How to resolve AdBlock issue? LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — In an ongoing discussion over raising permit fees issued by the Lake County Air Quality Management District, the Board of Supervisors this week pushed back on a proposed three-year rollout.
The Lake County Air Quality Management District is “one of 35 local regulatory agencies in California responsible for ambient (outdoor) air quality in our geographic region,” the agency’s website states. “It’s our duty to ensure the fair and consistent implementation of local, state and federal air quality regulations.”
For nearly 30 years, the district has kept its fees flat — a move district officials say has strained staffing and operation. Now the agency is proposing a significant fee increase, phased in over three years, with a 35% increment for the first year. But the Board of Supervisors was hesitant to move forward.
At the end of Tuesday’s discussion, the board asked the district to consider a five-year implementation plan instead with a 20% first-year increase. The matter will return for further discussion at a follow-up meeting.
If approved, this would be the district’s first major fee increase since 1996, aside from the introduction of a burn permit fee in 2003 and yearly adjustments tied to the Consumer Price Index, or CPI.
While supervisors were concerned that such a huge extent of increase may bring undesirable impact to local economic development, Air Pollution Control Officer Douglas Gearhart maintained that the fee changes — after three decades — are both urgent and necessary.
For the district, CPI adjustments alone no longer suffice, Gearhart said.
“We're probably at 50 to 60% cost recovery on the permit programs,” said Gearhart at the board’s June 10 meeting when the matter was first brought forward to the supervisors. That means only about half to 60% of the true cost of running the permit programs is being covered by the fees they charge.
Gearhart mentioned that the district has to carry “lots of state and federal mandates, all of which are unfunded.”
“And they are unfunded because the state Legislature passes laws and says districts have fee authority, therefore adopt a fee to pay for it, and so we haven't had to do that. We've been able to avoid that for, well, since I've been here over 25 years,” said Gearhart. “We've gotten to the point where we're just, we're not able to sustain that.”
The board agreed to proceed with the rule changes such as lifting the annual burn ban but raised concerns for the impact of fee increases and requested a side-by-side analysis of the new fees at the June meeting.
Supervisors ask for five-year rollout, annual review
About a month following the first hearing, Gearhart this week came back with a fee study summary based on staff time to perform tasks and a side-by-side comparison of the current fees against the proposed new fees.
A three-year rollout plan was proposed for existing permitted facilities, with 35% increments each year.
At the Tuesday meeting, supervisors pointed toward the magnitude of these increases.
“It’s not just a 100% increase; it’s a very large increase,” Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said, citing examples of fees jumping from $300 to $3000. “This impacts agriculture; this impacts economic development, any kind of development.”
Gearhard reminded the board that the increase will be incremental over three years.
Sabatier later said that he would like the board to have a year-by-year review to approve it annually and also suggested lengthening the rollout time from three years to four years.
In the fee comparison table, the less significant changes proposed include an increase from $335.38 to $950 for a type of authority to construct or from $20,122.98 to $21,095 for a type of permit to operate.
The more significant changes include a type of permit to operate fee that currently costs $670.78 and is proposed to increase to $23,438 for a power plant modification permit.
Later, when Supervisor Helen Owen questioned this change, Gearhart explained that this resulted from a changed fee structure. The over $20,000 fees were just issued in a different way in the past, he said.
Gearhart also explained that some increases are more significant because the task is much tougher than the standard ones while paying the same, lower fee.
The permit for “aggregate extraction and process for over 100,000 tons per year” has been charged $670.78 as a standard generator, for example.
“Aggregate extraction is a much bigger, much more complicated facility with a lot more emissions, a lot more equipment; the time required for inspections, the time required for reporting that goes into that is much more significant. So that's why the change is so much more significant for that,” Gearhart responded when Owen inquired on this item. “It was an unfair system for the people with smaller equipment and people with larger facilities ended up getting a lot more for their money.”
Later, Supervisor Brad Rasmussen proposed a five-year implementation period with the first-year increase around 20% rather than 35% to mitigate economic impact.
“I understand you have limitations and whatnot. I just know that this is going to limit a lot of the agencies and businesses that are trying to, you know, put forth anything,” said Supervisor Eddie Crandell. “So for me, I’d like to see six phases.”
Gearheart said that the district has been working on a replacement fee schedule for the last five to 10 years. The process was initially planned to start in 2020, he said. “Then we had COVID, then we had fires … So we've been putting this off to prevent the economic impacts and the impacts to the community because we had the salary savings, because we didn't have staff, we couldn't keep staff here.”
“We're not an economic development agency. We are here to protect the community from air pollution,” he continued. “We're not trying to balance what's the potential growth of the county versus impacts from smoke and the community health impacts related to equipment and emissions.”
At the end of the discussion, the Board of Supervisors came to a consensus to offer a five-year period to implement the fee raises, with the requirement to come back to the board for review and approval every year.
“I’m good with that,” said Rasmussen. “So we’re not locking ourselves in for five years.”
The discussion is ongoing and no final action has been taken at this point. A follow-up meeting will be scheduled for this agenda.
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