The DeKalb City Council will consider a request from the community development department to raise DeKalb building and inspection fees at tonight’s council meeting.

The increases come after the development department staff spent more than four months researching similar fees in other area communities and found DeKalb to be far below what most other towns charge.

Community Development Department director Paul Rasmussen said this is the first extensive revision of the policy since 1992.

“We submitted this plan to the DeKalb Building and Development Association, and though they will never support increased fees, they didn’t come out in opposition to the increases and generally accepted it as a fair proposal,” he said.

Rasmussen said the current system of charging flat rates for inspections is unfair to smaller businesses, while the city loses money in inspections on large businesses.

The proposed new fee system would charge based on square footage of a building, and would be subject to a mandatory review in five years to examine the fairness of the policy.

The department also is looking to change the application process for building permits, reducing required paperwork from 10 forms to a single form, with the addition of computer tracking for requests to cut back on the time required to receive and file the requests.

Also included in the proposal is a waiver of building fees for abandoned single family residences. The idea comes as an incentive to prospective purchasers to buy abandoned properties and remodel them for occupancy.