{"id":25030,"date":"2025-10-28T20:23:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/25030\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T20:23:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:23:25","slug":"plano-eyes-increased-fees-on-developers-as-part-of-cost-recovery-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/25030\/","title":{"rendered":"Plano eyes increased fees on developers as part of cost recovery plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPlano officials are considering raising various fees for planning, engineering and building services as part of a broader effort to recoup more of the city\u2019s costs.<\/p>\n

The proposed fees are set to go before City Council in November for approval.<\/p>\n

What happened<\/p>\n

At an Oct. 13 meeting<\/a>, Plano City Council members received an update from city officials on proposed additional fees on building inspections, zoning changes and other planning and building services.<\/p>\n

The fees<\/a> would be part of the city\u2019s ongoing cost recovery efforts, which began in March. Departments developed proposed cost recovery targets and fee replacements in September, ahead of council\u2019s planned review of potential fee adjustments in November.<\/p>\n

City Manager Mark Israelson said the cost recovery efforts have been part of Plano\u2019s fiscal roadmap project that city officials have been working on for the last few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cost recovery model is a framework for the city to recoup costs for programs and services that do charge fees,\u201d Deputy City Manager Shelli Siemer added.<\/p>\n

Plano\u2019s Planning, Engineering and Building Inspections departments are reviewing their current fees to determine what adjustments should be made. The goal is to achieve 80% cost recovery for these three departments by fiscal year 2027-28, Siemer said.<\/p>\n

The level of cost recovery is dependent on the balance of tax and fee support, according to city documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Siemer said the fee adjustments will also consider market comparisons with benchmark cities such as Arlington and Denton, which are similar to Plano in size and growth, as well as neighboring cities to Plano.<\/p>\n

What it means<\/p>\n

Currently, the building inspections department is the closest to the city\u2019s cost recovery goal at 84.4%. The engineering and planning departments are currently seeing just over 20% cost recovery, according to city documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"tableDirector of Engineering Caleb Thornhill said the department has limited data for benchmark cities because of state legislation that affected how Texas cities manage certain fees.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the department currently does not charge for submitting or resubmitting engineering plans for review.<\/p>\n

\"tablePlanning Director Christina Day said added fees for zoning changes would be substantially more expensive than current fees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a big shift for us,\u201d Day said. \u201cIt\u2019s still substantially less than our benchmark cities, so we\u2019re not coming close to meeting that 80% [cost recovery] ultimate objective, but again, we\u2019re still trying to stay within a reasonable realm of not too far ahead of our benchmark cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Day said several fees do include public notice fees, which were not factored into the examples.<\/p>\n

\"tableWhat they\u2019re saying<\/p>\n

Council member Rick Horne said he is worried about the potential impact of the increased fees on small developers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe large developers … know the cost of doing business,\u201d Horne said. \u201cWhen we have the small businesses that are trying to develop small parcels of land, I want to make sure we\u2019re fair to them … I\u2019m concerned that there may be some unevenness here … or an unnecessary burden on a small business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isarelson said that the cost to the city for the hours and materials city staff spend does not change regardless of whether it is a small or large developer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose costs to the city are the same,\u201d Israelson said. \u201cWhile I understand that their economics may be slightly different, the cost borne to actually produce that may not be different from the city perspective … We do understand a little bit of the rate shock as well, but we think that consistency is extremely important as we move from project to project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead<\/p>\n

Proposed fee adjustments are set to go before City Council members at their Nov. 10 meeting. If approved, the new fees would take effect in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plano officials are considering raising various fees for planning, engineering and building services as part of a broader…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[17679,712,713,708,715,714,160,711,4222,17672,162,161,720,17677,17676,13341,17678,717,17674,17673,17675],"class_list":["post-25030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-dallas-north-tollway-plano","tag-dallas-fort-worth","tag-downtown-plano","tag-east-plano","tag-park-and-preston","tag-parker-road","tag-plano","tag-plano-construction","tag-plano-development","tag-plano-development-rules","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news","tag-plano-parks-and-recreation","tag-plano-sb-840-plano-multifamily-apartments","tag-plano-senate-bill-840","tag-senate-bill-840","tag-single-family-housing-plano","tag-us-75-construction","tag-zoning-application-plano","tag-zoning-change-plano","tag-zoning-petition-plano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}