It has been reported to THE GUARDIAN utility franchise fees will be increased from 1.25% to 1.5% with the pending approval of the IPUC. This is a whopping 20% increase for Nampa and Boise residents. Caldwell and the rest of the valley cities won't be far behind with this new round of stealth fees.
Caldwell collects a whopping 18% of the total fees for trash pick up in our fair city. The City Council agenda calls for another increase of 2.42% to be added to the total per the City Council Agenda for 10/1/2012.
There is another item that will be slid in under the radar for Caldwell Building code. Any new building in excess of 5,000 sq/ft. will be required to have fire supression sprinklers.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
6 comments:
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Let me see now, that 10,000 sq ft warehouse I'm going to build will need a $60,000 sprinkler, if I build it in Caldwell, plus I will get to pay an additional 46% property tax every year. I'll just build it in that industrial park off Hwy 19 toward Greenleaf. I'll also save some money on my Idaho Power bill and get a better deal on my garbage.
ReplyDeleteAdd to the no brainer comment the fact that the water damage will render the contents of any building useless and not saleable. This is just one more impediment to businesses thinking of locating in Caldwell.
ReplyDeleteThis leads me to another issue.. why are property tax levy rates so much lower in ADA County? Could it be local governments simply spend too darn much money?
Plus $500 to $600 yearly Inspection fee. Out there past Simplot sounds pretty good for my new building!
ReplyDeletefiremen won't be happy until they have absolutely nothing to do. i can only wonder if they understand the consequences of water damage from sprinklers.
DeleteI enjoy this site so I wish you would have done a little more research on the work shop history, I did. In December of 2007 Fire Marshal Doug Brown presented to council to put fire sprinklers in every home and new commercial over 5000 square foot fire area. Council passed only the commercial ordinance and that was done due to the fact the for a city of the size the fire departments resources are not great for commercial fires over 5000 square feet. The current fire Marshal Andy Cater took to ordinace back to council as we have new council members to make sure they understand what requirments the city had and why and if they wanted to chage them. This is not something in the building code trying to be slid by again it has been around since 12/2007. It is an ordinance under the fire departmetn. I was greatly opposed to it untill I asked Chief Windelsdorf to explain the reasoning behind it. I was supprised at how much sicence there was behind it. I still support cities only requiring minimumn standards but I now understand where they are comming from. All of the city council minutes are availabe for viewing from the city clerk. I just request them when I want some historic information.
ReplyDeleteI served on Caldwell Planning and Zoning for several years in the first half of the 2000's and the request for sprinklers in every new structure was heavily pushed by CFD. We did our homework on this issue and came to the conclusion that it was not practical for homes due to the maintenance required along with the water damage to homes when they fail.
DeleteInitial costs, water damage and maintenance issues caused us to vote against sprinklers for all new structures in Caldwell.