HANCOCK COUNTY – The fee schedule for costs of petitons and permits was approved to go to the board of commissioners at the plan commission meeting Tuesday night.

Kayla Brooks, planning director, said that these fees cover the administrative costs for when someone submits a petition or permit, which includes costs such as paperwork filed by the departments and mileage when traveling to locations.

Brooks said that they were overdue for updating the costs and that assistant planner Hollie Kinker had been working with the building department to update these costs, researching other counties’ fees.

Kinker said that the last time any of the fees in the building and planning department had been raised was in 2016, taking effect in 2017.

Kinker said that when looking at the other counties fees, they looked at Hendricks, Shelby, Johnson and Hamilton. They also looked at various types of permits and petitions when drafting the new fees, such as a 3,000-square-foot home, 1,200-square-foot home and accessory structures.

Doing so, Kinker said they were able to figure out where fees were high or low and why, figuring out where they needed to land their fees to be competitive with other counties.

“To be honest, we’re probably going to be doing this a little bit more often in the future because I am concerned that our BZA variance fees are still not high enough,” said Brooks at the meeting.

Plan commission president Michael Long also said that he often thought that the variance fees were low, sometimes having five variances on one petition.

Brooks also said that when printing hard copies of their comprehensive plan, they currently had it listed at $32 per hard copy, but it was still more expensive to print and that the $32 should be struck or raised to $125, which makes it closer to the actual cost. It was also mentioned that the comprehensive plan is available as an electronic copy on the website.

Plan commission member and commissioner Gary McDaniel said they need to acquire what is needed to make the hard copies, changing the rate to the $125.

Kinker said that should the board of commissioners approve the fees, a resolution will be drafted and then they would have to wait another 90 days before they take effect per state statute.

The plan commission – with some members absent – approved the fee schedule with an amendment to change the cost of printing a hard copy of the comprehensive plan from $32 to $125.

From there, the fee changes will go to the board of commissioners at their next meeting for approval.

A copy of the fee schedule with the breakdown of each cost is available online at https://hancockin.gov/257/Fee-Schedule.
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