Overland Park to set rental inspect fee at $60/building
The Overland Park City Council on Monday informally agreed to a rental inspection fee of $60 per building a landlord owns.
Also Monday, the council denied a family’s request to keep its egg-producing hens.
At its Committee of the Whole meeting, the council directed staff to create a resolution to set a $60 per building fee for its new rental licensing and inspection program. The fee will cover the cost of external inspections of rental properties in the city.
The council adopted the rental licensing and inspection program in February in an effort to keep the city safe and attractive. Rental property owners are required to register for the program in July. In July 2017, the city will start collecting fees and inspecting half of the city’s rental properties. The other half will be conducted in July 2018.
There are around 30,000 rental properties in Overland Park.
The new program will cost the city around $330,000; the fee is expected to cover the costs.
When he proposed the staff’s recommendation of $60 per building, Planning and Development Services director Jack Messer also offered three other fee alternatives: setting the fee at $60 per building and $200 per apartment complex; $60 per building with a maximum fee, or offering a fee per unit within a building.
Messer told the council that if it decided to choose the $60 per building with the maximum fee, the cap would be 30 buildings, so the maximum fee would be roughly $1,800. So, if a property owner had 31 buildings and another property owner had 70 buildings, for example, they would each pay the same maximum fee.
The council unanimously agreed the $60 per building with no maximum fee was the best option.
“I think its human nature to take a simple situation and complicate it,” said Councilman Terry Goodman. “I’m worried that’s what we’re trying to do here. I personally think a per-building fee is the simplest solution. If you have 10 buildings, you pay for 10 buildings and if you have 600 buildings, you pay for 600.”
Councilman Paul Lyons agreed setting a maximum fee would make the inspection load for each apartment complex unbalanced. A complex with 60 buildings will take twice as much work to inspect as a complex with 30.
“The fee should reflect the work,” he said. “Otherwise you’re letting people with more buildings get away with more than their fair share.”
The council members also agreed that it was important to keep the fee simple, in order to make it more flexible for the future, should it need to change.
“This is about cost recovery and allocating the cost fairly,” said Councilman John Thompson. “We’re entering a new process, so we’re going to be learning as we go and there’s probably going to be fiddling with it until we get it right.”
The item will come before the city council to approve at a later meeting.
Later, at the city council meeting, the governing body denied a family the opportunity to keep its chickens.
Frank Hassanzadeh, an Overland Park resident who lives near 95th Street and Antioch Road, requested approval to keep chickens at his single-family home, which sits on .29 acres.
Because the city’s Unified Development Ordinance considers chickens to be farm animals, a special use permit is required to keep chickens on property if it sits under three acres.
For the past five months, the Hassanzadeh family kept chickens inside a two-car garage with access to a small fenced-in area outside.
Frank Hassanzadeh told the council that his family kept the chickens because his wife has an illness that only allows her to eat organic eggs.
He was not aware a permit was needed until a neighbor made a complaint to the city. He told the council his family originally had six chickens and a rooster on the property, but gave away two chickens and the rooster, leaving them with four.
He insisted that he has never had a neighbor complain about the chickens to his face. He also said he often gives eggs to his neighbors and friends.
“They (chickens) are very harmless and we keep their pine shavings clean,” Hassanzadeh told the council. “It’s a good situation. Like pets, we have names for them.”
He told the council that much to his dismay, he had to give the rooster away because the animal kept singing at 6 a.m., and he was concerned it would bother his neighbors.
“It was hard to get rid of the rooster, he was a real gentleman,” Hassanzadeh said. “But there is no noise now. Honestly, we have never had complaints.”
The majority of the council, however, remained unmoved.
Councilman Jim Kite suggested to Hassanzadeh that he buy his wife certified organic eggs from the Overland Park Farmers Market.
Councilman David White was concerned that the chickens lived inside the garage, rather than outside.
“This is not a neighborhood conducive to having farm animals on the premises,” he said. “Allowing chickens like this to be in the house could create a health issue there we need to think about. Are there diseases or anything like that that could infect the house? There are no vaccinations for them like pets.”
Ultimately, the council voted 11 to 1 to deny the chickens.
Councilman Curt Skoog was the only one who wanted the chickens to stay.
“This council has had a tough time approving chickens anywhere so please don’t take it personally,” he told Hassanzadeh. “It’s just a stance this council has taken at this point.”
Last fall, the council voted to allow an Overland Park family to keep its six hens after council members were touched by their story that the chickens helped their autistic son. That family lives at 191st and Antioch, a more rural area that had been annexed from Stilwell a few years earlier.
This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 4:07 PM with the headline "Overland Park to set rental inspect fee at $60/building."