City Council approve new fee schedule

BONNERS FERRY — City Council held a meeting to implement a new fee schedule structure for the city, but only one resident attended the meeting and spoke about the fee increases.

Gerald Higgs spoke against the $20 dog impounding fee per offense. Higgs argued that the costs would become difficult for pet owners who have dogs that frequently escape their enclosures.

Higgs continued to argue that conducting a fee increase during the holiday season is suspect because there need to be more eyes on the fees; Higgs wants the fee to increase during summer.

“I just think this should have been at a time when there would be a little more public input and eyes on it,” Higgs said, “It’s just the optics are bad.”

City Council discussed fee increases stating the dog impound costs were aimed to keep the animal shelter up to code.

Councilwoman Valerie Thomspon addressed Higgs’s remarks and detailed restructuring of fee schedules to eliminate specific fees instead of just increasing costs.

“There certainly wasn’t any intention to increase fees much more than they had already been,” Thompson said, “but that we had been losing so much money during COVID, we too as a city has lost a tremendous amount of our budget.”

Thompson was most concerned about making sure new rates would reflect the cost of maintaining and using machinery to take care of the tax payer’s dollars.

City Administrator Lisa Ailport detailed that the time was needed to determine fee costs, and summer months were not a reasonable time frame to figure out the many fees.

Thompson motioned to approve the resolution and fee structure, which was approved by a majority vote.

Also on Tuesday, Ailport mentioned that the charging station was garnering attention and praise because Bonners Ferry was the first to add the electric station and seek reimbursement.

The electric vehicle charging station is detailed as charging $.25/kWh and $0.20 per minute.