KAIT-Jonesboro, AR-News, weather, sports, classifieds-Jonesboro planning on increasing fees
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By Keith Boles - bio | email feedback
JONESBORO, AR (KAIT) - Earlier this week, we were the **first** to report Jonesboro's budget battle.
Tonight-- city leaders are discussing **new** ways of bringing in cash!
Basically if you don't have money coming in you can't have money going out. One way to add some income is to take a hard look at the fees the city charges for various services and change them.
At the monthly meeting of the Northeast Arkansas Homebuilders Association, Mayor Harold Perrin and several of his city officials told contractors about possible increases in fees that would affect them directly.
Mayor Perrin said outdated fees have to be adjusted to 2009 costs.
“We're paying salaries and expenses on a 2009. But again the problem is we have fees and fee structures that are 37 years old. So you have to adjust some of those fees.”
Todd Wilcox the association's president says even though the economy is strong in Jonesboro, these extra costs won't be passed on to customers.
“We're not going to, we can't pass all this on to the consumer because we want to keep our economy strong. So more than likely the builders will be paying this out of their pockets.”
It has taken about a year to develop the new fee structure. It will apply to commercial builders as well as residential. Other fee increases will include cemetery costs and recreation facility costs.
The builders association has been working with the Mayors' office on this fee change so it didn't come as a huge surprise.
Overall this could generate upwards of 3 to 4 Hundred Thousand over a year.
Once approved the changes would probably take place in January of 2010.
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