Cashmere City Council reflects on public workshop

The first February City Council meeting for Cashmere fell on a snowy evening - but unlike the frosty weather, the council was fired up and ready to tackle some items brought up at the public workshop that took place in January. On February 11, the council gathered to discuss the community’s suggestions, some fee tweaks and contracts. 

A recent resolution from the city was making some adjustments to rates for administration items such as licenses (i.e. business licenses), permits and building inspections. 

“Some of these jumps are pretty big percentage wise,” said council member Daniel Scott.

Most of the council members seemed to agree that these were necessary increases or tweaks, however Scott did notice that some costs leaped up enough to ask questions. Kay Jones, Cashmere treasurer and city clerk explained the reasoning in more depth how the costs were adjusted - beyond just comparing apples and oranges with other cities. While they did compare Cashmere rates with what other cities were charging for the same items, they also used the obvious need to breakeven and simplifying the process as reasons for rate tweaks. 

The overall goal seemed to make it simpler and streamline the process. 

“This clarifies everything, it’s very simple. We have already worked and created new permits so all permits are on one. So you don’t have to have a permit for everything, you have one permit and you get to mark whether it’s for mechanical plumbing, etc.,” said Jones. “It’s way more simplified.” 

The increase in rates isn’t to gobble money up from individuals, but rather to make sure there isn’t a loss of money on the city’s behalf. Jones illustrated this point with an example of the city paying $550 with their contract for a hearing examiner and the city previously only charged people $600 for the process that included the hearing examiner. 

“A lot of these rates increase because see, the original fee here was $600 and we’re increasing it to $850 and we say that it includes hearing examiner,” said Jones. “So we were only making $50 for all of our staff time.” 

And time is money. Scott suggested a gradual rate increase over the course of time to which the others seemed not sold on. Council member Kameon Smith and Jones reiterated that the city of Cashmere was still on the low end rate wise, compared to cities of the same size - Smith also made the point that the rates were fair for what was being exchanged. 

“It’s an honor to have a business in this little town. We don’t have a problem with it, nobody that does business in this town is going to have a problem with it, so up it (it being the various fees) and we need it,” said Smith. 

The council passed the motion 3 to 1 with Scott being the hold out. 

The next item wedged in was the Interlocal Agreement between Chelan County and the city of Cashmere. The contract has recently increased the processing fee along with tweaking how they calculate the cost of housing inmates in the Chelan County Regional Justice Center. They now calculate on average population and the processing fee is now $25. 

“So the (city) budget amount is about $3,000 so we’ll have to increase the budget for the line item for jail fees a little higher and the recalculation of the $25 processing fee,” said Jones. 

The council didn’t seemed thrilled with the contract and tabled the motion until someone from Chelan County will be able to address some questions - though Jones did have someone from Chelan County show her how the calculations for the cost were done and everything did add up. 

“They made the rules, I just want to play by them,” said council member Derrick Pratt. 

If some Cashmere citizens have had trouble navigating the city’s website, there is good news on the horizon. Next up on the agenda was the approval of the city’s website upgrade. Jones says that the software program currently being used is no longer supported and the new system will be much more user friendly and mobile phone accessible. 

Lastly the mayor prompted the council to share what they gathered from their constituents at the public workshop. The public workshop was an opportunity for the council members to actively engage with the community and take some suggestions.

The fairly inexpensive and quicker to execute items rose to the top of the to do list. Some things mentioned were the big push for the small town feel and how that correlates with building codes, requests for dog parks, inspection of bridge, sidewalk maintenance and even a shade canopy for the skate park. 

The city mentioned working with the school board, the Cashmere Chamber of Commerce and the Planning Commission on several of the proposed projects.