During Tuesday night’s Junction City Commission meeting the commission elected to remove a segment of the building permit fee ordinance that states the commission has the right to waive building permit fees upon request.

“Initially government agencies had the ability to receive no fee permits,” explained Tyler Ficken, City Clerk. ” The city carried that out but during the financial problems that the city faced the city decided to discontinue the automatic waiver of those types of permits.”

Agencies have still requested the no fee permits including Geary USD 475 and Geary County Emergency Management.

The school district requested the no fee permits last year and were granted them because they did not know about the city’s decision to no longer accept the no fee permits, and did not have money budgeted to pay the permit fee. They did resubmit for the permit again this year and were denied.

Cheryl Beatty explained that the decision to remove the allowance to waive fees from the ordinance is because it’s hard to decide who should receive a waiver.

“You know is it a government agency, is it a not for profit. Were do you begin and end on who do you waive and who don’t you waive,” Beatty said.

The commissioners discussed the issue last August and did give City Staff guidance to remove the waiver allowance in the ordinance.