Fees & Charges

The City of Troutdale has consolidated fees, rates, charges, and system development charges that were previously spread across numerous separate resolutions, ordinances, and departmental schedules into a single Master Fee Schedule. The goal is to make city fees easier for residents, businesses, and developers to find and understand.

Below is a guide to what's in the full fee schedule, organized by section, so you can go directly to the information relevant to you.

Quick summary: Residents will find most of what applies to them in Sections 1, 2, and 7 (records requests, parking, utility bills, park and facility rentals). Anyone building or renovating should go directly to Section 4. Those developing land will want Sections 3 and 6, particularly the System Development Charge (SDC) tables.

The resolution itself (pages 1–3)

Before the fee tables start, there's a short city council resolution. The important points:

  • It formally consolidates every city fee — records requests, permits, utility rates, park rentals, court costs, system development charges — into this single document.
  • The City Manager can make minor formatting/organizational corrections, but any real change to a fee still requires a council resolution.
  • Council passed it 6–1 on May 12, 2026, with Councilor White dissenting; the mayor signed May 18.
  • It took effect July 1, 2026.


Section 1 — General fees, all departments (pages 3–5)

The catch-all section. This is where you'd look for everyday city-hall interactions:

  • Public records requests and document copies (per-page copy costs, plus staff-time billing for larger requests — note staff hourly rates roughly doubled or more from prior rates)
  • Business licenses, home-occupation licenses, temporary and peddler licenses
  • Liquor license application fees
  • Lien checks, NSF check fees, new-resident lists
  • Utility-related penalties: late fees, deposits, illegal water use, meter lock-cutting
  • A flat $25/month per residential unit "Police and Fire Services Fee"
  • A 3.5% surcharge on online card payments


Section 2 — Public Safety (pages 6–9)

Police and court-adjacent fees:

  • Police report and record copy costs
  • Parking and traffic fines — a full table covering everything from an expired meter ($50) to blocking a fire hydrant ($155) to an abandoned vehicle ($285)
  • Alarm permits and false-alarm penalties, split into residential and commercial tables, with fines escalating from $0 on a first false alarm up to $300 for a fifth-plus
  • Tow release and special-event officer staffing charges


Section 3 — Planning (pages 9–11)

For anyone dealing with land use, zoning, or development applications:

  • Annexations and map/text amendments ($5,500 flat or deposit)
  • Land divisions: lot line adjustments, partitions, subdivisions, middle-housing land divisions
  • Conditional use permits, variances, sign permits, flood hazard permits
  • Appeals of planning decisions
  • A refund schedule for withdrawn applications (75% back if withdrawn early, scaling down to 25%)


Section 4 — Building permits (pages 12–25)

If you're a contractor or homeowner pulling a permit, this is the section to read closely — the fee for your project depends on which trade and which valuation bracket you fall into. It's by far the longest section, covering every trade:

  • Structural/general building permits, priced on a sliding valuation scale (e.g., a $50,000 project costs $657 plus incremental rates above that)
  • Separate valuation-based tables for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, solar/wind, fire sprinkler, and manufactured-home permits
  • Standard add-ons that apply across nearly all permit types: a plan review fee (often 25–65% of the permit fee), a 5% technology fee, a 0.5% Community Development fee on project valuation, state surcharges, reinspection fees, and after-hours inspection fees

 

Section 5 — Nuisance abatement (page 25)

Monthly penalties for uncorrected code violations, scaled by property size ($50–$200/month), doubling after six months of non-compliance, plus lien-related fees.

 

Section 6 — Public Works (pages 26–30)

Infrastructure and utilities:

  • Right-of-way work permits, plan review, and pavement disturbance fees
  • Water/sewer/stormwater monthly utility rates (e.g., water at $5.89 per thousand gallons)
  • A 50% sewer discount for qualifying seniors/disabled residents
  • Water meter installation and hydrant meter rental charges
  • System Development Charges (SDCs) — the one-time charges paid on new construction for water, sewer, transportation, stormwater, and parks capacity. These are the big-dollar items: for example, a new water hookup carries a $9,571 SDC, and Parks SDCs run $13,089 per dwelling unit. These adjust automatically each year for construction-cost inflation.


Section 7 — City buildings and parks (pages 31–33)

Rental rates for the Sam Cox Building, Kellogg Community Room, and City Conference Building (resident vs. non-resident pricing), park pavilion reservations, athletic field use fees, and the Glenn Otto Park paid-parking program (free for pre-registered Troutdale residents, $2/hour or $10/day for everyone else) with associated parking-violation fines.

 

Section 8 — Everything else, plus Municipal Court costs (pages 34+)

A catch-all for services not otherwise listed (billed at cost plus overhead), followed by the Municipal Court's own fee schedule — bail processing, DUII diversion fees, deferred payment plans, warrant fees, and collections referral charges. This part is set separately by the Municipal Court Judge, not the City Council.