now, when we find land clearing after the fact, they have to come in with surveys and arborist reports and estimates of what the cost was of the trees that they took down without coming in to get a permit or exemption,” she said. “They are paying many times more than the $125, so this is an incentive and courtesy to try and get people to come in before they clear their trees.”
Changes in state law regarding home-based businesses affected the town when it comes to business tax receipts, she said.
“A lot of additional work was added because now we have to go through a process for compliance with the state. That compliance review triggers two more compliance reviews,” Ramaglia said. “One is relative to the residential enterprise because once you start asking the question for home-based businesses, those answers trigger, ‘Maybe you’re a residential enterprise?’ That goes through the Planning & Zoning Committee and then to the council.”
Additionally, she said there are nonconforming businesses to deal with.
“We found that we have quite a bit of nonconforming businesses, and we don’t have categories to put them in,” Ramaglia said, adding that staff is working on adding categories for such businesses.
The resolution adds a rate of $550 per hour for plan review meetings.
“For plan review meetings, we’ve added a pre-application meeting,” she said. “The rate we’ve added is $550 an hour. That is the rate that Safebuilt uses.”
She explained that pre-application meetings include attendance by the town manager, assistant town manager, the town engineer, town attorney and planner.
“This is a fraction of what that the cost is, but by doing this, we save a world of trouble relative to trying to get folks into compliance,” Ramaglia said.
Councilwoman Phillis Maniglia made a motion to approve the resolution, which carried 5-0.
