This week’s San Luis Obispo County government meetings

July 1, 2024

By CalCoastNews staff

The San Luis Obispo City Council will meet July 2 at 5:30 p.m. in its council chambers.

While many government bodies in San Luis Obispo County canceled their first week of the month meeting because of the Fourth of July, the SLO City Council packed  their agenda with controversial content.

In February, SLO City Manager Derek Johnson announced plans to resign his post. Assistant City Manager Whitney McDonald has served as interim city manager since Johnson’s April departure.

During closed session on Tuesday, the city council will consider appointing a new city manager, though staff has not provided documentation regarding the item.

With rising salaries and increased costs, many governments in California are looking to increase fees to help balance their budgets. Government staffers review costs of services and then propose raising fees for those services in what is dubbed user fee cost recovery.

“The city’s user fee cost recovery policy calls for the city to review and update service charges on an ongoing basis to ensure that they keep pace with changes in the cost-of-living and changes in methods or levels of service delivery,” according to Tuesday’s San Luis Obispo staff report. “State law generally provides that fees for services cannot exceed the reasonable actual costs for providing services.”

Hoping to generate an additional $2,116,340 in annual revenue, under item 7-a on the agenda, the city council will discuss huge increases to mutiple city fees. In addition, the city will discuss adding new fees and eliminating outdated fees.

Proposed fee increases include:

• 210% increase to $59,621 for a development agreement
• 341% increase to $3,512 for an appeal of the planning commission to the city council
• 332% increase to $8,611 to appeal a permit denial to the city council
• 227% fee increase to $489 to replace a heater
• 238% increase to $622 to install a grey water system

New proposed fees, along with information technology charges, include:

• $3,758 to list or delist a property as historic
• $14,404 to transfer ownership of a cannabis business
• $636 to appeal a building official on a minor issue
• $1,139 to appeal a building official on a moderate issue
• $266 to replace an additional set of stairs, the first set is already $1,023
• $69 to install a skylight
• $133 to extend an expired permit
• $8,969 for an urban lot split

“At recommended fee levels, an additional $2,116,340 in costs are anticipated to be recovered annually; totaling nearly $13.1 million in estimated fee revenue per year across all departments included in the study,” according to the staff report.