City Fees Buried in 442-Page Code of Ordinances

Folks in La Grange are supposed to register their dogs and cats with the City and pay a fee. If you didn’t know that, you’re not the only one.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, La Grange City Manager Jack Thompson said the pet registration fee was one of many buried in the City’s 442-page Code of Ordinances. Thompson said he asked City Secretary Angela Beck to compile an appendix of all fees, rates, deposits, penalties and charges so that they could be easily located in one central location. Staff presented the appendix to the City Council for review at the meeting on Monday.

“Angela worked very hard on this, it’s been a lot of work,” Thompson said. “We had our fees amongst the various ordinances. So you had to hunt back and forth to find everything. I preferred to have everything in one area, so you could go there and look everything up.”

Thompson said it will be easier to update the fees and find that the City may no longer wish to impose.

Councilman Ken Taylor said he never knew the City had a fee for dogs and cats.

“I’ve had a dog for I don’t know how long,” he said. “I’ve taken him to the vet all the time. They never said anything.”

“That’s one of those where you can have a fee buried in some ordinance and no one remembers it,” Thompson said.

Council members Kathy Weishuhn and Violet Zbranek both said they recall a time when the City enforced dog and cat registration.

“The vets would sell you the tag,” Weishuhn said. “It was your responsibility, if you were in the City, to ask for the tag.”

Weishuhn said Dean Ray Ahlschlager, the City’s retired animal control officer, used to issue citations for untagged dogs and cats.

“That was a long time ago,” Weishuhn said.

At some point, the City stopped enforcing the ordinance.

“This is all stuff we’ll take a hard look at,” Thompson said. “Our first step is to get it all organized in one area. Then we can go back and say, ‘What do we want to keep? What don’t we want to keep? What do we want to adjust?’” Most of the City’s fees are related to permitting requirements related to new construction and inspections. A clothes dryer: that’ll be $1.50 added to the $15 permit fee. A ventilation fan: 75 cents. Commercial hoods: $3 each.

If you want to drill an oil well in the city limits, you’ll have to fork over a lot more money: $2,000 plus “an amount determined by the city manager as is necessary to retain the services of a geologist, geophysicist and/or petroleum engineer to study the application for conformity to the highest safety standards in the drilling thereof…” “Peddlers, solicitors, itinerant vendors and handbill distributors” are subject to several permit and fee requirements. To obtain a permit for 30 days, they must pay a $30 application fee plus $10 per person. The City also charges them a $30 nonrefundable fee to investigate each applicant.

The new fee schedule also includes all utility rates, such as rates for electricity, water, sewer and garbage collection. The City budget for next year includes slight increases to those rates, which were updated in the fee schedule, as listed below:

• Residential electric base rate - from $15.97 to $16.45/ mo.

• Residential sewer base rate - from $14.35 to $14.78/ mo.

• Residential water base rate - from $31.61 to $32.56/ mo.

• Residential garbage base rate - $25.20 to $26.45/mo.

The proposed ordinance amendment includes two new fees that will apply to new property developments: a city planner fee of $250 and a city engineer fee of $350.

“We did include new fees for developers, if they bring in some sizable building plans that our engineer and planner will review,” Thompson said. “It’ll cover those costs because they are consultants, and we don’t want to be out of pocket for those costs. It’s standard for cities to pass along those fees. It won’t come as a shock to the development community.”

The Council reviewed the proposed fee schedule Monday night and took no action. They will consider amending the code of ordinances to implement the centralized fee schedule, along with any changes the Council wished to make, at a future meeting.