Council adopts updated fee schedule, adds time-and-materials option for very large projects

The council adopted a resolution amending the city's master fee schedule to include a time-and-materials option for large-scale development-related fees at the city manager's discretion. Finance staff said the recent rounds of hearings focused on development feasibility and comparisons with neighboring jurisdictions and concluded that impact and inclusionary-housing fees have a far larger effect on project feasibility than permitting fees.

Finance Director Tomo Oku explained the revised schedule and the staff rationale for retaining flat fees in most cases while offering a time-and-materials pathway for very large projects. He said the methodology is intended to provide transparency and account for consultant costs for large projects; staff told the council the fully burdened hourly rates in the new model are not significantly different from the current time-and-materials approach and noted the change responds to the development community's request. Public commenters urged the council to finalize the policy and also to explore revenue-generation strategies beyond grants.

Speakers (attribution whitelist): [{"name":"Tomo Oku","role_title":"Finance Director","affiliation_type":"government","affiliation_name":"City of East Palo Alto","first_reference":{"block_id_start":"SEG 1294"}},{"name":"Andrew Belov","role_title":"Resident/Public commenter","affiliation_type":"citizen","affiliation_name":"not specified","first_reference":{"block_id_start":"SEG 3334"}},{"name":"Jeff Page","role_title":"Ravenswood Shores Business District representative","affiliation_type":"business","affiliation_name":"Ravenswood Shores Business District","first_reference":{"block_id_start":"SEG 3376"}}]

Provenance: topicintro: {"block_id_start":"SEG 3156","block_id_end":"SEG 3181","evidence_excerpt":"So staff recommendation... provide an option to use a time and materials model for large scale project with evaluation about $10,000,000","reason_code":"topicintro"}, topfinish: {"block_id_start":"SEG 3463","block_id_end":"SEG 3478","evidence_excerpt":"I'd like to move the item adopting the resolution..." ,"reason_code":"topicfinish"}