Issaquah City Council Planning, Development & Environment Committee recommended increasing fire permit fees and passing those fees to Eastside Fire and Rescue to cover plan-review and inspection costs and to support adding staffing, the committee agreed Oct. 7.

The recommendation, made after a presentation by Eastside Fire and Rescue officials and city staff, asks the full City Council to consider the fee schedule included in Exhibit A at the Nov. 10 meeting. Committee chair Council Member Zach Hall led the discussion and took questions from council members and city staff.

Why it matters: Eastside Fire and Rescue (EFR) said current permit fees do not fully cover staff time for plan review and inspections. EFR officials presented time-on-task analytics and regional benchmarking that, they said, show many permit categories have been underpriced compared with actual labor and complexity. EFR and city staff said the additional revenue would be passed through to EFR and could help fund the fire marshal office and make possible an additional assistant fire marshal if partners collectively approve hiring.

During the presentation, Jeremy Hicks, fire marshal for Eastside Fire and Rescue, described the methodology used to set fees. Hicks said the department measured average review and inspection hours, grouped permit types to reduce variability, and aligned fees to a percentage of city building plan-review fees for design consistency. Hicks said the department uses a 15% share of the city building plan-review fee to represent the fire plan-review component because, he said, "that's what we think is a fair number, and that's also being used regionally." He added the department intends to maintain analytics to support future adjustments.

Eastside Chief Will Aho explained the agency's funding structure and why the pass-through is proposed. He described Eastside as an interlocal governmental nonprofit formed under a five‑partner interlocal agreement (the cities of Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend plus Fire Districts 10 and 38) and noted that some contract agencies (Mercer Island, Woodinville, and King County Fire District 45) pay their own costs. Aho said the fire-marshal office currently has six staffers and that partners fund only a portion of that staffing; raising permit-fee revenue and passing it through to Eastside is one mechanism to address workload from local growth.

Minnie Dhaliwal, Issaquah community planning and development director, explained the city's administrative charge tied to the proposal: "The 10% is covering just the intake, the routing, the fee collection, the payment, and issuance," she said, describing work performed by city permit technicians and clarifying that the 10% charge applies to specialty fire permits, not to building plan-review pass‑throughs where the 15% model is used.

Officials gave permit examples showing how proposed fees compare to current fees for different projects: a residential sprinkler permit example would increase from a current range of $381–$544 (depending on number of heads) to a proposed flat $728; a representative single-family example using a $1.2 million valuation showed a net increase of about $838 for combined fire review and system permits; a four‑unit townhome example increased roughly $1,400 across systems; and a large commercial tenant-improvement example with underground work showed an increase of about $4,400, which staff characterized as a "worst case" scenario because underground systems are labor intensive to review and inspect.

Eastside staff also presented fiscal modeling based on 2024 permit activity. Using permit counts from last year, staff estimated plan-review revenue would rise from $19,190 to $45,786 under the proposed rates and fire-system permit revenue would change from $43,813 to $25,980 for the subset modeled; staff explained those figures by mapping last year's permit types to the new fee matrix.

Council members emphasized the need to monitor impacts on development and residents. Council President Walsh and other members supported standardizing fees across partner cities and tying fees to measured staff effort, while also asking staff to watch for any unintended barriers to development or undue hardship for homeowners. Several council members asked that EFR and city staff report back annually on analytics used to adjust fees.

Questions remained about implementation details and timing: EFR and city staff said several partner jurisdictions (Woodinville, Carnation, North Bend) have already approved the proposed fee schedule or pass-through arrangements; Sammamish and others were still in process. Ben Lane, EFR fire chief, said fee revenue would flow into EFR's budget as program revenue and would not automatically reduce each partner's contract payments; any reallocation or hiring would be decided by the EFR board and partner discussions once revenue is secured.

Committee action and next steps: The committee signaled support for both increasing the fire permit fees as presented and for passing the fees through to Eastside Fire and Rescue. The committee directed staff to place the proposal on Council regular business for Nov. 10 for formal Council consideration.

Clarifying details and limits: Staff and EFR repeatedly distinguished discussion items, administrative directions, and formal decisions. The committee's recommendation is not a final city code adoption; final adoption will require Council action. The timeline for hiring additional Eastside staff depends on demonstrated, collected revenue from all partners and a decision by the EFR board; Issaquah's committee recommendation does not itself authorize hiring or change the city's existing contract amount with Eastside.

Ending: The committee concluded the discussion and scheduled the fee ordinance and pass‑through decision for Council consideration on Nov. 10, asking city and EFR staff to return with annual analytics and with details on partner approvals and any program-level fund balances.