"You got to know when to hold 'em . . ."
Columbia County is about the start a $9 million expansion and renovation of the courthouse, and the fee to the City of Hudson for the building permit is reported to be $38,728. Public Works Commissioner David Robinson has asked the City to waive the fee, but Mayor Bill Hallenbeck isn't willing to do that. Nathan Mayberg has the story in today's Register-Star: "Courthouse building permit: $38K."
According to Mayberg, Board of Supervisors chair Pat Grattan and county attorney Rob Fitzsimmons plan to come to the Common Council meeting on Monday to ask the Council to waive the fee. Hallenbeck wants Fitzsimmons to address his suit to city attorney Cheryl Roberts and is quoted as saying, "I will leave it to the attorneys to work that out."
Building permit fees are intended to cover the cost to the City of the work of the building inspector(s)in connection with the construction work. In asking for the fee to be waived, the County is asking the City to absorb the cost of the inspector's work. The fee amounts to less than half of one percent of the total project cost and should have been included in the budget when the project was planned.
ReplyDeleteI suggest the mayor make a conciliatory gesture to Mr. Grattan by offering to take the $38k fee out of the property taxes paid by the County to the City. ;)
Would the "work of the building inspector" be Peter Wooster?
ReplyDeleteMichael -- nice!
ReplyDeleteBravo Mayor! As Michael points out, we burden an incredible amount for this County, its insulting they think we'll just roll over for them - again.
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