Council approves FY2026 fee schedule, adds new records and sanitation charges

The Moscow City Council on Aug. 4 adopted the city's FY2026 fee resolution after a required public hearing that covered routine fee adjustments and a handful of new charges tied to recent state law changes and actual service costs.

Finance staff explained that Idaho's House Bill 253 changed the statewide standard for public-records requests from out-of-state requesters and allowed local governments to charge the full cost of production for non-resident or out-of-state requests. Bill Beltknap described that change and staff's recommended updates to the city's fee schedule to recover true costs for those requests.

Key fee changes

- Public records: new fee framework for out-of-state requesters in response to House Bill 253; staff proposed charges to recover true production costs and a uniform duplicate-charge schedule (example: up to 20 GB for $30 with $5 increments per additional 20 GB for duplicates). - Sanitation and transfer-station: most tipping fees were increased (municipal solid waste tipping, mixed-materials, inert demolition), and tire disposal per ton increased substantially (from $236/ton to $325/ton) to reflect market disposal costs. Mechanical-container (dumpster)…