City council votes to update fee schedule for fire marshal services

Blaine city councilmembers recently voted 5-0 to update the “Building” portion of the city’s Unified Fee Schedule, which lists fees that are charged to property owners for fire marshal services that are provided by Whatcom County Fire District 21.

At their January 27 public meeting, councilmembers voted to approve Resolution 1788-20 updating the Unified Fee Schedule to add fees for the fire marshal services of Whatcom County Fire District 21. The agenda item was introduced by Blaine community development director Stacie Pratschner, who said that the fees enable the fire district to provide their support to the city of Blaine in its planning efforts.

“The proposed fees and redlines to the Unified Fee Schedule will permit the fire district to provide their staff support to the city of Blaine in our planning efforts, whether that’s in anticipating fire protection and emergency responses, doing construction inspections, attending pre-application meetings to let applicants know what weight roads need to be able to handle for the firetruck to go over it, where the fire hydrants are, and also review of our submitted land use and building permit applications,” said Pratschner.

She added that the city and the fire district are currently working on an interlocal agreement that will define the precise scope of the fire district’s services. “Currently, there is an interlocal agreement that is being reviewed – it is in draft form – between the city and Fire District 21 and that’s purpose is to secure and clearly define the scope of their services,” she said.

In response to a question from mayor Bonnie Onyon, Blaine building official Tim Woodard explained why an old set of fees is being crossed off on the document and replaced with a new set of fees. “The stricken items are items that were in place prior to our past agreement with a third party that provided our review services,” said Woodard. “In between that being on the fee schedule, there was a period of time that we were actually contracted, if you will, with a third party agency, Randy Snow. During that time, we were actually subject to his time and his assessment of hours to the project and things like this. The new fee schedule actually will help define and give clear guidance for what our fees are going to be ahead of time and I think will be definitely a benefit.”

In response to a further question from mayor Onyon, Woodard said that the update was necessitated in part by a switch to a new legal framework. “In a previous code cycle, which we switched from a uniform code, which was a model code nationwide to an international code, in that process there was a difference in what is permitted and what is not permitted,” said Woodard. “So the new list actually expands a lot more on what the new code requires for construction permits.”

After mayor Onyon expressed concern that the new fees that will be charged are considerably higher than the previous set of fees, Woodard said that the passage of time and heightened reviews are important factors, and that the new fees will be consistent with surrounding areas.

“I think time is the main thing,” said Woodard. “When those fees that you see crossed out on the fee schedule were applicable, under that previous code, I’m not positive how long our contract or how long our agreement with Randy Snow was applicable, but it was a significant amount of time. I’m guessing upwards of 10 years. You have that 10 years plus the last year and a half, where we haven’t had that, so that amount of time has elapsed with also the heightened review that they do. We were lucky enough to get somebody from a larger jurisdiction that has done a study on services provided and how much it actually costs, and he was able to bring a lot of that knowledge forward for us so that we could kind of assess a fee that was really poignant on what we are actually providing for services.”

Woodard added, “What I do feel inclined to offer is that those fees are consistent with our surrounding areas. So if you look at the cost-per-hour charges for the other jurisdictions such as Ferndale, Bellingham, Lynden, those cost-per-hour charges are consistent with those other local cities.”

Prior to the vote, North Whatcom Fire and Rescue division chief and fire marshal Herschel Rostov also weighed in from the audience. “The first piece of this is that the items you’re looking at at the top of the page, those are 10-year-old dollars,” he said. “So we’re comparing fees that were charged 10 years ago to what we’re charging now. As you can imagine, costs have gone up in 10 years and that’s why we’re seeing this. If you imagine how much costs have gone up in 10 years, it’s actually a reduction in a lot of the fees that are being charged, because those are 10-year-old dollars. That’s the first piece.”

Rostov continued, “The second piece is that we built a system that makes it easy for the city staff to apply those fees. That’s why they are laid out that way, in set blocks of money, so that contractors can predict ahead of time when they are putting in the applications, so that they have some level of predictability in what they are doing. And these fees are based on the exact dollar amounts that the Whatcom County Fire Marshal’s Office is charging, and the same as city of Bellingham, so the same type of work by the same type of people at the same dollar rate.”