Minneapolis business owners can rest easy. The city likely won't be asking for more in fees next year.
The city's regulatory committee voted Monday against a proposal to increase business license fees by 3 percent, choosing instead to keep them flat. The one exception to that was fees for pollution control, which will increase by 3 percent.
The vote is a win for city businesses, who were fretting over the possibility that fees would rise faster than they have since 2009. The fee increase was 1.5 percent in 2012, 1.5 percent in 2011 and flat in 2010.
Council Member Elizabeth Glidden, who chairs the committee, said they were keeping fees flat because there was not enough time to analyze the rationale for increasing them.
"It became apparent from our initial meetings with staff that it would take some more time than I think we really had allowed in this year to do the type of analysis that we wanted to do to do a thorough review of expenses and ... legal authority around fees and revenues," Glidden said.
Council Member Gary Schiff, another member of the committee, agreed with Glidden's motion.
"I think there's more efficiency that we can continue to work towards in our regulatory services department," Schiff said. "And that we have not yet found all the unnecessary regulations that are out there and all the reforms that are potentially available for us to make it easier to run a business in Minneapolis."
The 3 percent fee increase was expected to generate $300,000 in extra revenue.
