http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2010/may/13/few-boarder-lr-landlords-face-new-fees-20100513/

LITTLE ROCK — Small-time landlords in Little Rock will have to start paying an annual $35 business-license fee next month just like apartment-complex owners and companies that own dozens of rental houses.

The new fee for having one to three rental units is part of an update of Little Rock’s business-license fees pushed by a committee led by City Director Stacy Hurst.

The six-member group, several of whom own businesses, suggested the city combine some of the more than 200 business classifications and add a few new ones.

Starting next year, beauty-shop and barbershop owners will be buying the same license after their categories of businesses were combined into barbers/beauty operators. Mobile mechanics, excavating contractors and utility contractors now have individual categories.

And while there’s not a business in the city selling airplanes, Little Rock is prepared to charge a base fee of $305 plus 0.24 percent for inventory if such a company opens.

Until this month, Little Rock required business licenses only for landlords who own four or more residential units. Rental-property owners pay a $200 base fee for four units and $7 for each additional unit up to 100. Every unit over 100 requires an additional $3.50.

Although the merged or new license categories won’t come into play until businesses renew their licenses in January, Little Rock will start charging the new rental fee on June 3, City Manager Bruce Moore said.

The fee isn’t expected to be a huge revenue generator, even if all property owners comply. City officials estimated the $35 annual fee will raise an additional $7,000 a year.

But “it will allow our housing and neighborhood department to better track rental properties,” Hurst said.

No one spoke against the fee at a recent board meeting, where it passed unanimously May 4.

Jackie Twillie, president of the Little Rock Landlord Association, said members were aware of the proposed fee but didn’t come together to speak up one way or another.

Most of the association’s roughly 150 past and present members own only one rental unit, so the fee “is an additional burden,” Twillie said.

“As property owners, we’re already taxed,” she said.

The city considers a duplex to be two units, and renting rooms in a house also falls under the new ordinance.

Along with the new fee, the city intends to start publishing a list every year of delinquent businesses that are operating without a current city license. Little Rock also will start collecting three years in arrears rather than the one that had been permitted under city code.

The changes came two months after Hurst presented recommendations from a group of business owners who had spent a year studying Little Rock’s methods of assessing business-license fees.

Hurst, whose family owns a chain of floral shops, and other city directors asked for the study in 2008 after City Manager Bruce Moore proposed raising business-license fees to help balance the 2009 budget.

He later dropped the proposal.

The committee concluded that Little Rock has too many types of licenses and some businesses are unfairly penalized by inventory fees because Little Rock doesn’t take into account how muchmoney the business actually makes.

Yet, Hurst said, there was a general agreement among the group to wait for a discussion to start about increasing the city’s half-percent sales tax before pushing for a change in how the city assesses inventory fees.

“We’d like to wait and see how that plays out,” she said.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/13/2010