Staff will present the report of findings, stakeholder outreach and discuss details regarding the City’s user fee and cost of service study.

ADOPT RESOLUTION NO. 2021-2167, APPROVING AND ADOPTING A DOCUMENT ENTITLED THE GOODYEAR MUNICIPAL USER FEE SCHEDULE REPLACING AND SUPERCEDING THE MUNICIPAL USER FEE SCHEDULE ADOPTED BY RESOLUTION NO. 10-1357 AS AMENDED; PROVIDING FOR AN EFFECTIVE DATE. (Doug Sandstrom, Finance Director)

Resolution 2021-2167 adopts the fee schedule for the City of Goodyear. All fees are based upon a cost of service study, stakeholder input and council discussion and are designed to recover the costs of providing services while ensuring that the fees charged are not an impediment to growth or access to city services. Overall revenue collections from fees are not anticipated to change significantly as the areas which generate the most fee revenue, Development Services and Engineering, have fee modifications which mainly reflect a reallocation of fees to the appropriate fee category. The adopted FY2022 budget did not anticipate any revenue changes associated with this fee proposal.

The city retained the services of MGT Consulting to conduct the City's 2021 User Fee Study which was completed in April 2021. On April 21, 2021, pursuant to A.R.S. § 9-499.15, a Public Notice of Proposed Fee Increases was posted to the city's webpage along with the City's User Fee Report and Individual Fee Summaries by department. A dedicated email address was created and made available to the public through a link on the webpage. On April 23, 2021, an email providing the Public Notice and link to the city's webpage was sent to 233 developers. The City then hosted a virtual Development Advisory Forum on June 1, 2021, with Development Services, Engineering, and Finance staff present and available to answer questions. On June 14, 2021, a Council work session was held presenting the report of findings and discuss details regarding the City's user fee and cost of service study. On June 21, 2021, the City met its final public notice requirement by completing a Public Hearing in this matter. On July 1, 2021, an additional work session was held to further discuss specific fees within development services, all council discussion has been incorporated into the proposed fee schedule.

The City of Goodyear has not had a full external cost of service study performed since 2009. The City’s Pretreatment program’s fee study was conducted in 2014. The City contracted with MGT in July 2019 to perform a cost of service study using fiscal year 2020/2021 budgeted figures, staffing, and operational information. The current City fees in this report represent the fees being charged at the beginning of this study and the recommended fees represent the direct cost of providing the specific service. As a best practice, revenues should not exceed the reasonable cost of providing the service. The State of Arizona does not currently have any laws that govern the recovery of user fees. The recommendations in this report are advisory in nature and set the ceiling for any fee to be charged at this time without additional public notice. Council is the final authority on the appropriate level of fee to charge and all discussion with council to date has been factored into the recommended fees.