The Philomath City Council approved new building permit fees Monday night to keep rates aligned with Benton County’s fee schedule under their intergovernmental agreement.
The council adopted a resolution on a unanimous vote that increases building, plumbing, mechanical, electrical and structural permit inspection fees effective Feb. 10.
“As a reminder, since we work with Benton County for building permits, our intergovernmental agreement just says that we adopt whatever changes they make,” Mayor Christopher McMorran noted.
The rate increases are the first since April 2021. A public hearing on the changes drew no testimony from residents.
Under the city’s agreement with Benton County for building program plan review and inspection services, Philomath cannot establish fees lower than those charged by the county. Benton County passed an ordinance increasing its fees effective Feb. 1.
“These proposed updates are intended to support the continued delivery of high-quality services, maintain consistency in fee application and promote long-term financial resilience,” Jason Johannesen, Benton County Community Development official, wrote in a Nov. 18 letter to the Benton County Board of Commissioners. “They also help ensure that fees are aligned with the effort required to provide each service.”
The county’s fee considerations included adjustments to minimum permit fees to better reflect work effort on smaller projects, standardization of minimum fees across comparable permit types, updates to fee methodologies to align with current permitting software and inflationary adjustments.
“We try to make things uniform and then also bring them in line with the state’s guidelines for how building departments are supposed to charge for the fees,” Johannesen said at Monday’s meeting. “The primary goal is to match their model fee schedule so that the computer software that we use matches up nicely with the way we charge the fees. It just makes things more clean.”
City Manager Chris Workman sent the required 45-day notice of the proposed fees to the state’s Building Codes Division in December, and received approval from the state for the changes.
“I want to make sure I give Jason 99% of the credit for that because we literally said we’re doing what Benton County did, so what they submitted is what we’re submitting,” Workman said. “A couple of little tweaks on some of our fees that we’ve got but otherwise, Jason and his staff do an awesome job. We’re very fortunate to have Benton County so close by. They do a great job for us.”
In his notice to the state, Workman explained that an analysis was carried out on each fee and adjustments were made to help ensure fees will cover the costs of work involved for each fee item. The fees are also being adjusted for inflation due to rising costs of administering the building program.
