SALISBURY – The Salisbury Board of Health met on June 3, 2025 to amend the town’s fee schedule to match the wording and costs on their current applications. Among the list were eight suggested corrections for four different fee sections. These include septic, habitability, food establishment, and dumpster permits and costs. To clarify, the actual price wasn’t changed for any fees; only the information on the fee schedule was amended to align with applications.
Out of the eight, the proposed changes that prompted the most debate were to food establishment plan reviews. On the application, for a full service plan review of smaller operation mobile and static food establishments, it states that the costs are $150 and $250, respectively. Although people have been paying these prices for a long time, the fee schedule was never changed to match them. Instead, it stated the old costs of $100 and $150, respectively. This brought up questions from multiple Board of Health members as they were wondering: What prompted these price changes? When were these adjustments made? One member speculated the costs were amended due to the fact that plan reviews require a great amount of work hours, causing the town to have to raise prices of plan review fees to pay their workers adequately. This conclusion was ultimately agreed upon by the six Board of Health members.
Though, they couldn’t pinpoint the exact date these adjustments were made as there was no record or documentation of changes. In the end, there was a unanimous decision among all six Board of Health members to amend the fee schedule to match the plan review application, preventing further confusion, and to keep this price change as one said, “it is a reasonable price for the man hours required”.
Another one of the eight amendments to the fee schedule, encouraging debate, was to the section containing the soil evaluation fees when replacing septic systems (ground water test).
The proposed change was to write that the fees apply to “per proposed lot” instead of “per lot”. As said by a Board of Health member, this is to prevent future misunderstanding as someone could have one lot divided into ten smaller lots with ten different septic systems. One member suggested that the fee says “per proposed septic system” to further elaborate this idea. This member’s suggestion was accepted and the amendment was unanimously voted in by all six Board of Health members.
Other minor amendments that were proposed include changes to the wording on the fee schedule of the drain layers license, dumpster permit, habitability re-inspection fees, certificate of habitability, and a suggestion to combine the hotel and motel habitability application while eliminating that people have to pay extra for more than ten units. All motions were unanimously passed.
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