City staff presented the proposed 2025 city fee schedule at the Dallas City Council work session on June 2 and described several drafting changes and proposed rate adjustments for council review.

Brian, city staff and presenter, said the city reviewed the consumer price index for the past year and proposed that most fees increase by at least 2.8%; some fees that have not been adjusted in a long time were proposed at higher adjustments to cover costs, while others will not change. “Most fees are proposed to increase by at least 2.8%, which was the CPI for the last year,” Brian said. Attachment A to the staff report contains the full fee schedule.

Staff noted administrative details and effective dates: most fee changes would be effective July 1, while aquatic center membership changes would be effective January 1 to align with membership rollover. The packet printed for the work session omitted footnotes for formatting reasons; staff said the missing footnotes explain which fees are subject to automatic CPI adjustments and will appear on the final packet.

Staff described a technology fee assessed as 4% of the applicable fees to fund internal electronic-business costs. The garage-sale permit fee was lowered in the draft schedule. For electric vehicle charging, staff said Level 3 chargers are not functional currently and therefore the Level 3 fee remains at 10 cents until the chargers are restored; staff said the fee for Level 3 could be revisited if the chargers return to service.

Under fire and EMS fees, staff proposed clarifying billing line items for transport and adding two new fees tied to billing categories. The proposed transport fee remains listed as $1,930.34; the ambulance response or treatment with no-transport fee would be $604.95. Staff proposed adding a specialty care transport fee of $2,860.62 and an extra ambulance attendant fee of $19.36. Staff said the rewording (for example, separating ALS 1, ALS 1 emergency, BLS, BLS emergency and ALS 2) is intended to match billing codes and payer requirements.

Council members asked for missing footnotes and for comparison data to other jurisdictions. David asked where to find the footnotes in the packet; staff said the footnotes will be included on the final version. Staff committed to returning a resolution and the full annotated fee schedule later in June, and to provide comparison fees from other jurisdictions before the council considers adoption.

No formal vote or ordinance was taken at the June 2 work session; staff described the proposed amendments and said they will incorporate the changes into a resolution for council consideration at a future meeting.