Service Fees Expected to Increase : Budget: Under a proposal to be considered by the Board of Supervisors, user costs would rise in nearly all county offices.

In a move officials describe as an effort to offset rising costs of doing business, Ventura County supervisors are planning to raise fees for county services ranging from trailer inspections to AIDS tests.

Bert Bigler, county budget manager, said the annual round of hundreds of fee increases and several dozen fee cuts are “reflecting the cost of providing government services.”

There is no telling how much money the increased fees will raise if approved by the Board of Supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting, Bigler said. Those assessments will come next year as departments draw up their budgets.

But this year the fees are drawing extra criticism from the private and public sectors alike, most notably from Supervisor John Flynn, who said that increasing levies against service-users may lead to privatizing government.

“If you go talk to small-business people, shoe repair people, pizzeria people, gas station people. . . . They’re looking at public agencies as coming around to collect their salaries,” Flynn said Friday. “Something’s wrong if the economy’s falling and fees continue to rise.”

Tax hikes are no more palatable, Flynn said. But the repeated fee increases charge service-users inequitably for services they use that may also benefit the general public, he said.

“For example, a person needs several permits to open up a restaurant. There’s a public benefit in that that restaurant is employing people and that restaurant is bringing in money to the economy. What benefit the public is getting needs to be looked at.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee, however, defended the policy of charging the service-users, saying, “There is a fairness about it.”

The fees are designed to make those who use services pay for them, Kildee said. “We can’t make any money on the service; we can only cover the cost for the service.”

Some departments would reduce their fees, such as the treasurer-tax collector’s office, where the cost of a copy of the Ventura County tax roll would decrease from $400 to $150 under the proposal to be considered Tuesday by the supervisors.

But fees would increase across the board in nearly every other government office.

For instance, a permit to build a 2,001- to 3,000-square-foot restaurant would increase from $351 to $395; a fireworks display permit would increase from $146 to $160, and drug counseling would increase from $60 an hour to $80 an hour.

Medical tests at county facilities also would rise in price. A pap smear or breast examination would go from $17 to $24, a flu shot from $16.93 to $18.25 and an acquired immune deficiency syndrome test and counseling session from $18 to $40.

“Our costs, like everything else, are going up,” said Dr. Larry Dodds, county public health director. The proposed testing fees are comparable with those charged by private organizations, Dodds said, adding, “we lean over backward to keep the cost down as much as possible.”

Fire inspections would increase from $73 to as much as $200 for one- to four-unit single-family buildings, and from $146 to $240 for building tracts.

Development fees would not only increase, but change in nature, a proposal that brings strong criticism from builders. Fees for county engineers and planners--now capped at fixed rates--would change to hourly rates with no limit on the amount developers and builders could be billed.

That plan has already drawn a protest from the Building Industries Assn. of Ventura County.

“They provide a service, and if the service takes more time, then you’re billed for the additional time,” said Elaine Freeman, a spokeswoman for the Building Industries Assn.

“There’s nothing wrong with that in principle because they should be paid for the services they’re providing, but without any way to track the time spent it’s very difficult for anyone to keep track of what their costs would be,” she said.