LEWISTON — Councilors may take another look at room fees during their budget work, they said Tuesday.
The city last year began charging groups a $50 application fee to use city facilities. It includes meeting rooms in city buildings, gyms and halls.
All groups are expected to pay the fee, including city and other government groups.
City Administrator Ed Barrett said it makes sense to exempt state representatives and senators from the fee if they are hosting open meetings for constituents.
“I think that’s a valuable service to the community, so that’s one of the changes we are suggesting,” Barrett said.
The policy amendment would also exempt the city from charging the fee to itself and from charging federal officials hosting meetings.
Barrett suggested councilors also update the fee schedule for users of the public library’s rooms, especially the upstairs Callahan Hall. That fee would match the fee at the Lewiston Memorial Armory.
Callahan Hall currently costs $315 for most private groups, $210 for nonprofit fundraisers and $160 for local nonprofit meetings. Private groups would pay $465 under the proposed schedule, nonprofit fundraisers would pay $230 and local nonprofits holding meetings would pay $175.
Barrett said the discussion inspired some library users to ask for all fees there to be waived.
Mayor Robert Macdonald said that would be a tough sell because the city charges fees to use other buildings.
“I think that’s just opening a Pandora’s box here,” Macdonald said.
Councilors said they would take up the library fee changes at a future meeting but would wait to discuss waiving other fees until they began reviewing the 2015-16 budget.
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