Opinion ID: 794639
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Service Fees

Text: 127 Citing to City of Gary, Food Not Bombs argues that SMMC § 4.68.140, which allows the City to charge departmental service fees, invites content-based or otherwise improper fee assessments. On the contrary, the Instruction provides content-neutral standards for post-event fee assessment, specifying that [a] permittee shall not be required to provide for or pay for the cost of public safety personnel who are present to protect event attendees from hostile members of the public or counter-demonstrators or for general law enforcement in the vicinity of the event. Instruction at 37 (Section VIII(1)(a)); see S. Or. Barter Fair, 372 F.3d at 1141 ([T]he standard does not allow the governing body to gauge the reaction the applicant's message will generate and set the fee according to the projected costs of policing hostile listeners, a feature the Supreme Court disapproved of in Forsyth as impermissibly content-based.); City of Gary, 334 F.3d at 682 (It is apparent . . . that the requirement of the fee is not based on a concern with the burden on public services that parades and other open-air assemblies impose—a concern that would be entirely legitimate and would permit the charging of a cost-based fee.); see also E. Conn. Citizens Action Group, 723 F.2d at 1056 (finding that an administrative permit fee was acceptable only to the extent that the official body could demonstrate its necessity in relation to costs that were actually incurred in connection with processing applications). The departmental service fee provision therefore withstands constitutional scrutiny.