Politics

County scraps fire inspection fees after one year

By Melissa Moss, Published: May 18, 2016

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners scrapped its year-old fire inspection fees after commissioners received complaints from businesses about double taxation.

Many of the smaller companies that had fire inspections from the county fire marshal have simply refused to pay.
Under a revised fee schedule, buildings under 1,000 square feet would see the fee reduced from $100 to $25. Commissioners dumped the fee schedule instead.
“What I’m hearing from businesses in the county is this is double taxation,” Commissioner Charlie Messer said. Some commercial buildings with multiple tenants were paying more for fire inspections than in property taxes, he added. “If you’ve got one building that’s got three or four small businesses in it, that’s double taxation. I think we need to withdraw and go back to where we were last year. We’re giving all these companies benefits to move in here and then on the back end of everybody else there’s a big fee. I’ll be voting against the budget if we don’t change this.”
Commissioner Michael Edney, who opposed the fire inspection fee last year, reiterated his opposition to the fees.
Many small businesses hit with a $100 charge for the inspection have simply ignored the bills. The county has billed $20,000 that businesses have not paid.
“Most of those are $100 inspection fees,” said Rocky Hyder, the county Emergency Management Services director. Larger businesses have paid fees at a higher rate.
Commissioner Bill Lapsley argued that the fee was sound policy because it applies to one segment of the tax base — commercial property — and residential property owners should not be required to subsidize that service.
Since some businesses had paid and others hadn’t, the county should refund money for those honest businesses that had paid, Lapsley said. “I think we owe it to all those people that paid to refund the money,” he said. The commissioners did not authorize that. Instead, the county will pursue collections through property tax collections, County Manager Steve Wyatt said.
A year ago commissioners authorized the new fees in order to cover the cost of the inspections. The fees ranged from $100 for businesses under 1,000 square feet to $500 for those over 50,000 square feet. Scrapping the fees will create a hole in the budget.
“We’re looking at $200,000 that the county taxpayers of Henderson County are going to have to come up with to do this,” said Chairman Tommy Thompson. “We can’t walk away from it.”