Sierra Madre’s Solar Power Permit Fees Among Highest in L.A. County

A report released Monday by the Sierra Club shows that Sierra Madre is charging fees for the installation of solar panels that are among the highest in Los Angeles County.

The report shows that the permit fees charged by the city for rooftop photovoltaic systems on commercial buildings are particularly high, relative to the other 89 Southern California cities included in the survey.

In fact, at a cost of $37,349 per 131 kilowatt commercial system, Sierra Madre currently has the third highest fee of all the cities surveyed, topped by only Inglewood and Rolling Hills Estates.

For 3 kilowatt residential systems, Sierra Madre charges $515, just $3 above the average of the cities surveyed. Nevertheless, the Sierra Club says that the city’s fee is still too high.

In stark contrast to Sierra Madre, nearby cities such as Arcadia and Pasadena charge fees that are well below the Sierra Club’s estimate of how much cities need to charge in order to cover the costs of reviewing and inspecting the installations.

Some cities, such as Santa Monica and Hermosa Beach, charge no permitting fee at all for residential or commercial installations.

While charging low fees or waiving them altogether may encourage solar installations, there are costs incurred by the city during the permitting process. But it’s the way those fees are calculated with which the Sierra Club report takes issue.

“The time needed for city staff to review and inspect a commercial PV project does not vary linearly by system size,” the report says.

But basing the cost of the permit fee on the valuation of the total project is exactly how Sierra Madre operates with regards to commercial installations, according to Planning Director Danny Castro.

However, the city does not take project size into account when dealing with residential installations.

“I know there was a similar survey done before that dealt with residential installations,” Castro said. “We responded since then and reduced [the cost of permits] to a flat fee.”

But for commercial installations, “It’s a formula based on the value of labor and materials. And with solar, the cost of materials is pretty high,” Castro said.

Again, the language of the Sierra club study argues that fees should not be calculated in this way for any installations.

“Basing fees on the value of the solar equipment inflates permit costs to unreasonably high levels, especially for larger, more expensive solar power projects. To recover costs, therefore, permit fees should be based on specific review times and billable hourly rates and not on PV project valuations.”

But it’s exactly those “larger” solar power projects that Castro said just don’t come up in Sierra Madre.

In fact, the city doesn’t currently have any commercial solar installations and they have never even received an application for one, according to Castro.

“Because our city is largely residential, we focused our fee revisions on residential,” Castro said.

Nevertheless, the Sierra Club says “high fees can discourage businesses and residences from making good, long-term, high-yield investments in solar power” and is offering a free online calculator tool for cities to determine a permit fee appropriate for full cost recovery.

As for whether or not the high fees for commercial installation could discourage businesses from applying in the first place, Castro said he agreed that was possible.

“I agree, it’s just that this city has not taken the position to lower commercial fees,” he said.