donk said:
What do you do in a year where developmentis slow and fees are low, does your budget come out of general revenues then?
Sorry to ask all of these questions, this is an area of interest of mine.
It can be feast or famine, but we tend to project revenue low. The numbers I quoted dont even count our Engineering Dept's charge-outs.
Despite the sour economy our residential market is booming, and we're platting constantly. A typical subdivision is 50 lots, each 20,000 s.f. minimum, fully improved, and they sell of $115,000. Add your house and it's easily a $290,000 start price. No one is bitching about $1000 in additional planning fees spread over a $14,500,000 development.
But to answer your last question, a part of our budget comes from the genreal fund, a part from landfill tipping fees, a part from "enterprise" funds such as our CDA, and a part from our municipal utilities, since we do all of their GIS.