Service fees to pool and gym admissions are under the microscope as the City of Nanaimo explores the cost of its services and how much it should recoup from the people using them.
The City of Nanaimo has hired U.S.-based FCS Group to do a three-month study of its user fees, from the cost of services to what the city recovers through charges.
City staff members will also collect comparable information from other municipalities and build a policy for user fees and its philosophy on costs and recovery, with plans to put the full package in front of council this fall for it to decide what user fees will be.
The work comes after a core services review, which said, for example, that arena fees are below average for Vancouver Island while general admission fees are close to the highest. It recommended the city increase arena rental charges to be the top two or three on the Island and increase rates for commercial users to the highest amount the market will bear and ensure commercial uses don’t displace public ones.
Victor Mema, city chief financial officer and deputy CAO, said most of the rates being looked at are in parks and recreation, such as rentals, the cost to use the pool and gym, as well as fines for bylaw infractions and fees for the city to provide service.
He expects water and sewer rates will likely be done next year by a consultant, adding it was a budget constraint.
Work this year is budgeted at $75,000 and spans costs for consultants to policy work and comparisons.
“You want to be able to know, obviously from a planning perspective what the true costs of providing a service is and I think members of the public also want to know that part,” Mema said, adding there’s also objectives with every fee and “you want to confirm whether those objectives are being met. These being user fees you want the party that is benefiting to truly carry that cost.”
Mema said this is a planning exercise not a revenue-raising exercise and most likely there will be some increases and some decreases.
“That outcome we won’t know until we see the data,” he said.
Gordon Wilson, senior program manager with FCS Group, told council at an open meeting last month that if they see something out of line from the standpoint of their experience they’ll let council know, but there are a lot of value judgments. If there are recommendations, they’d be suggestions.
Results of the consultant study are expected at at the end of June or early July.