Brookfield residents can expect a bump in the fees they pay for vehicle stickers when the renewal period opens in May.
Village trustees on Monday, March 9, approved increases to the fees that will go into effect for this year.
A regular passenger vehicle sticker will cost $60, up from $50, while motorcycle stickers will cost $30 instead of $25. Vehicles registered at the senior citizen rate, which is limited to one car per household, will have stickers costing $10, up from $8. Trucks weighing less than 8,000 pounds will now have stickers that cost $96 instead of $80, and those heavier than that will require stickers costing $150, up from $125.
Late fees will also increase. If you’re late to register your car, you’ll owe $30 extra rather than the previous $20, leaving a total late price of $90, up from $70. Senior late fees will rise to $5 on top of the regular price, motorcycle late fees will rise to $10, and all truck late fees will rise to $50.
All fee increases are about 20% of the previous sticker price, Finance Director Doug Cooper told the Landmark. According to a staff memo Cooper wrote, this increase is Brookfield’s first since 2019; with about 3% annual inflation in operational costs over the seven years, the fees will just about even out with inflation.
Vehicle sticker renewal will open on May 15, Cooper said, and run through June 30. Late fees and police enforcement will go into effect on July 1.
The memo estimates Brookfield will bring in $111,445 more than last year, based on the number of vehicle stickers it sold in each category.
Cooper said the bulk of the newly generated revenue will go toward the village’s public works department.
“We’re looking at hiring a new assistant public works director, and that led me to review all of the expenditures within that fund, and I noticed that it was time to look at some possible fee adjustments that needed to be made in order to appropriately fund that particular department,” he said. “We need to fund salt, all the manpower involved with clearing the streets, the leaf program, patching — anything that has to do with street maintenance, those costs have risen.”
He said staff discussed the fee increases during the village’s budgeting process last year as staff looked ahead to this year.
In addition to raising the fees for vehicle stickers, Brookfield staff are working to do away with the physical stickers themselves. Instead, the finance and police departments are working together to implement digital vehicle stickers, though Cooper said staff are still in the “initial stages of investigation” to determine if the program is viable with the village’s existing software.
“When people pay for the sticker, it will get into our database, and what we would end up doing is taking our current database with the newly purchased stickers and putting that into a license plate reader over in the police department,” he said. “As they go down the road, the license plate reader would be able to determine whether or not the car is registered to a Brookfield address and whether or not they actually purchased the vehicle sticker.”
Announcements related to the virtual sticker program will be made to the community as village staff iron out the details, he added.
Cooper acknowledged that some residents may be unhappy with the rising costs associated with vehicle ownership.
“Unfortunately, we need to increase the fee to maintain our current service level on the streets,” he said. “We need to meet inflationary expectations, and we are trying to keep our costs to a minimum. This was one of the few ways we could see to fully fund that department.”