County May Resolve to Increase Fees in New Year : Government: Supervisors will consider more than 300 rate hikes for residents of unincorporated areas to offset costs.

The new year may bring new fees for residents of Ventura County’s unincorporated areas.

Got a dog? It could cost you $3 more for a pet license. Want to reserve a field for your local baseball team? That could run an additional $5 per hour. Need a fire inspection? Make that $70 more.

These are just a few of the more than 300 fee and service rate hikes the Board of Supervisors will consider Tuesday.

Most of the fee increases would occur in the fire, animal regulation and public works departments, as well as the county’s Resource Management Agency and the Alcohol and Drug Department of the Health Care Agency, officials said.

The proposed rate adjustments vary from one department to another and are intended to offset increased personnel costs as well as higher overhead for such things as utilities and phone service, officials said.

“I don’t want to say that the cost of government is going up,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “It’s more a case where we’re behind on increasing fees over a number of years.”

The board had been set to consider the rate hikes last month, but the issue was continued after Schillo requested more information from department managers to justify proposed rate hikes.

For the most part, Schillo said he has since become satisfied that the rate adjustments are needed to offset increased operating costs.

He pointed out, for example, that the largest rate increases are proposed by the county Fire Department, which has not raised service fees for two years. The new fees, to apply to a wide range of services from weed abatement to inspections of new commercial buildings, are expected to bring in an additional $200,000 to $400,000 in annual revenues.

One of the proposed increases in fire service fees includes weed abatement, officials said. Property owners who have been ticketed for failing to adequately clear their land of plants that could become fuel for a brush fire would pay a base fee of $365 plus related cleanup costs, depending on the size of their property. The current fee is $221, plus a personnel charge for the cleanup crew.

The additional revenues raised by the Fire Department would be used to replace aging firetrucks and special emergency equipment, such as defibrillators, used to revive victims of heart attacks or accidents, fire officials said.

Schillo said he also endorses increases in some recreation fees, such as the cost of reserving a baseball field. Daytime charges would double, from $5 to $10 per hour, and hourly nighttime rates would increase from $10 to $15.

Schillo said the additional money is needed not only to keep pace with operating costs, but also to improve aging recreational facilities.

Like her colleague, board Chairwoman Maggie Kildee said she also believes most of the fee increases are justified.

“I support full-cost recovery for the services we provide,” Kildee said. “You can’t run government like a business on one side of the ledger and not the other. It costs money to provide a service.”