Case Study

City of Saint Paul - Department of Safety and Inspections
License and Permit Fee Study

In 2007, PFM conducted a fee study of selected licenses and permits within the Saint Paul Department of Safety and Inspections. 

PFM analyzed fees in the following areas:

• General Licenses
  
• Licenses related to Environmental Health
  
• Trade Permits
  
• Neighborhood Housing and Property Improvement
  
• Fire Department: Certificate of Occupancy
  
• Alarm Fees
  
• Pawn Shop Fees

In addition, PFM estimated the “Police Enforcement Cost” related to each of these different license types to account for a transfer from the DSI fund to the General Fund.

PFM used several methods to obtain time allocation values including time studies, system data collection from Amanda and Eclipse computer systems and structured interviewing.

To determine Police enforcement costs PFM extracted data from the Police call system.  There were 160,000 records with call data for 27,000 addresses.  PFM used zoning data to determine that 17,500 addresses were eligible to have a business license and 1,250 of those actually had a license.  PFM then used econometric analysis to calculate the difference between the baseline average cost per call for the license-eligible addresses and the difference between that baseline and the licensed addresses, depending on the type of license.

The city used the direct results of the PFM prepared fee study to propose an increase of $1.1 million in license fees for FY 2008.