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Report regarding a resolution to approve proposed amendments to the Master Fee Schedule for Fiscal Year 2021-2022 (Heather Enders, Management Analyst II)
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RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
Staff recommends that the City Council of South San Francisco adopt a resolution to approve proposed updates to the City of South San Francisco Fiscal Year (FY) 2021-22 Master Fee Schedule.
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BACKGROUND/DISCUSSION
Under state law, public agencies are permitted to recover the costs associated with providing certain services considered to be a "personal choice" or "user fees." All fees on the Master Fee Schedule are for services that are considered user fees.
Services provided by the City which are discretionary in nature and benefit a specific user rather than the entire community are typically funded in whole, or in part, by user fees. General Fund tax dollars then subsidize any amount not covered by user fees. Such services are provided to a specific customer for their singular benefit. Some examples of these types of services are building permits or recreation classes. By law, most user fees may not exceed the estimated reasonable cost of the service for which they are collected.
Best practices are to complete a user fee study roughly every five years. The last comprehensive user fee study adopted by Council was in FY 2016-17. On August 28, 2019, City Council passed resolution number 113-2019 approving a contract with Matrix Consulting Group to conduct a comprehensive user fee analysis. The goal of the contract was to study the actual cost of delivering fee-related City services, of which the largest component is labor costs. From there, it would allow the City to update the overall fee schedule to align with the data. However, in March 2020, South San Francisco, like so many businesses worldwide, had to adjust its business practices quickly as the pandemic gripped the country. Given the paradigm shift on City operations, as well as the number of programs ...
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