Everything has a price in cost-conscious cities

Anyone with a hankering to hawk patent medicines might want to avoid Richfield.

Otherwise, it's going to cost him -- $179 for a single day of trying to charm people into buying quack medicines.

Richfield's city code is full of fees for such activities, and in fact the city is raising the permit fee for mountebanks, or patent medicine peddlers, to $182 next year.

Other transient merchants -- such as the Texas shrimp-seller who brings in a refrigerated truck to sell seafood to dozens of loyal customers -- must pay $94 per day, a fee that allows the city to test the seafood to make sure it's safe.

Each year, cities review their permit and license fees to see if they should be increased. State law limits such fees to the cost of offering the service, so cities can't legally raise what they charge just to help with tight budgets.

But this year, cost-conscious cities such as Richfield and St. Louis Park asked departments to closely review what they've been charging to make sure they were collecting as much as they could.

"Our goal wasn't to try to generate additional revenue. It was only to make sure the fees were fair," said Brian Swanson, St. Louis Park's finance manager.

One new fee charges $50 to number a new address, something that Swanson said will just cover the city's cost of making sure numbers are properly displayed and big enough to be seen from the street. Another fee change affects developers who would rather pay the city than replace trees they remove; next year, they'll have to pay $115 per caliper inch, a $5 increase.

All about competition

Still, St. Louis Park cut some park and recreation fees to remain competitive with programs in nearby communities, Swanson said. Edina did the same, cutting the group fee for 18 holes of golf at Braemar Golf Course from $49 to $46.

"You have to make sure you're pricing yourself within the golf course market," said Edina Finance Director John Wallin.

Edina bumped up fees for its ambulance services, much in demand in a city with many older people. Next year, fees for on-scene medical treatment will increase from $335 to $350; "major care" will go from $1,485 to $1,550. Wallin said those fees were adjusted after they were compared with those charged by hospitals such as Hennepin County Medical Center and other ambulance providers.

St. Louis Park, Edina and Richfield all increased fees related to massage therapy. Officials said that because massage businesses have occasionally been fronts for prostitution, those businesses must be thoroughly investigated before they're licensed and monitored afterward. Next year, St. Louis Park will charge $325 to establish a massage therapy business; Edina will charge $285.

Richfield charges similar businesses a whopping $733 fee and massage therapists a $75 fee. Betsy Osborn, support service manager in the city's Public Safety Department, said that years ago the city had a problem with "masseuses" who were trafficking in something other than kneading sore muscles.

High cost of licensing

Sometimes even a hefty fee may not cover a city's licensing costs. Richfield forbids locating massage therapy businesses in homes. But a few years ago, an agoraphobic -- someone who fears crowds and public places -- applied for a license to do massage therapy in her home. The city worked with the Minnesota Disabilities Law Center to meet requirements of federal law and agreed to license the woman to work at home. It had to verify that doctors had diagnosed the woman's agoraphobia and had to confirm that she had training. In the end, the license fee probably didn't cover all of the work the city did, Osborn said.

"I've easily got an inch of paperwork on that," Osborn said. "She is the only person we have ever licensed who works in a home."

Some fees appear to be historical relics. Judging from them, Richfield in particular seems to have had a colorful past.

There are fees for wagon peddlers ($221 in 2010), people who keep pigeons ($43), fortune tellers ($148 for a day, $1,470 for a year) and public baths ($2,553 for a year).

Are such categories obsolete? Not in a city that tries to protect its citizens from noise, danger, irritations and cheats, Osborn said.

"Every so often we get someone who wanders into town and wants to tell fortunes. That can be problematic," she said. "We tell them the process and, gee, it's funny, they disappear the next day."

Next year, the fee to bring a circus to Richfield will be $191.