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Finance director reports fee-schedule updates: card-processing costs down, public‑safety fee generating revenue
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Summary
Milwaukie finance staff told council that a 3% payment-card processing fee and an increase in auto‑draft accounts have reduced card fees and that a December public-safety fee has produced about $384,000 in five months; council reviewed other fee changes (tree preservation, right-of-way licenses, municipal court dismissals) and directed follow-ups on several items.
Finance staff presented the draft 2027–2028 fee schedule after the water-rate discussion, reporting early results from recent changes and proposing modest adjustments across several service areas.
Finance staff said a 3% payment-card processing fee implemented Feb. 1, 2026 has correlated with lower card-fee expenses and more customers enrolled in auto-draft. "At the end of last year, we were averaging about $15,000 a month in credit card fees. In March, it's 9,600," the finance presentation said, noting an increase in auto-draft accounts from roughly 850 to nearly 1,150.
Staff also reported the new public-safety fee that appeared on bills starting December 2025 has generated about $384,000 in five months. The packet included several other proposed changes: updates to tree-preservation fees and credits (raising certain removal brackets and removing a retained-tree credit to align with removal-fee bands), municipal-court dismissal fees ($100 for class C and $200 for class B dismissals), and modest adjustments to planning and right-of-way fees to recover staff time.
Why it matters: the fee schedule is part of the city’s biannual budget process and the proposed changes affect ongoing cost recovery for services and development-review functions. Staff emphasized many of the smaller increases are intended to better capture actual staff time (for inspection re-visits, addressing, right-of-way plan review) rather than raise general-purpose revenue.
Council discussion covered downtown parking permit counts, the relationship between business-license levels and competitiveness, and whether neighborhood-district associations should receive targeted fee waivers to encourage rezoning. Staff noted the business-license base-fee review will come back to council and several items (solid-waste rates, transportation-SDC methodology) remain pending further analysis.
Next steps: staff will finalize the fee schedule and return it for final adoption on June 2, with several follow-ups (solid-waste consultant findings, transportation SDC methodology updates and a requested breakdown of UAP consumption data to inform water-rate and affordability decisions).
