The Safety and Licensing Committee met 09/13/2023. One of the items they took up was a request to approve some of the Clerks Office’s licensing fees for 2024. These fee increases ranged as low as $5 to $150 not including the 10% overall increase to all Special Event permit licensing fees.
The fee increases were made to bring Appleton’s fees more in line with those of surrounding and comparable communities. Alderperson William Siebers (District 1), expressed concern that the fees were being raised in response to what other communities had done rather than in response to Appleton’s own individual costs; however, Clerk Kami Lynch said that the city actually did not recover its costs with even the increased fees, and were it to seek to recoup its costs, the fees would have to be drastically higher.
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) was particularly concerned about the $150 increase to the Class A Liquor license fee. Clerk Lynch explained that that fee had not been increased since 2014. Additionally, up until recently, convenience stores had not been allowed to have Class A Liquor licenses so, while the increase was going to be a hit for people with existing licenses, it was not going to be a surprise to the many establishments who would be seeking Class A Liquor licenses for the first time.
The committee ended up voting 4-1 to approve the fee changes with Alderperson Schultz casting the dissenting vote.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
Clerk Lynch started out by explaining that she had compared the city’s fees with the fees of similar sized municipalities in the same region and discovered that a few of Appleton’s fees had fallen behind neighboring communities. She hoped, in the future, to review fees on an annual or bi-annual basis.
CLASS A BEER AND CLASS A LIQUOR LICENSES – The beer license was increasing from $200 to $250 and the liquor license was increasing from $300 to $450. Clerk Lynch had been keeping her eye on these since 2017 when she first saw that they were a bit low. A lot of municipalities have their fees set at $500 which is the maximum allowed by the state.
OPERATOR LICENSE – This was increasing from $60 to $65, but the license was good for 2 years, so the increase would only be $2.50 for each year.
AMUSEMENT DEVICE LICENSE – This was increasing from $15 to $25. Per Clerk Lynch, bars and taverns are not allowed to have gambling devices, and the presence of gambling devices in those establishments has become a problem statewide. The Clerks Office was working with the Inspections department to do a better job of tracking what machines various establishments in the city had and to keep a record of the descriptions of those machines because sometimes a bar will swap out one kind of [presumably legal] machine for another [presumably illegal] machine. The increased fee was to help covered the costs of doing a more thorough review of those licenses and also make sure that business owners were aware of what kind of machines were compliant.
SECONDHAND ARTICLE DEALER LICENSE – This was increasing from $90 to $100. Clerk Lynch said that these dealers had to get set up in a system to report their activity to the Police Department to make sure they were not selling stolen items.
FIREWORKS SALES – This was increasing from $80 to $100. This looked like an increase; however the current license only covers one employee and a seller needed to pay an additional fee in order to have an additional person work in the fireworks sale tent. The new proposed fee would cover two people working in a tent so it could be considered a decrease.
She said that there would also be an ordinance amendment being brought forward in the future cleaning up how the municipal code covered fireworks sales.
MOBILE HOME PARK LICENSE – This was increasing from $100 to $125. The increase was based on looking at comparable communities.
SPECIAL EVENT LICENSES – These fees would all be increasing by 10%. Staff was reviewing all of the special event fees, and would come back with a report and a proposal for 2025. For 2024, however, they were just requesting an across the board 10% increase. Each fee varied based on whether or not there were street closures and how close or far off the event was from the date of the license applications. The further off the event was the less expensive the fee was. The biggest fee increase was still under $300 which would be for a significant event for which the application was filed at the last possible minute. Otherwise, Clerk Lynch said the increases were pretty nominal.
Some of these fees had not been increased for a number of year, and moving forward Clerk Lynch hoped to review them annually or biannually.
These fee increases currently before the committee were mainly recommended based on looking at the fees in comparable communities. This concerned Alderperson Siebers who said he believed that the city should recoup its costs but he didn’t think comparing Appleton’s fees to neighboring municipalities was a good justification to increase costs. “I just don’t think it’s fair to our constituents that we’re charging them fees based on what other communities are charging.”
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) asked if there was any kind of analysis done to understand the city’s costs to review/issue the fees and to make sure that the license fees were in line with that cost recovery. Clerk Lynch said that was not something that takes place, but were something like that to happen, “I think, then our fees would have to be drastically higher, to recoup the cost, because a lot of them initiate for these licenses, they’re multi departmental licenses that that are reviewed by, you know, police fire, inspections. So, to cover the costs of everybody’s review of the licensing just would not be fair. So, this is just to make sure that we’re capturing the additional work that’s being done for some things that are changing or more controversial, like the amusement devices.”
Alderperson Schultz was concerned about the $150 increase to the Class A license fee, which was a 50% increase over the original $300 fee. He thought a 10%-15% increase would be more palatable to business owners and citizens.
Clerk Lynch said that it had been last increased in 2014. Additionally, prior to a couple years ago the city “did not allow convenience stores to hold class A liquor licenses. So, we had very few people that held the class A liquor; it was more the grocery stores. And now that we’ve, you know, allowed that to happen, we are seeing more, so it it’s going to be a hit on some that have had these licenses, but as more people are new licenses, it won’t be, I guess, a surprise because they’re used to paying the new fee.”
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) said she recalled discussing the cost of licensing fees a few years ago during the pandemic, and at the time, it was suggested not to increase the fees due to the added hardship on restaurants and bars.
Alderperson Schultz asked about doing another round of evaluations on the increases. He also wondered if they could do a 10% or 20% across the board increase to all the fees to prevent large jumps in individual fees.
Clerk Lynch answered, “I wouldn’t have proposed these if I didn’t feel that they were reasonable. Doing just a percentage seems—doesn’t capture the work that’s done, which is why, like, fee by fee, we looked at an average to see what the average was for each community and then also thinking about what we do what additional work goes into it to come to those fees. So that’s why I would hesitate just to do a percentage. It seems fair on the surface, but when you dig in, then there can be some unfairness.”
The committee went on to vote 4-1 to approve the fee increases as proposed by staff, with Alderperson Schultz voting no.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1112094&GUID=63C9E9EA-0CAA-4ABB-85A7-62825F70A621
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