Eastside Fire and Rescue proposes higher permit fees; Sammamish staff to forward fees as pass-through

Eastside Fire and Rescue presented proposed changes to its fire permit fee structure to the Sammamish City Council on Oct. 21, asking the council to support updating the city's fee schedule and to pass through collected permit revenues to the fire agency.

Vicky Carlson, finance director for Eastside Fire and Rescue, and Fire Marshal Jeremy Hicks told council the agency reviewed permit analytics for roughly 2,600 plan reviews a year and found the current fees underrecover the time and cost associated with plan review, inspections and specialized review work. "We do roughly 2,600 permits a year, plan reviews. ... The cost recovery for the development within the cities is not fully covering the cost of providing these services," Hicks said.

Hicks described a methodology that ties fire plan‑review fees to the building plan review effort: for larger commercial projects, Eastside proposes a building plan review fee equal to roughly 15% of the city building plan review fee, reflecting time on task for fire review, pre‑construction coordination and follow‑up inspections. Using sample projects, the agency showed proposed fee increases that would raise review fees for a $10.4 million commercial tenant improvement project from roughly $3,000 to about $9,500 (a net difference of about $6,200) and raise combined fees for a larger single‑family residence example by several hundred dollars compared with current amounts presented to the council.

Hicks and Carlson said the increase results from updated analytics on staff hours spent on complex plan reviews, additional review cycles, and new regulatory complexity (including changes tied to recent state legislation). They said the department has not raised staffing in the fire marshal's office since 1999 despite growth, and the board requested a pass‑through approach to better align revenues with workload and recover costs for partner jurisdictions.

Council members asked about the scale and timing of the impact. Carlson said the city historically averaged less than $100,000 per year in fire permit revenue because Sammamish is primarily residential; the proposed changes would change how that revenue flows. "At this point, it would come to us and we would pass it immediately to the fire department," Carlson said. She and Hicks said the fee schedule update would return to council for formal adoption next month as part of the city's fees and charges update, and a related budget amendment would be presented to route revenues and adjust expenditures to match the pass‑through.

Deputy Mayor Amy Lam asked why the commercial plan review fee increased sharply for the sample commercial project; Hicks said the existing fees likely reflected historical or COLA adjustments rather than a time‑on‑task study. "When we started looking at those numbers and going for the time on task of what we're actually doing ... that's the methodology we're using," Hicks said, describing the 15% derivation from the building plan review workload.

Council members expressed general support for aligning fees with actual workload and for cost containment but asked staff to return with the formal fee schedule and the ordinance or resolution necessary to implement pass‑through collection and a related budget amendment. No final ordinance was adopted at the meeting.