Students who rent housing in the city will likely see their rents increase as the city raises the fees that College Park landlords pay.
The fees, which already run hundreds of dollars a year, will go up by about 10 percent as part of a routine adjustment, College Park finance director Steve Groh said. The fees were last changed in 2005.
Staff from the city’s code enforcement department made their case for a fee increase before the city council Tuesday night. The council will hold a public hearing May 27 and a vote will likely come this summer.
Groh said “a 10-percent increase in about three years is not ridiculous,” but the hike is being met with some groans in the city.
“I don’t know what to tell you. That’s kind of crazy,” College Perk Coffeehouse owner Chris Gordon said. “It’s a lot of money.” The city considered challenging Perk’s liquor license earlier this year after Gordon refused to pay his occupancy fees, $210 for each of the six cabins he rents out on his property. That fee may now increase further to $230 each. He said he also pays $75 every other year for a county inspection and permit.
The fees are tied to the cost of the city’s code enforcement and are supposed to cover about half of the code enforcement department’s expenditures.
College Park Public Services Director Bob Ryan, whose department includes the city’s code enforcement, said Gordon had not actually paid his city occupancy permit fees, which have accumulated over the last two years.
Ryan also said the College Park code enforcers do more than the county’s, and have to charge a higher rate to cover costs.
“[The county doesn’t] conduct an annual inspection,” Ryan said. “They don’t respond to complaints as often as the city.”
“Code enforcement does a lot of work: There’s a lot of people over there. There’s a lot of expenses involved in operating code enforcement,” Groh added.
But Dave Dorsch, the chair of the College Park Landlords’ Committee, said the city should find other ways of paying for code enforcement instead of upping landlord fees every time the city needs more money.
“It’s unnecessary, that’s the sad part about it. The city just doesn’t use any good thinking on this kind of stuff. It’s all knee-jerk reaction.”
Gordon said the added fees will result in higher rates for students renting in the city.
“Most folks look at it as only another 25 bucks, but, in the long run, these sort of things build up,” he said. “As those prices go up, so does the rent.”
Dorsch agreed that the renters would ultimately be the ones to pay.
“I think that’s a bunch of crap. They definitely don’t need to [raise the fees]. Remember who pays for this, the people who rent the units.”
Neither Groh nor Ryan anticipated strong opposition to the measure. There were scattered complaints the last time the city raised its fees, and a handful of landlords spoke to the council to no avail.
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