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鈥淲e really wanted to get into the fee schedule today and highlight a couple items that the board has brought up in conversation through past meetings that they wanted to either look at that will possibly change,鈥� Deputy Administrator Daniel Fox said at the Caroline County Commissioners meeting Tuesday.

County officials presented the draft FY 2026 fee schedule at the meeting, highlighting some main focuses the commissioners wanted to discuss.

The Liquor Commissioners fees were looked at by the county commissioners. While majority of the licenses and fees for the board are set by state legislation, there are three line items the commissioners can adjust: the application fee, advertising cost and TIPS alcohol awareness certification class.

The commissioners focused on the application fee.

鈥淭he reason for bringing this up is really looking at the money that鈥檚 being brought in from the liquor license,鈥� Fox said. 鈥淔irst, what the operation is costing us. So, we鈥檙e budgeting to take in about $60,000, but last year, we spent about $99,000 to operate the the board. So there鈥檚 about a $40,000 gap there that is being made up by the general fund.鈥�

The commissioners suggested raising the application fee from $175 to $500 to help the board break even.

Commissioners addressed similar concerns with Jonestown Water System.

The water system, which serves residents near Preston, hasn鈥檛 increased its fees in over a decade, commissioners said at the meeting.

鈥淲e have to do surveys, outreach that are now required by MDE, and it鈥檚 just just continuing to push that fund into a little bit of a bigger hole,鈥� Fox said. 鈥溾�ased off the 52 users that are in the system and some quick math that we calculated on last year鈥檚 operation, the fee would have to be about $476 to break even.鈥�

The current resident price to have a property connected to Jonestown Water System is $300.

鈥淚 think we have got to start coming up with some type of a gradual increase here,鈥� County Commission Vice President Larry Porter said. 鈥淲e are going to at least start recovering some of this money because we cannot continue to operate the system on the same amount of money every year.鈥�

The commissioners suggested raising the price to $350 this budget term and removing the $150 unconnected charge.

The last fee the commissioners and officials discussed was the Office of Finance administrative.

鈥淭his is the fee that the county charges for the Office of Finance to conduct all tax collection or property tax collection for the municipalities,鈥� Fox said.

The adjustment of the fee is being presented to account for the larger towns that require more attention and interaction. The current cap is set at $15,000.

鈥淭his costing us money to provide. I don鈥檛 want to gouge anybody, but if it鈥檚 costing us a certain amount of money to process these bills, we already give a differential to the towns. We already provide significant services to the towns,鈥� Porter said. 鈥溾�� We are going to have to get away from this subsidizing services process here if we鈥檙e going to go forward with balancing this budget.鈥�

The commissioners will phase the removing of the cap in to next years budget.

鈥淚鈥檓 fine with with implementing this next year, but letting them know that the cap is going to be phased out and they are going to need to adjust their budgeting for to come of this cost,鈥� Porter said.

The commissioners will raise the cap to $22,500, and next year they will remove the cap completely.